theology&geometry

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Built to Spill. I’ve loved that band for years but for some reason recently their sound fits neatly into my life in ways it did when I first really got into them. I used to steal all kinds of their lyrics for blog post titles back in 2003 or so. There is something about their music and Doug Martsch’s voice that will always remind me of my years in Murfreesboro, when I’m fairly sure I thought I had everything figured out. In retrospect, I was an itty bitty baby.

So I’m rifling through every single thing I own, trying to toss what’s expendable and pack what’s not. I came upon my stack of Collages, dating back to the mid-’90s (working in what used to be the Student Publications office had many perks, one of which was access to back issues), and instantly remembered these two poems from the Fall 1997 edition that I’d fallen in love with when I encountered them back in 2001 or so. Both are by Mary Cummins. I’ve Googled her and the poems to no avail. I hope she’s out there still writing poetry, because the things she writes speak so softly but mean so much. Anyway. Here they are. Hopefully she won’t mind me sharing them here.

Honeymoons
by Mary Cummins

There was that time
in your mother’s house.
She had blue curtains
and flowerpots on the balcony,
watching the lake and our
occasional exploding
semi-melodramas
of those years,
way before she died
and we became calmer lovers.
It was some morning when
we argued over something,
maybe distances or faults
or the frying of eggs, and
she wondered why we visited
west Nevada every June
to pet her cats and shout
profanities in her kitchen.
You slammed some door
and I threw tupperware
at your stubbornness
and her hand-painted wall,
cringed as she surveyed
our splattered breakfast,
its plastic bowl
bouncing on the floor.
She shook her graying head,
clicked her tongue and said,
honey, it’s not love
’til you break something.

I don’t know you.
by Mary Cummins

You pour coffee
and I sell shoes.
You have Clark Kent eyes,
fuzzed goatee, a tattoo
round your bellybutton.
I wear big heels and my
mother’s college dresses,
line my lids in black.
Weekdays I size up customers,
wonder where I’m going
for lunch, send you good
mornings in corner glancing.
I hate life this way.
You give me chamomile tea,
dollars and soft fingers for change.
If one day I say hello,
I am twenty-two and stuck,
perhaps you would run
gentle hands over the ruins
I’ve made of these years.
I place my tired hair behind my ears
and go for doughnuts.
I offer you pennies,
my pressed skirt whispers please.

Old and busted: Sitting in my parents’ office in the squeaky desk chair, craning my neck upward to look at the monitor, cussing heartily at the plodding pace of their ancient Dell. The new hotness: Doing my nightly websurfing ritual sitting cross-legged on their couch with a laptop warming my crotch and a sleeping Daschund next to me.

I made a whirlwind trip to Murfreesboro yesterday to celebrate an old friend’s emancipation from the ‘Boro and entrance into the world of law school in Chicago. Got to see some Kids I haven’t seen in forever. Got to see some others I don’t see nearly enough. The ‘Boro is slowly but surely being evacuated of Kids and I love that we’re taking over the Tennessee media.

Guess what, America! We’re all godless liberal heathens. Some of us are more godless than others, but we are ALL heathens.

[for Saturday, Sept. 1]

Coxynoodlenose (okay, where did that nickname come from?) came back to the ‘Boro for some face time over the weekend. We whooped it up at the Campus Pub, which is a seedy little joint on Greenland that offers dollar beers and a foosball table lit by a billiard lamp shaped like a NASCAR car. I don’t remember too much, except for being my usual obnoxious drunk self, and finding someone’s phone in the bathroom and trying to dial someone named Cindy and someone named Precious. At 1:30 a.m. Neither Cindy nor Precious had the wherewithal to answer. That’s probably for the best. I also have a vague recollection of finding a bit of hamburger in the cab on the ride back. And of JR and Cox singing a subdued karaoke rendition of “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man.” Aw, I think they were sad that the night was coming to a close.

This is a terrible picture, but all the good ones were taken after midnight and by people who are not me. So they don’t count for this little artsy-fartsy project (day 244: holy crap, I’m nearly within 100 days of being done).

Good to see you, Cox. Have a safe trip back to the land of low humidity and observed civil rights.

Project 365