On Not Flying to Hawaii

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving advice
about stock portfolios for forty years. I could be his mortal weariness,
his discarded sports section, his smoldering ashtray.

I could be the 70-year-old woman who has never seen Hawaii,
touching her red lipstick and sprayed hair.
I could enter the linen dress
that poofs around her body like a bridesmaid,
or become her gay son
sitting opposite her, stirring another sugar
into his coffee for lack of something true to say.
I could be the reincarnated soul of the composer
of the Muzak that plays relentlessly overhead,
or the factory worker who wove this fake Oriental carpet,
or the hushed shoes of the busboy.

But I don't want to be the life of anything in this pitstop.
I want to go to Hawaii, the wet, hot
impossible place in my heart that knows just what it desires.
I want money, I want candy.
I want sweet ukelele music and birds who drop from the sky.
I want to be the volcano who lavishes
her boiling rock soup love on everyone,
and I want to be the lover
of volcanos, who loves best what burns her as it flows.

Alison Luterman

28.12.09

My New Crush


Tootsie Rolls. How long has it been since you ate a tootsie roll? I hadn't even thought about these since years ago, more than likely the last time I went trick-or-treating. That is until one of my students gave me a box of them for Christmas. At first, I was thinking, great, tootsie rolls; reese cups would have been better. But then I ate one. It's a little slice of heaven. One reason being, they are low calorie candy!!! I did a little research and you can eat six little rolls for only 140 calories. How perfect.

Although, I almost made a fool out of myself in my joy of rediscovering tootsie rolls. Tonight, when I was leaving for the gym, I thought to myself, "I'm always a little nausous after doing the ellipitical for 45 minutes. Maybe I should bring a few tootsie rolls to give me a little something afterwards so I don't feel queasy." So I put a few in my pocket.

Well, as I was about to get on the elliptical, pulling off my jacket, tootsie rolls started to fall out of my pocket. Luckily, I caught them before they fell across the floor. How embarassing. I can just see the ripped dude behind me on the tread mill thinking, "Oh yeah, a workout will never help that booty with candy falling from her pocket."

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