by Joshua Cohen
i wasnt sure what we were waiting for and then i was sure and getting queasy. i hadnt been told this was a cattle call the type in which prospective clients interview a number of agencies or i had been told and id forgotten but whichever i was flustered nauseated or nauseous j always corrected me. [501c3s and public agencies are worse than private corporations theyre the absolute worst to work with please forgive the digression. the money given to them out of the goodness of hearts or from taxes doesnt go to the hungry children without healthcare but to midlevel professionals on disability and though i understand why a for profit has to try to get the best work for the best price the city likes to swing dick the same way and had already smacked u&i $20k in the hole on a campaign that ultimately lost its winner 4x that. well beyond any monies saved in the deductibles. still profile was enhanced.] i got that it was a cattle call and that i was the cow with the door letting out a team from an agency ill just call “the white agency.” they all were hauling out their mockups i didnt have a chance to eval because of a pet the bulge reunion with this totes bitch wasp girl who shrieked that she hadnt known i was preggers as if we were friends and id neglected to tell her and she wrapped herself around me to exaggerate how burst i was but i only said i thought shed been laidoff and had gone into media admin or alumni affairs for like marymount or williams.
we went in after into not anything administrative but just this classroom all set up like a classroom just chilling. it made me think no way im going to send my kid to this or any other publicschool im just going to follow “tali” and move back to wykagyl or the north shore of the island or do like “emi” and straight from the hospital fill out an application for the 92nd st y anything but abuse my own kid like this. It was just this spare ugly dropceiling sheet tile flooring streaked like the dryerase board dented globe dump. At a table the color and greasy texture of fries and a seeded bun stool the size of a burger i eased down onto slow like i was at maximum capacity already.
now im already on thin ice writing about a client so im just going to composite with the assurance that unlike with j everything is true but the job must be protected. its really difficult to do that because i just have this urge to go ahead and type because there arent any consequences here in front of me besides my smoothie. in the future there will have to be this immunity. this immunization booster or whatevs that lets me both vent and erase lets me both tetrant and delete because i can say from experience from having been on the other end the receiving end that a spouse cant be just a recipient or sender. there really have to be better ways than this or crumbling cookies and sneaking a scoop of yellow cakebatter icecream into my smoothie to cope with the pressure. “verna smith” sat atop the teachers station across from us. she was the project mgr. an old but young mix of black mama poet laureate with dreadbraids twisted through cowry shells dangling peacock feathers and white dyke flannel over chinos. then maybe two maybe three other people inhouse. communications personnel at the health and education depts.
“verna” was talking forever about the project the expectations whatevs but always bringing it back around to her resume or core principles. it was difficult to pay attention especially by “in my socialwork days up in the Bronx” but also because of the cramping just severe excruciating cramping. though i dont mean to be so mean. its difficult because im making up “verna” from the combo of two people honestly the project comanagers and the one from health was tolerable enough because about to retire and haitian french but the other from education was middleaged an irish catholic phd cunt who said things like “advertising in schools can be justified only as a teachable moment for media literacy.”
i was so out of it i could only could barely poke my bangers to represent. “jim” and “jon.” big mistake. biiiig miiiistake. “jim” opened up with the tag “eat junk feel city” because he wrote it and was sure of its humor but the depts either didnt get it or did and just sat as he did the dumbest thing and tried to sell the sell or just neutralize by explaining that the agency didnt think the city was shitty or might be in any way associated with junkfood however we did think the msg would register with youth and i was feeling junky shitty myself. “jon” picked up with “get nutritionated” which was greeted similarly. neither of these were the tags to start with and i thought they knew that i mustve told them that with the city they had to start conservative and work up to the risquey or what the braindead would find risquey they had elected officials to please it was wet the stool. i got shaky up and ignoring the sense of having pissed myself had rod and khan hold the boards “eat and run—or walk—or bike” “eat the world (in moderation)” my hand was trembling. but those only launched education “verna” into this on the rag rant about such “old played out dichotomies.” though health “verna” had no issue with “edgy” the hope was to “get the best msg to the worst affected” education said “this has to be a quality of life initiative with a secondary benefit educational component delivered about or even through the very medium of ad culture inculcating critical reading techniques and consumer scepsis? skepsis? vital to differencing between exploitative msging and healthy mealplanning public service announcements.” as comparables were being cited from like the american heart association and the presidents council on physical fitness i was dying literally physically dying. but just then “jon” and “jim” interrupted what was becoming another miracle of “verna” converting crackheads in tremont by recounting the modalities of the multiple intelligences. “the healthiest dinners have the shortest commutes” campaign featured an extension of the subway map extending the lines out of the boroughs into farm country to encourage consumers to relate to dutchess county and the mexicans who picked in jersey. “next bus: 2-10 minutes next local apple season: 1 year.” and the “vernas” said “wed be very pleased to further this discussion” i was doubling over. and the “vernas” said “well be in touch” i was bent over my hands on the table slipping ketchup mustard picklewater blood slurping down my stockings and through the mesh a gob on the tip of a heel.
now you and i mean you (but not you ladies. you. were supposed to be in dc. some archaeology conference. my memorys perfect. like a computers memory perfect. like a wrinkling going gray elephant computer. but let me check they dont have elephants in mesoamerica. it was supposed to have been some convention about mesoamerican archaeology four days three nights and this was just in the middle. youd been excited about it couldnt stop talking about it. i couldnt help but be excited for you. but then i was being squeezed toward the school lobby. “jim.” “jon.” hero friends. everything was a hero the hallways were heroes just for being halls and the lockers that stayed shut for me were heroes and the doors that were being opened for me were heroes and everyone was a hero except the education people and even the health people who did nothing but wait around houston street for the 911 “verna” called while even the guard was out yelling and hailing cabs though no cab would take us and 911 took forever. “verna” cradled me with womens room papertowels and told me about her two children who were grown architects in new orleans and how her daughter used to work much before my time and more in acct services at an agency ive forgotten. “verna” hung over me asking questions not to keep me with it but to accuse what did i eat did i drink enough was i on any drugs who remembered. my memorys as perfect as something i cant think about just now like how you j youd be writing your hackwork online and wouldnt know what analogy to use youd take a break and read some poetry and then return to work and write that whatever it was the experience of being in a hotel or motel or b&b inn was like poetry that was your default analogy. in the ambulance up 1st ave i had my bangers scrolling my contacts for you and calling but your phone was off and they were leaving msgs delirious. yo um j man your wifes going to where we going where. bellevue er. it was strange when they said your full name. which i never did because you dont deserve the vowels. through admissions before turning the corner i had enough mind presence to tell them how my mother was listed as moom and the ba
ngers got her on the line and before they hung up she was already driving the triboro. then they kept calling you through the day through the night staying all that time until “ben” came too and kept moom company until d&c became dilation and curettage and she was let into my room and coming to all i said was that the day before the night before everytime id called youd picked up. i had moom call “tal” and “emi” and i talked to them while moom on her own initiative called your mother but i wouldve told her that was pointless you tell your mother nothing you hide and keep secrets from everyone and this is the repulsivity j how you keep them from yourself so who knows if she even knew i was preggers the bitch didnt even offer to drive up. then because i told moom you were in dc because you were writing walltxt for the met she called the met but they were closed and she got lost in the menus and transfers. she went to the apt and got the paper where you wrote down where you were staying but the numby and addy you gave were for two different dc hiltons and neither had a record of you as a guest and beyond that no record of archaeology either and moom came back to my room and immediately told me because j you have to respect and be open with the ones you love even if it slays them. because though what you dont know cant hurt you used to be legit now theres nothing that cant be known and so the greatest pain has become not the act itself but the thought of you trying to conceal it from me and how stupid that is and how pitiful the failure how petty. but at the time and it mightve been the anesthetic all my reaction was defending you to moom saying that you were always garbling logistics and that was accurate saying that you probably hadnt booked your own room and that was probably accurate too and reception clerks understand nothing about cuttingedge archaeology. also i was flipping because they gave me doxycycline a tetracycline or teratogen that causes birth defects as an antibiotic and not clindamycin with a shorter halflife so we wouldnt have to wait as long to try again. i wanted nothing i just wanted it out of my system now but though the nurses kept saying discharge and i kept saying discharge moom was just trying to get everyone talking about the same thing. also in the middle of that conversation j you called. you knew what was going on but pretended you didnt because you knew that if i found out youd checked your msgs before just calling me back the moment you turned your phone back on id be whacked youd be. i knew that you knew i was wasted because i didnt interrogate you on why youd turned your phone off or were pretending. we had levels between us deep with meaning to excavate. fuck you and fuck your mummy. you checked the amtrak schedule and said youd be back in four hours but that was a typical exaggeration because it took you all of six and moom who wouldnt leave the room to let me take the call alone had already gotten me back to the apt by then and wouldnt leave until you got there or here and even after discharge the discharge continued and like with this its still sour fresh.
i was out and apparently stayed out through a fight between you and moom who refused to leave until i came to but with all the pessaries and anesthetic and teratogen death agent ivs i was pumped with though wouldnt swallow as tablets and dropped behind the bed instead and later flushed it was all just a dream of you moom and emi and tal the four all the five of us in bed together dreaming. that was a week id say. week and a half. you were doing and even by past behavior overdoing everything and just by realizing that i was recovering. you even managed to impress moom and convice her to go to a show with emi and tal before heading back to wykagyl. jersey boys that was the show. then we were alone except for all the shiva trays and platters. so many of them so much ringing at the door you pried off the intercom and cut the wire but then all the ringing was phone. note how all the dormant instincts come out among the buddha jews and suddenly its tunafish and eggsalad and coldcuts and rye. the smell of meat i couldnt deal with. note the pareve cheesecake babkas and diet soda liters like a reflex from fairway. thankfully i couldnt keep anything down. the office called daily. “mia” my yoga instructor showed up with a healing asana a malasana variation to detox she said i had to do the moment i got up i had to squat down toes diagonal heels flat to pelvic width or wider abs or what was left of them to the front hands front elbows to the inner knee breathe shoulders to the inner knee breathe and hold imagining the vagina is a nostril and the anus a mouth or the other way around and drop them to suck the floor and she demonstrated and basically held her class for me on the unmatted floor of our room and you were admiring her ass her tits admit it but like me shes too fit shes not your type. you werent sleeping with me anymore. but that came out wrong because i dont mean sex i mean it would still be forever before id be able to use a goddamned tampon. instead we just stayed awake together and you gave me your story. the tale of the man whod garbled the hilton and the hyatt and how thatd caused you to miss the registration orientation. all through the calling youd been in different important sessions. also the topic wasnt pyramids but writing and curation. museumology and institutional critique. as you talked all i could think about was rabbi offen the friend of mooms you wouldnt let marry us whod said that even without a body we could have a funeral. but then i thought that a funeral after a shiva was meaningless. then i was out of bed. youd hired an inept cleaningperson or cleaned yourself we never discussed this. ill be straight with you id had enough of you being shut up together. all id wanted was tv but as always i felt judged when i switched on my reality crap even though when you were crapping out yourself with top chef i judged nothing and then you went and got movies but not my movies and be straight with me not even yours because theres no way you like or ever enjoyably or au fond thoroughly sat through godards vivre da vie or fastbinders berlin alexanderplatz. all id wanted was to be left to my workmails and tv. id gotten out of bed not because i was strong enough but because youd gone out for groceries. i had this urgent need for laundry to do laundry. you hadnt done it whether because you were “begging to be caught” or giving “a cry for help” or just suffering from a passive aggressive s&m complex or guilt resulting in reversal (selfsabotage or sad cingulate gyrus selfhandicapping) according to doc meanley. the suitcase youd taken was in the closet and i emptied it all into the machine that roller suitcase the friedmans got us for our wedding. by the time the load was ready for the dryer id read through the conference convention schedule a map of the smithsonian. from the map fell this limpdick amtrak ticket to dc. faded but also oneway. folded into the schedule were printouts. hertz rental car reservations from dc. your name. receipt for the mainstay inn cape may nj the night that night your name vowels intact. payment type was cash. depraved. you were two hours from ny but only an hour from your mother and didnt visit. i got out my work laptop and put it atop the lap that had just held our child of fingers toes eyes and ears but not yet sexed. or barely. or i resisted asking but asking would never have occurred to you and i took your lack of curiosity as trauma and then as gender equality because we were mourning ourselves and not just genitals and then i realized what it was and realized that id always known what it was selfishness all along id known and been lied to and so lied to myself to banish from my mind that shadow like the sagittal sign on the ultrasonogram the cranial notch that says penis and the caudal notch that says not vagina but clitoris the penis pointing up to the empty head because in utero its in perpetual erection but the clit pointing down out of shame because with women even our own bodies are against us. i tetrated every name in the schedules list of panelists every name. small versions of photos on paper bigger ones online. the curator of the whore collection at the met gave a presentation about the fate of possessions in the afterlife. whether they were believed to actually incarnate into use or were just purely symbolic. whether a clay slave was believed to have represented a flesh slave or to become one. interesting. it was the middle of the second trimester we miscarried you did. how am i doing check back with me in october. i was all over the computer ignoring my backmail and well wishes and you came through the door. you were carrying groceries. youd actually gone to get groceries.
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10/16
There’s somethi
ng different about writing by hand again (something rebooting, refreshing, restoring, restorative), using pen and notebook, for the first time since I’m not sure, school. Writing with the whole hand, writing with the entirety of my handedness, not just with the fingers. Get a grip, a hold, let the punctuation loosen, let the ligatures slack, shed the remanence, degauss the ghost, release, breathe. Do whatever.
Writing by hand, it’s not just the foreign words that get italics, every word gets italics. Capitalization becomes a negligence. Letters in the middle of words are capitAlized. Or at the end, like seX. Bold is pressure exerted. Underline, a bump.
The pen—not a dippable nib but a disposable ballpoint. Ink through a tube like marrow in the bones, which lubricates a ball as it’s rolled over a page—I can’t help but be reminded of heads, of decapitation. Cut off my own, dripping its fresh indigo, and roll me over all that blankness outside. Me, rolling over the fields, punctuating with my nose.
The paper—like the traintracks laid straight out below me, ruling Europe, lining mind—I’m wondering, what year did lined or ruled paper first appear? And which is it—lined or ruled? German goes for Liniert. In school the marble swirl notebooks were Wide-Ruled, like a Homeric epithet. My gut’s telling me that this longitude first emerged before the war—but which war? But then the gut gets all unsettled again and says—maybe the 1840s? That feels more like it. 1642, in London or Paris. Venice. Amsterdam. Make it up. Feel more. At the time, the writers must’ve been thinking, just another pointless novelty! The grid’s too cramping! Too controlling! Once again, technology’s depriving our thoughts of freedom! (I haven’t used an exclamation in a while! Feels great!) Bear with me hairs, plant fibers, horse hooves! Bear me nut galls and berries, resins, tannins!