She sat down in a floral chair my mom gave me when I moved out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smells sneaked in from the Thai restaurant below my second story apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the street, a crack house cracked in the Portland afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She produced a cassette with legerdemain from the rear pocket of her jeans: Bad Company’s Greatest Hits<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her top came off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wanted Bad Company playing loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wanted to wear one of my shirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said she wanted to drink whiskey from the bottle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said she wanted absolute control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We repeated scenes like this, off and on, for 35 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, grievance needled inside her, festered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We dissolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the best verb to describe what happens when you stop stuffing a Bad Company cassette in your back pocket?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Erode?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sift?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squander?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ossify?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Petrify?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bury?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forget?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the best verb to describe avoiding the disappearance of that cassette?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maintain as in maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spirit, body, teeth, soul, roof, car, yard, caulk, lust, love, bridges, roads, shipyards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hardest thing to do in American life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at all the substitutes for substantial maintenance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trips, gadgets, baubles, therapy, superstitions, recriminations, fads, fantasies, media, mendacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did I just write the first poem in the recent history of American literature on the subject of maintenance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There should be thousands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soul music has ten thousand songs about maintenance. They define the genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She’s still out there with that Bad Company cassette somewhere, ready for that back pocket again. I believe it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She sat down in a floral chair my mom gave me when I moved out. Smells sneaked in from the Thai restaurant below my second story apartment. Across the street, a crack house cracked in the Portland afternoon. She produced a cassette with legerdemain from the rear pocket of her jeans: Bad Company’s Greatest Hits. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}