“Between the cape and the petticoat” by Leora Fridman
We have a lot of kinds
of goodness today. We would
be babies, if only we could block
out the environment noise. Between
the cape and the petticoat there are at least
four kinds of summer, four kinds of
approaching to the stray. There’s something
about winter that makes it hard to recover from,
even with a full fist of pollen-flashing
leaves. It hasn’t gotten so bad that I don’t have
brooding. It’s only – women can become such foreign
creatures in shells. A sheet of analyzed cloth can
become such a plaything. If I were to count the possibilities
for evenings, I might very well end up buried in figurative
bulbs. They’d flicker on when I
achieved. Sometimes you have to limit yourself. Say,
the light bulb is made of glass pieces: what can be made
of those. I know more about making things from other
things than my listed skills would imply. For
example, your tenderness. Any sheet of metal can be
melted into a door. Any plank could be worn. Indefinite
possibilities reach out for windows like their sources
of electricity will be cut off for being chunky. Where there
are branches, there are also smooth bundles
of twill. A plastic chair is also a smoking pile
of quickly-stiffening clay. I would like to have
a meal with you in which that which is eaten is
made from the furniture. I imagine your head
would go spinning like the power grid,
your earlobes go stiff like garlic, your tongue
alone. We would have three tries at making
conversation. If we failed, we’d signal with a flap
of our coats. Any superhero would come rushing in, a mother-
draper of sorts. He’d lay down three possibilities for connections,
two perfumes for taste, and a small daylight thunder,
just released from the store.
Copyright © Leora Fridman, 2010