What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon

Author:Stephen Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Published: 2010-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

SHE.

She called and said “Can I stop by?”

“Sure, what’s up, how are you?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there, all right?”

“Of course, see ya, goodbye,”

and two hours later she rang from downstairs

and I buzzed her up,

my room cleaned, floor washed down but not ammoniated,

as I didn’t want to give the scent I was doing

it for her.

New sheets—fresh, I mean, and bed, which is also

my couch, remade twice till it was right,

most of my books out of sight or in place in my

one bookcase,

books on my table and desk turned cover-side down

so I wouldn’t seem pedantic,

everything on my desk stacked and aligned,

my new eyeglasses opened on top of my typewriter.

If she asks “Those yours?,” I’ll say “Yes, for reading,

and only nineteen ninety-five at Cohen’s, Delancy and

orchard, and that includes the eye examination,

bathroom and kitchenette cleaned too and everything put away.

Two croissants bought in a run so I’d have time

to do all that cleaning and tidying up,

old clothes thrown into the closet,

but what should I wear?

I had that thought: Which turtleneck jersey, blue,

green or black? They’re all clean,

and which pants of the five pairs I found in a pile

on a garbage can on the street the other day

and washed in the Laundromat down the block,

even the gray wide-wale corduroys that said

Dry Clean Only,

all of them my length and waist and no cuffs,

the way I like mine.

Shoes and sneakers and flipflops paired and lined

up at the end of the short hallway by the door,

bedspread flattened out again in my only room.

“Your tomb,” she’d said a number of times,

but not for a while.

Then my face shaved, hair brushed back,

anus, genitals and underarms cleaned with a wet

washrag, the washrag then folded neatly over

the bathroom towel rack.

She might comment approvingly of my new headhair

curls which have formed in the two weeks since I

last saw her, painting on the wall also picked up

on the street since then: large studio oil of chair

turned upsidedown on a studio cloth with many folds,

draped sidetable with teapot, several birthday

candles in their holders and can of Ajax on top,

and she might say “Where’d you get that

—off the street like most of your furniture?”

and I’d say “Yes, a studio portrait, appropriate

for my studio apartment, and the chair sort of

symbolizing my life right now,

and also the way I acquired it:

that somebody would just toss it out.”

“You writers,” she might say, or something like,

if the conversation came to that.

So she came—knocked on my door and never mentioned

the painting or my hair—and tells me what I knew

she would and had prepared myself for,

and I told her why I hadn’t called her the

last two weeks and that I’d been thinking the

same thing: “We just don’t click together anymore

after almost three years. And it’s not that I

don’t love you, but—

Actually, I do love you, but like a croissant and

some tea? The croissant’s fresh.”

“I’d love to but I haven’t time and am meter-parked.

I’m glad you’re taking it this way and not getting

angry as I thought, and was a little anxious,

you might. But you know, I’ve always said,

from the first

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