View From Here
Bill Ratner
Tools essential to my life: the bitch, the gripe, the whine, box of silly fears, bag of automatic thoughts (she’s tired of me, sexual prowess wanes, I stink of demons) cleaned, sharpened, ground to a fine point. I’m building a birdhouse for phobias with a perch for imaginary conflicts.
I’m determined to stop jutting my face out like a jack-in-the-box. I lay fingers over my eyes to see the shadows, rotate my thorax rooted by the pelvis, an ancient children’s dance—breathe, thoughts like clouds, feet on the floor.
I wasn’t surprised to learn from genomics that I am descended from a bubble of intestinal gas originating in the bowel of a seventeenth-century commedia dell’arte player—Pantalone in a royal Florentine family farce. I come from solid stock, sometimes liquid, occasionally fire, mostly earth.
In museums I’ve looked at squares of graphite swirls as though I were sifting light. Given the chance to stare long and silent, the bigger view—a hill of spruce, lightning strike, rattling temblor—I am tapped by sadness, as though every view before was seen in a sad time. Little blue theater. I clear my mind like resetting a page, try to see free of old weight, a sincere effort, churchy work.
Bill Ratner
Tools essential to my life: the bitch, the gripe, the whine, box of silly fears, bag of automatic thoughts (she’s tired of me, sexual prowess wanes, I stink of demons) cleaned, sharpened, ground to a fine point. I’m building a birdhouse for phobias with a perch for imaginary conflicts.
I’m determined to stop jutting my face out like a jack-in-the-box. I lay fingers over my eyes to see the shadows, rotate my thorax rooted by the pelvis, an ancient children’s dance—breathe, thoughts like clouds, feet on the floor.
I wasn’t surprised to learn from genomics that I am descended from a bubble of intestinal gas originating in the bowel of a seventeenth-century commedia dell’arte player—Pantalone in a royal Florentine family farce. I come from solid stock, sometimes liquid, occasionally fire, mostly earth.
In museums I’ve looked at squares of graphite swirls as though I were sifting light. Given the chance to stare long and silent, the bigger view—a hill of spruce, lightning strike, rattling temblor—I am tapped by sadness, as though every view before was seen in a sad time. Little blue theater. I clear my mind like resetting a page, try to see free of old weight, a sincere effort, churchy work.