Suppose it were Friday lxxii: In the plentiful season

                      A little zipper whine

                      that runs along the

                      convolutes of his ear

                      licking in under every

                      bone like a bad emotion.

                      It could be morning noon

                      midnight the sound never

                      stops. He stands watching

                      a thousand whitecaps go

                      diagonal on the bay.

                      Components of today

                      include a shape asleep on

                      the floor an erased white

                      world the tumblers

                      vibrating in the closet and

                      he brought the wrong

                      book. Alive in a room as

                      usual.

Anne Carson

Red Doc>

  [page 34]

Knopf, 2013©

Cranky aubergines

Mme Reid-Gaillard writes

the indispensable kitchen

garden blog referenced in

Context, and captures the

volatility of the season 

as few have done, in her 

current entry:

    You always blame the 

weather for the fact that 

your aubergines are a few 

centimeters shorter than 

the neighbors, your hot 

peppers have only started 

flowering or your tomatoes 

persist on remaining green. 

It's a gardeners preroga-

tive to moan!

I don't think one could put dismay with one's aubergines any more poignantly than she has done, especially in her adoption of the comparative frame of reference; and with the season now so advanced upon its evanescent trajectory, who can afford to wait for hot peppers to reach veraison? This is horticultural cruelty at its nakedest imperviousness to aspiration, to say nothing of good works and good will. Nor is this ultimately a matter so much of knowing that somewhere a neighbor is proffering a plusher aubergine, as it is a crisis of underripening, per se, in which the very shade of the fruit proclaims it, never mind its scale. Moan? Rage, rather, against the persistence of tart hues.

One feels an almost natural 

dread of tribal culling in 

any botanical failure, and

while she manages to keep

it together with resilient

culinary wit, I know there

are many of us whose first

recourse might be to our

usual suspects, the gods.

I, for my part, have too

much respect for the pow-

er of prayer, and can ill

afford an overcorrection,

of clumsy side effects.

So if New York does go ahead, to elect a flasher, mayor

Do you think he'll
allow any day when
they won't have to
see, you know, it?
That's sort of the
thing, it seems to
me, not a fellow's
compulsiveness but
his making it com-
pulsory to notice.

It's like the Com-
monwealth of Vir-
ginia spouting Fox
News in every In-
terstate pit stop.
Shame doesn't live
there anymore.

Blue 78 in Los Angeles

      People who don't know Los

      Angeles, who wish to dis-

      tinguish it by fragments

      they believe have some ca-

      chet, miss that is a whole

      space, not The Blue Boy by

      himself in San Marino. The

      permeating golden light is

      why we recognise him there,

      but that gilt frame is cast

      about him everywhere. Born

      in the neighborhood of The

      Blue Boy, I was taken often

      to see him, and to roll my-

      self down the slope of his

      gardens from his perch on

      Oxford hill. But even then,

      by its light I knew my world.