they pulled my hair at charm school.
they
stole my guestbook during
rolecall.
Dispatch from Summer 1994 + JUNE 25. 2003 = 94
/ Finally, 95 degrees. Outside is a wasteland of swampy air, boiling grass, wilting greenery. Am flushed , yet prefer this to the long weeks that have contained nothing but rain. The first summer here. Age 18. Moved into a tiny room on Graves Ave. with my older sister. Graves Ave. = The street of derelicts. Men sucking on cigarettes and crowding the front porch of the Half Way House. The noisy girls guzzling beer at all hours on the roof of their apartment. The hippie couple with the VW Van at the end of the street, who would open a popular vegetarian restaurant, trade the van for a Range Rover and move to a large house on the outskirts of town. (They would also hang creepy photos of their deceased baby on the wall of restaurant & commence every open mic night with a poem dedicated to baby�s spirit.) Age 18. Stuffy office job I reported to every morning. Stole notebooks from the Office Supply Closet in which I would scribble notes and bad poems and copy lines I loved from novels. Lonely lunch breaks at a faux wood table in a hospital blue room. Walk home at five p.m. and wait for my sister. We would eat burritos from Vera at the Smith College pond. Play ping-pong with the boys of 15 Gothic St. Buy art supplies from the Guild and pastries from Bakery Normand. Prowl for books at Broadside. The ridiculously hot nights when we couldn�t sleep. Leave cramped upstairs quarters with two mattresses on floor. (In the morning we stack one on top of the other so that there is room to get dressed.) Dark kitchen. Street sounds. Cool air when she opens the refrigerator. Suck on cold strawberries and gossip until two a.m.
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ghosts!
