LAYNIE BROWNE
BEA'S NOTEBOOK
1
Invisible feeds the visible
My children begin the day. Witch picture fell off of the wall. The bony-fence
cereal. He sees a squirrel-bat on the way to school.
This non-material light, as I imagine it is filtering, though the shades
are closed, and falling onto the face of a photograph.
2
This is said and unsaid
the known
I could speak of you
but when you arrived
sunlight, medicinal
I call you by such a name, forbidden
3
Dear Blankness,
Your utterance mistakes me
I am here otherwise blemished by thought
Undone by lack
Timeliness is utterance
If you were to speak through these tracings of words
I say tracing as I am trying to locate the underlines, a scaffolding
built upon that unmentionable s – k- y
If I say so, I am told, I will be scattered as any terse ink
Body transposed
Smudging in a reverie of sand
Have you ever --
4
Dear —,
Have you ever
lain awake by fingerlight
of the one no longer
beside you?
5
Retire, when to revere, pay reverence to expiring tickets and registrations, the endless formatting of motherhood, return this, staple that, the folders and the string to wind about plastic wheels, velcro. Costume check, permission slip, check, mineral vials, check. You still forgot the pledge money, the sharing day, check, mental angst, check, those who consider you to be daycare for their children, check, please pick him up by five o'clock, check. Five o'clock. No one arrives, check. Five-thirty, phone call, check. We are sitting down to dinner with how many additionals? The invisible child, check. You can hardly blame them, check, so they say from the car, oh we're doing our shopping.
Bedtime, bath, teeth. Paid rent, check. Now what is forgotten twice?
Returned call, voting research, the desk, half hidden in all means of significant communications mixed with research, check.
Who have you become? By the middle of the day. Check. This isn't
a memory, it is today. But then again as I lay here in the imagined sunlight
, so forbidden, so evidently normal—that bodies recline.
6
If you admit to me in all good humor the evident trouble you cause, especially
since your death, I will smile, and take you to bed.
Let your hair grow
Fall down to your knees
Remember scent
We once inhabited now for many hours
Weeks in which we planned for this unconsigned
Continually arriving future
Awakening together by habit and necessity
How long before they will wake us
Remedies for unanswerable questions
why you have been taken
Now that such inquiry permeates
My every thought
And my meter has turned to ask
Everything
Now, you have decided not to get any older
What interest have we in such forsaken endeavor?