Poem for Tuesday

Treatment
By Ange Mlinko

It's a little spa for the mind—seeing butterflies
set themselves down by the dozen like easels

on bromeliads, when out on the street the boutiques
are dilapidated, construction can't be told from ruin.

A single taste bud magnified resembles an orchid
but what that one's drinking from is a woman's eye

which must be brineless. I wonder what she consumes
that her tears taste like fructose. For minutes she's all its.

Then the moon rises and the river flows backward.
Composed of millions of tiny north poles, iron's

punched out of the environment, hammered into railways.
Pubs serve shepherd's pies with marcelled mashed-potato crusts

and each tree casts its shade in the form of its summary leaf.
Is a woman's eye a single taste bud magnified?

Yet construction can't be told from ruin.
Out on the street the boutiques are dilapidated

by the dozen like easels. And the mind — it's a little spa.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

It was marginally cooler on Monday than it was Sunday -- "marginally" in this case meaning only 91, not 94 degrees -- but the pollen count was roughly a hundred and fourteen billion, so I cannot say that it was pleasant to be outside. Fortunately, my major activities for the day were ordering inflatable penguins, researching penguin key chains, trying to figure out whether anyone prints affordable penguin playing cards, and comparing this classy pewter penguin card holder with this adorable squishy penguin card holder (Adam wants the squishy one, which costs $2 less per penguin, so over $150 total; we still haven't made any decisions). I continued this important task while Adam was at tennis -- half the dome was closed because the air conditioning was failing, but it was still much cooler in there than outside, and the octogenarian tennis quartet was having an end-of-season party with lots of food that they shared with the pros but not with us parents in the lounge, harrumph.


The farm at the University of Maryland's agricultural school in College Park.


There were equine events at Maryland Day...


...and farming and veterinary students taking care of cows...


...so we got to see a very clean, robust calf population.


I find it very amusing that the sheep center has a clear view of the Comcast Center.


I wonder if the sheep are basketball fans.


In addition to the inhabitants of the barns, many other animals live at the school...


...from all the insects in the entomology department to the various specimens in the biology divisions, which, naturally, includes terrapins and other turtles.

We watched The Tudors on demand, meaning post-Jane, and it was sort of bizarre; on the one hand, the show wants Henry to be a charismatic mad genius so Cromwell has to be a stuffy jerk by comparison, but having erotic fantasies in between wailing about his loneliness while he's bored determining the future of the Church of England makes Henry seem rather unhinged and at this point everyone is unlikeable again. Whereas on the season finale of Heroes, certain people are marginally more sympathetic than they were during previous weeks, but oh what utter crack...how many people do they think they can kill off and bring back and transform and shapeshift and give personality replacements? Spoilers: I did love Angela Petrelli's moment playing Anjelica Huston in The Grifters, and I adored Peter turning from the president into Sylar's attacker, but as for the rest, can we please have more Hiro&Ando and women who don't get killed off only to come back naked?

My evening was almost ruined by the utterly disastrous Nationals -- I don't even root for them, I couldn't care what happens in the NL, but tanking because the Phillies hit a SECOND grand slam in a single game is just plain embarrassing. But then Jon Stewart pointed out that the reason we're all going to die of swine flu is obviously because some idiot f*cked a turkey club sandwich, which put life in perspective and left me snickering.