TRISH SPOTTS grew up in a small town. She never put her roots down. Daddy always kept moving, so she did too.
 -------------------
1099-MISC

it had the charm [for her] which any broken ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest habitually on the level –George Eliot (from The Mill On The Floss)


[SERVICES RENDERED]

as an arc
without plan climbs
just at an angle

an unassuming charm
we might say “slope” but not quite “rise”
we might say “bank” but not quite “pitch”
as if laxness was
a highlight

no one wants to talk about

the bookmark
from the seaside bookstore
where the book was bought

how it remains
so the picking up & finding one’s place again
touches back
some day when the pressure pushed
far to the edges

culminating with the clerk wedging said bookmark
between pages 78 & 79

& off one goes

with the level edge of the earth slinking back
from the horizon

there is a trick to holding the knife
getting behind the joint
so the muscle has nothing left to hold

my landlord, Jeff
my neighbor, a foreclosed home

the feral cat
wants to come inside
which is the opposite of everything
we know.

[CONSENSUS OF OPINION]
an irreverent and humorous attitude, combined with polished graphics and professional design

simulates the gag reflex
we're not short on sunshine
but long
to be pixilated
to make up the weft
along with the other square
while a bank of elevators shift gray to grey
silently rising
& gliding back down

listening to Spanish language podcasts
From Scotland

how many windows
have you open
right now?

view all
& off one goes

*

I thought how I would talk about my mutation
how each night
I would press it
in hopes
it would go
away

I thought how I would arrange mirrors
so I could see it
from angles
unbeknownst
gross angles

and after a longer sorrow than could ever be imagined
ending, it was as if these grim facts oozed
pure biography

how it easily pooled
eroding into a sore

here I mean
service
in the basic sense

[IN LAG TIMES]

Down-turned trumpets
arrive, depart, & mourn
in the same bloom.

In the face of an epic
I whet the point
of each Dorrito
         cracked in half
like a home

         a fiction / a fever
confusing a billboard for the setting sun.

In olden times
I’d be old
so I’ll act as I were
noxious & scatological

grim in the face of trees that limb like cathedrals
babes that coo

re: hours
rush fast as the faucet
& jumble
with names for things

we do & do not know

 [IN LAG TIMES]

gunshots, sirens, milestones, & horchata

GIANT EXPLANATORY science!
A cranium
young enough to be sewn

I approach
this
with a step-daughter smile
welped
by officious dander

(I see a pagoda!   
---again, I go grim)

the cresting edges
broke
out of becoming
not back into –

the spines of my lips
a grin
I grow into

that is to say,
you are plentiful, rich, and wide.
If you acknowledge time as it is
in your present:
crapping in your garden,
sleeping on your couch
you are in love!

while I am drinking
tequila I am
thinking about
more tequila

while I am eating bacon
DEAR GOD! I am
thinking
fry more bacon!

Keep in mind: these are lag times.

We are going to walk
shackled by this frowny-
faced thesis
across a map

frickin A
I go grim

trying to differentiate the world’s desire
from the desire to summit
the world
or dirty work in the double negative
feeling wild
obtuse
large & unshorned
the work

a sham
a curt
excuse

golly

the punch line was
“eat me
in your fucking canoe”
and the new yorkers
laughed

*

That I sold nothing. Possessed nothing, not even a charm
to sell. Even my words
amounted to zip in the bluebook, regardless
of my re-built engine
my obsessive record keeping

filed & alphabetized in a grim little box
kept in the crawlspace
where once a 
a dragon slept
it was speculated
& in prior times
a river flowed.

[QUALITY ASSURANCE]
the planned and systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled. It is the systematic measurement, comparison with a standard, monitoring of processes and an associated feedback loop that confers error prevention. -Wikipedia

El jefe referred to me as A BABE then sd one of my co-worker must have been RAPED A LOT GROWING UP, HAHAHA then called the graphic designer SWEETIE while asking her to do a last minute job, & by way of apologizing for the short notice sd I KNOW WE [sic] ARE PUTTING YOUR HEAD IN A VICE HERE…WHICH I KIND OF ENJOY. HAHAHA and then an hour later called me HONEY, to which I corrected him and he accused me of not having a sense of humor.

[I AM THE FUNNIEST PERSON I KNOW]
Spanish for "blood of Christ", is said to come from the red color of the range at some sunrises and sunsets, especially when the mountains are covered with snow, alpenglow. However the particular origin of the name is unclear, and the name in fact only dates back to the early 19th century.
-Wikipedia


A blur where the trigger
was a mirror was now
subject in triplicate

I get the third
        the carbon copy
        the non-employee
        the 1099-miscellaneous.

If you want a merry-maker you shoulda known me
12 years ago when I gladly arc-
ed

on a bus
climbing forever
into a cradle of mountains

cutting all of us
off
in a delirious orange altitude.

The paint
kicked from the door –
or kicking the door until the paint falls off
it doesn’t matter –

kicking is the important part.

One of the perks of the job, is that I now know
how to spell “miscellaneous”.

And off one goes.

[NOT GRIM]

but perhaps I meant stolid & avuncular
calm, dependable, & showing little emotion
AND/OR
kind, friendly toward a younger or less
experienced person

& in easy replacement
craigs list bears
three
wide open nymphs

[ARC-ing]

We rhymes with criminy.

grim indeed.

the poem itself
currently on the down grade
the peak
(why are we surprised?)
was at DEAR GOD!
or maybe it was the bacon…

does it matter?
You are still here
on the map of “our” transgression
all of us supping
from the same pot.

Salty, sweet, sour, bitter, unami,
rhythm. All can be detected
in the daily gruel.

[PRESENT TENSE]

Barely acknowledged concurrence of flies
becomes “too many”
not to acknowledge. I’m down on my knees
weeding low
low enough to catch the scent
the scent that travels
close to the ground / on that level
on a different draft

until the pang comes again like a color
so obvious
unleashed

I think you know.

The feral cat has crawled beneath the house, hasn’t he?
He has been dead at least a week. Curled up
in the water
heater’s insulation.

Elliot brought home a huge bushel of blooming
rosemary – as if he knew –
and buried him in a bed of resinous boughs
beneath the compost heap
beneath the egg shells & coffee grounds
heaps of collective mornings

their unassuming charms teeming with worms.

We smudge the entrance to the crawl space & the smoke moves in
& out as if
the house
itself is breathing.

Today is march third. The anniversary of the death of Elliot’s father.

And off one goes.

*

[MOLOTOVE COCKTAIL]
primarily intended to set targets ablaze rather than instantly destroy them.
-Wikipedia

You make the bed.
You make the bed.
You make the bed.

I take out the recycling.
I take out the recycling.
I take out the recycling.

You clean your face with your paws.
You clean your face with your paws.
You clean your face with your paws.

He confesses.
He confesses.

He confesses.
This was in Santa Monica.
El jefe thought I said “kiss me” El jefe sez he wishes
I had.

A lot of nervous laughing looking out at the ocean
That’s
a lot of o
the cursive kind
crashing over itself

now everything seems misleading
even the names of mountains in translation

El jefe sez not to tell anybody. Grim-tastic.
I think about telling nobody. But end up telling you. El jefe sez he asked me not to. El jefe sez he wishes I hadn’t.
Google sez “tell someone in human resources”.
Human resources is la esposa del jefe.

No better time to ask for six weeks paid vacation.

*

Grim stasis. The cat hogs the chair. No
explanation.  Just hogging it. Sitting sure-fire. Like a hog.

When was the last time you’ve eaten?
Dunno is not a food.

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