CHERRY PIE
II like to eat pie but I seldom do.
I am thinking of pie right now. I bet it is apple.
II
We can’t solve our problems entirely, but if we try to one by one, like slices of apple pie that you slice and eat.
III
The man at the pizza parlor always smiles and acts like he knows me. I don’t mind. I like garlic, it is cold outside. Next.
IV
I used to stay home sick and watch this old TV show about the South. At some point when I grew up I realized that it was actually filmed in Hollywood and not in the South but once I realized that I forgot it almost immediately. I trained my mind to forget and it did. And so when I watched the show and I would see lavender by the side of the road or chaparral or a tumbleweed I wouldn’t say Uh Oh a tumbleweed I would just pretend it wasn’t there. And when a man would call out to his girlfriend Thelma Lou one sunny day on Main Street and ask her Would you like to go to the picture show on Saturday and his voice would echo on the sound stage, again I would exercise my powers of concentration and say to myself: I don’t hear an echo, do you? I bet Thelma Lou will go to the picture show on Saturday after all, even though she is angry for the comments he made about her dress, which was a very attractive dress, I would say to myself. Watch out for the tumbleweeds, I would say, but they always acted like they weren’t even there.
V
ONE SLICE OF ONE PIE PROBLEM
I have is that it is almost impossible for me to ignore anything now: echoes, pretend streets, chapparal, Hollywood, Thelma Lou, lavender.
VI
In THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, Scott Carey stands at the top of the stairs, the size of a child, filled with pain. You can see through his body, and you can see the wall behind him.
The Incredible Shrinking Man isn’t really shrinking.
The Incredible Shrinking Man isn’t really in pain.
FACT: someone paid The Incredible Shrinking Man to act as though he is, although, again, he isn’t shrinking.
He is perhaps in pain. It’s hard to say with people.
VII
My first job ever was putting up storm shutters before a hurricane came and it was for $1 a day. I remember looking at the dollar and thinking “It’s just a dollar.” Who in the world would fall in love with some one who made one dollar a day putting up storm shutters? Well, Cristina Edwards kissed me a week later and her lips tasted like peanut butter. I think I know what love is.
VIII
No, it is cherry pie. It is cherry pie that I am thinking about. Cherry pie because I think about it but I never eat it. Pie, problems, life, eating pie, divided pie. Things you never eat.
If you divide the problems of your like into pie slices, and ate one slice, the sum of all of my problems would probably be the very same pie just before you did.
all artwork, including handsome monsters but not crinkly devilish types, ® mr. crispy flotilla, 2008
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