small remainders | Wendy Lotterman | The Hypocrite Reader


Wendy Lotterman

small remainders


ISSUE 30 | THE DADDY ISSUE | JUL 2013

You know I can’t sleep without the air.

Not to be naggy but the reflection cast off the directions is impairing my view. It’s a hazard, it’s OK you didn’t know. A keeps talking circles inside the smallness. I hate to say it, but this news isn’t news. Can’t you tell—just realize how coolly I recline as you count and count the deck. The message isn’t lost; I know it felt parched inside your tiny ablutions. For a while there in mine it did, too. I also know there is only one way for you to relax in auditoriums. A: repulsed by diffident fabrics which steal others onto me, which worse steal me onto the underside of others.


A to W: Do you even understand that there is no bough above mutual recognition, Wen, that because of it the perch is precarious?

W to C: How many times do I have to ask you about the water-tower podium before you tell me what it is? That is: a water-tower podium. I know there is nothing else to it, but can’t we just meet at the Getty and carpool from there?

W to A: Dad do you take every Sunday to count your remainders?


Take a look at my gallery of glassware. The plates we don’t need to have two of. This fact I scratch down with a penny when you’re ready. The reward also scratched by my unsleightofhand. Sentences starting T, T, T, T.

It is hard that the chocolate gains prominence only once the candy’s been shucked. Content running M and also M.

Listen, I know those subscriptions were not a mistake and I can just tell when the channel’s been anxiously changed. Imagine the small economy of reasons. In the end I am embarrassed by decibels. I stick a blanket in my bass drum now, too, dad. We all sleep with white noise now, too, dad. Muffling the same movements now, too.

Super able to avoid hitting the charged edge of your bread-basket with my shy, obedient pincers. Keep an eye on my sopping operations, dabbing the moisture as it beads up around me.

The rash you etch around details does make me less likely to zoom in.
It is also the little fridges you keep there.

I have been sleeping with only a fan these days, and I think it’s possible that before I had mustered the summer inside of me. Allergies sit beyond on the lawns I am taught not to touch.

Picture the confettied linoleum of high-school tiled floors. And on top of it how arid we get together. And then also when a snack (cold pasta) slowly (regrettably) gains the stature of a meal. Now my headache when I say this all at once.

I don’t want you running the numbers in pencil, or out of ways to hop back down the gingerbread stairs that collapse as soon as PLAYER ONE looks behind.

Who is watering our images of badminton and marmalade? What register do you keep me in?

This whole time I have been trying you on.
Like here:

There is a part in this story where I need it to tug,
so just listen as though you, too, can’t sleep without the air.

Last night I received:
Full stop [mistake] I’m not there v complicated.

In other words:
How many more repetitions before I can work out my core?

How much more? How much more? How much more?