Tag: coffee
February 23, 2011
THE SWISS THIN IMMIGRANT
shrinking in a wash of coffee
touched nothing but
the odd square caramel (and hairy
illustrated men)
Distressing, yes, yet we said
nothing, knowing it would only
snip the wrong wire
and blow us
to the tip of liberty’s pointy iron tiara
Her mother died
of the selfsame thin
in addition to cigarettes
Vexed at the end, an effect, said
the doc
of brain starvation
weighing no more than those
odd square caramels
we’d watched her pop
go boa-like down her throat
Tomorrow? Grocery shopping
(From Plum Stuff; first published in Quarterly West.)
July 20, 2010
I HAVE DRAWN #2 – THE PICKLE-BACK
This, as best I can tell, is a pickle giving its young a “piggy-back.”
Tomorrow – less coffee. I’ve been triggering seismographs as far away as Honolulu.
Alright, just one more cup …
July 6, 2010
THE IRREPRESSIBLE MISS HALFPENNY
TICKLED, on a recent stroll through the park, to spot a librarian (one Miss Halfpenny) wearing all the classic librarian things – flowered dress, dark glasses, floppy hat, dangly earrings – reading a copy of my latest, Plum Stuff. She was a little bashful, as you can tell, but still permitted a snapshot or two, reproduced here with her kind permission.
Thank-you, Miss Halfpenny, wherever you are …
In other news, I’ve decided to kick coffee, right in the teeth, forever. Starting tomorrow.
June 1, 2010
DE TOUR
From the Plum Stuff reading tour. It was fun. Not so much the gas bar coffee, which I wasn’t sure whether to pour down my throat, or into the gas tank. So I tried both (groan) …
February 16, 2010
ON COFFEE
I need coffee. Coffee’s my first thought on rising, often my last at night. I’ve never, in a life of opportunity, tried a drug of any kind. This is with the exception of coffee. For I’ve used coffee. And I’ve used a great deal of it.
No coffee drinker will deny its power as a narcotic. I became one later than most, in my early twenties. And it took a week, only, of swallowing the dark stuff before I began to wake each morning clambering for it. I could not go without it. A cup, and I was soothed. Two, and I grew louder, more animated – a cartoon. Three, and my pupils were pools of deep, black coffee. In the words of the Hatter (approximately), “Everything percolated after that.”
Of course, like any narcotic, its effect dropped off with tolerance; so that now, to match the four-cup jolt of ten years ago, I drink, I’m prepared to admit, no fewer than 20 cups of brewed coffee per day. Not all at once, of course (that, I’m convinced, would kill me), but there and here, with meals, and between them, socially, and alone. It’s gratuitous to point out that I’m drinking coffee as I write.
Yet I’m no gourmand, no connoisseur of coffee. Roast and bouquet are, to me, worthless incantations. The smell of coffee is pleasant, the taste agreeable; but any one’s as good as any other; and the whole culture of mochas and au laits is so much lucrative madness, an en mass pageant of the emperor’s new clothing line. I drink, like your garden rummy, for the upshot – that thrilling spur to the nervous system that really gets one kicking. Decaf is the devil.
The appeal of such a drug to a writer is easy to imagine. No one wants to be intelligible first thing in the morning. It can be a difficult enough thing, at the best of times. And if coffee can change shuffling slugs into marvels of wakeful industry, it may well be the most wonderful drug that ever was, or will be. A popular one, too. At this very moment, hearts are fluttering, fingertips by the millions trembling, over worn-down keys, the world over. The current pandemic of personal journalism must owe its vitality – and perhaps its origin – to overcharged nerves desperate to ground themselves in some (apparently) productive activity.
When asked that stupidest of questions, one that only a person who’s never created anything puts to someone who has – i.e. “Where do you get your inspiration?” – I answer, minus hesitation, “Coffee.” This typically incites either a grimace, or slack-jawed stupefaction. The preferred retort, I suppose, is “nature’s majesty,” or “the moon,” or “a divine marble goddess who plunks down through the roof on occasion.” Some give these answers sincerely (the “flakes,” as they’re called), though most know the lie as they speak it, quickly, to get rid of the asker, who goes back to sweeping floors, or teaching, or whatever it is that dull people do to pass the time. But I’ve outgrown deception. Coffee, black coffee, is all I’ve ever needed – or ever will. And I’ll drink to that.
February 6, 2010
THE LICORICE BANDITS
A few things, briskly, between coffees:
Dreamed I was burgled, and in the process tied to a coat rack – with licorice rope. All that kept me from chewing through the rope (a very simple thing), and apprehending the thieves AS THEY MADE OFF WITH ALL MY FIRST EDITIONS, was my rabid abhorrence of licorice. So I’d no choice but to sit there on the floor, softly weeping, and watch them empty the bookshelves.
(sip)
Pleased to report that “Von Claire and the Tiger” – my tale of a wobbly professor who’s eaten by a Big Cat – has been named Story of the Week by Short Story America. Read it now on the SSA website (you’ll have to register, but it’s free), and next year in their paperback anthology/Kindle ebook.
(sip)
NOW AVAILABLE – the new issue of The Labletter, featuring my poem “Bev (of the Selfish Same Hills).” Why not pick up a copy?
(sip)
On the children’s front, read my new poem “Bat,” in the current issue of COLUMBIAKids; and look for a short story, “BeeGirl,” in an upcoming Bumples.
(sip)
COMING SOON – poems and stories in Highlights for Children, Ladybug, Quarterly West, Antigonish Review, Feathertale Review, Wascana Review, and plenty of other reviews.
(sip)
Gotta run. My coffee needs me.
