I made a giant dent in my residency-application stack, and this morning I will celebrate by taking time off to get my hair cut before clambering back onto the reading train.

[Side note: Maybe you might be interested in yesterday's meal? I believe I mentioned that I roasted a chicken on Sunday. A whole chicken is a fine and economical purchase for two people. You get a special dinner, a manageable amount of leftover chicken for sandwiches and recipes, and bones for soup and stock. Yesterday I used diced chicken and the dregs of soup as the basis for a risotto, which I accompanied with roasted purple sweet potatoes and sliced fennel. I decorated the plate with lettuce leaves and topped the meal with feathers of basil. Afterward we ate bowls of blueberries and played Yahtzee.]

I hope to spend some time with Rilke today, and maybe also my embryo manuscript. I hope to go for a walk and get the upstairs rooms vacuumed. I hope to finish Green's Loving and begin something else . . . maybe Johnson's biography of Dickens. I've got a teaching syllabus roiling around in my thoughts. I'm considering a craft essay on using historical materials as creative triggers.

And I'm thinking about disappointment--thinking about it observationally, contingently. Watching the way it sours and shrills inside a body. The way it chokes.

Here's a poem from the embryo manuscript. It appeared in the Maine Sunday Telegram a couple of years ago.

Disappointed Women 

Dawn Potter 

They lived in filth. Or were horribly clean.
They piled scrapple onto dark platters.
They poured milk and ignored the phone. 

They arranged stones on windowsills.
They filled lists and emptied shelves.
They dyed their hair in the sink. 

One stored a Bible in the bathroom.
One hoarded paper in the dining room.
One stared at Lolita and stirred the soup. 

When I say emptied I mean they wanted to feel.
When I say filled I mean they wanted to jump.
When I say bathroom, dining room, soup I mean 

I washed my hands.
I sat at the table.
I ate what they gave me.