Memory Card, July 8, 2010

Lately I've been writing memory cards again. Over ten years ago, I started writing prose poems that fit on large index cards. Index cards as measure; index cards as research tools; index cards as markers to memory that can be shuffled. When the cards were published, their order was fixed, but what I had intended was more a deck of cards that could be reordered by will or by chance. Call it hypertext for the technologically inadequate set. The book was published by Potes & Poets, which has unfortunately since passed away into the long history of fine but defunct small presses. This morning's card was inspired by a facebook posting by Alain Cressan about mirabelle and merde. I have no idea what he meant by it, but the sound sequence started my engines.

Mirabelle, merde. The fields of Lorraine. Alzheimer's carpets. Another 4 a.m. call. Another fall. The other one they call the. She didn't want to talk about Frost, doesn't like Frost. Last time I saw my mother she was past the smiling happy phase. Plenty of dysfunction there. She hasn't paid me back; she hasn't respected the parents. Fractured elbow to go with fractured time. It doesn't fugit, fusses with itself like an 8-year old her hair. Mirror, mirror on the floor: who's the most ancient of them all? What she sees is not her self, her being, her body. Parents should reconsider their reasons for placing their children in competitive soccer. Skin tears, lacerations. They were amazed by the pervasiveness of smiley faces, or smilly when they're misspelled. Spell me, mother, spell you, spell check time past. This spell comes to a close; it falls, and we fall with it. She can tell us when it hurts.

--8 July 2010

for Alain Cressan