Frittering

I can remember lying in the sun, watching a dog stair at a tree when my brother came up to me to ask what I was doing. I told him I was just trying to do something that didn’t cost any money and he said it didn’t matter, that they were probably deducting money from my account over the internet. Past debit purchases from days ago that were just now clearing.

“Why’d you have to go and say that,” I said agitated. “Now I feel all thwarted.”

I wanted to feel the opposite of thwarted. Stimulated? I started writing poetry in my head.

“Why is that dog just staring at that tree?” My brother said.

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” I said before quietly reciting to myself, “To Michael Jackson on his Deathbed, Part One.” About a half hour later my belly was getting red and the shavings from my brother’s whittling were blowing all around my face and getting in my hair.

“Why don’t you take your fuckin’ whittling out-front,” I said, but he didn’t budge.

I couldn’t remember any of the poetry I had written in my head, but I didn’t care. I had never even known anyone personally who had written any poems.

“You know any real poets?” I asked my brother.

He stopped whittling and looked up like he was really trying to think for me.

“You know Dougie Sampson, from Marietta?” He asked.

“The tall guy who speaks in tongues at that weird church?” I said trying not to laugh.

My brother went on unfazed, “His cousin told me he knew a guy in Charleston that got a poem in a book. The editor sent him a crisp ten dollar bill.”

I sobered up and thought about how it would feel to see something I had written in a book, and then I pictured myself opening an envelope that had crisp ten dollar bill in it.

“No shit,” I said.

Then, blocking the sun from my eyes I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why that dog is staring at that tree.”