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Category Archives: Plum Poetic

cat love

My cat needs more love. (Don’t we all?)
She’s licking herself raw. Declaring psychological trauma.
The sly owners observed for 13.5 months before concluding:
“The Fat Cat Feels Usurped By The Really Cute Baby With The High Pitched Squeal.”
Then they sat around and ate toast.
“Where’s Elsie—I mean Frannie?” she wondered.
“Good question. Where is Els—I mean Frannie?” he [...]

kneeling girl, egon schiele

Just a kneeling girl. That’s all.

a screwball family drama

And all of these things might have significance if the writer could just give them some. The assembling of the day into metaphor. First clarity. Clarity is key. Blah, blah. Blah, blah. Blam. Blam. Thank you ma’am. Bam. Boo.
“Stop.”
“I’m playing.”
“You’re thinking too hard.”
“We were talking about clarity, right?”
“Right. It starts with the desktop. Everybody knows [...]

day ten: elsie thinks

little puzzles

What does Elsie dream about?
Is she smiling or is it gas?
Was the train rolling through the desert a sign…a pointer toward something…?
When Simon eats raw, should I have to too?
What is it about cooked food?
Why is it so hard to live in the moment?
High art or low art…the blog?
If your mother said, “I am 59 [...]

ant admiral AND lunch captain

“You need to take care of these ants.”
“What? I’m the Ant Admiral AND the Lunch Captain?”
“Today. Yes. Next week, I have the privilege of assuming ALL roles.”
“Can I still be maintenance-handy-man-fix-all-the-crappy-broken-things-around-the-apartment-clean-up boy?”
“I would never take that away from you, baby.”

the fruits of eavesdropping…

A young guy looks up and says sort of to me, sort of to anyone:
“Do you know where Dresden is?”
“Ah…no,” I reply.
He turns to the old man across from where he’s sitting.
“Do you know where Dresden is? Dresden?”
“What?” he yells. The old man can’t make out what’s being asked.
“Do you know where Dresden is?” the [...]

dear elsie, please love what i love…

Dear Elsie,
Mama loves breakfast. I hope you will love it too, and we will have lots of intimate brunches together. Daddy will make us amaranth pancakes, and I will read us breakfast poetry. I will have to read pretty loud, ’cause Daddy and I like to blare Lucinda Williams or Kathleen Edwards over break. But [...]

the recluse has a fondness for art

She thinks she might be becoming a bit of a recluse and wonders if it’s a problem. Or not a problem. Strange behavior for an actor though. Maybe.
For a few moments the sky is dark. She needs to act fast if she’s going to walk. But no sooner does she think the thought, the sun [...]

mama is a trickster

The image of the mama and her wild children wafts into her consciousness. They were having snack time. “We’re going to start with our apples today, but we have to stay on our bottoms,” the mama says. “Katie, take out your binkie and eat your banana.” The binkie instruction is ignored. The children wander away [...]