A Conversation with Pink Cotton and Other Distractions

An experiment in experiential prose poetry

Limp and silent air, still but for grunts,
utterances shared with shadows,
those friends not really here -
merely beings imagined
to season words with meaning
more than animating dust;
spoken unheard in darkness
they’re the jam licked
off the tip of a rusty spoon -
lips soon twist in disgust
at a bad taste, forgetting
there was sweetness once


I sit in the dark car hoping the phone won't ring. The dog's panting reminds me of a t-shirt sleeve that can't dry anymore.  My little buddy doesn't drink whiskey and can't sweat, which gives no relief from stale, humid heat anyway, so he paces while I sip slowly, swirling liquid in my mouth, wishing for ice before I swallow.

Moisture slides on the inside of the windshield, drops tracing wandering paths on the glass, aimlessly collecting fog as they fall. Drips in the shower keep time at night, echoing from walls until finally dying in a forest of drying brasieres and hosiery hung from the rail. Life in the neat cubes between them could stop at the impacts and we might never notice; but close up they’re mushroom clouds of destruction. Smooth glass makes no proscriptions of movement; gravity is defied sideways. Drops are silent and random, leaving time uncertain as they disappear at the bottom.

I imagine. How a mind wanders when there are no temporal distractions. There were knee-length boots in the afternoon, their leather stretched to near bursting around full calves; a dress obviously sizes too small, it's hem balancing tenuously close to a dangerous place. An audience in awe watching a tight rope walker sway is really waiting, secretly wishing for him to fall. Thus, the low, guttural prayer uttered for a breeze to blow and lift limp the fabric like a rude hand groping; yet I still tried not to look when it came.

The frock fluttered up for an instant, revealing too much: ample thighs, supple and perfect; the hint of pink cotton beneath. Both burned. The image coiled on my tongue amber, smokey, and glowed in my throat like delicious shame.

A sudden jolt broke free from my wrists. The shopping cart had rolled over the curb onto the pavement, its shock transmitting from locked elbows to shoulders, following an anatomical line to a clenched jaw, which fell open.  The pretty picture fell out in a ball, a memory still distorted by arbitrary creases.

The glass door obediently opened as I reached for reality written in a list from my back pocket, sterilizing deviant senses in the cool air inside the market, in its comfortable order of shelves, and neatly organized bottles, boxes and jars.

After the Rain - the name was invented by Madison Avenue marketers to sell a new fragrance of shampoo, but it smelled too heavy-handed to be branded that way. Which is not to say the scent didn't delight - it just didn't have the complexity of nature, slight hints of earth melded with grass, a multitude of additions we can never duplicate with satisfaction. Perfumers sanitize odor, preferring the hypoallergenic safety of synthetics they can mass produce like running shoes.

I remember the smell of damp spring evening in the city after a drizzle, pregnant with the excitement of moist concrete that exudes from pavements and buildings.  It made expectations change every instant. Youth made quick through the mist on the way to a date; only a memory of that air remains.  Now it reminds me of an engine’s roar as a car races up the hill past the house in its hurry to get somewhere.  I can watch from the porch as it disappears beyond the neighbor's shrubs and trees, anticipating the loud crash as the driver misses a stop sign at the crest.  But it doesn’t happen. Destiny learns from mistakes. They’re tamed, distilled for sale in polypropylene bottles neatly arranged like books on a shelf.

The list is short - supplies for a shapeless life. Writing names of items on paper gives them importance and by proxy, a world that wants them:

dog food, water (gallon), bowl, toothbrush and toothpaste, hand sanitizer, bag of chips,
set aside money for gas (which isn’t an item as much as admonition not to spend too much for the bowl).

I imagined that a bowl could be fashioned from the bottom of a plastic soda bottle if one cut off the top; but it’s too small and the dog laps water from it into his nose, snorting, but not stopping. On hot summer days, thirst overcomes fears of drowning. We both want to be immersed in arctic blue, see sunlight filter down through a layer of glacial ice overhead and feel oppressive heat sucked from our bodies. Mine comes mostly from inside my ears. Water from there is heated to boiling, bubbling out over the rim of the sink and down my neck to the tile floor.  Employees must wash hands; the sign shows pictures of the recommended sanitary method for those illiterate in English or Spanish.  The tiles were powder blue - for boys and men. The dog will be glad for a real bowl, which is red so I can see it better against gray carpet in darkness. He’s color blind, so doesn’t care; but he can smell water.

His universe is made of odors, ones I can’t name, the way connoisseurs discover plum and rose petals in the bouquets of fine wines. People are unaware of that world they inhabit. Scents become invisible threads that tether us to places we’ve been between rain drops. The stretchy elastic can snap back without warning. An anonymous waft of a perfume first found at the nape of a neck takes us there - nose pressed to flesh or a rose freshly picked. Time’s lost in attempts to remember that face, a particular timbre and cadence of voice. They’re savored with measures of guilt as we linger, but like a passage of soft music, they fade, and we forget they ever existed. They remain nameless, untamed, the secrets we keep from ourselves.   

Rain patters gently as it hits the metal roof of the car, accidental and without rhythm. I can pretend it’s the sound of brushes on a snare drum or symbol - a jazz riff perhaps. The mind can do that - make patterns from the nonsense it experiences, like raindrops on rooftops. Langston Hughes loved the rain, his silver liquid drops. My buckets never fill with silver. Filtered through layers of plaster, water collects yellow like a nicotine stain. Maybe here in the car it will get cooler, as they flit in through the open slit of window glass and land on my forehead.

Two men pass, their conversation in Arabic or Farsi joining the foreign tongue of running water. A rivulet has formed in the gutter, urging hesitant cigarette butts onward. Glistening asphalt clawed open by tail lights will heal by morning, renewed in sunlight. A mind, it’s strings untangled, carefully counted and rewound will awaken. The dog still pants, though now he sits. I hope the phone won't ring.