Image by OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay
(after Rachel Zucker's “I'd Like a Little Flashlight”)
one crafted by my favorite bartender Chelsey, a Chelsmo, and I want to alphabetize my file cabinet,
be articulated gracefully through the pages there (my mind isn't big enough to contain an organizer, and it
sieves out all clattering keys of efficiency). I want to close the drawer, let the pages go without looking back—jump forward, embrace the Nick and Nora glass, taste the sweet and the sour,
let the gin tickle those brain cells
not good for much else—
I can have a file cabinet that holds the contents of my brain, gives it
lift and precision, an external memory device that at a touch gives me presence of mind and I don't mind my mind anymore, its limits its drafty oops—I let that go fly out the door and vanish. I want to alphabetize my file cabinet. If I stoop over that file cabinet
and ruffle through will I find the object? I'd like to get into that file cabinet now,
organize the feel, feel again what it’s like to have everything at my finger tips,
remember control remote control the mirage of control, that peace
of mind that was never really one piece but I had it baby and knew where everything
dwelled—could fill two boxes with precision moving from New York to Alabama after graduate school. I had
no car no cats no house and no file cabinets
just a handful of photo albums everything in my two hands or in two suitcases
that I dragged onto the plane that was
enough and I knew it—I had it it was me and I didn't forget
I want to alphabetize my file cabinet to have that sense of me complete and to be
chill as I cast my chances on paper and on digital media, and spout
words all the while sipping my Chelsmo and knowing my memory can go to hell and
I will still have all or not care what I am now if not my memories.