Squid in its Own Ink
I used to listen to Jacques Brel Is Alive and Singing in Paris.
Now I sit on the couch with a towel in my lap,
I eat rice and beans, find the day exhausting.
I think about godlessness, and about
how wisteria
is in a constant state of diving-down,
or of descending, like rain.
Wisteria: always awaiting
Hyades, or a girl that needs
a pretty photo taken.
In an odd twist, I am informed that
Jacques Brel is Alive and Singing in Paris
is very hard to find, and my copy
has joined the angels
someplace opaque and unknown to me.
First found in a stagnant closet
before my adulthood, last lost and
I am here now with my dishrag and
little phial of alcohol.
I clean the apartment with vigor and eros.
And life is small,
suitable for daily use.
It withstands heat,
it sometimes proffers pleasures:
The hot blackness of night,
hot bar of soap in the shower,
next morning.
Summer showed up yesterday
squawking even at midnight, among
our resting cloud of lime-tone parrots,
and I played Jacques Brel through the television,
wondering
what that might make the neighbors
wonder
Allison Hummel is based in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her work has recently appeared in Gasher, A Velvet Giant, The Cabildo Quarterly, A Glimpse Of, and other journals.