Futures

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We are always jumping off into the future. San Diego County Fair, 2010.

Yesterday and Today Himself: Has an appointment at one of those alphabet agencies Thursday about job coaching, and after that has a job interview with GEICO at a cattle call/job fair. Today’s the last day he’s feeding the cats. Herself: I went to the store meeting yesterday, and no one was there. It’s like hitting myself on the head wondering what I missed when the signs said, “Monday at 9.” Gratitude: Today’s the first day of sunshine this summer.

My day was spent with my nose in my computer. The powers that be informed me, quite correctly, that I couldn’t shrink one poem to 10 point type and have the next one be 11 point type. I changed everyone to 10 point type. I changed all the headers to Papyrus 12 point with a colophon before it. Uniformity with a little style.

I’m nearing the end of this project, and I’m very nervous about it. My typesetting friend, Janey, died this year, and I’m not the best graphic designer in the city. I punt, then moments later I find I have just reinvented the elephant in the living room. I do seem to spend vastly more time correcting errors than the average person. One I found, much to my chagrin, was that I had the poem Futures on two pages.

Now my Future is reduced to only one page.

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Futures
______________________

My mother’s cloisonné has
grown into our cloisonné
his grandmother’s knick knacks
have become our art.

My grandma’s art
has become precious
memorializing forgotten love.

My cookbooks grow into Linus Blankets
while his sci-fi is hidden
so more of my cookbooks can have air.

Teddy bears sit everywhere
intermixed with bunnies
turning us into our worst nightmares.

Ah, but
our computers sit without argument
twittering their lights at the modem
which only sometimes
refuses to light our way into the future.