Little Reviews: Poem for Tuesday

Reading Between Points A & B
By John Gallaher

The point called room. The clean,
structural lines, and the people in the room. The point called
shadows across the room. The power
of the one being looked at. The power
of the one looking. Shapes and planes of pure color
and compressed space leading to the statues.

Figure one, for instance, on the bed. And the equal solidity
of surfaces, the blue of the room, the early gray
of the room. The gesture, and you kept waking in the air,
your white dress. Your white dress.
How could any of us survive it? Where the world
gets in your head. The thinnest line of shadow, moving across the sheet
and breaking across the wall. The sweeping lines of shadow
from passing cars. We endure
with what we endure, and then these little moments
that we can rob from ourselves or others
spark us back into the window of the room. The point called
window of the room.

We're supposed to be thinking about the program,
aren't we? The way it starts and stops and starts back up again
with a new cast and what looks like, at first blush, a new plot.
And which ones are your dreams,
which the other's? And whose chair is this? Whose
jacket? Whichever figure is naked on the bed,
whichever figure is floating above the room,
we're pointing to the room all morning. We're practicing charts
and graphs. Figure A. We come together. We fall apart.
The point called your totem of constellations.
And in case you missed it, the point
of the point at which.

As it's cold, I will be cold, in the point later. The point of the point later,
if the points are infinite,
and time fits neatly into time,
like it should mean something, spinning off into the past.

--------

I had an early appointment for an abdominal sonogram whose results I won't have for a few days -- possibly till after Thanksgiving -- and for which I had to fast, so although it was completely comfortable compared to a pelvic sonogram (no full bladder, worst I had to do was hold my breath for ten seconds), I came home lightheaded and very thirsty and have felt sort of sleepy and off all day. The fact that it was a very gloomy, rainy Monday probably contributed to that; I don't mind the rain or the chill, but it felt like it was never properly morning, let alone afternoon. So I did laundry and worked on holiday cards, and when the kids came home, I watched Adam spend hours struggling with his math homework while discussing the pitfalls of Animal Farm.

I feel like I need a refresher course in Heroes even to have an opinion on whether anything is making sense these days...no one in my family could remember how Arthur Petrelli died, for instance, or how similar Peter's power is to his (Peter's has changed over time, yes, in how many powers he can have at once and how recently he has to have touched someone, since he lost them all and got it back again twice?). So while I was happy to get Petrelli and Bennett family drama over the Thanksgiving table, which will certainly make any family annoyance with my own relatives seem extremely minor, at this point I'm just watching for a couple of characters and really hoping this is the last season so they can make some attempt to wrap up their many loose ends.

I watched Buffy's "Surprise" and "Innocence" while folding the laundry, which I blame partly on Cidercupcakes and partly on New Moon because I'd remembered being irritated when the episodes were new at the "lose your virginity and your boyfriend will turn into a soulless demon!" theme, and given all the Bella-bashing, I wanted to see whether Buffy looked better by comparison. Buffy curls up and cries when her boyfriend dumps her, too, but she has a wonderful support system that Bella lacks -- a mother who loves her, friends who will do anything for her, a Watcher who believes in her and is completely devoted to her. Bella has a dad who doesn't understand her, an absentee mother, and a best friend whose lust for her gets in the way of whatever support he can offer her...a terrible situation, of course she's no Slayer, and I don't think the films are suggesting that Bella should cling to her virginity as the last vestige of her self-esteem -- it's more that she can't get Edward to do what she wants.