Poem for Wednesday

Troy
By Meghan O'Rourke

We had a drink and got in bed.
That's when the boat in my mouth set sail,
my fingers drifting in the shallows of your buzz cut.
And in the sound of your eye
a skiff coasted—boarding it
I found all the bric-a-brac of your attic gloom,
the knives from that other island trip,
the poison suckleroot lifted from God-knows-where.
O, all your ill-begotten loot—and yes, somewhere,
the words you never actually spoke,
the woven rope tethering
me to this rotting joint. Touch me,
and the boat and the city burn like whiskey
going down the throat. Or so it goes,
our love-wheedling myth, excessively baroque.

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Adam started seventh grade on Tuesday morning in the middle school that I attended -- well, it was a junior high school then, but it's still a bit surreal for me that I have somehow subjected one of my kids to three years in that building. He didn't seem terribly unhappy last year, at least, which is about the best one can hope for at that age, I think. Daniel had the day off, as his entire high school building is used for freshman orientation, so I took him out for bagels (his request), then home where I folded laundry and we watched The Fellowship of the Ring, which has kind of been a tradition for him and me on sick days. It's been many months since I've seen it, long enough for me to have forgotten all the things that disappoint me in The Return of the King, and it made me unexpectedly happy. When Adam got home, I spent quite a bit of time looking around the house for school supplies that the school hadn't bothered to put on the summer school supply list sent home weeks ago, then finished sorting out the kids' clothes -- the giveaway pile being bigger than what either son is keeping.


The Renaissance Vaudeville team, Rick and Jan, juggle knives while balancing on boards and playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" on harmonicas, with their trained dogs looking on.


One of the dogs in action while a little girl volunteer from the audience holds a hoop for her.


Actors portray the shipwreck that starts off The Tempest.


A refugee from the Mud Show, where every Shakespearean drama has the same ending: everyone gets very dirty and lives happily ever after.


I saw Barely Balanced get into this position and I still have no idea how they did it.


The Royal Falconer persuades one of his birds to land on his hand.


Aboard the pirate ship, one of the armory's officers holds an auction for unclaimed swords.


And the Royal Heralds announce the court in the afternoon.

Adam's best friend brought over Superhero Movie, which the kids insisted on watching -- fortunately it's short, and silly, and once again I got evidence that I am twelve because even though I've seen it before, I was more in the mood for that than all-night DNC blather. While the kids were getting ready for bed, we put on Across the Universe, figuring it would probably be possible to listen without really paying attention to the plot, but there was actually lots more talk and less Beatles than I was expecting...and Bono and Eddie Izzard in awesome cameos, which I didn't know about! The woman playing the sort-of-Janis-Joplin character was terrific, too, though the psychidelic sequences got to be a little much after a while. It's no Hair, which is what it seems to want to be with Beatles tunes, but it's worth seeing once.

The movie ended just as Hillary was starting to speak at the convention, so we got to hear her. I expected that I might be completely out of the mood -- every time I checked my RSS news feeds today, it was all "disgruntled Hillary supporters say they won't vote for Barack" until I wanted to throw up -- but I really appreciated her speech, as bittersweet as it must have been for her to get such an ovation. I wonder whether the news is ever going to cover the crisis in Georgia; right now they've gotten past a bear cub in a tree and moved on to puppy mill rescues. And every time I read something like this, my affection for Harry Potter dies a little bit more.