Stoical, haunted by the porn star with the scarred thigh in quiet profile in the parlor—I hear things.

The public calls to me like a vacuum in the next hotel room, suckling doppler effect, petitioning a holiday where one can sit all day at the kitchen table, eat Depression cake from LK’s Easy Cakes for  Hard Times, struggle with the problems of art, how it seizes on whatever occasions life offers and  enhances the constructed object; a day set aside for deep-dive criticism, read with one raised eyebrow,  a playful smile, wolfing, saying the word fungible slowly, out loud. Or thoughtfully examining the contours of encountered non artistic values breached in the free local paper. Mornings spent alone, masturbating at the window to  the birdfeeder, listening to “You Don’t know What Love Is,” with beaten saltless buttercream breath, a few bittersweet tears; coming with the Say’s Phoebe cry.