We’re somewhere outside Grand Forks, ND, at the nicest rest stop in the world. It’s a lovely day, and there’s wireless internet access. God bless the USA.
Up north
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Caruso
David Caruso is an “actor” in only the Affleckian sense: He gets paid to appear on screen. And yet, I sort of like Horatio Caine. Maybe it’s the pale one’s foolishly bold absence of sunscreen. Or perhaps it’s his pointed enunciation-and-glasses-on way of ending every scene. Or maybe it’s that his cat’s name is Bosco.
Now, Bosco. You know what you did was wrong. What you did was improper. It was inconsiderate. But you didn’t think about that, did you? You thought you could get away with it. But you forgot the most important thing. You forgot that the only thing that matters is evidence. …
From Brian Graham’s “David Caruso scolds his cat about its lackadaisical litter-box use” at McSweeney’s.
"Bindweed"
American Life in Poetry: Column 062
By Ted Kooser
U.S. poet laureate 2004-2006
Gardeners who’ve fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It’s an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
Bindweed
There is little I can do
besides stoop to pluck them
one by one from the ground,
their roots all weak links,
this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
at night, not the Heavenly Blue
so like silk handkerchiefs,
nor the Giant White so timid
in the face of the moon,
but poor relations who visit
then stay. They sleep in my garden.
Each morning I evict them.
Each night more arrive, their leaves
small, green shrouds,
reminding me the mother root
waits deep underground
and I dig but will never find her
and her children will inherit
all that I’ve cleared
when she holds me tighter
and tighter in her arms.Reprinted from “Headlong,” University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author, and first published in “Poetry Northwest,” Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright (c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is “Home Stand,” a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.