Back from vacation

It’s too much, Bosley. I can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take what, Ralph? And it’s not Bosley anymore. It’s Hussein, thank you very much.

I can’t take the suspense and where did you get Hussein from?

We’re all big O’bama supporters up here and he’s getting a lot of flak for his middle name sounding Egyptian or maybe Yemenite. Many of us are adopting his middle name as ours. That way we’ll all sound Kuwaiti or Omani and no one can say that his name doesn’t sound Americani. And what’s all the suspense?

Ok, so you’ve been reading the papers. Good for you. So how are things up there, anyway?

Oh, big happenings. The lesbian bloc rose up and had a mass self-resurrection of their souls. They’re all coming back. Remember what I said earlier. Don’t diss any dykes.

What’s up with them? Did the California vote on gay marriage get them all excited?

No. Most of them care more about finding out if Shakespeare really wrote those plays himself. Once you get up here you realize there is some truth to what that liberal Anglican priest said that arguing about gay marriage is really about rich people arguing about sex while the poor still look for justice.

Interesting point. So what’s heading up the annunciation?

Your new Poet Laureate. She’s a dyke and a hot mountain biking Californian, too. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/352?gclid=CPuUlrTT4ZQCFQN2sgodwFswSA

Poetry is what gets people worked up up here, not marriage. Remember that. Your lovely wife might like a little poetry from you.

I’ll work on it. What about the gay men? Doesn’t poetry get them excited, too.

Not as much as television. But they may be self-resurrecting, too, now that As the World Turns has a gay couple.

That’s right. Their name is Nuke as in Noah and Luke, just like Brangleina and what’s his name. Wow, I wonder what my mother’s mother, Granny, is thinking about that. She watched that show like it was a religion.

I’ll ask her. Of course, I still love Billy Crystal in the old TV comedy, Soap. That was good TV. What’s happened down there since scientists discovered that the brain in gay men closely resembles the brain in straight women? Any research on lesbian brains?

Still looking for one, but we did have a potential lesbian scare the other day. Amy Adams, who played the fairy tale princess in Enchanted, had her picture in the paper with the caption reading, “Adams to marry high school sweetheart.” Right next to her picture was a picture of Pamela Anderson. My first thought was not pretty.

Too much fantasy for you, huh?

What?

I’m still waiting for the suspense, Ralph.

Well, maybe I’ll use Hussein, too, and the suspense is all about which one of my siblings won the bet.

What? Bad bet, Black Bart? I mean Ralph or Hussein, or whatever. At least you didn’t switch to Bartman who was the spectator who stole the World Series from the Cubs in 2003 by interfering with the foul ball. Of course, you could be Bartman Hussein O’Berlin. Which would put you back in Ohio since Oberlin College is there and in an amazing coincidence so is the home office for Ho’Bart dishwashers.

Sure, and the bet was about how long I would last with keeping my mouth shut.

All Shall Be Restored

by Kay Ryan

The grains shall be collected

from the thousand shores

to which they found their way,

and the boulder restored,

and the boulder itself replaced

in the cliff, and likewise

the cliff shall rise

or subside until the plate of earth

is without fissure. Restoration

knows no half measure. It will

not stop when the treasured and lost

bronze horse remounts the steps.

Even this horse will founder backward

to coin, cannon, and domestic pots,

which themselves shall bubble and

drain back to green veins in stone.

And every word written shall lift off

letter by letter, the backward text

read ever briefer, ever more antic

in its effort to insist that nothing

shall be lost.