Cassie Premo Steele
and Jim Doran

Jim Doran
Bottles, Books and a Bed

Detail of Inspiration Piece

This test is over
By Cassie Premo Steele

Response

Three most dangerous things for a woman: bottles,
books, and a bed. I have played games of death
with all of them, in real life from time to time but
most days in my head. My mind is a desire machine,
I want more, I want better, I want beyond my means.
My mother was a philosopher and she taught me
the balance of beauty in Aristotle, not too much,
not too little, this is what makes enough, she said,
but did I listen? I became a poet instead, shifting
my bodymind into overdrive, liking the speed
and the feel of my hand on the wheel, going fast,
going back into the past and then flying away
with the fuel of my words and some wine and a
vision of myself as a courageous woman. I was not
afraid to be blue. Or red. Or whatever you wanted.
Until I took to my bed. Dangerous was no longer
humorous. Courageous came and went. All that was
left was my blanket, covering my surrendering head.
You told me then, this test is over, and I listened
for the first time in my life. We had been married
for many years, but it was then I became a wife.

Jim Doran
Boxes

Detail of Inspiration Piece

This will be on the test
By Cassie Premo Steele

Response

Man, woman, child, wife, husband, boy, girl– these are files
someone created and put into our heads, to alphabetize and
tame and civilize what once was unpredictable and wild.
We were in the forest then. There were no boxes, no walls,
no windows. We lived where we wanted to play and eat–
it was usually near a river– we jumped in when we needed
to escape the heat, and when it was cold we huddled together.
Now it is always 70 degrees, even in winter, and you live
in a box with yellow walls and blue windows, can’t remember
the last time you jumped or huddled, instead you float
on your bed with the remote pointed at blue boxes that download
more files into your head: Olympics, McDonald’s, American
Idol, House, Law and Order. Your eyes blink and you think
of yourself as lucky. You won’t even remember the plot
in the morning, but you suddenly have a craving for fries.
The Ambien kicks in and you can no longer open your eyes.
You wake in the night and turn on the light with the sense
there is something to study. This will be on the test,
the professor said in your dream, but you can’t remember
the contents of his lecture. The answer, you think, lies up
in the attic, tucked away in the boxes of stuff you have
carried through your life. You were once a boy, now you
have two children and a wife. There must be more to being
a man, you think, some other file or plan you’ve forgotten.
You get up, make coffee, take it to your study, and open
a new box of paints. It is barely four in the morning.
You have hours before dawn. You pick up a brush, dip
it in color. You are ready for the answer. You will wait.

Jim Doran
Blue Hands

Detail of Inspiration Piece

This test is not something you can fail
By Cassie Premo Steele

Response

The mute bottle shines clear in its emptiness, like a blank page,
a wall, a canvas in the corner, the fears that wage war in the nest
of your head. You want to topple it, you want to win, you want
to tip it over and begin to be the artistwriterthinkerdreamerdoer
that you see in the dark before rising out of bed. And then
the day takes over, the endless tests of broken coffee pots and
toothpaste to be bought and forms and letters and bills and bites
of sandwiches on the way out the door to the next meeting or
class or important date. You are tired of being late. What if,
you think to yourself in one quiet moment of putting groceries
away on a shelf, this test is not something you can fail? What
if those dreams are real? What if one day, you just got up
and began to write or paint or pour your heart out of that glass
bottle onto the dry and waiting world? What if your small blue
hands were enough? What if deep down inside you were tough?
What if you knew every answer on the test because you yourself
wrote the questions long ago, in the blue ink from that bottle?
How do you think the bottle got empty? How do you think
your skin got so blue? This test is not something you can fail.
You know it. You dreamed it. You wrote it. You drew it. You.

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