Brain Freeze, Brain Fry

      Kate and I used to do this thing, when we thought the same thing at the same time. We'd touch index fingers and say "Brain freeze" then wiggle all of our fingers while making hissing noises, saying "Brain Fry."

That was before I called her Kate.

The night is only dim here
it's raw and constant
how the hours sllither in between the thoughts
that send much needed chills down my spine

      I drove Shuijuan past the bowling alley where we used to spend so much time, and no one asked questions. I could have sworn that it was less dingy then, but then of course, the awe of aging was robbed from me by my stupid brain, which immediately informed me that nostalgia and all forms of it are just different versions of some ideology meant to keep me from acting radically.

And thus the average epiphany was thwarted. I tried not to look at apartment 14, and instead remembered to be a good driver.

They ask me when the day is
it's when the silence isn't filled
when the harp stops pinging solidly
when the melancholy of the background music
fails to tingle in my gut

      I suppose there are worse things than missing out on epiphany. We talked about epiphany and Elizabeth Bishop in class, and I'm pretty sure we came to a conclusion that Bishop didn't believe in epiphanies, not as positive, life-directing moments. They can always cause you harm later, they can be merely constructs, they can make you move back to Boston.

      I got an email from Purdue on Friday, from a woman identifying herself as Jill. She told me my application was complete. She called me Amy, and signed it Jill. It was very warm, for a short, generic (of a genre) letter. I mean, email. I mean e-letter.

     Epiphanies are so rare these days, that I should appreciate the little ones. There is a woman in Indiana named Jill who wants to call me Amy.

The man said he saw Paul standing behind me
the heat waves off my thighs
in the middle of a phrase, the words shift
to something like mangoes, to cornucopias
to the science of fiction, the art of waiting
(It's not hard to master) to read the right line

      Sometimes I forget that those places still exist. Have I become the true New Englander, who can't see west beyond Foxboro? Can I live without public transportation? Even sucky public transportation like the T? Do I remember how to buy gas every week? What if everything outside of these eight blocks or so is actually just a bedtime story?

      Then again, stories matter, they always have. Or I wouldn't be doing this. It's not about Material Science. It's about Material Rhetoric, the stuff we live in.

Staring at black lines and platonic wisdom
Paul can stand behind me or beside me
when I turn out the lights and hate myself
for letting the sun come up so quietly
for not seeing the transition into dawn
When I crawl into my cave and shut my eyes
against the maddened crowd, against the material
of my wet washcloth that won't be dry by dusk.