Acupuncture
Anne Germanacos

Pearl Barley is a singer.

No, she's a food.

A mother is a mother is a mother, not a father.

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I, for one, adore liminal stages.

In this place -- beware -- one sees moving, living things from the corner of one's eye and animal calls turn into human voices requesting attention and care.

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In New York, you will find a salon where they'll wax your brows for nine dollars and speak Hebrew, besides.

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Adolescence invades on all fours, tousled and unabashed.

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This, no Gregorian count. Biological, hormones plump and slough to the moon's light and cool.

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Sometimes -- a little bit obsessed with Scarlett Johanssen.

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My friend decided that she'll get back at him by writing the true story of the demise: hers, as activated by him.

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When I dropped a plate in the sink (it broke), he said (thinking he was the reason for the broken plate) that he would leave. I told him that if he did, I would follow.

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Unable to accommodate the extreme needs of so many people, I choose (once again) my husband over my mother, and begin to arrange the suitcases -- in my mind if not in fact.

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Tired of endlessly hungry people who refuse to feed themselves.

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Fanaticism. What it is. How it grows.

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We ate with family, speaking of family. And tribe, belief, water line, fence. Sometimes the proximity of family makes you entirely foreign to yourself.

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There are solid, lymph-like things too: scalp and hair, bone and skin. Anything grasped at a point of no return, just before oblivion.

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A dream like a fat leech waits on the underside of the smallest fragment of time: fall asleep and it sucks.

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Where is my candy?!

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I have a voice, but how long until I ventriloquize it again?

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Sometimes there are meteor showers; sometimes we avoid them.

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From here, it's easy to see what is essential and what is useless. You give away dented cans, jars of unused face creams, anything that bends or can be woven, dross, stagnant things, unread books, objects that have been sitting too long, all containers half-empty or half-full -- it doesn't matter how you see them -- inkless pens, broken plates or plates with a telltale crack, old mattresses, stained clothing, anything taken by mouth that's expired or about to expire.

What do you hold onto? Small things, essential things, anything sad (but not too sad): shiny pebbles from the beach, wires to connect one machine to another, clocks, dried orchids with their delicate scent that refuses to depart, bookmarks, printed pages, more dried flowers -- carnations and roses, notebooks in every size and color. You fill sacks with good things no longer desired. You let lizards crawl the newly-painted walls, their stillness a lesson. (Their quickness makes you touch your eye.)

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When your mother was still your mother, she reigned though not by evil.

Her barley soup wasn't as good as her mother's -- you remember the taste of each -- but barley itself, the ovals split by a line, are pure mother to you.

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My husband and I are reconciled. He is my crown -- and the jewel in it, too. Without him, I'm a pauper. Enough of fairy tales, but sometimes life submits.

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Cooler today.

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The wind is playing our song.

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Slightly heavier women age better than thin ones like my sister and me. But we laugh a lot!

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Focused on suitcases.
Unsure how to proceed.

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The relationship between therapist and patient is highly concentrated (sometimes costing as much as four dollars a minute) in an attempt to speed up one's relation to the span of one's life.

It sparks you alive. Or examines why you can't be sparked alive. Or why you're already a wildfire!

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No fog to speak of.

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My mother speaks more quietly each day, now that she's focused on the fact that I'm leaving soon. Who will she be when I return? And for that matter, who will I be?

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My niece sent rows and rows of shit, each pile with its own buzzing fly, to her babysitter by email.

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Where has all the bowling gone?

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My mother hallucinates more each day. Since she is being destroyed by my imminent departure, I cannot be.

My best friend gave me eight-and-a-half minutes of her time which was just right.

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Right now I'm trying to disguise my passion for foreign languages in the scent of slow-cooking meatballs.

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Today at my mother's, I laughed when she asked if I've been gargling -- and then she laughed because I'd laughed. No one will be like her ever again.

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He and I stood side by side shelling monstrous koukia beans; I can't honestly say the experience brought us any closer. Within some of the pods nestled brown miscarriages.
My jaded piece-work didn't stir him.

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The stuff, murky and bright, left on the sidewalks by junkies: half a baby stroller, pink and yellow clothing, lime green shorts -- all of it too bright by more than half.

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Both my sister and I dreamt last night that we'd killed people: she did so actively, throwing them down the stairs. I did so through negligence, leaving that day-old baby in a boarded-up house then running back to make sure that everything was okay. It wasn't: the baby had turned into a wilted flower.

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The guy stuck needles into the left side of my face, head, neck. It hurt and then it didn't.

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