it is a tough day for irish alcoholics/a fun day for party beasties/an affirming day for those with Celtic pride/and a fine day to trot out your fake irish accent
for stripper erin mccallahan it is a day to wear her thin green shirt/emblazoned with “Erin Go Braghless”
historians will associate the day with snakes/but snakes will be indifferent
americans might wear at least one green garment/and the older ones might remember being pinched
while older patriotic americans might remember with nostalgia the late john f. kennedy
as for me i have a bit of irish in me/though more scottish/scotch
and i’d love to start off the day with a celebratory irish coffee of coffee and jameson and bailey’s irish cream
but i have a dentist’s appointment later in the morning/so plain old coffee and a spinach omelette/is about as irish as i can get/to start this green day
A few minutes prior, turning the Start key made the dashboard light up but didn’t turn over the engine.
I am in the parking lot of my workplace. I was eager to get home.
I have logged in the Triple-A and have requested roadside assistance.
Now I wait/And hope for no rain/And for a simple and quick fix.
It is noon.
I have about 14 ounces of water and this phone, which has about 70% charge.
I tried the key again. This time there is clicking similar to a dry-fired gun, about a click per second.
It is twelve oh four.
A text message says a driver is on their way.
It is twelve fifteen.
Clouds are making shadows.
I bought this car last than a month ago. I told everyone trying to sell me a car that I didn’t want anything fancy, just reliable transportation. One phrase I used over and over was “no headaches.”
one an air-inflated near-sphere/one a wood and string arrangement
both wave
the basketball goes unspherical when bounced against hardwood/and makes a distinct sound/that has an afternoise/from the post-impactal wave form of the ball itself
the violin has an interior/designed to vibrate around a supporting post/harmoniously/when the bow is drawn across the strings
i am imagining/expanding my horizon as a sculptor/by sculpting the more than two hundred individual bones/of a human skeleton
and having done that/have the bones be three-dee scanned/and fabricated in porcelain/with a three-dee printer/in enormous quantity/and variety of sizes
and with this huge number of hellish tinkertoys/assemble odd dioramas/such as a bone house/surrounded by a picket fence/made of femurs/connected by clavicles
or a portrait of lincoln/with tiny carpal bones/assembled into his beard/and eyebrows/and a little patella/for his wart
the bones could make anything/from petunias to starships
but what has indelibly seared its image into my brain/is a ribcage and upper spine assembly/within which/is a heart-sized skull
the skull would be made not of porcelain but silicone
and via interior bones and a small motor/and maglev tech/would beat like a heart/faster if excited/slower if asleep
and could travel within the ribcage/peering out of the cage of the ribs/with its eye sockets
“Why are you here to have your memory tested?” “I forgot. –Joking!”Beginning of interview phase of neuropsychological testing for patient Gary Bowers, March 10, 2025
we had my pal marty on speakerphone/so he could give input on my cognitive issues
i described blanking out on names and forgetting i had done things
marty confirmed my argumentativeness/but said he’d learned to be more understanding/and i added “we both have”/and we agreed that my directional dyslexia/is nothing new
we bid marty farewell and thanks/i ended the call/ and dr. m commenced the testing
she did stuff like read a list of words/and have me recall as many as i could/in any particular order
then some numbers in strings progressively long
there was one segment involving making a sort of cryptogram transcription/of random-order letters of the alphabet
the worst i did was the test where i was shown an array of six shapes for ten seconds/and asked to draw them from memory
i sucked at that one
then she turned me over to her assistant e/who told me two stories and asked me to retell them/as accurately as i could
had me use blocks to reproduce two-colored designs
read me a list of paired words like “ice°cream” and “wood°fire” and then another list/and asked me which words had been on the first list
there was another list of paired words/and i was asked to describe how they were similar
“habit” and “tradition” were one of the pairs
and there was plenty of other stuff/and somewhere in there i found out/that I don’t know what the hell “pavid” means
the last and most fun thing was simply reading a list of words/that were increasingly unlike the way they were pronounced/and i was proud to give “hyperbole” the four-syllable treatment/and to add some french nasality to “piquant”
but the last word was a mideast (i think) doozy/whose last three letters were i d h/and i am sure i mispronounced it/but equally sure/that none of my fellow glendale high school class of 72 graduated/would get it right either
.
after the testing came feedback from dr. m/that filled me with jazzy joyous comfort
One with Clay, Image and Text 