Eat Mangos

Entries from June 2008

why the world would be a better place if i had a boyfriend

June 24, 2008 · 12 Comments

**AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a satire. It was born of many hours reading best of craigslist. Please don’t take me too seriously :-) .**

 

Dear non-denominational deity of unspecified gender and number, aka God;

First off, congrats on creating the Earth. Very very good job. A+ first draft. Truly stunning and original work. May need some editing here and there, and a few of those characters are just kind of idiots that you can cut out, but the rest looks really quite promising. If you weren’t already famous for the Vatican and the Spanish Inquisition and stuff, this would surely be your ticket to celebrity status. 

The reason I am contacting you, however, has little to do with your project, and more to do with my role in it. The truth is that, while I am perfectly aware that I have very little room to complain, I am not entirely happy with the hand you are dealing me at the moment. And so I would like to offer you a proposition. A compromise, if I may.

You see, someday, I will fall in love with a boy who is straight, available, and into me, who is not off-limits or a fictional character, a teacher, a creeper, a convicted criminal, or someone who is convinced he will end up married to his ex ex girlfriend from five years ago, or his mother. On that day, I promise to start taking out the recyclables and putting each one into its proper bin. I will stop going the five extra miles to the Safeway in Sunnyvale just because they have better blueberries. I will drive the speed limit. I will clean my room. I will wear sunscreen every time I go out. I will put my car up for sale and resort to using only public transportation as a means of getting around. I will move to a place where they have public transportation. I will take a vow of silence until we find an alternative source of energy. I will refrain from making inappropriate sexual comments regarding my friends’ mothers. 

I will use the most energy efficient setting on the dishwasher. I will do the dishes. I will turn off all the lights when I leave the room. I will learn to fill out tax forms. I will balance my checkbook, find a respectable job, and declare financial independence from my parents. I will call home every day. I will stop eating in and around the area surrounding my laptop. I will limit my caffeine consumption to two cups of coffee a day. I will warn others about the dangers of smoking, and of driving like people from Boston. I will protest global warming. I will shop organic. I will promote research, of all things, at all times, even on weekends. I will permanently turn off my air conditioning, and convert my house into a Bikram Yoga studio. I will sponsor an endangered species. I will ban abortion, adoption, abstinence, and babies altogether, unless they are very cute babies, in which case exceptions can be made. I will give out free contraceptives, to anyone, at any time: they will just magically appear in your pocket the moment you need them. Unless you’re not wearing any clothes, in which case they will appear somewhere in your general vicinity. You may have to look around.

I will stabilize the economy—how, may you ask? Why, I will find a lasso and reel that sucker in like a wild mustang, and put it into the first old barn I can find. I will name it and we will share a special bond. I will tell Ben Bernanke to feed it only vegan gluten-free whole-grain raw-food things, so that it will stay healthy. On such a diet it will soon become not only very large but also biodegradable, as you may have guessed, and we will be able to use our growing economy to help fuel our jets, without polluting the environment. I will make all currency with 100% recycled materials, and compostable. As a natural consequence, I will no longer waste money.

I will legalize every kind of marriage, everywhere. I will make it easier to become an American citizen from Mexico. I will standardize prices to above fair trade. I will become a one-man co-op, working for the betterment of humankind. I will go to church on Sundays, and I will make it okay to wear white after Labor Day. I will make sure there are always sales on cute shoes. I will ban the act of wearing tights as pants, but clarify that leggings are alright with long shirts, because my friend Siobhan says so. I will bring back disco. I will party like it’s 1999. I will institutionalize the term, “mad acad,” and I will take the money we spend on sucking the fat out of our food and put it towards feeding the masses. I will make sugar-free chocolate illegal. I will make sure the only cell cancer sees is a prison cell. I will learn how to cook my dinner without setting the house on fire.

In other words, the world would be a much better place if I wasn’t so damn lonely, and if I could have a little bit more luck than what I’m normally used to, and perhaps even a chance to grow up. I realize you are busy these days, got a lot of things on your plate, but please; if I could offer you this deal, and lend you a helping hand simply by being an adult and a better person (and working a few miracles here and there), you may find yourself with a lot fewer things on your plate, and maybe even some vacation time (could be nice). All I want in exchange is a genuine bona fide beautiful stranger to walk into my life, asking to be taken on as a part-time lover or a full-time friend (the latter comes complete with full company benefits, but no trading options—let’s talk). Now, is that really so much? Cosmic coincidence is your middle name. Could you, would you, make mine a good one? And soon, if at all possible?

Yours so very truly,
Me

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized
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the california chronicles, pt. 2

June 23, 2008 · 2 Comments

 

It is twelve twenty-eight. I strike a match.

In the quiet I go running through the cool night. The sun sets late out here and it takes a while for the heat to evaporate, rising up through the brown and the upstairs bedrooms. I find myself circling around and around the route through the townhouses, clockwise like an old carousel horse, losing myself to the path I’ve followed for the past five years. I catch my breath on the wandering smoke of my neighbor’s cigarette as she waves at me on her way to her front door through the darkness. It tastes strangely sweet. She tosses it into the dirt on the side of the path.

There is no reason for me to be out here, except I have trouble sleeping and I need to breathe. I hate days when there is no moon. I am terrified of darkness, of loneliness, of something I can’t put my finger on but dream about whenever I’m at home, quiet disasters, little terrors that make no sense to anyone but my own tired mind. I wake up at cold hours, suddenly aware that I lonely, feeling like an image is slipping away, like a part of me quietly knows that I am at a point in my life where I have everything I will ever need, and that someday, soon, I will lose it all, piece by piece by piece, like puzzle that needs to be put away.

So I run my mind like a racehorse, until it is clear and I can think, and then I sit on the stair, watching the windows dim and the street slow. Out of a second-story apartment across the street appears a man with a fauxhawk and a white wifebeater, followed by a small reddish-brown dog with pointed ears. I can’t make out the man’s features; all I can see is the bright orange embers of the tip of his cigarette, and his silhouette against the staircase. He walks slowly up and down the street, the dog, leashless, trotting at his side. Then he stops, looking up at the sky, and exhales. Something about him goes so still it makes my heartbeat slow. In the window way above, an invisible hand lights a candle. He becomes a picture I can frame. 

Sometimes I wish I smoked, just to have something warm in my hands, just to have an excuse to light another match into the solitude of my own front porch. I also wish I wasn’t allergic to dogs. Not sure about that fauxhawk though, it might throw my style all out of whack.

I write by candlelight, between sips of tea, my fingertips lightly coated in sulfur and potassium chlorate, from a room that smells like vanilla coffee and blueberries. The sprinklers outside are making a rhythm like rain on warm pavement. I like watching the lights being extinguished in windows as I pass beneath them. I want to know, are you afraid of the dark, like I am?

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forks

June 12, 2008 · 3 Comments

 

I like
forks
because of how they can be situated
on top of the kitchen cabinet,
in the middle of the road, 
or where they embrace at the end of the river, 
before body meets body, becoming ocean.

I like
my nephew Sashka
who, being unborn,
is already beautiful–
with hair of dark honey,
hands like wild bees,
pink pomegranate cheeks
and eyes blue
like his father’s.

I like
my friend who reads in rainbows,
and my friend who can write the world into love
with itself;
my friend who sings in keys that unlock maybies,
my friend who has danced with me through every impossibility;
also, my friend who smiles like jasmine on a late-January morning:
this is not something just anyone can do.

And so it is because of 
you that I don’t want to live
a life unanswered;
or, rather, I want to live like water lives–
at then end of an exhalation,
condensing, changing, constantly 
converging carelessly toward
if I could 
fall upon your deserts
like stars out of summer
with the weight of rains over your empty reservoirs,
if I could 
fill your ponds myself
I would. I would
be contained in your blood like a beautiful river through your veins,
emerging into a fork that carries you like a wave over
we the nobodies of water
to Atlantis
and, becoming ocean, stops
before the crash
is.

Reminding us that we are still caught in motion always lost but finding
each other amongst ourselves impossibly within.

Categories: poetry
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