Working Notes: Christmas Party

"a" this pecan tree
that wind three hundred years
ice storm java script
"won't be long" perilous journey
this book "already finished"
just walking the forest
through it one more time
all the chapters
rereading it for "the first time"
hemlines and drawings
"nature" ants starving below the surface
indonesia indonesia indonesia indonesia
"company Christmas party" tatoos
"beef" or "chicken" dismal strangers
"five kids" she is taking him in
"do they have that" in Indonesia?
"indonesia"
"over there?" Dreiser's Chicago
"new apartments" New apartments
"like ants" starving
skin ashtrays skin lampshades
"brown on brown on brown"
"hard to find" she is a Mexican Jew
"can't get rid of the accent she says"
"her Holocaust Chilean grandparents"
"Pinochet?" Pinochet? "did you hear that silence"
I look into her eyes, those little round eyes
she was told very little "the act"
and I know she is taking him, he's simple
born again hovering hovering
the tribulations "do they have that"
over there?
and the next morning, "I pick the pecans"
off of the ground, brushing aside the leaf
clutter and she comes to me
in an excerpt not knowing
who the hell Pinochet was or is
and I said, Pinochet to her again
as if to wake her up from the mulch.
Pinochet, you are caught. Pinochet
lives in the leaf clutter and dining
room chatter. I cringe at his old
born again blue eyes and the way he cupped
her darling shoulders hunched from
the years she has spent telling
old men like him
what they want to hear and he said,
"take care of her will you?"
He went out for his smoke
while she chewed and her
cud full mouth oblivious
just kept chewing
and on her hands were rings
so many new rings
little trophies "as it were"
yet I kept walking, silent
just walking through this
book that's already over
been over for a thousand years.