Good morning.
It's Saturday, April 11, and it's beautiful out, but we can't even go to the park.
What to do? The only thing to do is stay home and read. Or play with the cats. Rebecca Brown, a certified genius, tried to read to her cat Miss Busy, but, as you will see, Miss Busy wasn't having it.
Ooop!
Why does it cut off so quickly and so abruptly, you may ask?
The answer may nor may not involve (1) Rebecca's other cat Ryder entering the room, launching a series of indescribably offscreen events that also involved a spatula, a power strip, and a rubber chicken, (2) Rebecca's phone dying, (3) a mystery that cannot be explained.
But to keep reading the poem that Rebecca was reading to Miss Busy, click here and read it on the Poetry Foundation's website.
If you have nothing to read today, or even if you do and you want something better, you should check out some of Rebecca's books—including but not limited to The Gifts of the Body (winner of a Lambda Literary Award), The Dogs (which prompted Mary Gaitskill to remark, "A dry, witty, graceful—if savage—gift"), The End of Youth (stories and essays), Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary (which the Seattle Times said "lays open the fragile nature of the flesh"), The Last Time I Saw You (Utne said it "pulses with desires that cannot be attained"), and Not Heaven, Somewhere Else ("Reading the whole thing in one sitting—which I highly recommend—you really feel this move from extreme darkness and desperation to light," Rich Smith wrote).
Or, for free, you can read her writing in The Stranger. Read her writing about paintings. Read her writing about opera. Read her writing about Flannery O'Connor. Read her piece about the Sorrento maybe being haunted by Alice B. Toklas. Read her essays about spring and summer and fall and winter. Read her piece about volunteering for the overnight shift at a homeless shelter.
Thank you so much for reading to us today, Rebecca.
Have a glorious Saturday reading Rebecca's writing, everyone.
Sorry this was so not amusing for you, Miss Busy.
* *
Previously in this series: