Greetings from the Vodka Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

collection are, for example, written as poems. Sometimes they rhyme — I have a least eleven sonnets or poems that take a rough sonnet-like structure, and dozens with less elaborate rhyme schemes — but free verse is more popular, in particular the haiku. This reflects, I think, a general belief that free verse is easier to write than rhyming poetry. Granted, it is easier to sound important with free verse, no one wanting, I think it’s fair to say, an insignificant sounding suicide note. It’s another interesting statistic that most suicide notes are written by men, despite the fact that the overwhelming number of suicide attempts and a significantly higher proportion of successful suicides — there’s an oxymoron for you — are carried out by women. This supports the coroner’s “last gasp” theory, I think. Men are much more drawn to the notion of their place in history than women are — I’m not being sexist here, it’s just what I think. Men are much more inclined to need a last burst of literary achievement, a demonstration of their creative prowess in the face of what they see as the ultimate act of sacrifice and destruction. Don’t roll your eyes, that’s how men think. For many women, I suspect, suicide is a creative act in itself, which needs no justification.
    I have not been a collector as long as the coroner. In fact, I did not start my collection until after I met you. It was on the drive home from Niagara Falls — the second time, our honeymoon — that I realized two things: I loved you, and I needed a hobby, something to collect. You made a remark. Remember, we’d stopped off at your mother’s house, and just as you stepped out of the car, your teal pumps sinking halfway into the mud, your sister opened the screen door with her new hair and a new man on her arm. What did you say? You always say the right thing at the right moment, and that was the perfect thing to say. Your sister came and took your arm and helped you through the mud, and her friend took the suitcase from my hand gallantly and carried it to the house. He was an investment banker from Mexico, the wetback with the green-backs, your sister said; she always had a thing for Latin men. Your mother met us in the hallway, and she hugged me tightly and kissed me like we’d known each other all our lives, like she was my mother, not yours, or our mother, even though I’d never met her before. Your stepfather forced himself out of his chair and shook my hand and said, “I guess you’re part of this crazy circus now.” You sat on the red settee, rubbing your swollen feet, with your hair piled high and your sunglasses on like a movie star; that’s the moment. That’s when I knew I loved you. Your sister talked about a springtime many years earlier when you tried to hatch a robin’s egg that had fallen out of the nest. You kept it on the hot water pipe in your bedroom in a cereal bowl full of torn-up yellow toilet paper. And finally a beak appeared and a tiny head, and your sister said she wanted to crack the egg open to let the chick out. But you wouldn’t let her. You said it would have to get out on its own or it was as good as dead. (Where did you bury the chick, I forget, by the birch tree in the back yard?) And all the time your mother sat there on the edge of the sofa, both hands supporting her cane, correcting your sister and shushing your stepfather whenever he opened his mouth.
    And when she could contain herself no longer, your mother burst out, “So you’re married, honey, I can’t believe it! I’m so happy for you.” (Although the family politics, the sharp look to your sister and her rolling her eyes, did not escape me.) Then your step-father saying out of the blue, before your mother could hush him, “I’ve married off five and buried two myself. That’s not bad batting.” The Mexican laughed