no people no places

louis pasteur is not a person i spend a great deal of time thinking about.

nor my ex.

they both homogenized well.

i don't know who was better.

that's something a lover asks, isn't it?

pasteur homogenized more broadly. he had a helluva lot of experience.

lot of people experienced his homogenization.

but my ex was sort of amazing.

he too had pretty decent experience with homogenization.

sometimes i would like if he told me about those he had homogenized.

it could turn me on. who knew homogenization could be exciting like that.

shouldn't i have been threatened?

but if i wasn't....was i not holding on correctly?

i guess i thought i was being a realist.

and then maybe that plants the ideas in their head.

they might want to be louis pasteur

they might think about curing rabes. the institute.

oh it's like the thing about rape.

margaret atwood had to write that story.

that's sad that margaret atwood had to write that story

to explain the thing about rape.

and people read at college and look

across the room while the canadian

thing about rape comes clear.

or not. it's like raymond carver

i don't think it's glamorous.

he would tell about the homogenization

focus on the shiny metallic milk tanks.

people would be reaching for them

on a winter morning. kids with their hands

against the glass. and the mother

is just a girl driving her boyfriend

to college. he would feel homogenized

but in a really bad way.

twenty-five and twenty-two.

everything would be wrong with that.

then she reads the milk cartoon

and she reads about louis pasteur

but it makes her sad. she reads

about the boy who died of rabies

before. she wants the story

to be there in front of her

like her boyfriend. but he's

already homogenizing staring at a gardener

on the college grounds. korean

with a retarded son. his head

is as big as one and a half soccer balls

and he is singing out of tune

a song the boyfriend loved

very much last year. he gets up

and walks toward the library

and later when he's on the third floor

where he finds the novels he likes

in the 800s all the authors have been

replaced with faces on milk cartoons

and he starts laughing. a girl

looks at him like he's a dead marlin

in a traveling exhibition

with a good reputation

as she passes his

aisle where he is

deep in the aisle