A Bird in Hand
By Amber Flora Thomas
I’ve memorized its heart pounding into my thumb.
Breath buoys out. My fingers know how to kill,
closing on the bird’s slippery head.
I don’t remember. Was it that beak bit my chin?
Was it a claw cut my wrist? I blow feathers
away from its chest, smelling pennies and rain.
Skin like granite, a real white-blue, flecked
by knots of new growth. I found my need,
cold in cupped palms, just the way I was taught.
I return to account for whose neck falls around
backwards. Eyes that go cataract bring clouds.
That fat pearl with wings looks like water disappearing in me.
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The story of my day was trying to read The Prestige, which I am having trouble putting down, in and around all sorts of other things, some fun (lunch with
I am sorry to see the murder case end, though it was also time -- we haven't seen nearly enough Brad, Paul or Shirley this season, and we've mostly seen Alan on silly cases rather than the stuff he's best at. The episode starts with Gracie Jane announcing that the father's accusations of incestuous feelings on the part of his son for his mother make her all tingly down there! She says the court case is better than sex, and Denny tells Alan he hopes Gracie didn't mean sex with HIM -- his mad cow is giving him mad penis. Alan is having his own problems: every time he has sex with Sally, she rushes out to work on her cases without any afterglow. Meanwhile Claire goes to visit the psychiatrist, saying she came to apologize, but he doesn't believe her even when she suggests that she really wants to rip his clothes off and make wild love to him on his desk; it's clear he will try to destroy Scott on the stand.
Meanwhile Jeffrey -- whom Brad tells Paul he doesn't think is that hot, leading Paul to suggest that Brad is threatened by him -- can't get the judge to stop the psychiatrist from speculating on whether Scott is psychotic so he decimates the psychiatrist on the stand, asking why he gave a videotape of the wife's lover threatening the wife to an angry husband perhaps looking for an excuse to kill his wife rather than to the police, then stating that the psychiatrist likes to embellish and interrogating him about his bragging to Claire about Gina Gershon. Scott testifies that Mrs. Judge Hooper liked rough sex and she did indeed remind him of his mother, so he probably transferred both his affection and aggression to her, but he maintains adamantly that he did not kill her. On cross-examination the DA suggests that he's a loner who lied to the police about assorted details.
Then Jeffrey gets the mother on the stand and asks whether SHE is lying about Scott's actions the night of the murder, notes that she lied to a court about whether Scott's father molested him to gain custody, and asks whether she was in love with her son and killed the judge to keep him for herself. The mother demands her own lawyer. Denise is furious, believing they staged this and the jury will see right through it. (She's already had a moment with Jeffrey where he asked her how engaged she was, and she told him -- with Brad overhearing -- that she was very engaged, though later she tells Brad that she and Daniel have not set a date.) Indeed, the DA reminds the jury that Jeffrey has now attempted to pin the murder on the husband, the judge's other lovers, the neighbor, Scott's father, and finally the mother in that big staged scene when all along, the evidence has pointed to a sick, twisted defendant who by his own admission was in the house that night.
Jeffrey says yes, exactly, he did try to suggest other potential killers -- the police investigated no one but Scott, when all the others have motives, few have alibis and there's evidence of lies and deception from many people other than Scott. When the police don't investigate fully, that creates reasonable doubt, he concludes. Even Claire and Denise are impressed. So is the jury, which finds the defandent not guilty. While the lawyers go outside for the media circus, Scott asks his mother how Jeffrey knew and she insists it was just a lawyer tactic -- he has no evidence, they can't convict her of anything and if Scott had been convicted, then she would have come forward with the truth. Then they exchange I love yous and big wet kisses. (Prediction: before this season is over, he's going to kill that psychotic manipulative bitch, and someone at Crane, Poole and Schmidt will defend him.)
Back in crack-land, Alan is having his own mother issues and goes to the sex therapist to get her to measure his inseam -- something he has previously admitted was one of his only points of contact with his mother, so he finds it erotic now. When she asks him what's going on, he explains about Sally, whom he ends up bringing to the therapist with him. Sally doesn't understand why he cares if she leaves after such good sex, but the therapist rightly guesses that she feels skanky to be fucking Alan and that's why she flees the scene. Soon after, she's fucking Brad, who says the sex was amazing and she's a different girl, but seconds later she's fast asleep like a log...just like Alan said she always was when they used to date. Denny commiserates with him about Sally and reveals that he has a talking Gracie Jane doll in his pants. When Alan asks how Bethany would feel about that, Denny looks down and...sure enough, there is Bethany, saying she doesn't date disgusting vile pigs. "She's got to learn not to interrupt my special time," Denny announces to Alan, who toasts special times with him.
The 1850s bridge originally went over Monocacy Creek, but was partly destroyed in an 1889 flood, moved to its present site over Fishing Creek and repaired.
Have been Led Astray this evening (not like it's not my own fault, heeee) and must get to bed or I will be useless for magnet high school introductory meetings the next two days!
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