Kathleen Ossip

In the story of my life there is a field filled with chicory, daisies, and mayflowers. It’s the field behind my childhood house. In summer, I used to spend hours lying in it looking at clouds before my mother brought us to the town pool where I spent some more hours swimming. In the other seasons I went to school. In the school there was a library. In the story of my life there is a book. The book was bound in rough green cloth. Its glossy pages smelled oddly like puke. The book told the story of two children, Johnnie and Jill, I think. They got lost in a deep forest, drawn in thick dark ink. They were brother-and-sister orphans. They met fantastical creatures. One was the goddess of spring, or was that in Botticelli’s picture that I saw in the same library in a book of art history for kids, old European art of course. The other kinds they did not want us to know about. The picture was magic and so was Johnnie and Jill though not a children’s classic. I don’t really remember the title. In the book the goddess of spring rescues the children in trouble and then — I can’t remember a thing. I’m sure there was a villain in the book, probably a woman, who practiced dark arts on a dark hill, so evil she wasn’t human. In the story of my life there is a hill that tamely rises above the field. We sledded there in winter. In spring our bikes wheeled down the hill dangerously. I walked on the hill this summer tamely, carefully, slowly, alongside my mother. It isn’t hard to say what had brought us there. We were old and middle-aged in the knife-like summer air. Slowly and tamely we walked and I remembered the book. It was called —Julie and John? I wanted another look. So what was the title? And was it an allegory? A Catholic one? (It was a Catholic school.) That would ruin the story. A story is only good if it’s made up but convinces you it’s true. Even better if one of the characters is someone who could be you. How else do you know who you are? I once asked an old strange friend: You only know you’re the person who’s with the people you love, in the end.

amy winehouse All song is formal, and you Maybe felt this and decided You’d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.) When a desire to escape becomes formal, It’s dangerous. Then escape requires Nullity, rather than a walk in the park or a movie. Eventually, nullity gets harder and Harder to achieve. After surgery, I had Opiates. I pushed the button as often as I could. Understood by music was how I felt. An escape So complete it became a song. After that, Elegy’s the only necessary form. steve jobs Say you lost all your money, or turned against your ambition. Then you would be at peace, or Else why does the mind punish the body? Vengeance is mind, says the body. Ever after, you’re a mirror, “silver and exact.” Just like the bug in a string of code, the body defies the mind Or looks in the mirror of the mind and shudders. Better instruments are better because they’re Silver ish but intact. troy davis The clock is obdurate, Random, and definite. Obdurate the calendar. You thump on the cot: another signature. Did it didn’t do it would do it again. And if a deferred dream dies? Please sign the petition. Very good. Let’s hunt for a pen. If you thump, there’s another signature and Signatures are given freely by the signer’s hand. lucian freud Lingering over Unlovely bodies, Couldn’t help Intuitively rendering A whole Nother angel. Facts are Relics — an Effect worth Undertaking: yes, Dear daylight? donna summer Discourse that night concerned the warm-blooded love we felt. On the divan and in the ballroom and on the terrace, we felt it. Now virtue meant liking the look of the face we lay next to. Never mind the sting of the winter solstice. All discourse that night concerned the warm-blooded love we felt. Something lifted us higher. Her little finger told her so, Untangling, with careless skill, the flora of the sexual grove. Master physician with a masterly joy in wrapping up Mud-spattered, coke-dusted wounds at midnight, when it’s too Early to stop dancing and go home. Our lily-minds soothed by her Royalty concealed in the synthesizers in the flora of the sexual grove.