pillowside library

When I turned 27, I bought a big girl bed. After years of sleeping on a European single which is like an extra-long twin from your old collegiate days, I bought myself a $150 frame from Ikea and a $700 full-sized mattress. Oh, how the extra inches felt like yards and yards of drowsy terrain.

On the bed, during the precious few moments before slumber rolls over me like a fog approaching the shore, I read a few pages from whatever books I'm into. Being too tired to return them to their respective shelves, I've allowed a pillowside library to erect itself on the corner of my mattress. The library usually contains anywhere from 2 to 4 selections. When the number of volumes becomes too high and I can't sleep for fear of a stack of books falling on my head in the middle of the night, the lesser titles find their way to the floor.

It's an interesting barometer of my mental or intellectual state. Sometimes of my emotional state. Consistently over the past few years, dictionaries have appeared and disappeared from the library. In the periodicals, there's usually a section or two of the New York Times. Over the summer, I read On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Then it was the September issue of Vogue and the Food Lover's Companion (3rd Edition). A UK paperback of "The Prophet" by Gibran travels back and forth between the mattress and the floor.

If you didn't know me, you could easily take the books and conjure what would probably be fairly accurate assumptions about my interests. I'm probably a "foodie". I'm probably a woman. I probably went to college. Maybe I'm an artist or perhaps a wannabe hippie. Maybe, based on the frequent appearance of dictionaries, I'm an English professor. I'm probably an old English professor as many of the dictionaries were published before 1960. Maybe one of my liberal and fairy-headed students gave me a copy of "The Prophet" as a gift. These are all reasonable paint strokes giving context to a stack of books.

Right now, the assortment of books is fascinating. I'm currently sleeping with three, independently published poetry books one of which was copied at Kinko's and stapled by hand and a book on self-defense. I recently saw the poets Ellyn Maybe and my idol and friend Rachel McKibbens and quickly snatched their chapbooks from them, shoved money into their hands and ran off to immediately crack them open. The "Complete Guide to Unarmed Combat Techniques" was written by man whose nickname is "Lofty". Presumably a reflection of his goals. This one I found sitting in a friend's box of discards.

To save myself, I'm armed with the writhing, tentative words of two poets. I've got the curt directions of a British Survival Instructor whose orders are accompanied by agitated black and white illustrations of people fighting off attacks. You can tell the women by their skirts and black high heels.

Defend your body with your body. Defend your heart with your heart. Here's a better glimpse into the pages that punch and jab and wriggle me free. Reprinted without permission.

"I found a year that likes my body
1921
girl sitting on a rock
Picasso painted a woman with my thighs."

"I lean into the paintings.
I veer to the outside to find out what Picasso
called each work.

I like titles.
Their vocabulary of oil."

-Ellyn Maybe, from the poem "Picasso" found in walking barefoot in the glassblowers museum


"The head on a hinge, the man notices a small light coming
from somewhere inside the cat, possibly between the fourth
and fifth cervical vertebrae. He takes his pen and digs around,
parting flesh and fur chips as best he can.
Inside, he finds Theresa, the first girl to tell him "no."
He can tell it is Theresa, even though she is considerably smaller, because she is sitting on a stool polishing spoons by candlelight and of all the women he has ever known,
only Theresa would do such a considerate thing
at at time like this. Theresa! I knew it was you! How are you?

Theresa looks up and smiles.
I'm doing just fine, Charles. Thank you.
She sets down a polished spoon inside of the other.
There are tall stacks of spoons spooning that surround her
feet and stool. She pulls a new spoon from a crate
and huh huhs her breath into its shallow bowl,
rubbing it with a handkerchief. She is mesmerizing.
A three-inch tall Elizabeth Taylor.

She continues to polish spoons as if he is not there.
The man realizes he has interrupted a meaningful pattern
of pure and absolute beauty. A natural machine, designed for no
one other than the machine itself. Clumsy, he interrupts one last
time. Are you thirst Theresa, would you like me
to bring you a cup of tea?

Theresa continues her stack, then reminds him:
There isn't a teacup small enough. The words
form a dinner table of malice inside his chest,"

-Rachel McKibbens, from the poem "Thirsty Theresa" found in Tomatoes and Daffodils


"The teeth can be very useful in self-defense. If you're a woman, bite on whatever you can get hold of, ideally the ear. And once you bite don't let go - you'll just arouse the attacker. Bite into his neck, his throat, his ear; just bite, chew, rip and spit."

-John "Lofty" Wiseman, "The SAS Self-Defense Handbook: A Complete Guide to Unarmed Combat Techniques - Chapter 2: Your Body's Weapons"