Bday wishes

Philips went onto Facebook and looked at his friends list. Looked for a name he could say something like, “I will fuck your brains and eat your ass” to. He thought about how anyone might react. Anyone would either be offended or joke about it in a semi-trashy way, or just think something was wrong with him. He decided to masturbate to status updates. He was proud of himself for not messaging someone and offending them. He wanted to be less weird in his own eyes. He came to the status update, “Thanks for the bday wishes”.

Real Life

Scene I

Roarke:

Have you heard of Tsai Loo?

Francis:

No.

Roarke:

He’s like, really big somewhere.

Francis:

An author?

Roarke:

Well, yea.

Francis:

Have you read him?

Roarke:

No. I’ve just read about him online. He’s big into like, gimmicks and stuff.

Francis:

What kinds?

Roarke:

Well he did a reading in Brooklyn last week and he read the same sentence like 1,000 times. 

Francis:

Which sentence?

Roarke:

It was that thing that the chimpanzee says in “The Lion King” when he holds Simba up after being born, or whatever. It’s in like Swahili or something.

Francis:

Ahhhhh sabenya, baba hee bee abow?

Roarke:

Yea, that one.

Francis:

Interesting. What else does he do?

Roarke:

He hired like two hundred people to follow him around one Friday night to go from restaurant to restaurant saying ‘table for two hundred’ and just get rejected over and over again. That ended up in like a tabloid or something. He’s pretty good at getting his name out there. It’s weird you haven’t heard of him.

Francis:

You seem to forget my policy: I only read dead authors; live authors are glib, mundane, and have nothing of consequence to say—after all, what could there be to say in this sea of vapidity? This world is awash with tweets and blurbs and…whatever. Why would I pay attention to today’s literati?

Roarke:

Want to get another cappuccino? I’m falling asleep. Maybe an espresso.

Francis:

You know, I drank so much espresso in Europe that I simply can’t stomach American coffee anymore. When I got into JFK from Dusseldorf I ordered a Starbucks grande, black, and nearly vomited all over my Versace. It’s just…Guatemala flavored water.  

Roarke (stifling a yawn):

How was Europe anyway? I saw you Checked In at a restaurant in Prague last month and felt jealous. Or something.

Francis:

Oh, you know. Europe.

Roarke:

Quite. Let’s?

Francis:

Let’s. 

Elevator man

The elevator man says every job has its ups and downs.  He looks ahead, he sees through the buttons on the metal, his blazer holds flat against his body.

Bed

            I walked into my room today and thought, "Is this my room?" Smells like something I read about once.  Maybe Burroughs. Is this my room? I walked over to the bed and sat. The bed sits lows, and creaks slightly sometimes. It didn’t creak, but instead I got to listen to the churning of the fan, and wondered what its velocity was. Is it a high velocity, is it not so high, unimpressive even? Am I thinking about an unimpressive fan? I sat on the bed, and my stomach hurt, then my foot hurt, and then most of my body was in extreme pain. I thought, “Am I not supposed to think about the fan?” and the pain persisted until I was crying, and I thought about those people with Irukandji disease, those poor goddamn people. They are in such great pain, such excruciating, unbearable pain, but then the pain isn’t so bad, and the disease makes them think that they should die. That the only way to get rid of the ominous pain that will come back, just when they’re least expecting it, is to die. Intensely suicidal. 
              People keep knives away from them.  I didn’t have people with me, and I did have a knife next to my bed. I really had no one there. No one there to push the sharp objects out of reach as I writhed in pain. My eyes were closed and I couldn’t see, but it felt like I was Cyclops and my vision was red and I thought I could see the dresser and the drawer with the knife in it. I grabbed the knife and didn’t look at it; it was red. It shook in my hand, and I thought, I have Irukandji disease. Was I stung by a jellyfish? Have I been stung by a jellyfish under my bed? Maybe my roommates are playing another trick on me, waiting to come out from under the bed with jellyfish, saying, “Aha! Surprise! We got you. Happy half birthday.” I always forget when my half birthday is, and my arms have blood on them now, but the pain has begun to subside. My body was playing the trick. There is no one under the bed. My body has been trying to surprise me. Why did you do that body, I think. I don't have Irukandji disease. I think I'm just fine, actually. My body doesn't answer "why did you do that," instead there's just blood on my sheets, and no more coins to do laundry. I sighed, deep sigh, long sigh, quiet crying sigh, and walked to the door. Is this my room? 

In the air

Mama

I’m broke again

Could you send me a buck or two?

How about 50?

Yeah?

Okay, send it along.

Yes ma, I know

I know you’ve told me

That your fingers are crackling

At school

And your third job is laying off.

Mama,

You there?

Stop crying.

I gotta live,

I’ve got a girlfriend now,

Some dreams,

A job I hate.

I hate it so much

It makes my liver burn every night.

Don’t worry, I don’t mind the burn, ma.

Mama,

You there?

Why don’t you return my calls more often?

I felt a breeze the other day

And I just knew I had to leave

Had to glide on it.

I’ve got to cut through mom,

To foreign lands.

Don’t you realize?

Stop crying.

I got a good deal on a cargo ship,

My friends are all in Berlin,

I gotta go.

Why are you whispering?

What’s that sound?

Your boss should let you speak;

I’m your son.

I’m a man.

You’re a woman, mama.

Mama,

They treat you like cake,

And treat you to cake sometimes,

So they can treat you like cake always

Eating you up.

I know, I know,

You hate to hear that talk.

You should meet my girl, mama.

She doesn’t like the burn,

But I give it to her,

And it slides down her throat,

And sometimes when the fire is lit

she wants to glide too.

Didn’t you glide once?

Mama?

Stop crying.

Mama,

I read once,

“Let’s go, come on  let’s go,

Empty our pockets and disappear,

Missing all our appointments

And turning up unshaven years later.”

Did you read that too?

Are you there?

Have you dissolved?

Stop crying,

Come on let’s go,

Ma.

I need cash tonight.

Jaime with no apostrophe

End of the flowers

            In bed, with Jaime beside me, when I let my head drift, there is one image that recurs and berates: the casket not yet lowered, with gold trim, and the smoothest wood, masked to look like the smoothest wood, no lines twirling on it; the top, an image uniform throughout. I think on then. Then, there were flowers on the top, many flowers. Many flowers lay waiting to be lowered and sitting in patience as they remained still. The casket, I think, and nothing else comes to mind.

Liars

            I lie in bed. Jaime is at my side. I tell her three times as she falters in and out of sleep that I love her. “Je t’aime, Jaime, je t’aime, je t’aime.” I feel her arm and hand in the darkness that always looks like it’s sprinkled with salt to me, or something ready to change form right as my eyes settle. I come upon one of those jagged parts of her hand. It feels like soft rock from the cuts that are scarring. Je t’aime, Jaime.  I could ponder the rivers of blood that she summons from those veins, but I don’t. I think and let the pools in my mind slip through the fragile formations of Je t’aime. The words crackle into sand.

            Ten days before I saw the casket for the first time, in life for the only time, the guy frozen inside the huddle of mourners said “Love, love, love!” so excitedly that tonight it still makes me afraid of my sacrilege.

            My yo-yo eyes prance between moist lids and brittle air in rapid dance and I want to yell, but instead I whisper the refrain “Je t’aime,” and she whimpers once, twice, and I lie still, until I am better.

            Cut—pause

            She asks me to stay with her and nuzzles her nose into my chest. The salt moves a bit as usual, and I find myself wondering what the grains have displaced this time. I can’t even tell. She starts a sentence “Do you,—” and stops as usual, so I let my head drift, and it knocks back into the casket. I can feel it a bit. It’s cold. Jaime feels along my arm and comes to a spot filled with raised tissue. She continues to lie in her silence. No movement, no reaction to my cutter’s wrist. “I was drunk,” I say. “I did it because I was drunk.” She doesn’t respond. My fingers feel so cold and hers so warm. I can almost feel them burning. My toes are so cold; I think I may have an iron deficiency. They feel ready to come off, toes, fingers, nose, ears—ready to go. But they stay, and I think about the casket. I see it underground, but I don’t see it all, just the inside. It looks very warm. It looks very nice. Even a dead person needs a sense of luxury, you see. The face underneath has little pieces of my fingers sprinkled around. That face once told me, “See man, this is what you need: you need a girlfriend. No problems anymore. Like that, gone. Boom, fizzle, pop, man.” Jazzy language. I make jazzy fingers with my hand that is free, but when I look at them they seem transparent and slow.

Numbing

            Quicksand hands, I think, and Jaime asks for water, so I tell her “Je t’aime.” Her head has been on my arm for some time now and my arm no longer has any feeling in it. The casket no longer has any feeling in it. Jaime has fallen asleep and I think it’s been quite some time now. What is this feeling? And I think about saying, loud enough to hear, you see, “Maybe we should be friends.” But I stumble, and by the end of the first syllable the casket is back.  

Untitled

We:

Wander lustful kids

around the city,

down the river,

onward, onward,

and our feet peel and ache,

so we sway, sway--

a sway that runs lazy

through bloody meat muscles--

when we talk our game and

ellipsis

into Indonesian, Persian, Parisian hearts.

We sway;

we, lustful kids wander.

Morbidity, meet Lethe; Lethe, morbidity

Sycophancy planted a cicatrix in my belly
causing my family's pother
and my beauty's growth
in the dug in claws 
of the Ether

Welcome Babies

I’m born silent.

            I take my paste; I use it. I smell it; I let it waft in my nose. I withdraw the glue from my face, loving the sticky residue. Kindergarten is sweeter than nuggets of sugar, sweeter than home. I think its heaven and hell, but find out it isn’t. Punches on the playground coming from Tommy Slater follow paint splashing with my bare-hands. I taste evil and joy.

            I grow up. I go to college. I go to life. It feels good, but mostly like nothing. I fail, and sometimes succeed, but mostly neither of those. I listen to NPR, and write in my spare time. There’s not much to leave behind. I die crying, because someone else begins and ends Kindergarten.  There is more silence and more noise. It goes on forever.  

Homographesis

        Sometimes I like to imagine what people from high school are up to. Every so often, I go back to Dick. He was a quiet guy, kept to himself. I think I heard someone say he’s living in Marcellus, NY now. I imagine he’s a bigger guy now. When we left school he had a beard coming in. I think when he thinks of me it probably goes something like this:

            Dick’s been stacking the aisles all day. His arms are tired. His underwear has been turning underneath his pants all day, making everything chafed. He’s uncomfortable. His glasses keep falling down. Still, this day is like all other days to Dick, nothing incredible will happen, but a few entertaining customers will come in, maybe a nice looking woman. He’ll talk, flirt, and laugh. He will try to do as little work as possible.

            He does a crossword puzzle, and the bell on the door rings. He doesn’t look up.

            “Heya dick,” Barry says. “How the heck is this weather so crummy?”

            “Oh, hi, Barry,” Dick says. “I think it’ll get better. Life always does, even if you don’t really ask it to.” The bell over the door rings. Dick looks back down.

            “Well, I don’t wanna keep you. I’ll just take one of these,” Barry says, motioning to the town newspaper. He pays and let’s Dick keep the change. I suppose Barry is a very nice man. Let’s say he comes to the store frequently. He’s one of those old men who smells funny; one who doesn’t have much to do, so he uses trips to various stores to get his necessary interaction for the day.

            The bell on the door rings. A man at the door asks in a high pitch, “Excuse me? Excuse me? Did you see my boyfriend come in a moment ago?” His pants are skinny and white, his hat is brimmed and feathered, his bone-structure magnificent. He looks like the type of person that people see without seeing. They don’t see exactly how odd his mannerisms can be, or how odd his fashion sense is, but they call it “unique” instead.

            Dick shakes his head, slowly, looks back down, snorts and relaxes his eyes.

            “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me! I’m sorry, but I know he just came in. He must be in the restroom. UGH! Thanks for the help,” he says sarcastically.

            Just then it occurs to Dick that he knows that fella. He sees that fella all the time in fact. Usually he just speaks to faces—faces that remember him, but that come up utterly blank in Dick’s own recollection. It must have been the bone-structure. “Wait! Wait a second. I know you. Ahhhh, yeah, aren’t you the fella that came around last weekend, flashing a fake ID? That was a good one!”

            “Yeah, ha, that was me,” the man says, dropping his high pitch. “Glad you woke up! Ya know, I really am 21. We just like to joke around sometime, show our old fakes. I can show you it now if you’d like,” the man says.

            “Go and find your friend for crissakes. We can chat about nothing and all its lies later. Later. Later. Later,” Dick says with his voice trailing off.

            A yelp from the back of the store precedes the two customers. When they get to the front, they stand with their asses on the counters, as if they’ve pal’d around the place a lot; as if they are as comfortable as anyone could get. The audacity annoys Dick. He lets it go. He likes them, because the other day when they came in, drunkenly knocking down snacks around the counter, they were kind enough to pick everything up, and confident enough to ask for beer, even though they were driving and already wasted. He knew they were 21, and he knew they liked to play peculiar jokes on people. He had once seen them hiding behind the pumps, but he lost interest before he saw what they did to the cars pumping gas. Dick lets them get their asses comfortable on the ledge of the counter.

            Dick decides to open the conversation. “So. You two gay today?”

            “I don’t know George. What do you say? We gay now?” A tall man in cargo shorts and a blue polo shirt says to his white panted companion.

            “Yes, no? That’s so boring. Why don’t you tell Henry and me a story, then we can tell you a story!” George says.

            “What the hell do you think this is?” Dick asks.

            “You don’t get any business here anyway, we’re in Marcellus!” Henry says.

            “You two seem a little queerer than before. What the hell’s gotten into ya?” Dick says.

            “You, Dick, you’ve gotten into us,” George says.

            “Alright! Alright, you fucking weirdoes,” Dick says with an approving smile. “What kind of story?”

            “How about this: what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? I hear that’s a pretty common pickup line,” George says.

            “I’ll tell ya what, fine,” Dick says, smiling slightly again. “I went to high school about an hour away from here. I’ve only seen one tranny ever around here.” He gave them both long looks to grab their attention. Henry grabs a brownie and begins to eat it. Dick continues, “Well, I remember there was a tranny in my graduation year. At first you couldn’t really tell it was a tranny. He just seemed like a weirdo, putting makeup on with guy clothes, that sort of thing.”

            “Did anyone ever say anything? Where’s this going, Dick? You gonna tell us about how you got a BJ from him in the bathroom?”

            “Yeah, fucker. I got a BJ and now I’m here to confess it to you little shitheads. Here’s my soul, splatter it with some redemption. Will ya? Oh, please? I mean I can’t understand how you can ask someone to tell a story—”

            “Okay, Dick. Henry is being mean, just keep going,” George says.

            “Well, okay, the tranny’s name was Jesse. She only hung out with Asians, even though everyone around here is a little racist against Asians, and I think she was too, actually. He, or she? He, before she was a she, would walk around ignoring everyone. I would’ve spoken to him. Everyone knows I’ve never been a bigot! I had a couple classes with Jesse. In history she would raise her hand and talk about how slavery wasn’t so bad. She would say stuff like, ‘The north and south needed to be separate,’ in this voice that just oozed artificial. It just couldn’t have been how his voice always sounded, but it was hard to tell after a while if it had always been, or was just an invention. In eleventh grade Jesse started looking more and more like she wanted to. She even got some boobies. She threw away her guy clothes. People said her dad beat her, but I don’t think many people cared. She seemed like trash, and that kinda thing just happens to white trash.

            “When she sprouted those tits, and wore those skirts, people started getting confused. They’d look once, twice, three times. They’d look and look and look and then finally would come to some conclusion. It was a big school so not everyone knew everyone, but everyone knew there was one of her types in the school. When people figured out which you could hear them say, ‘Found her!’ Truthfully it was confusing as hell. Lots of people would accidentally look at her butt wiggle down the hall, forgetting she was a he whenever she stopped looking the same. What’s in your pants buds? Dicks, right? Well, if she could look so different I could see anyone with a dick pretending not to have one, anyone without one pretending to have one. And the desire is so confusing, boys.” Dick trails off for a moment. George and Henry exchange glances. He looks at the bottle of water he has sitting next to the register, takes a sip, and looks outside. His eyes water, Henry yells, “Wait, you can’t stop there!” and Dick continues talking.

            “At the end of eleventh grade, I had some foreign exchange students in town from France; they were pretentious lil’ assholes. They fucked constantly. I think the oldest might have been 15. My guy was pretty quiet, really fashionable. Weird face though. One day we were in the library, and he just stared at Jesse for about twenty minutes. His eyes ate her up. Desire. She flipped through pages. She got up and went to the bathroom, passing pretty close to our table, so he got a good look at her. His eyes bulged real big, he clutched his stomach, went running out into the hall. He puked on the floor, and screamed, “It’s a fucking guy!” so that everyone started chuckling, and then pouring laughter everywhere, and everyone knew why he threw up, and felt sorry for him—being confused and everything. He complained about America for the rest of the day, and I nearly choked him, but he probably doesn’t know that. At night, I would go home and think about Jesse, think about trying to make myself puke, like the Frenchman. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to get out of me, but I never puked.

            “Truthfully, I felt bad for the Frenchman. I don’t know exactly when, or even what started it, but I started following him. I would watch him walk home; I would run past his route home during cross-country practice. I could smell him sometimes. When I was younger, I wished I smelled like a girl. Jesse smelled a lot like my sister.

            “I’m not sure if he noticed me. For a while I would walk behind him thinking he was brave for what he was, repulsive, nearly inhuman, an expressionless desire. Then I realized that he was no different from me. He didn’t know me. I wasn’t really someone people noticed at school, either. I watched drivers stick out of their car windows to cat-call, I saw him give them the finger, call ‘em ‘dirty faggots,’ sometimes even pick up a rock and chuck it at them. Desire.

            “I had this really nice bat I’d take out sometimes. One day, I skipped school, spent it with my bat, came to school at the very end, followed Jesse with my bat. Fuck, I even called my bat “Jesse” a couple of times during the chase.” Dick laughs.

            Henry and George are engrossed, their bodies are tense. Dick keeps laughing. Dick has that power over them in that moment, and he laughs because he knows it. He knows they are assessing, thinking, “the devil, or god,” but nothing in between. A few tears drip out of his lids. George grabs Dick’s shoulders and shouts, “Keep going!” Dick doesn’t want to keep going. A car speeds by outside and Dick imagines he’s in it, going as fast he can into the nearest tree. Dick has this tingling—the kind of tingling that acts like an oven light, but lets you know, “time to implode.” He continues.

            “When I got to the block before his house I decided to speed up. A couple of times, I thought maybe I’d go home. I didn’t know what I was doing out there. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next, but I found my bat in his head before the end of the block. I pulled him down into the trees beside the road. He was unconscious before he even felt the second blow. The bat fell over and over. My hands squeezed, but I wanted them to relax. Most of the hits went to the core, the muscles. I pulled his body back onto the walk. He wasn’t dead, I knew that. I went home. Desire.

            “He didn’t go back to school for a while, so everyone thought he was getting surgery or something. I felt freer by then. I could laugh at those jokes now. I knew everyone was bones and flesh.

            “I started going out with this really cute girl named Sharron. She told me she loved me after a while. I told her I loved women. When I touched her head, I could almost feel the tranny’s bloody head. When we fucked, I thought about the pounding of the bat, but I was gentle. I’m a gentle guy, anybody will you that. I think imagining her that way might have been the worst thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe it was all of it put together. Or, I can’t tell, but maybe it’s that I don’t feel terrible about it all, I just feel numb, confused, desirous.”

            “Dick,” George says. “You can’t be serious.”

            “What do you mean,” Dick replies.

            “You’re a fucking psycho! That’s what he means,” Henry interjects.

            Henry is silent for a long time, and laughs, boisterous, like the devil himself. He laughs for close to a minute, and Henry and George are worried, then baffled as his face turns merry as ever.

            “It’s a story about a guy, you faggots, not me. I would never, assholes. You know me. You know me. You know me! Faggots! Queers! Get the fuck out of here,” Dick says.

            “Now what the hell do you think you’re doing, Dick,” George says.

            “What? You guys can come in here and pretend to be gay, and I can’t make a prank of my own?” Dick laughs again.

            “Oh, fuck you, Dick,” Henry says.

            “Whoa, no thanks, guys,” Dick laughs with his eyes squinting, unable to open.

            “Let’s get out of here,” Henry says. They walk toward the door, looking over their shoulder at Dick laughing, clutching his hair. Henry notices the tears coming out of his eyes and rushes to the door, taking off his feathered hat.

            As they leave, Dick feels his inability to implode, his confession turning into a joke. His words becoming the wind; his humanity sees its own corpse and thinks it’s a replica. The bell on the door becomes silent, and the room does. He feels the veil covering his face, the marriage to silence and confusion. He grabs a paper to read, stops sobbing, and feels the soft cotton paper. He reads.

            Maybe he doesn’t think any of that. Maybe he knows I knew he followed me. Sometimes I like to think of people I went to high school with, because I know I need to. I just don’t know why yet. When I think of him, I follow the lines on my scalp, I quail my own tears, because I know no one will do it for me—there’s only silence.

On Finding Subversive Types and Generally Disaffected Souls

“Hi, uh, miss? Excuse me, miss?”

(He had my attention)

Yes? (She un-podded her ears)

“Well, I’m not sure exactly how to put this…”

“mhn?”

“Well, I was just curious as to…uh, whether there was a location—a specific location in which…”

“In which, yes?”

“In which the inhibitions that you cling to tightly on a quotidian basis will be stripped—which will lead to further stripping—you know, a watering hole—where do you get fucked up?”

“Uh.”

“Come on chicky—tell me baby way-be where the party will-be? Come on give me the lock and the key—do you see me? Do you see me? I be on my knees girl in da middle o starbucks how can you do me like that??? Tell me chick commmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeon chick puh-leeeeeazzzze baby puh-leeez”

(she looks around and pods ears again. I snatch him up)

“Psst—remons—pst,” I whisper.

“Urh?”

“Got a pocket fulla big faces—cuz eryone I’m wit iz Taylorrred!”

“Oh you on that Wizzy shit, huh? You overheard, I presume?”

“Indeed. I appreciate your persistence. Bitch madz prude. All goodi though you’re a handsome fell, what the name be, bwoi?”

“The name be Joseph, and yours, fell?”

“Well, as it just so happens to be, and happens to be it be, the name of me is ERSATZ, ya see?”

“Ersatz—what glee! What a pleasure it is, to mee—“

“The pleasure is almine, that much is for sooth. What be the dealings with which you doth protest to be at in here pursuing buxx it is, hm?”

“Always pursuing buxx, you know. And the truth of it be, much more do I need—wouldn’t mind so much to be in the presence of a lady, ya see.”

“20-10 Paco, not a glitch in the cistern—ya-ya—I hear it resounding like thought-clap sonic boom, broth, boom tomb with an epitaph on top, ya dig? Whip the froth like a cappuccino hat and plop it in your mouth with a little sprink-o-sug on top that much the ladies be pleasing to see!”

“Ah yes,” the persistent one said,” Ah yes, well it is delightfully fine of an occasion—a chance as skinny as the slivery little plunky interstines of a slimy vermiformed creature, that is—to be meetin and con versatiling with a like-minded and like-bespeeched fell the likes of you, good broo.”

“And you, broo, too. With out ado I must protest this conversation is through. And I’ve had quite enough of this Seussian dialect of speech, good god, thank you very much, I’d like to be through.”

“I think he heard us.”

“Yes, I suppose he did. Well, things are always bound to go the way they’ve always gone, huh?”

“Same as it ever was.”

“Indeed. Keep persisting, young one.”

“Willdo.”

And with a nod and a clap he was on his way. To subversify the world and practice his calisthenics of anarchy or whatever it was James C. Scott was talking about at that lecture today. Charisma? Yea, to be charismatic.

Whatever. Fuck you.

Yes

“Is this what the prophets felt like when they spoke to god?”


Booming noiselessness echoes in my burrowed out veins. I’ve sat in this tomb with the voice of God screaming translucent Griffith horns into my side, and eye, and womb. What is it to die if this sound escapes and absorbs until I see life and death bound into endless glimpses?

A Light Repast in an Old Stone Building

I got it easy:
two eggs and toast,
the ivy league,
I got it over easy.

Cookie (excerpt)

The sword in the garbage pokes at the cat flung there bow three days past. Meows come every five minutes. They were more frequent before, but they died down, it has been dying down and knows it, okay. Okay. Now the street the cat walked on before being abruptly flung into the garbage has seen much joy and terror and abstraction. IT has passed from the hands of men, like I have. I have passed the street, forsaken the street, stomped onto and out of the street, four times. I have come back four times. And the rock eyes of the street look up my skirt, mocking, assessing, pulling me, until I feel the difficulty and necessity of each step.

            “Beatrice, go to the market,” Mark says to me, wrenching my eyes from the lidded garbage and to his naked scarred chest. His voice sounds sweet and almost fatherly, so my eyes soften and I begin to get up, and he says, “Fucking right.” I limp out, though my legs are fine, it’s psychosomatic, and can’t be helped until I’m outside where there are kids littering the stoop. “Get up! Get up! Get out of here,” I scream. They push their lazy eyes up to me, admire, ponder, and finally begin to slosh their skin away, pushing the soaking sun’s rays off of the stagnant and burning chest flesh. I walk hesitantly behind them, and their pace is slow. They know it is slow. They are sending a “fuck you” my way. I speed walk past them, disgusted in knowledge: those little pre-teens are probably checking me out.

Our Lake Pontchartrain

On the edges of the lake,

there are cars that blast music

on the fourth of July.

Half naked gangsters

talk loudly to flabby stomached

black women

with the ends of their braids dyed blonde.

They sling beer cans to their mouths

and shout

and laugh

and pucker black lips in backseats.

Ten years ago, 2002,

my mother confessed

She wanted to kill herself

at the lake,

but she couldn’t,

so instead

we sat silent

on the rims of our seats

watching the crusts of the lake.

The gangsters had kites

and they watched them glide across

the blue above.

Music sprayed out of the cars

covering everyone with sound

until they didn’t know

that anything

at all

could be happening.

We watched their puddle of ecstasy

for hours that year.

It is 2012,

and in a bland moment

of inconsequence

I stick my toes into the darker sand

and my soul into the sounds,

the water,

and the sky.

The depths tell their secret,

and then I know

how very odd it is

that the lake did not suffocate

my dear old

black mother.

Exhale

It's all sighs
and heavy breathing,
When I sleep with myself.

Devil's Paper

I left a sticky note

On a goblin’s chair once

It read

Though I asked it to refrain

And the goblin found the glue

Bending and curving

Coming off

He didn’t want to see me

He just asked me to leave

And I did.

It's Been A While

"It's been a while since I've been here."

"I know. What the fuck have you been waiting for?"

"Well... I'm not really sure. I guess I've been waiting for a spark. A fleeting excitement. A satori?"

"You and your satoris."

"Yea."

"So?"

"No satori."

"Then get the fuck out, prick."

"Okay. Sorry." 

A walk in the park

                I hate these tacky rooms. The chairs are too big, and they are only big because they are clothed with layers of Indian carpets. I don’t know why Miranda invites me here if she knows it looks like this. I invite her out, because out is better. Away we go. I think Miranda may be looking off a bit too much today. Is she even here? I blink and she’s still here. Good. I was hoping she would be here. The park is always nice around this time. I usually ask her to come with me to the park around this time. Around this time is perfect—that is, around 4 A.M. Her eyes have bags under them, and the white is peppered with red. Has she been crying? Sometimes I think these walks could be better alone, but then I step in something, and I realize I would HATE to lack the proper company to complain to about this.  Again I look over, and she seems to be lagging behind a bit. “MAN ALIVE!” I shout, and she startles back to life. I love that. Her hair jumps and she’s back with me. Like a doll with strings connected to my words. Well, I don’t like the thought of words being stringy, so I should probably say something to her to turn my mind. “Pleasant day indeed!” We reach the marker in the mud, and I lead us back.

                You sonofabitch! You really do think that you can go on screaming at me, leading me around, telling me what to do, you son, of, a , bitch. This is the last day.

                Did you know your mother called? Did you know she knows about the phone flying through the air crashing into the wall with noise enough to wake the neighbors? You know she knows you’re drinking again. Did you know she knows about the letters found in your drawer? What about my face? Did you know she knew? You love me. I think you do. Did you tell me once that you thought about killing yourself? I wish I would have said something. “Man Alive,” you like to say when you’re thinking about jabbing a dog, or anything close enough that moves. Your steps are too fast, and we’re already back at the entrance. You’d like to leave me here, and I’d like to stay, but today you’re too slow, and getting slower each time. I think you’ll probably notice eventually, but I won’t let you know--Today is the last day. Your breathing gets labored and I think about what’s going to happen to you. It’s a recurring thought—your cold lips, ashen skin, deep wrinkles. You shouldn’t have screamed so much, Dad. 

January Guest Posts

Untitled

Love, I thought you said nothing hoped for better
gone people who inspired me to work and libido,
not versed in regressive mechanisms for how to say
it flowed freely without self-consciousness, genuinely
glad to fit a puzzle with improvised emulations that
flouted immaculate behavior like learning slumming.
I need to be, as though looks taken apart wore any clothes,
over the television induced hyperphrenia and screen-dive
muffs, because disavowal would be so ideal that I can
away hopelessness and rejection for dirty that that
keeps inside some switch for kinetics to collapse.


By J

Stairs

His hands twirled spider arms at the base of the stairs, with arms high and to his side, face tilted, fingers moving. He looked straight ahead into the third indent.

“What's that?” He was saying something, right? He must have been saying something, and he… he hesitated, then hunched down and moved up the climbery two at a time. The door opened and he announced his intentions. “I need to get something to write with.” Clarity.

Harvest Ground

This place is ancient and baleful

and filled with the organs

of now ashen men and women

I’ve never seen.

And this dust is much too cold

for now.

This cobwebbed, grey place

with long dead crawlers

and a silence that resonates

is swallowed whole by my dilated pupils.

And now

these deeds are much too old.

The walls have seen

banana bone marrows carved out

in faux-hubris by sweating men—Murderous,

this place shivers under and out of my eyelids.

Murderous—this place is the end.

Cleavage Ghettos

Somewhere in the sweet supple breasts of Lisa I can see ghettos of microbes huddling together, smoking crack pipes, calling out for some god to take those pale mountains in palm and squeeze them together. In her ghettos are my eyes, watching her dinge and grime barely covered by some grey blouse made of wonder. As I watched her, her arm crossed her torso and her neck stretched out while her head craned into her shoulder.  In that moment I believe she had come from that ghetto on her chest—had somehow ascended it, but barely, growing out of insignificance and into its representative. Giant microbial being—I deem her, and she smiles one of those smiles that tells you she’s uncomfortable and waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, in the ghettos, a young microbe lies in Main Street and dies as she scratches her cleavage.

          

  I often think about Lisa this way, staring at her through my little peepholes that I hate nearly as much as I hate what they are forced to see. I see her ugly muscles and bruised breast; I see her bourgeois grin as I have seen rats piss on the stairs of my home. As we slouch hand in hand on these piss stained stairs I want to tell her exactly what she is. Then she speaks.

“So, why do you live here? You know, you don’t have to. You could get a good job, live a good life…marry even. I could talk to my dad, you know.”

“For crissakes! Why do you come here if you wish it were somewhere else?”

I didn’t really say those two sentences. I wish I could have. I wish I could have sneezed and sniffled at her three hundred dollar boots, and told her to “getdafuckouttahere!” But I just said, “Well, maybe that’d be nice. Let’s just talk about it some other time.” And as the silence pressed its breast to my ear I could hear the heartbeat of our lives. The smell of grime hit me just then, and I thought maybe I should make a call, do something with myself, stop living in misery, do what people do. Maybe I should have eaten her purse, hell if I would ever know. I invited her up. This was the fourth invite I had sent her way to see my abode; I was counting. She declined, probably thinking it a wreck. Little did she know, that cunt. Little did that little fuck know that every time she told me she was swinging by, I went through an arduous tidying routine— which of course isn’t to say that it was a complete shithole beforehand. Enough complaints.

“I have something to take care of. If you want, you can ride around with me. Starbucks? My treat!”

“Do you know how much I despise that?”

I had actually said it this time. It was that moment everyone experiences at some point in their life; the moment when the person adjacent has realized a deeply hidden thought and that person knows that you know it too.

“What’s wrong?” She was already backing away. ‘Good riddance you shithead’ should have been my first reaction, but instead I stammered on words, tried to pull her back in, tried to get her to fill the air with some of that nice perfume she bought. With no words at all, she was already tearing up. Red face, puffy face, ugly face. A grotesque sight really. It seemed to contort in slow motion, like some parade of her disgusting emotions. It softened me. I closed my eyes, prepared a speech, an apology, and when I reawakened, a newfound sensitive guy, veil and all, she was heading up my stairs. My only thought was the broom at the head of the staircase I had forgotten to put away.

“Fuck, can you just leave?”

Hole

Outside I put the the cigarette in between my fingers and take deep drags on the cotton edge. As the smoke rushes in I hope it fills me up completely, cures that itch somewhere down there that I can’t help but not acknowledge. The smoke comes out and the itch is even more insatiable, so I scratch my arm until there’s blood dripping into the world, my unimaginably large hole. Before I know it, the fumes going into my lungs are cotton, and it's time to reenter the house.

Cockroach Heaven

Rumpled T-shirts and corduroy pants
form a moat around my bed.
A basic printer, a prehistoric amp,
wedge into the mess and jut out like monoliths.
A thin layer of dust coats all,
everything,
including the sails of the model
Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria
from which the cockroach captain looks out.
Crawling up the masts, seeing nothing,
leading a skeleton voyage
through icy waters
and breath-fogged vision.
This is cockroach heaven,
the baby universe
of my squalor.