The secret to growing long hair is very simply
not to cut it. Very few people will tell you this.
Popcorn kernels are one of the great secrets of the Universe,
and there are few things I say with certainty.
They are all simple.
Those who cannot do, cannot teach me to! is a thing I would like to shout
at the sharp end of a no. 2 pencil. What ever happened to lead poisoning?
is another. I have been adressed frequently with the phrase right up your alley,
so I begin to think why do you people think I live in an alley?
and then I imagine my alley. I imagine my alley in width and length,
decaying brick, a Tomcat I'd have named Edna with only one eye
who rails at the moon each evening, a woman on the 6th floor aims at my head
with potted plants and chipped china plates--

the sound of these things breaking, the woman
old and lonely, the red wallpaper in her kitchen, she always misses
except for the one time, and the cat goes on railing
like a faucet drips.