And Words Are All I Have

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.
~~ e. e. cummings


Gilding the Lily, Prom Nights, December,Defined.

camel

Botoxed, Surgically Lifted Camels
Banned From Beauty Contest.

This story is too bizarre not to be true.

Saudi authorities have clamped down on a camel scandal, disqualifying more than 40 of the humped animals from the annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival beauty contest after discovering they had been given Botox shots or had face and hump lifts. The month-long festival sees jurors tasked with awarding beauty prizes worth more than $66 million for the best shaped heads, necks, humps and posture, as well as judging their often elaborate costumes. But organizers say that each year camel owners go to even greater extremes to make their beasts beautiful by stretching their lips and noses, boosting their humps, and even inflating body parts with rubber bands.

“The club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels,” the Saudi Press agency reported.
sanitizer

The world feels different since this virus came among us… to wit, I find myself talking out loud in supermarkets at random. OK I may have done this in past days but it has ratcheted up.

Behind masks everyone skulks around avoiding eye contact, wordless. You can't get a convo going to save your life. So I keep up an ongoing dialogue with an army of me, asking ongoing rhetorical questions… e.g.

“Isn’t Lavazza really the best? C’mon. Just try a bag.”

“Could they stock a chocolate covered Digestive biscuit? Would it kill them?

“These roses smell like a refrigerator.”

“Didn’t the cashier already bleach that Plexiglas?

“Who buys evergreen boughs? Do they live in the Gulag?”

That is an unfortunate hat.”

You get the drift.

If you come upon me in an aisle, just keep going. You'd be wise.


swing set
Perfectly Sad.

The child’s swing set across the road
creaks and sways this December morning.
It paints the perfect picture of sadness.
A textbook definition for anyone to see.
As if in collusion with the particular slant of light and wind,
it stands there in stark detail against the bleak horizon,
snow collecting in its rusting joints.

The gargantuan uprooted tree by the river,
hanging on by its slim tortured roots,
It too knows.

The man alone in the coffee shop reading
yet not reading,

the woman at the bus stop in the cold,
her broken shoes, her cheap handbag hard against her heart,
shaking her head, no,

no,
no.



words voice of the heart

The brilliant writer Christopher Hitchens - sadly - died at a paltry 62 years.
Here, he recalls a trip to Aspen, Colorado, and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.

"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition, he wrote. What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case."

'Sir, that would be inappropriate.'

"In what respect?"

'At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.'

"In that case," I said, 'make it a double.'"


tricia handwritten signature
I am here, listening. Share your own stories with me, gentle reader. writer@triciamccallum.com


Recent Post

Gabby Petito

For all of the girls and the women who trusted too much... those found and never found, the lost ones, the lonely ones, whose stories go untold, their heartache entombed alongside them. Last Text from Gabby Petito No service here, but at least I’m free from the cage bars of my body; remember what I’d blogged in observation of …
Gabby Petito
woman solitary

Book Sales

The Music of Leaving, my collection of poetry, is available to order.
Order directly online — for both Canada and U.S. orders — from Amazon, Brunswick and Demeter.
The Music of Leaving - Tricia McCallum

Poetry goes social...

facebook twitter instagram youtube