Julie Doxsee is doing a “blog tour” for her terrific new book, Objects For a Fog Death, so I asked Julie to write about her 5 favorite object combinations and her 5 favorite objects to leave by themselves. She did us better than my essaystic suggestion and wrote these “fabley little poem paragraphs.” I have used sophisticated Google Image Search techniques to jimmy up some complements. Enjoy!

Giraffe tooth/Helmet

You pull into a nook in the alley and my helmet clunks yours and this is a kind of talk we’re having but in the talk there is a kill wish and a rocket launch and a bright laser-beam lengthening our hearts across the sidewalk end to end.  There is blood and light.  You pull a giraffe tooth from your pocket, center it in your palm and say have you ever seen one of these?  From under my tongue I pull a giraffe tooth. I center it on my palm and say yes.  We sit this way until the shadows disappear.

Right now when I look at Asia/Cocoon

A flag unfurls like a sheet cracking over a bed over the sea.  I love when sheets crack on their way from scrunched to flat over things.  Ships, ships, ships bring things and people to people.  A gull stares at a face and I stare at a face.  The air is wet – nothing will stick to it except a deep lonely song.  As a man boils cocoons he slips his naked hand in to pull the silk from private little worm homes, wombs.  The song he sings is a scream for all songs lost above the torn submarines rotting black in the mud of the seafloor. Dolphins leap around in the distance.

Balloon/Coal

In 1934 a balloon appeared on the shore – a yellow bald head with no face I touch with my fingertip as birds clean their wings above.  One day it is gone.  I ask a crowd of people where it went and a man with coal eyes puts a handful of diamonds in my hand.  There is now a new balloon.  It is white with red stripes like a faraway candy.

Mountain/Monster

A hailstorm comes out of the monster’s mouth and I spill my coffee with a jolt.  We laugh and laugh as if we had come together for the only time and place when and where spilt coffee is funny.  You are the only monster I know who wears a pink sweater I say to it as it pretends to offer me some cashews.  We are on top of a jagged mountain, fingertips inches from the clouds.

Eternal Flame/Lip

The scene vibrant, the wood widened, twigs descend with feathery fingers to put us on the path.  There is no moon, no talk; no wine so the dark is a long starvation.   We reach the eternal flame with clouds of bugs.  Rocks and ruins lie about invisibly. A small man roasts a sausage over the towering flame.  It sizzles. Can you think of the opposite of this? I say with my blacked-out mouth.  Lost waterfall you say, shapeless.  The job of lips finished, we mix our hungers together, body and body end to end, and wait for something to swallow us.

Window

The window is a still wind frozen into a limit.  Tarantulas walk vertically up, confused.  A window is a concentration of wind smashed into something touchable but not so strong.  When did a window knock you or your trees down or blow your dog away?  When did shards of wind bring blood?  Put your expensive sailboat next to a window and wait till it turns to dust.

Fog

There is an entire ship made of fog.  It grows and shrinks according to the wind.  It causes people to squint and make newspaper hats with their hands.  Some people scuttle off with chunks of fog in their hats, which is perfectly legal.

Moustache

Once I was in love with a moustache.  We ate fried mussels and hid under a winter coat in the monster cold.  It made me wear big jewelry that caught the light nicely.  It wanted me to coat my walls orange so I did.  When it hovered in the streets the streets became wavy and steep.  The curtains turned to shiny leather and people, even, started to become wavy and steep.  Groups of cats gathered near it one morning when it was asleep and took turns touching it with their paws.  The moustache danced around on a face, above a mouth.

Photo credit Destination360 Rainbow Bridge Monument

People do lots of things on bridges.  They walk.  They fish.  They befriend.  They eat.  They sunburn.  They say Oh.  They smell fine.  They bellow.  They wear masks made of hippopotamus breath.

Bridges do lots of things to people.  They connect.  They scare.  They bottleneck.  They throat.  They horse-whinny.  They fall down, fall down, fall down.  They go dark in the city.  They fill with snow and handholds.

Towel

There is a special kind of towel that is spread out on a hot marble slab.  On it a mountain of bath bubbles is erected and you are put inside of the mountain with your eyes closed.  The bubbles pop all over your skin until it becomes angel skin.  The towel feels floods of oils and waters and perfumes and is never dry.  Above it is a kind of light that goes right into your forehead and stays there.