Still Awake by Julie Marie Wade
Julie Marie Wade’s very short essay “Still Awake” defies easy classification. Flash-length, the essay departs from the narrative structure associated with a flash, and from the armature of ideas associated with an essay. Her tribute to Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s classic Goodnight Moon might be described as ekphrastic, a written description of a work of art. The poet John Hollander suggests that contemporary ekphrasis may exceed description, “addressing the image, making it speak, speaking of it interpretively, meditating upon the moment of viewing it.” The insomniac adult narrator of “Still Awake” provides a counterpoint to Goodnight Moon as the simple images in the book conjure adult worries and concerns: drones, credit checks, aging, heart health, the passing of time, climate change, poverty, homelessness. Wade explains the process of composing “Still Awake” in her author’s note: “I took the structure of the children’s book and began—in my office at school, during office hours strangely unoccupied for that time of year—writing new text into each page. The invitations were rife for a zeitgeist update, a cataloguing of the present moment with adult observers and participants in mind.”
The resulting essay is hybrid and lyric, propelled by dreamy rhythms and images, by anaphora (repetitions of “And” and “Goodnight” to launch lines) and rhymes (“Goodnight room” and “Goodnight moon,” “Goodnight little house” and “goodnight mouse,” “Goodnight mush” and “the old lady whispering ‘hush’”). “Still Awake” combines what Wade calls “contemporary triggers for insomnia” with the “luminous particulars” of concrete objects, extending the life of a literary classic written over seventy-five years ago. —CRAFT
For Margaret Wise Brown
In the great green room once known as The Earth, we stretched out in dry grass and stared up at the sky, arms akimbo behind our heads. Elbows for miles.
There was a telephone, once a great behemoth tethered to a wall, but now a pocket-sized thing, nearly a thimble, ringing. Someone silenced it. Another rang.
And a red balloon drifted through the night as if alighting on lyrics for an old-timey sing-along.
Unseasonably warm for carols, we thought, though we sang anyway—of the overbooked inn and the straw-brimmed crib and the great, guiding star we no longer believed in.
And a picture of our unbelieving rose like smoke from hookahs and cigarettes newly noncombustible. Less waste, they said. Less addictive, they promised. The cow jumping over the moon was only visible to those with medical marijuana cards.
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs in a Gulf Coast courthouse where Goldilocks had just been named a circuit judge.
And two little kittens flouncing through coco plums, hunkering in mangroves near the brackish edge.
And a pair of mittens nobody could wear anymore, not even Senator Sanders.
And a little toy house like the model on the desk where a real estate agent with varnished skin says, “Before we go any further, I’ll have to run a credit check.” Someone has knocked all the plastic palms down, even tipped the miniscule flamingo on the Lilliputian lawn.
And a young mouse, lactose intolerant, skitters across the office floor with a shred of vegan cheese in its mouth.
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush, which the folks at Quaker Oats keep reminding us is the “heart-healthy” choice.
And a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush” said also, in a louder voice, “Let’s get that cholesterol down, with diet and/or medication. Capeesh?”
Goodnight room that used to feel roomier.
Goodnight moon that used to bring less kingly tides.
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon, then lowing near a manger in a story retold like Telephone.
Goodnight light and the red balloon, which on closer inspection turns out to be a drone.
Goodnight bears, declared vandals in their own home, then jailed out of state in Gatlinburg.
Goodnight chairs that collapsed under the weight of each continuance.
Goodnight kittens hunting lizards in the swamp, eluding gators. Goodnight kitten-predators. Goodnight kitten-prey.
And goodnight mittens, which someone might still have the skill to re-stitch. What are the Scouts BSA learning these days?
Goodnight clocks that no longer have to be wound, even as time is always winding down.
And goodnight socks worn thin at the toes, mittens for our feet, sometimes with mittens printed on them, or kittens frolicking with a ball of yarn.
Goodnight little house that was not meant to remind us of all the unhoused yet cannot help but remind us of all the unhoused.
And goodnight mouse, squatting in that house, gnawing through the tiny wicker couch in the east-facing Florida room.
Goodnight comb that was once made of plastic for Picture Day and is still made of plastic for every day.
And goodnight brush thick with mousy gray locks, for they don’t tell us, “As the color changes, the texture does, too.”
Goodnight nobody, who lost her name when she refused to color her hair.
Goodnight mush with Lipitor crushed up in it.
And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush,” who learned too late or too soon that “old lady” is just nobody’s nom de plume.
Goodnight stars that snap, crackle, and pop like cereal in a too-full bowl, that still light up some nights like the tip of a Juul.
Goodnight air that sweetens to petrichor, though later and later each spring.
Goodnight noises everywhere: the crickets keening and the bamboo squeaking, the parked car preaching its false alarm, and the ringtone announcing too many missed calls.
JULIE MARIE WADE is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University in Miami. A winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography, her collections of poetry and prose include Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures; Small Fires: Essays; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems; When I Was Straight; Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems; Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing; and Skirted. Her collaborative titles include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, written with Denise Duhamel; and Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, written with Brenda Miller. Wade makes her home in Dania Beach with her spouse Angie Griffin and their two cats. Her newest projects are Fugue: An Aural History (New Michigan Press, 2023); and Otherwise: Essays (Autumn House Press, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura for the 2022 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. Forthcoming in 2024 is The Mary Years: A Memoir, selected by Michael Martone as the winner of the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize. Find her on Twitter at @manyplums.
Featured image by Insung Yoon, courtesy of Unsplash.
