by Sarah Gorham
A third space, cozy, warm, animal. Composed not exactly of shared palates, or preferences for Cubism. Not the one slate roof and nine-over-nine windows that sheltered the Pipers. Not jobs at the same university, not children. Not specific things, hers or his or theirs. Nor was it visible, this space, though they spent more and more of their time in it. A third space that expanded over the years, that seemed to travel wherever they went. More at home there than in their real home. More comfortable there than under their own skins.
“Can you give me the recipe for your beautiful glaze?” Such are the questions that plague Matsui Kosei, named Living National Treasure for decades of work in nerikome, as neriage is sometimes called. No one knows the secrets to his particular technique, and no one will. “My colors are the colors of the future,” he has been known to say.
What is the secret of a long marriage? Marianne and Henry’s seventy-nine-year marriage came close to the longest in U.S. history (eighty-three years) and the world record (eighty-seven years), held by Karam and Kartari Chand from Bradford, United Kingdom.
They had more than six dozen children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Their offspring composed one-third of the population of the town they settled in. More than seventy relatives attended their seventy-fifth-anniversary celebration, which was held in the very same rose garden they married in. It was later in May, and the Portlandias were in bloom. A gravel path surrounding the sundial was overwhelmed by thick, aromatic lilacs, and phlox bubbled over raised beds.
What cacophony, this mélange of Ellison noses and stubby fingers, Piper close-set eyes and long legs, black Piper tresses tied back with barrettes, strawberry Ellison crew cuts! Their Lutheran minister had long since died. His son settled the crowd with a sweep of his hand and launched into his homily.
“Clay lay in the earth millions of years,” he began.
PERFECT
Ending
Makes you want to begin, again.
NOTES AND SOURCES
(On Lying)
The poem “Our Other Sister” originally appeared in Jeffrey Harrison’s Feeding the Fire (Louisville, Ky.: Sarabande Books, 2001).
The poem “Homesickness” appears in Sarah Gorham’s Bad Daughter (New York: Four Way Books, 2011).
(A Drinker’s Guide to The Cat in the Hat)
The figure Sources of Neurological Complications of Alcohol and Alcoholism is from J. L. Bernat and M. Victor, “The Neurological Complications of Alcohol and Alcoholism.” Alcohol Health and Research World 21, no. 1 (1997), 66.
Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (New York: Random House, 1957) and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (New York: Random House, 1958).
Lindsey B. Zachary, “Formalist and Archetypal Interpretations of The Cat in the Hat.” www.jbu.edu/assets/academics/journal/resource/file/2008.
(Sentimental à la Carte)
Figure Mettigel released into public domain by its author, Stillife, at the German Wikipedia project.
(The Shape of Fear)
Special thanks to Orlagh O’Brien and her website Emotionally} Vague, where I found the images for “The Shape of Fear”: http://www.emotionallyvague.com/results_08.php.
(Be There No Human Here)
R. C. Lasiewski, The Energetics of Migrating Hummingbirds. Condor 64 (1962): 324.
Thanks to Laura Jensen for the borrowing from her poem “Window Views,” which originally appeared in the collection Shelter (Port Townsend, Wash.: Dragon Gate Press, 1985).