Raw Goods

The Advertiser

I want to be an old woman - this fascinating business of petroglyphs and alien visits. Who would you choose to watch the sun melt? Enter - the printing press on a sandstone mesa. How it all started: memories of East Texas backroads, mid-Victorian handicaps, and a girl who'd seen the ocean. "She ran off to California - and she never come back." Truths of advertising: they were no easy roads; I'm on fire; to replicate vacant sunglasses increases the selling power of Ladies' Home Journal. Lay down your burden, writing on walls: the advertiser of intangibles will hear your case. Our burial mounds may bulge between rotated crops plowed under bare mountains, or flourish lush on slow trains. It's gonna be a long time before empty highways dodge false hillsides. Tomorrow's friend has condemned crop circles because "an angel loves you." I don't remember how that goes.

I think I'm a housewife. Saint Barbara can't fool me now. She's got curly headed-babies under Coptic towers, and feather quills to open mission doors. "The only bilingual man in the state translated new and old laws," she said, but she lied. Never thought I'd hear a saint lie. Gold-leaf color plates roll off intaglio presses, and grandpa was an ugly man who knew all the ways to tan a hide. Tassajara - the place where they raise beef - the old men don't stop here anymore. The spirit of volunteer service was unquestioned until the natives revolted. Don't let us do it again. Remind me how to cook potatoes, how to sew - you know how this story goes.

posted by judy j @ 1:54 PM