Who’s who? What’s why? How’s it Goaling?
n.e.s. #101 of 480
Leave a comment
Tag Archives: Gary Bowers
An American Bachelor’s Feast
In the refrigerator there are things that must be eaten soon–carrots, spinach, a tomato, and some defrosted “chicken breast tenders.” The Bachelor is out of ordinary table salt and does not wish to use garlic salt.
So he takes the chicken, lemon-peppers about two breasts’ worth, wraps half in a whole green chili and then in aluminum foil (reflective side inward), does the same with the other half, and puts them in a gas oven set to 400° F. They will be in the oven for an hour.
He then thin-slices half the tomato and wedge-chunks the other half. A handful and a half of spinach goes into a cut-crystal bowl.
There are peeled “baby” carrots and there are treetrunky, unpeeled regular carrots. The babies get halved longitudinally and then sliced to about two-millimeter thicknesses. (At first he tried chopping without halving, and found that the chopping turned the new slices into projectiles. He is learning by trial and error.) The little halfmoons of carrot babies will go with the chunked tomato into the spinach; half a bowl’s worth of large carrots, grated, will join a handful of raisins and a healthy squeeze of Kraft squeeze-bottle mayonnaise and four packets of Splenda, fork-mixed, to make carrot-raisin salad. The spinach salad, hand-tossed thoroughly, is dressed with two parts apple cider vinegar to one part extra virgin olive oil, pre-mixed, and then hand-tossed again, yielding salad-redolent hands that must be dishsoap-washed (“4X greasecutting action,” the label says) immediately.
The hour has passed, and the two foil packets are opened ouch-fingeredly, a handful of “Mexican-blend” cheese sprinkled/ladled on each packet, and the foil folded closed to facilitate cheese-melting. The table is set with oyster crackers and Fritos available as salt supplements–forkful of chickenchilicheese, half-handful of Fritos per bite (the oyster crackers turned out to be too bland). Bite sequence chick, carrotraisin, spinach, chicken, spinach/repeat maximized satisfaction, with cold Sapporo beer administered as needed. When the spinach and chicken were gone, the remainder of the carrot-raisin salad served well as dessert.
While the meal was prepared the Bachelor muttered to his deceased brother, “Wish you were here, Brian. I’d feed ya good.” He listened for an answer but this time there was none. Nevertheless, while eating he tried to communicate the deliciousness of the feast into the spirit world.
n.e.s. #100 of 480
Thinking BEHIND the box. No peeking though! 🙂
n.e.s. #99 of 480
The intersection of Music and Electricity.
n.e.s. #98 of 480
…and then she woke up.
n.e.s. #97 of 480
If a non-person threatens you, do you take it personally?
n.e.s. #96 of 480
One of my favorite words is “indeterminate.” Got it from a math class. It goes beyond “don’t know” to “no WAY to know.” The number of vessels within a sphere of radius Fifty Meters and center Center of Your Heart is Indeterminate.
n.e.s. #95 of 480
In trying to make sense of life on earth, it is important to factor in Craziness, Chaos and Contradiction. –Hey, they all start with a C. Coincidence??
the prodigal icecream man (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 30 and last)
The final challenge for National Poetry Writing Month, Day 30, is “Write a poem about something that returns.” In Arizona, that’s easy. The Ice Cream Man usually waits till Spring, and
the prodigal ice cream man
do the ice cream folk of the valley of the sun
hibernate? or do they attend symposia on mind control via
maddening repetitious music, or do they have to sabbaticalize
away from kids and/or stickiness for some
therapeutic silence?
don’t know. DO know
that our neighborhood guy is back, and I again wish
the culture would change and let him use a mix tape instead of that grotesque
“DAAA Da Dah dada daDA daDAA da [beat] Da DAA daDAA da [beat] Da DAA daDAA da [beat] DAAA Da Dah dada daDA daDAA da [beat] Da DAA daDAA da [beat] Da da DA da…dadadadaa. DadaDa DADADADAAAA!”
the upside is that he remembers me, and that my order is always for five generic fudgy-sickles, and he gets to keep the change.
we transact quickly, he smiles, I hold my catch by the wrapper-ends so they look a little like caught trout, and i go back to my apt,
open the freezer door, put four in, and then, like always,
decide to eat two instead of one.
William Doglas Bowers (NaPoWriMo 2020, day 29)
Challenge: Write a paean to a pet, past or present.
I have written at least three poems about this friend of mine already, but I could write dozens more, so…
William Doglas Bowers
I was his man Gary just as much as he was my dog Bill. He once stopped
Dead in his tracks after he sprang from the screen door after a cat, because when I said, “Bill! No!”
it was more than a command. A tether, not a leash, connected us.
My daughter Kate gave him his name. His full name, William Doglas Bowers, had the same rolling cadence
As General Douglas MacArthur. It almost always suited him. But when he cowered
Against me, trembling, needing more shelter than our house, during a crack-lightning thunderstorm,
he was Bill, the big waif, and I felt huge
that I could stop his trembling with my arms.
I sentenced him to lethal injection after the heart-rippingest week of our time together. He was ribs and uncontrollable saliva and neverbebetter,
and again there was no trembling as he ceased, and he never closed his eyes, he just left, and then it was one of those orange Costco-y carts
to get his body to the parking lot, and then a hoist into the back
of the pickup, and home, and a plaster pawprint all claws, because
I couldn’t press hard enough, because I still didn’t want to hurt him, and then easing him
into the hole my friend and I had dug the day before, and words
from my daughter and my then-wife and me,
and then reuniting William Doglas Bowers with the Earth.
Three months later, walking with my daughter, I burst into tears. I hadn’t been thinking of him, but his name came up.
Eleven years later, here we are. I use my mind
to hologram him hrumphing contentedly
at my feet. I blink and blink.
