#3

FIRST REPORT
By E Therese

First Report: the 4th. Baby steps
For the whole year.
Mornings are wondering.
Hours disappeared.
Working through the things I thought I saw.
Walking through my own cloud of
afterthought. Back to my window.
The projects are mounting
with no direction at all.
Forcing me to face the origin of
what existed before I looked to create it.

At night I roam
between points of thought somehow
determined by my unraveling.
If I stay the course and give it all
that I don't have they must know it will
be worth the effort
she doesn't even understand yet.
The earliest moment of today
she made me promise I'd never leave her - ever.

Sometimes I wonder if my flow
doesn't give it all away so that when it's bound
they'll shake their heads up and down slowly
an intimate recognition.

What should I give the ones waiting to come in.
The meeting at this point in my life
of newness and the expressions of life
stage that seems to feed itself.
The not adding surely isn't self-loathing.
I'm getting more sleep now.
Less control over some things and
a journeying that we are willing
to embark on.

The Winter just started
again.
Rooms keep moving their contents
as if we could rewrite the standing still.
He keeps demanding that he sees the movement
coming.

I had gotten used to the noise
that the heat brought.
But he changed that this year too.
I lay remembering the bed we used to share
with windows at our heads that rattled in the wind.
The comfort in that noise
always halfway there in dead silence.
A friend who whispers through others
but never shows up.

______________________________________

FINAL REPORT
by Mary Jo Bang

Final Report: the 13th. No progress
Until 10 July.
Tuesday is worried.
Today didn't come back
Again until 2 or 3.
Still trying to sort out the morning yesterday.
The day and all evening
A terrible headache. Back to bedtime.
Still working on revisions
To the Napoleon machine.
It keeps churning out the question of how
Can I wait and see how I feel.

I woke up and couldn't convince myself
To work on 2/3. Why is this happening?
I slept. But I'm hoping for more from the gray one.
I really wonder whether all is going on
In so many words. I have to tell someone
At 3 to sleep. I don't need much.
A pin under a nail. Either way.
It seems a bit tangential to something
Of an explanation.

Back pain until mid-September.
I don't know.
If I did, I would take the wiring apart
And see how it works. Like that.
As if it could be done. He wondered if I would...
What? Whatever it is of course I'll do it.
I have to remind myself
That it makes no sense to be crushed.

Chalk and crayon face, tree trunk the shore
Of the social sphere that turns and turns and turns.
I keep my eyes closed
At the verge of a chasm.

A space heater rumination.
That thing that is buried.
You believe in it
Because you've been told it is there.
It's not a bad feeling.
I do not think it will.