OH THANK HEAVEN FOR . . .
I get an email from the ASPCA
thanking Chanel
for her generous tax-deductible donation.
I almost want to marry her
on a glamping trip for that.
I prepare a pitch.
I go to the closest 7-Eleven
and buy a blue Ring Pop and Citi Bike
back home. I get down on one knee.
She says, Sorry but I saw this recipe
for making your own ring pops
with blue agave . . . I'm ok.
I Uber-X it back to 7-Eleven and return the Ring
Pop. I am upset. I think to myself, I'm going to
Splurge. Do you want to
go glamping? Chanel says later that night, flipping
through a vintage National Geographic.
TIME IS WHAT YOU DON’T MAKE OF IT
It's Earth Day (the specific one),
so Chanel and I thought it would
be the perfect time
to craft a sundial.
To warm up, I YouTube how to
do a sun salutation (turns out what I've been doing
in couples yoga is “inauthentic”). I get as far as Cobra,
when I overtax my poor
obliques. I figure you need
some kind of axis, so I stab one of
Chanel's tortoise shell hair chopsticks
into our Miracle-Gro soil, accidentally
burying a ladybug alive. I'm not sure if
that's how you do it, Chanel says, do you
even know the declination?
The declination? I say. I look at my Swatch
“Dr. Swatson.” We might have to raincheck this.
Sure enough, it begins to rain.
Do you have our MoMA Design Store umbrella
with the blue sky underneath? Chanel says.
A SAFER WORLD, ONE PARTICLE AT A TIME
Giorgio got a solar-powered
Techko Maid Robotic Vacuum
but it's rained for the last week
so I know saying yes to Netflix night
will mean paying an unnecessary
visit to my allergist. Chanel suggests
we bring our portable HEPA air purifier.
We do. As advertised, it removes
about 99% of the environmental impurities
we experience (reliability). But Giorgio insists
we watch Waking Life stoned,
so my asthma acts up anyway.
Luckily, Coco has an AromaMist Diffuser,
and she fills it with Eucalyptus oil,
which as per Dr. Oz, is a natural decongestant.
In addition, and here's where it gets interesting,
it's a perfectly wearable scent.
Peter Cole Friedman is a poet and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Recent work has appeared in Powder Keg and Prelude. He co-edits the virtual literary and arts platform glitterMOB.