A Catalog of How Are You Doings
There’s the ones you get from cashiers,acquaintance coworkers, the husbandsof your wife’s childhood friends—they say it like tearing the last yellow pagefrom anot your first choice, the ink runs,you know whatever you do with itit’s bound for forgetting’s garbage bin.Then there are the ones with ‘man’tacked onto the end, the old friendsreaching through telephone wiresto garland your shoulders with cigarettebreaths, and something about themfeels like ship horns sounded in the harbor,the brightest pennies in a wishing fountain,how your hands first landed on the small of a girl’s back.There’s the ones at aunt and uncle funeralsplopped like spoonfuls of mac and cheeseon a paper plate, ones like a flock of geesetaking flight after you bump into your ex.Your mother dies and people placetheir black origami in your palm.Your father dies and people drape themlike coats across your back. Once or twiceyou find one whispered like an envelopeslipped under your door, except this one fallsfrom your bathroom mirror. You’re naked, soaking.Haven’t you been practicing for thisyour whole life? Say fine. Say great.You have nowhere else to be.Say how about you?
