showed and told

sleeping in the summer, see you in the fall

2009-05-03T00:14:00.004-05:00

Showed & Told is excited it's spring. Spring break time! Bike rides and bbqs for everyone!

We're taking a little hiatus for the summer so we can soak up the sun and work on some retools of the S&T format. We'll be relaunching in the fall, but until then you can check out all the great stuff we've been doing this past winter, like writing and art and photography and music and craft. Here's your chance to catch up. Enjoy!

graffiti street

2009-04-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Chinatown, NYC

birds of a feather...

2009-04-29T07:30:00.003-05:00

2009-04-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

how long would it take to find me?
in a crowd, would you want to...
with the windows closed and barred,
washed and polished with care.
i don't think i will ever know what he meant-
to open and close.

notions phrases paragraphs so often get cut
holes you can see through
like my windows and my words
sentence structure attacked
and the grammar is all wrong

relief from those twisted voyeurs and mirrors
i don't remember entering this fun house.
no one steps forward
with nothing to offer.
i think i am losing my will.

lines get stuck in my head
i can't make it 24 hours
without wondering which is better
i'm afraid i'll be gone forever

the beauty in that timid contact was not lost on me.

Tides

2009-04-27T07:19:00.004-05:00

Listen/download:

Rench
"Tides"

(3:04)

2009-04-24T00:12:00.002-05:00

things come and go

2009-04-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

Our bungalow was actually two apartments, side by side, under one roof. The neighbor on the other side was a young, single woman. Our house was crammed in comparison, with a cat, and a kid, and a mother, and usually, a live-in-ish boyfriend. It seemed like all the live-in-ish boyfriends had one-syllable names. There were several repeats: “Tom” was probably the most popular. “Tom” always sounded like someone solid and level-headed. They were. But then there was something in my mother that dug out that solid foundation, and made “level-headed” seem like a bad word. And then that particular Tom would stop sleeping over for the whole night, then not showing up quite so much, and finally, whatever it was that made him a distinctive “Tom,” whether it was a Redskins baseball cap, or Marlboro cigarette butts in the flower pot in the tiny sliver of back yard, or a Bruins knit cap that landed on top of the refrigerator, or the pungent scent of Old Spice, would disappear from our lives. And my mother’s slight perfume would take over again, until the next Jim, or John, or Pete, or Bill would start the process all over again.

The “Tom” that I liked best won me over with a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream treat. He was a summer Tom. All of the summer boyfriends seemed to spend a lot more time with me, probably because the days were long and lazy, and sitting on a bungalow porch waiting for the ice cream truck seemed as good a place to be as any. This was the Tom that smoked Marlboros. My mother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, so that was another rule to pull him outside. Mostly he wouldn’t say anything more to me than “hey there.” Depending on how hot it was, I would either be practicing cartwheels, or begging to water something with the hose, hoping to cool off my feet. Or, on really hot days, I would be content to just sit on the porch step, while Summer Tom sat and smoked.

I got an allowance that translated into fabulous bounty: one ice cream treat a week. The cash was doled out every Monday afternoon. It took a lot of willpower to get past the first rush of instant gratification, an impulse to use it up immediately as it passed from my mother’s hand to my own. Sometimes it went straight to the ice cream vendor, barely touching my fingers before the coins tumbled into his practiced hand. In those moments of weakness, the week stretched ahead, as bleak as a parched wasteland. So I learned to bring my cravings under control. Monday would pass, and Tuesday. Sometimes I got as far as Thursday, finally realizing that the thrill of expectation had a little frisage as much as the taste of real ice cream melting in my mouth. That was when I was being Grown Up Beyond My Years. In truth, an eight-year-old is chronologically challenged, and three days of watching the Sunshine truck approach up the street (such potential), then disappear, might as well have been a month. The very tune hung in the air, the notes almost palpable. Unlike a bakery, where as you walked past you could at least get a whiff of yeasty warmth, the truck left nothing behind. Other kids, luckier, richer than I, contemplated their choices, agonizing over the chocolate/non-chocolate choice, then fine-tuning the decision (Fudgsicle? Sundae cup?).

The day that Summer Tom won me over was hotter than usual for July. It was a Tuesday. That Monday had been one of those days where I recklessly surrendered to a craving for sweet creamy goodness, and now there was no hope in sight for days and days. There was lemon water in the refrigerator, but that wasn’t going to satisfy me. I was jonesing for ice cream, and nothing was to be done.

Soft sounds began -- the endless repetition of jingling bells in a half-recognized tune. I had been sitting on the top porch step, wreathed in Tom’s lazy smoke rings. By instinct, I sat up straight, gazing expectantly to my left. Oh, sweet torture. I imagined all the bright colors of the menu card, the colors saturated, each frozen treat prominently displayed, the text just an afterthought, probably added so that ignorant adults would know what to call things and would order the right thing for their child. (Hearts could be broken when the parent said “ x “ and got “y.”) I gave a heavy sigh. My shoulders slumped. Behind me, I heard the front legs of the chair hit the porch boards, and a sort of shuffling and jingling sound as Tom rearranged himself in the chair.

“Hot day today,” said Tom. “Why don’t you get yourself somethin’ cold.”

I turned around in disbelief. Tom leaned forward with a few coins.

“Go on,” he said, “that ice cream man doesn’t have time to wait for someone as slow as you.”

I grabbed the money with one hand, and with a voice that sounded something like “thanks,” sprinted to the curb. There was one other kid already at the side of the road. We exchanged grins, looking at the magical money in our hands, waiting for the moment of transformation when it turned from hot metal to cold treat. I knew what I wanted. On Monday, I had been all about a Creamsicle. It was probably the citrus tang I was craving, with just a soupcon of creaminess that signaled “treat” to me. But today, in a fog of bliss, I was all about the commitment of a Strawberry Shortcake. There was nothing like a Strawberry Shortcake bar. The color, an artificial, neon bright, surreal pink, with a crumbly coating. All of its fabricated, unreal goodness wrapped around a solid bar of vanilla ice cream. It was a toothsome challenge, but one that I was up for. After all, this was a miracle.

“One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar. Please.” I had to remind myself about the “please” because I was so intent on getting those sweet syllables right, so he wouldn’t have to ask me a second time, or, even worse, give me the wrong thing.

“One Strawberry Shortcake bar, please” I said to Danny, the ice cream guy. I remembered to say “please” because this was a moment that was special. Before, I might have just thought “please,” and Danny, probably an ex-firefighter who took early retirement and settled on selling ice cream to do something else special in his life, would have seen that “please” in a little kid’s eyes and, not being one of those “teach you a lesson in politeness” grown-ups, pushed to hear the actual words.

Danny handed me the treasure. I took it with my left hand, and handed him the coins with my right. I felt like one of those old balance scales – one hand tipped one way with the weight of the ice cream, and then tipped to center itself when the weight of the coins fell out of my hand and into his.

I knew exactly what would be beneath that paper. But as I peeled it off, it was almost as though as I was doing this for the first time. Crumbs stuck to the wrapper, inviting a little lick. This was the tricky part. It was hot, and heat and ice cream were incompatible on several levels. Too slow, and you were licking a drippy mass of frozen cream. Who could enjoy that? Too fast, and you were crunching chunks of ice cream that could lead to the dreaded “ice cream headache.” Where was the joy in that? I started at the top, nibbling the thinnest peak of the treat. There’s nothing but pure sensation in that first bite. The ice crystals hit the tongue, melting so quickly that the creaminess flooded the mouth with vanilla and strawberry and dreams. The other kid! There was that other kid who was at the curb, waiting for the ice dream truck with me. Now that the first wild cravings had passed, I had a chance to look around and see how the world had changed since I took that first bite. Hmm. The sun still shone in the sky. There were a few fluffy clouds. The air had a certain special warmth that before had been just plain hot, but now was a delicious compliment to the ice cream.
The other kid was down to the stick in some places on his ice cream. He was a sprinter. Maybe he got three, maybe even four ice creams a week. He might have been in danger of becoming a glutton, or maybe had an undiscriminating palate. I would have to keep my eye on him. Or maybe he was just a little kid and would grow out of the gobbling phase. I had high hopes for him. But in the meantime, I had my own ice cream to concentrate on. And Tom! Oh! The founder of the feast, and I had forgotten him from the moment the quarters hit my hot hand.

I looked up. The sun was still high in the sky, but it was behind the bungalow roof. The rays cast themselves out from the side of the house. And there, on the front porch was Tom, sitting, tipped back on a wooden chair, squinting as his last inch of cigarette butt blew smoke into his eyes. He could have been Zeus on Mt. Olympus. He had given some mere mortal the gift of Fire, or Ice Cream. Or whatever. The mortal whose life he had touched was already building a marble altar to him. Tom didn’t show it, but I knew that he was tickled.

This was only one afternoon. This was the only time he ever put his hand into his pocket and pulled out some change and gave it to a little girl for ice cream. I loved him from that moment, and didn’t stop loving him, even though he was turning into a shadow three weeks later, and into a ghost six weeks after that. He represented a giving spirit, even when he wasn’t required to be giving. I asked my mother where he went.

“He had to go,” she said. And by the tone of her voice, I knew not to ask anything more than that. It was ok, though. It was like collecting a butterfly and then having it on display. You knew that one such butterfly existed, and you could imagine another one coming along. For now, eight year old that I was, I was ready to move on.

The Lil House of a Belligerent Owner

2009-04-22T00:01:00.003-05:00

Five Haiku About Bigfoot

2009-04-21T00:01:00.001-05:00

1.
Erudite sasquatch,
embarassed by Southern kin,
thinks, "Skunkape, indeed..."

2.
"Yeti?!?! What is that?!!
Canadian for bigfoot?!?!?":
jingoist sasquatch.

3.
"IN ORIENT, I
CALLED ABOM-- ABLOMO-- A--
ANABOM-- YETI!"

4.
I once told my dad
bigfoot was a cross between
human, ape, and bear.

5.
"Patterson-Gimlin
film bigfoot think he all that...":
envious sasquatch

The tallest building in my hometown

2009-04-20T00:01:00.002-05:00

Postures Are Not Gestures

2009-04-17T00:01:00.002-05:00

the slap of conclusion

2009-04-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

When they finally released me, I left with a fear of women. A fear of what they can do and a stronger fear of what they can't.

How, where I was, I came to the conclusion I did is best left to the guesses of people who can more easily thrust themselves into thought than I can.

It's not that I didn't have time to think. I did. I had time; it ran off me. Then there was the rethinking. But there was such a small population of thoughts in me. The only ones I latched to were vile and absurd, rainwater beading on cracked walls in a building on the outskirts of a city at the pinpoint center of a country that's been left to crumple.

And women never took up residence anywhere, not once that whole time.

Life can spring out of unexpected places. Opportunistically in sidewalks, say. Or science scaring it out of a barren womb. Life can shrink and grow, expand and collapse. Disappear if it wants.

What I came to, the slap of conclusion, was between. Not swollen or skinny, here or away. Not even living or the opposite.

Between, somewhere between.

But real. This fear, my fear, is real as the history of your own life. Women. I hide my head from them. Not from shame, not out of reverence. Not because I'm any more like or unlike them than I've ever been. But because it's the only thing there is now.

Re-Purpose

2009-04-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

Jars and tins, scarves washed by hand.

willful abandon

2009-04-14T01:39:00.006-05:00

George sits across the restaurant table and talks about art films and important novelists and experimental jazz and Kayley thinks she might scream. Long and loud and deeply, with great feeling. With high passion. George is talking to Kayley about art and novels and music because, he’d told her, those were the things he was most passionate about. Kayley thought either they had different definitions of the word or, more likely, that George was lying through his teeth. He’d been talking for twenty minutes straight, a monologue interrupted only long enough for her to interject polite noises like “Really?” and “Hm,” and it just seemed like an attempt to look cool. Passion wasn’t coolness; it was dirty and messy and unselfconscious. It was the least cool thing of all, and Kayley wanted to scream with it.

“The thing about the Swedish postmodernists,” George says through a swig of merlot, with what he must have thought was a roguish lift of his eyebrow and a self-satisfied chuckle, “is that their Swedishness was completely at odds with their postmodernism—”

Kayley screams, long and loud and deep with passion.

It is their second date.

+++

When you are young, everything is new and shiny, wrapped in possibility. The world is filled with so many stories, and you don’t know what your ending will be. Who knows what amazing career could come out of that new job! Who knows if your exotic and extroverted new roommate will be your new best friend! Who knows what will happen on your next date, how the evening will unfold, what you’ll do, what you’ll talk about, how far you’ll go!

Kayley isn’t young anymore, and she knows exactly how far she’ll go with a well-meaning and boringly handsome corporate artist who cannot stop trying to talk to her about soulless things. Kayley has seen the way things went in previous chapters, and there aren’t any surprises anymore.

+++

George says good-bye at the subway entrance, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say good-bye at all. Kayley’s outburst at dinner hasn’t scared him off; on the contrary, it seems to have made him more interested. This is not a surprise either. George thinks it makes Kayley dangerous and crazy, a free spirit. He thinks it makes her someone uninhibited in bed. Kayley is completely over whatever George might think, and she shakes his hand and turns away when he leans in for a kiss. She rushes down the steps and through the long tunnel to the other end of the platform, and then takes a different set of steps back up again. She isn’t tired and doesn’t feel like going home yet, but that was none of George’s business, after all.

+++

At a bar downtown Kayley sips her gin and tonic and watches the old bartender handle the regulars. She’s way overdressed for the dive bar, wearing a cocktail dress, carrying a purse, her hair pulled up and back. Still, no one pays her any attention. She used to live in the area, and this bar was her favorite. The old pub next door has been turned into a hipster lounge, trafficking in fake grime, contrived decadence. The bar she’s in now though, that’s the real thing. The alcoholics here are passionate about their addiction, and that’s something she can respect.

Kayley needs for something to happen. The itch in her chest that had started in the restaurant with George seemed to grow with each block she walked down, and when she got to this street and the two bars, side by side, she couldn’t decide for a minute. She stood on the sidewalk exactly in between them and considered. She needed excitement, an uproar, a feeling of life. On her right, in the lounge, music pulsed out from the seams of the door and took over the street. Sweet young things went in and came out, laughing and stumbling and making out by the side door and the aluminum trash barrels. Kayley needs for something to happen.

But she also needs something real, and so she walked to her left and stepped into the quiet dive bar, waving hello to the ancient bartender as he mixed her gin and tonic.

+++

“Young people, you don’t know what you have. We didn’t know then, and now you don’t know.”

Kayley has made friends with one of the regulars, an old alcoholic named Jim. She let him bum three cigarettes and then just handed him the pack. In exchange, she asked him for his stories, and he happily began telling them. Like George, Jim speaks in monologue, a steady stream of unbroken narrative. Unlike George, Jim is funny and heartbreaking and unfettered and passionate.

Right now, his passion is about his lost youth, and Kayley’s comparative youngness.

“The fire comes so easy when you’re young, and you think you’ll have it forever, that it’s part of your gut and soul. And then life takes over and you get caught up in it all, all the little battles, and then you wake up one day and poof!" Jim throws his hands into the air so enthusiastically that he tips back a little too far, and Kayley moves her hand out as though to catch him. Jim scowls at the gesture, and throws his hands up again, more emphatically this time, to prove her wrong.

“Poof!” he says, remaining standing. “The fire’s gone. Even the embers, gone out with the wind.”

“What fire are you talking about?” Kayley asks. “Like, activism or building something or—”

“Doesn’t matter. Whichever you want. All of ‘em. They all go. Fire to build with and fire to burn it all to the ground.” Jim sighs and sits back on the bar stool and takes the new drink that Kayley’s ordered for him. “Even the fire to burn it all down disappears with age. Without that, how can you start anything new?”

The itch in Kayley’s chest gets stronger, beats a staccato rhythm. She has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss Jim, not sexually, but passionately. But Jim is focused on his gin and lost in thought for whatever used to light his fire and so instead Kayley raises her glass and taps it against the edge of Jim’s and says

“Cheers.”

+++

Fire trucks pass Kayley on her walk home from the subway, their lights blazing, but when she gets to her block her apartment building is still standing. Real life isn’t as poetic as all that. She opens her cell phone on her walk and checks her messages. One is from George, and she deletes it without listening. One's from her sister, and she shuts the phone for the time being.

It’s almost four in the morning but no one’s around outside her building; either the party kids haven’t gotten home yet or they decided to sit out a night for a change. Kayley unlocks her building’s door and walks up three flights of stairs and unlocks her deadbolt and then locks it behind her again. Nothing happened on her way home; the night was without incident, good or bad. How can a person be expected to live without incident? Kayley wonders. Without burning things down or starting things new.

Kayley’s exhausted, and she kicks off her shoes and opens her window and climbs up her fire escape to her roof. She isn’t supposed to be up there, but she’s tired and the view is beautiful and the sun will be coming up soon and the itch in her chest is beating a drumbeat she can’t find the rhythm to. She lies down on the black tar and wiggles into the hard surface, wishing she’d brought a pillow. There’s a rose color at the edge of the horizon, she can see it just past the skyscrapers and the trees. She fights to keep her eyes open as the rose turns to red and orange and gold, to stay awake long enough to see the sky turn to fire in front of her eyes.

“Poof,” Kayley says, and smiles.

Ice Smile

2009-04-12T22:37:00.001-05:00

sirens

2009-04-10T07:09:00.002-05:00

The sirens went off every Saturday at noon. The boy was always surprised, but then remembered that it was only a test. No tornadoes were coming.

What would happen if a tornado came at noon on a Saturday, would everyone just continue pushing their carts down the produce aisle and making sandwiches and folding the laundry? Would they hear the noise before it was too late and run to the far corners of their basements. Would they have time to save the dog?

Why hadn't any adults thought of this problem? They were supposed to be in charge.

This is what he was thinking when his Grandpa came into the room.

The boy's Grandpa was a kind old man, soft around the middle, with deep creases in his face. He'd raised the boy since his son dropped the boy off for the weekend and never came back. It didn't effect the boy much, he was so young, but to his Grandpa it meant a lot. He knew he had to be better than a father, better than a mother, better than a family.

And he was better. He raised the boy with more attention and love than his son ever could have.

The old man was sick though, but they still went about their daily routines, the boy’s Grandpa pretending he wasn't getting weaker and the boy pretending that he didn't notice.

The boy took on many of the tasks the old man couldn't manage anymore. He cooked their meals and helped with the cleaning. He did a good job too. He had never gone to school because his grandfather didn't believe in it, but he had managed to learn enough along the way.

Now it was his grandfather who was startled by the sirens, and every Saturday the boy had to dry the old man's eyes and reassure him they were safe.

The only thing the old man had any energy for was destroying his belongings.

He'd push glasses off the table to watch them shatter. He’d tear houseplants out of their pots. The boy didn't mind because it was something he used to do when he was little. And because it made his Grandpa happy, the boy would sometimes help.

Their favorite thing to do was to tear the pages out of books. Sometimes they'd spend the whole afternoon shredding one text after another. Reader's Digest, War and Peace, The Joy of Cooking. Even the Bible. Their house looked as though a small tornado had made its way inside and devoured everything in sight, leaving only the walls and furniture intact.

When it was time for his Grandpa to die, the boy helped him into his best suit, now worn thin at the knees and elbows. The boy cooked and they talked and laughed all morning.

When they ran out of things to say, the boy led his Grandpa to his room and placed a pillow beneath his head. He crawled into bed next to the old man, and this time when the sirens went off, it was the boy who cried. When the sirens stopped, the boy wiped his eyes, kissed his Grandpa's cold cheek, and walked out the front door.

LISE, Cambridge, MA

2009-04-09T00:01:00.002-05:00

LISE, Cambridge, MA

2009-04-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Distance had been traveled
Revelations come and gone
Dampening dreams
Reshaping the outcomes

Next to me
Always so near
Never have I felt this absolved
A quest felt by so many before me

Habitats have changed
Memories move and flow
Have they stayed true?
Mentioning my memory of you?

Observing to keep the same straight face
Just to move my feet along the ground
Obstacles of mountains and men
Jokes of tall tales and long days

Beside all of these years
Far and near
Beside my side and invisible
Forget these fears and I know you will stay near

2009-04-07T06:47:00.001-05:00

White Riot

2009-04-06T00:01:00.002-05:00

Jimmy was the kid that nobody talked to. Nobody.

Especially in Riverdale.

Sheila Barnaby once tried, and she was pretty tough. She wore dark red nail polish and chewed cinnamon-flavored gum with her mouth open. So scared of Jimmy, she looked down when he approached her on the street. The attempted conversation happened two weeks ago in aisle two at Fontaine’s drugstore. They were both looking at sunblock (although she couldn’t really tell, because Jimmy was always wearing the darkest of dark sunglasses), and Sheila had thought to make a remark about how she was going to the beach later that day, but got nervous when Jimmy cracked his knuckles and stared straight ahead at the five choices of sunblock available in aisle two.

Kenneth Rominski, the bagger at Hermann’s Groceries, would snap the brown paper bags less smartly when Jimmy came in to buy his: gallon of milk, jar of peanut butter, loaf of bread, bar of Irish Spring, pound of coffee, pack of razors, dozen eggs, two pounds of hamburger and quart of orange juice every week. He wasn’t sure if Jimmy was looking at him as he bagged the nine items. Jimmy always stood, hands in his jacket pockets, his sunglasses-covered eyes never belying his true line of vision. Uncannily, Jimmy was always at attention enough to grab the grocery bag from Kenneth when the top was all folded and pressed. Kenneth got goose bumps from the seemingly mundane transaction.

Ruthie Eckhardt stopped cleaning out the parakeet cages at Metzer’s Pet Mart every time Jimmy walked past outside, his sneakers sounding like he’d stepped in gum, his pale skin gleaming like the undead, Walkman blaring Stiff Little Fingers out of the cheap headphones affixed around his small cranium. The dull, paint-it-black hair had oddly wispy, duck-fluff roots peeking out from underneath. The tiny parakeets in their cages involuntarily shuddered because Ruthie would suck her breath in sharply each time it happened. Needless to say, the parakeets’ new newspaper became old again, real quick.

Matt Sutton gripped the handlebars of his kickass BMX bike a bit tighter, half wondering if Jimmy would try to mess with him and take his bike again as he rode past him down Beechnut Street. The trees whispered, “no”, but his heart beat like a rabbit-heart, thumpity, thump, pedal, pedal, pedal, coast. Last week, Jimmy wordlessly grabbed his handlebars at the park and gave him a shove, hopped on the bike and took off like a bat out of hell, only to return the bike to a bewildered Matt five minutes later, out of breath and with no explanation. He had half-thrown it at Matt’s feet, and sauntered off, trying to light a cigarette with pale, shaking hands, turning his head in all directions, the setting sun glinting off of his dark plastic frames. Now, Matt shook the hair out of his eyes, trying to look authoritative. "Just try to take my bike, asshole," he muttered underneath his breath as he veered past Jimmy, who held a suspicious-looking brown paper bag in his pasty hand. Jimmy visibly flinched and his mouth turned downward in a state of startled confusion.

Angela Goodwin sidestepped an oncoming Matt Sutton and wondered if she took that third library volume on paleontology of the Paleozoic Era out of her brown shoulder bag quickly enough, she could defend herself against an approaching and suspicious-looking Jimmy. He’d never actually threatened her, but never say never, right? Would she go for the throat or the kneecaps? She glanced at his brown paper-covered mystery object, his sunglasses-veiled face and reached for her book as though it were made of metal, not paper. “Paper, rock, scissors,” she muttered, “pick your weapon,” as she quickly passed him. Jimmy, again, wondered what the hell was up with people talking to themselves today. He felt the gum on the bottom of his sneakers and stopped to scrape his foot on the curb. Angela looked over her shoulder two seconds later and noticed a group of three neighborhood kids rounding the corner behind Jimmy. He was out of her field of vision. She let her breath out and promptly tripped over an uneven part in the sidewalk.

Mrs. Heckler ‘saw’ Jimmy Albinson coming with her three out of five senses. She could smell, taste and hear as keenly as if she were a flawless, newborn, despite her eighty-three years and terminal blindness. She could smell Jimmy’s Irish Spring sweat under his blue, gabardine zip-up jacket on the May breeze heralded by the wind chime on her porch, she could taste the faint whiff of his open-bottle brown bag on the moisture-laden spring air and hear the swish of the gabardine, the soft thud of rubber sneaker soles and the soft and quick breathing of an out-of-shape punk. She could hear the held-breath breathing of the three pursuers.

Her neck twisted and rose like a bird’s. Mrs. Heckler wasn’t afraid of anything because everything and everyone was afraid of her. “Fools, fools!” she muttered.

Mostly unaware to all of this: parakeets, Paleozoic Era volumes and "paper, rock, scissors," BMX bikes, and brown paper bags, Jimmy Albinson, shrouded in his black sunglasses, clutched his brown bag tighter at the neck when he walked past Mrs. Heckler’s porch, even though he very well knew that old Mrs. Heckler probably had no clue that he was drinking on a public sidewalk.

Still, he rushed past. “It’s too early!” Mrs. Heckler crowed from her porch. She intuitively was attempting to shake off the three following the slight, sunglassed and pale seventeen year-old with her vocal display.

Jimmy didn’t catch any of this. CRAZY, he thought. Too early for what? It’s one o'clock in the afternoon. What a wack-job, he shrugged, thinking, My life sucks enough already, I really don’t need an old crazy bugging me on a Saturday.

Further down the street, the three boys stopped for a millisecond, feeling the unseeing eyes of Mrs. Heckler on them, then continued on, cutting diagonally through the impatiens planted by Geronimo Musselli, the eccentric neighborhood physicist and artist who was on vacation in Naples, down the caving pavement of the alley and into the warm, garbagey smell environment of the alley garages, no noises, save for a baseball game on an AM radio here and there and a couple small, authoritative dogs expressing their Napoleon complexes in fenced-in disdain.

Three boys versus one. The largest of the three was a Gene Wilder type of punk, dealt a crappy head of hair and a crappier dose of teenage acne. He first grabbed the brown-bagged Newcastle out of Jimmy’s surprised hand, then flew the other fist into Jimmy’s small, pointed chin. The second kid pushed Jimmy from behind; the Newcastle bottle flew and shattered, contained inside the bag. The third, as a typical third person does, kept lookout. All wore an unassuming costume of mommy-bought clean T-shirts, jeans and sneakers.

“What’s the matter, punk?” Gene Wilder sneered as Jimmy thudded into the warped concrete, “Gonna cry over spilt beer?”

Jimmy said nothing. He knew it was inevitable. It usually took about two years…he’d been in Riverdale for just under two.

The second one, skinny and slack-jawed and big-toothed, joined in, “Not so tough now, huh, Mr. Fancy Pants?” he mouth-breathed. He kicked Jimmy in the back. The third one, slightly chubby and red-cheeked, pretended not to be nervous, but tapped his right hand against his right hip, his fingers hooked into the belt loop of his jeans and tried to glare at Jimmy, but the sun was too bright in his eyes, and he just glared, in general.

Jimmy winced. Alright, just get it over with, he willed.

“How about some mud all over those Fancy Pants?” Gene Wilder offered, scooping up a convenient clump of rain-soaked sod from the side of the alley and pitching it at Jimmy’s curled-up knees. What fancy pants? Jimmy thought of the normal, boot-cut jeans he was wearing. Now, covered in mud. He held his breath, waiting for more mud to be added to them.

He knew that if he got up and ran, it’d all be over. It had happened once before. He luckily had run past that kid with the BMX, and had taken it for a cruise to lose his assailants that time. Now, not a BMX in sight to rescue him.

Another clump of mud hit Jimmy in the side of the face. Still, he did nothing. What could he do at this point?

This non-reaction reaction pissed Gene Wilder off to no end. Skinny & Slack-jawed echoed the curly-haired fury. They went at Jimmy from both sides, his already-askew headphones cracking in half, his Walkman and cassette dying in a sad chorus of broken plastic. His right shoulder hit the pavement now littered with brown shards of glass and black plastic as his sunglasses slid off only to be crunched like a large, black beetle under Gene Wilder’s white-sneakered foot. This made Gene Wilder laugh. The famous black sunglasses. Jimmy closed his eyes. The sun pierced through his eyelids like a laser.

Another fist to the face and Jimmy’s eyes shot open despite the laser-beam light. The light was white-hot and uncomfortable: those sunglasses had been on for a good reason. He’d worn them outside almost every day of his slightly vampiric life. Gene Wilder and Skinny and Slack-jawed froze and jumped back as though Jimmy were a human electric cattle prod. “What the fuck?” Gene Wilder whisper-hissed.

Jimmy’s pink eyes blinked hesitatingly back at him with a delicate, albino stare. Three pairs of eyes blinked back at him: brown, blue and black. He wondered when it’d be a good time to tell his parents that they might have to move, again…maybe this time, though, things would be different. He wouldn’t get death threats from the older, superstitious neighbors, rocks thrown at him from the football team, whispers of the worst names imaginable from everyone from age three to age eighty-three. Jimmy opened, then shut his naked eyes twice only to see the soles of three pairs of sneakers and three pairs of jean-clad legs run, run, running as fast as they could, first to get away and second to tell everyone, “Guess what???”

Now Empty #42

2009-04-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

In NYC shops have always closed and we would mourn them for a week, then a month later we would patronize the new place and be all happy about it. But now, everything is empty. Stores go down, nothing comes up. More stores go down, still nothing. This store is next to 45 West 8th Street, which is a well-known street to buy shoes. In two blocks, there were 6 empty storefronts. What will we become, NYC?

the frown

2009-04-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Mama always said I came out with a frown on my face. I never cried, I just opened my eyes and frowned. She says it was the darndest thing. All my brothers and sisters cried.

Well, Russell cried after he fell to the floor. Doc couldn’t keep his hands on him. Slippery little bastard. That’s just what he is to this day. He’s always lying and thieving, and the law just can’t seem to keep their hands on him for very long.

We all called him Slick when we was growing up.

Me, I frowned. So I got called Sad Face. Matter of fact, three people to this very day call me Sad Face - Sissy, Slick and Bernard. I never much cared to be called Sad Face, but I have to admit they had a point. I can’t even smile. Not a proper upturned smile like Sissy could make.

I smile in my head, and what’s on my face is an upside down version. Looks pathetic. I’ve stopped even trying.

So either the name wore off on me, or maybe it was imprinted on me from the moment I came out of Mama. Maybe the frown sealed the deal.

town of planks

2009-04-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Sunlight mounted the room as pyramids. The heat, and there was so much of it, coughed up a sleazy barroomish haze. I was choking on the humidity, but the windows had long since swollen stuck and I'd promised I'd wait there.

This was around the holiday, but after.

The town—three irregular peels of streets hemmed by shops filled with dunes of souvenirs—was in its midweek slump. It was like how it becomes when visitors leave after the on-season finally gasps to a close. Only then it’s stiller and we sleep easy.

I'd been a beast, something slovenly and low. So when she'd said, "Wait, I need this," with stabbed-through urgency, I realized this might be the chance I thought I'd never have to bounce back to being the way I'd always imagined I could.

She wasn't from here. She was another of those who filtered in and out during that brief stretch when the weather lets up and unfreezes the lakes. Her features were toneless; she didn't stay for long, but we kept in touch over a diminutive pile of years. I'd pay for tickets to visit her in the denser southern part of the state.

For the telling, she'd managed to tug extra life out of her time off, so I said I'd be here and I was, drained-feeling, asphyxiated and fluvial in the hot room.

Then the sun got lower and I finally heard the gravelly sound of her approach. Looking out, I saw her mouth hitched into something like a grin through the snare of her windshield. What she'd put to me, I knew then, would not be what I'd wanted.

Bird's World, Franklin Park Zoo, Boston, MA

2009-03-31T00:01:00.003-05:00

Bird's World, Franklin Park Zoo, Boston, MA

broken things

2009-03-30T00:02:00.000-05:00

Today,Topanga State Beach, CA

Yesterday's kitchen Floor, Los Feliz

And the Same is True of All of Us

2009-03-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

As I drove back to work from a lunch hour that involved me not so much eating as watching my dog relieve herself, I put on my sunglasses for the first time on this lush and grey Thursday, the Sun finally coming out just in time to set. Just like every other trip in my car for the last two weeks, I was listening to Juno’s “This is the Way it Goes and Goes and Goes”. I started to sing along with his low, soft scream, and I thought of you. I don’t remember if it was something funny you said, or your laughter, or the shape of your face, but I thought of you, and that memory made me happy, and I wanted you to know that.

No.

You.

I’m talking about you.

You may or may not dance at nighttime through the dreams of others like smoke or candy or a great and monstrous train, but I can guarantee that during every moment of every waking daytime somewhere someone is thinking of you. Maybe it’s your mother or your boss, or maybe it’s the last heart you broke or that quiet special someone who can’t ever seem to get you off their mind, or maybe it’s your third grade teacher or some guy at American Express carefully monitoring your credit card expenditures, or maybe it’s me, but somewhere someone is thinking of you.

Don’t look so surprised. Have you seen you? Go ahead. Look in the mirror, close your eyes, and take a good, hard look at you.

You.

You are beautiful.

You are talented.

You are kind.

You are you and you are loved.

You.

You feel that?

You’re smiling.

Because you know I’m right.

literature man walks through town

2009-03-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

patchwork

2009-03-25T00:02:00.002-05:00

skull

2009-03-24T07:26:00.003-05:00

A still-hardening skull crashes into a crib of gravel. It’s like a spool letting loose, the clattering of tension, a rolling that lasts from here to the hospital bed. That man, the one of whom you’re a parcel—an unanticipated exclamation launched through hollows—folds you over his shoulder. You’re six plus feet up, ears ringing like the testing of a tornado siren, and he’s murmuring to you, just barely, over the idling autos, pushing along his bike and yours.

The vacation has been called off. You’d been presuming sprung pup tents, the cool moisture beading over you—a storm, maybe, smothering the fire and relegating everyone to the lighting of flashes.

Where you are is named for saints. There’s no record of how you made it here, but this is where you’ve come to be entangled. You’ve sprouted tentacles. Their guts are as empty as your own, but they manage somehow to lend you cloying moisture at specified intervals.

He had a story that he always told on camping trips about a one-eyed banshee named Cy who’d taken an axe to the breadth of his family tree. Transient, wayward, county-hopping, Cy was always at the heels of your hiking boots. In the same way dreams inspire treacherous rebirth in supplicated combatants, dusk awakened the fury of termination in Cy. There were rumors that he’d licked the blood from his axe, so to say he had a taste for it was not just figurative.

Early summer, the smells and sun melting over everything. There is no way to retract the windows—the coverings are pulled tight most of the day. You have the vague feeling of nothing really being wrong with you, that all of this is just something into which you’ve been wrongly placed. They feed you into machines that swallow you whole. Blood is drawn; cards pile up, flimsy toys bought in the lobby below. There are other visitors, but what you’re aware of most is how he keeps watch over you, pacing back, sitting down, occupying himself by stroking your brow.

It’s all a rehearsal for the way that days can wind down. Statistics bob over you, incomprehensible charts. You’re just beginning to understand the significance of numbers. Percentages lilt. The doctor, who is covered with a field of exploded follicles that pause only at his eyelids, pays intermittent visits. He speaks a language that translates to silence—eventually he palms your crown.

As you’re putting your shoes on for the first time in a week, they come across with a menu. You’re horribly tired of frozen grapes. But you’re rushed out with nothing.

At home, still disappointed that the fennel-laced accouterments could not be yours, you take the glossy sides of Mylar balloons to the uncombed mess of your chlorine-wrecked hair. They cling to the wall and stay there until they pale.

***

It’s well known that lights kept on in skyscrapers prompts the collision of birds in the night. There is that sound, that smack, late, against the taut slant of the tent wall. The tapping of an axe. You crouch deeper into your pumpkin-colored sleeping bag and flex your leg out to make sure that he is still there, keeping watch, lungs expanding.

combat and ballet

2009-03-23T13:06:00.005-05:00

marilyn (feather ceiling)

2009-03-20T00:03:00.005-05:00

Marilyn's face would have kids lassoing around her, wide loops of wide and not so wide kids, the fat or bones dancing on their bodies as they whooped up and down, taunting Marilyn with weird constructions. "Helium buttons, balloon skin!" "Frosty the Snow Bitch!" "Baby woman, go home on the range!" "Knotty tree cranium, sick, sick!" "Scareilyn bear face!"

Marilyn opted out of caring. "It's a coping mechanism," the doctors (specialists, all) would tell her father, who loved her very much, and her mother, who buried her shame in thick, boastful gradients of pride. It wasn't that at all, the reason Marilyn more or less sealed her lips shut for anything other than to eat and drink the things she liked.

She'd kick down the country roads that lead like a cross from her house. She'd walk until long after her knees were sore and her shoes started to slope from outward pronation.

As she walked those roads, she'd listen to the wind scrape the leaves on the trees and the nearly blond wild grass until it all rattled, and tried to align cadences with the shuttering cicadas.

She'd take it all in. She'd gulp it down like it was lemonade. Predators swooping out of the sky to swiftly murder prey, the patter of chipmunks on mud, a branch smacking down, roaring. She'd reach up to her horrific face (they said that and she agreed so it must be fact) while continuing to walk and wipe away bits of sweat that the humidity of late August pulled from her.

The reason she blocked it out, all the theories and taunts, was this. This was all that really mattered, she knew, was all that was real. And the falseness of the rest of it terrified her.

free time

2009-03-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

Beyond the security entrance, Dan swaggered, wearing his tough-as-balls attitude, squaring his shoulders, clenching his jaw. In the sterile hallway, tiled in standard-issue mint green, he felt true to the bumper sticker on his car: unfuckwithable. His busted lip added depth, his brand-new Nike Shox conferred style. He was for real. The guard kept ahead a good five paces.

On the outside, things were different; he was different. He was a sanitation worker, hauling away everyone’s unwanteds, keeping people clean and safe. Most people did not realize what filthy animals they really were. The guys in here, though, were a different breed, and even if they weren’t animals, especially if they weren’t animals, they still felt like animals.

Kevin was not an animal. Though back when Dan was ten and Kevin only six, Dan slipped the dog’s collar round his neck and chained him up in the backyard till he cried. But that was just kids’ stuff. Sixteen years later, Kevin was chained up again. He’d been shackled and led out, he sat when and where he was told, behind a shield of inch-thick glass; he was not an animal, but he obeyed. He was already seated and waiting when Dan entered the room.

A big dopey smile hollowed out the bottom half of Kevin’s face, and round wide eyes ate up the top half, like some baby seal on The Simpsons: impossibly cute. Those innocent eyes had helped him get away with it for so long, but when Dan tried to see past their shine, all he found was a bottomless black hole. He was no angel himself, but his brother was hard-core under his fuzzy exterior.

Dan plunked down into the folding chair and lifted the black telephone, the only connection to his kid brother. “Yo,” he said.

“Hey,” he replied.

The seasons had changed, and changed again, since Dan last saw his brother’s face. When Kevin was first locked up, Dan promised he’d come every week, which dwindled into every month, then whenever he could. Time could wear out even the sincerest promise.

“Pop been by lately?” He already knew the answer. He lived with the man and worked with the man—if Pop had gone to see Kevin he would’ve heard all about it. But small talk was small talk.

“Two, three months ago? I forget.” Kevin’s smile faded. “Time in here, you know… It’s hard to recollect.”

“I’m working the truck with him,” Dan said. “It’s hell on my hands, but the paycheck is nice.” His mantra. The thickest work gloves he could find couldn’t protect him from the skin-tearing, bone-crunching work of lifting heavy trashcans all day. Pop laughed at him. With time the skin would thicken up, he said. One day his hands would be tough and meaty. Like Pop’s.

Kevin drummed his thin, bony fingers on the counter. “Well, Pop always said do what you love.”

“Shitty advice, huh?” Dan started out doing what he loved—drinking—and worked for years as a bartender till the bar went up in flames and Pop got him on the trash truck. Kevin went after his love, too—cars—learning how to fix them up, and how to take them apart. Wasn’t long before he was stealing cars, selling off the parts. It was a good gig till he got caught.

“So, where’s Sandy?” Kevin asked suddenly, looking around the half-full room as though she’d gone to someone else’s window.

“Fuck her, man,” Dan replied, pointing at his busted lip, still swollen.

“I wish!” Kevin threw his head back with a throaty laugh. “But I forgot about what always comes with it.” He twirled his finger by his ear in the “loco” sign. He’d had some crazy girlfriends, one who’d even had his baby, but he was, as Pop always said, the agitator. Trouble found him when he wasn’t finding it.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “You’re not missin’ anything.” His neck was stiff; last night’s fight hurt more today.

Kevin sighed, leaning back onto two metal chair legs. “I always liked Sandy.”

“Eh.” Dan shrugged. “If I let that bitch dictate what I can and can’t do in my free time, then I might as well be in here with you.”

Kevin, his nose and cheeks a motley muddle of freckles, resumed his finger drumbeat on the counter. When he spoke, the hole where his right-side incisor ought to have been whistled slightly, the unfortunate result of a particularly rough high school fight, not long before he dropped out and left home. “Least you get to take a dump in private,” he said. He snuck a glance at the clock on the wall behind him, above the guards’ heads.

Pop said being inside would force Kevin to grow up, but with fifteen months under his belt, he was still the same, baby-faced and petulant. With another forty-five months to go, Dan had to hope Pop would turn out right. Eventually.

Dan rubbed the bruise on his cheek, holding back a wince. She’d called four times, no message. By now she’d be at the diner, too busy to call again. His anger was raw, his self threatened, he couldn’t deal with her shit today.

“God, Sandy has a nice rack, don’t she?” Kevin blurted, rocking manically in his chair. “Last time you were here, man, I just couldn’t stop thinking about her tits.”

“Bet you say the same thing after Mom leaves,” Dan said, something in the pit of his stomach igniting.

“For fucking real,” he replied. “Tits are hard to come by in this place.” He blinked his fat bulging eyes. “Hey, tell Sandy to come by and see me.”

“Dude.” Dan couldn’t single out any one thought, so many were zipping around his head at once. “Dude!”

“I didn’t know she was aggro, too.” He looked almost like he could pop off out of his chair, like it was all he could do to contain his energy, rocking and drumming.

“Aggro?” Dan was confused. His brother had had some crazy girlfriends, and he thrived on provocation. “Dude, we had a fight and she threw the remote at me. I ducked it, but kind of lost my balance and fell.” It was stupid, embarrassing even, but hardly aggro. “I biffed the TV and busted my lip.”

“You biffed the TV?” He smirked, let the chair drop to all four of its feet.

“It looks worse than I do, believe me,” Dan said, far removed from his bumper sticker persona.

“Ah,” Kevin said again. “You guys are fucking boring. Made for each other.” The guard by the door called out that five minutes remained for the visitors. Kevin hopped up. “Bet you’re back together next time I see you.”

“Nah,” Dan said, coming to his feet. “She wants me to move in. She flips out every time I go to the titty bar…”

“Whatever,” he interrupted dismissively. “Give it a week, a month tops.”

“Well, I won’t be bringing her back here, if so.” Dan tried to smile but it hurt his lip.

Face-to-face, they almost looked like brothers, the resemblances were so slight. The glass, thicker than the years, kept them on opposing teams. Dan was about to hang up when Kevin leaned closer to the glass, as though to whisper in his ear. He breathed heavily into the phone. “Come back next week, Danny.”

A murky moment passed before Dan tilted his head. “Sure, Kev.”

“Please...” He hung up, severing the connection. In the past, Kevin would wait there till Dan was gone, but now he nodded to the guard, who approached him speedily.

Dan watched, the receiver dangling limply in his hand, as the guard adeptly cuffed and fettered Kevin, escorting him through the sturdy double doors, which slammed shut behind them with a slap. Other people in the visitors’ room were crying, pressing their palms up to the glass. So close. He sank the phone into its cradle.

In the hallway, he took slow steps, unable to recapture his earlier swagger. He noticed now that the tiled walls were dingy, the overhead fluorescents ghastly. Slow steps. Outside the air was brisk but the sun was shining. He had nothing left to do that day, no plans, free time to spare. The drive home would kill an hour: wide open roads through rolling farmlands, big sky, loud music, and his foot on the gas. Maybe he’d swing by Frey’s for a quick nip. The state pen inside its razor wire cage loomed behind him, steely and sprawling, where it would be next week and the week after that, never moving, never changing, never free.

Not the guitar solo for 'Love Spreads'

2009-03-18T00:02:00.003-05:00

aged and grown...so far

2009-03-17T00:02:00.002-05:00

I sit with me and I wish for better company
The horizon line gets near--
but I can't see it anymore
All I can see is your face in front of mine
songs will fill tomorrow.
but I long for yesterday--
when those hours lasted for all those days
and through all those nights
and the stars. i can't count or touch the stars.
but I want to kiss your face--goodnight.
I can't reach that high above the earth
where you shine so brightly among those stars.

It's all sharply defined
referring to the equivalent of me.
Elation fades past days
Let's imitate the real thing and
exaggerate our courage.
Fake pleasure in the details.
Let's create an analogy
for the purpose of understanding
keeps on spelling out the obvious...
nothing has the same effect as you.

Cut holes so you can see through
my windows and my words.
You were the best looking one in the room tonight.
Losing light with desire--
the dawn is lying to me again--for so many years in a row.
I think that dream was you.
moving in me.
Curiosity is overwhelming me day by day.
but I won't be killed again...
that cat died nine times ago.

Security Blanket

2009-03-16T00:01:00.002-05:00

Never Say You're Sorry for the Waste You’ve Lain, Because We’ve All Got Marks to Carve.

2009-03-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

There are varicose sidewalks beneath my skin
to a city whose subways thunder disappointment
with the systolic rhythm of missed opportunity.
White blood cells disinterestedly wave away from the bleeding wreckage
beautiful tourists armed with spray paint and misplaced vendetta:
“Move along. There’s nothing to see here anymore.”
Workers fill abandoned atriums with cement.
I point left, tell them, “You missed a spot.”

The woman in the back listlessly sings “Is that all there is to a fire?”
She dresses in apologies, living her life with her suicide on pause.
She's earned the immune system of a trailer park, suffering disaster with duct tape and inertia, defying guilt, derision bouncing off her foam trucker hat, using self-acceptance like judo in a gunfight.
Call it obstinacy,
call it laziness
she’s not going on anywhere.
“This is what I am. And I can’t be ashamed of that anymore. The view of my shoes never changes and you deserve to look me in the eyes to see how your scorn is received.”

The future seeps through the vents and speaks like the backhand of God,
“There’s a horizon in this night, so squint harder, boy.”
leaving guiding trails in countertop dust of dead skin and the skeletal remains of hope long since calcified.
And I file down my scars,
because this nerve can never be raw enough
and,
Mom,
they tell me I clean up pretty well.

these are my friends and this is what we do

2009-03-12T14:10:00.012-05:00

Sex Ed

2009-03-11T00:01:00.002-05:00

How was I supposed to know what it meant?

I mean there's blow jobs, hand jobs, tug jobs, strap-ons, hard-ons, money shots and 100 different things. Like I'm supposed to keep it all straight.

Everybody knows it was me too because Mike told Sarah. Mike knows because I asked him what it meant last week and he told me it was something you buy at a porno shop. Now Sarah told all her friends and the girls keep laughing at me in the hallway.

I hate Mr. Tunney too.

He just kept smiling and whispering to Miss Kemper, even after they'd gone on to the next question. Why do we even have to go to sex ed anyway, it's not like I'm going to need to know this stuff anytime soon. Especially now that everyone thinks I'm an idiot.

I've never even kissed a girl who wasn't my mom or my grandma, and it's not exactly like that's good practice for anything.

It was after they told us about wet dreams and showed us close ups of women with chlamydia. After the video of a baby coming out and the diagram of the penis. After they told us that condoms can break and lectured us about teen parenting.

It was after all of that when they passed out note cards and asked us to write any other questions we had and pass them to the front.

I almost didn't write anything, but they hadn't answered my question and I figured that nobody would know it was me anyway.

Miss Kemper collected all the cards and brought them to the front, and Mr. Tunney pulled out the first one and read the question.

"Can you get A.I.D.S from a toilet seat?"

"No," said Miss Kemper. "That's a common misconception, but it would be almost impossible to get A.I.D.S., or any other sexually transmitted disease for that matter, from a toilet seat."

"Alright gang, next question," Mr. Tunney said as he pulled the next card out of the basket.

"Is it true that if you masturbate you can go blind?" No. "When you're having sex can your penis break?" Yes. "Are fake boobs really filled with air?" No...and on and on until finally I saw Mr. Tunney pull out my folded note card.

He started laughing right away when he read it, and then he showed it to Miss Kemper. She started blushing and smiling, but was trying not to show it. I don't get what's so funny about it and I bet a lot of other kids didn't know what it meant either.

How am I supposed to know what Love Handles are, it sounds like it should be dirty.

Reach Out (I'll Be There)

2009-03-10T00:53:00.000-05:00

every muscle sore

2009-03-09T00:01:00.008-05:00

On the battlefield of words, all soldiers are asleep, having dreams like whispers about the way things might have been if they hadn't ended up as they have.

It happens, just does. Night arches its back and they assail each other like a hailstorm. There's a wicked hardness to the pellet of each utterance. It's as difficult to stand as it is to stand up to.

So they sleep again tonight like men who have almost died.

Eventually they'll wake, their smallest muscles jousted through with soreness, coughing up fog. They'll agree and say for not the last time that this change, now that it has finally come, is more than good and that it will last nearly as long as forever.

Less Worries

2009-03-06T01:09:00.003-06:00

once bitten

2009-03-05T00:46:00.000-06:00

thud.

Thud.

THUD!

Maggie sat in the chilly humidity of the basement, her fingers poised falteringly over the lower register of the ivory keys. The piano sounded as though it was underwater and she sighed heavily. Didn’t her mom know anything? Pianos shouldn’t be put in basements.

THUDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

Just for emphasis.

The cinderblock walls echoed the muddy notes. The piano was a total pile of garbage: The cat had used it for a scratching post for years and the kids had used it for an emotional punching bag. She unhooked her right foot from underneath her left knee where she’d curled it for warmth in the basement’s damp atmosphere, and shook it a little to loosen the pins; it felt as though someone were pouring cool, dry sand over her bare foot.

At the top of the stairs, a shaft of light jutted through the dim basement, lit with only one overhead bulb. A shadow appeared at the top of the stairs, then an ungraceful and angular figure swung down the stairs, three at a time, using the handrails like monkeybars. Laura.

“Hey,” Maggie said, turning her face back to the tops of the ivories, which gleamed in the double light. The tops were slightly scratched, giving them the appearance of the underside of a leaf.

“Hey,” a husky voice echoed, slightly out of breath. “Where’s Mom?”

“I don’t know. I thought she was upstairs?”

“Good. Can I borrow five?”

Maggie’s eyes shot back towards her older sister, standing outlined by the light of the open door. One hand was on her freshly shaved but still faintly blonde head.

“What did you do to your hair? You look like a total asshole.”

“I didn’t ask for an evaluation; I asked to borrow five bucks,” Laura annunciated, a tiny bit irked that she had pointed out the obvious. “And watch your mouth – you swear way too much for an eleven-year-old.”

“What do you need the five bucks for?” Maggie asked discriminatorily, reaching up to close the cover of the keyboard with a firm indication of what her answer should be.

“A pack. I’m out.”

“You’re gonna get cancer like Grandpa Mike and have to shove a piece of plastic up your nose just to breathe before you’re out of high school. You’re going to look stupid and die.”

“I’m prepared to deal with that.”

“Where’s Jerome?”

Jerome was their five-year-old brother.

“He’s in the bathroom, doing lord knows what.”

“What do you mean, ‘lord knows what’? Aren’t you supposed to watch him so he doesn’t fall in the toilet?”

“I have exceptional hearing.” Laura stuck out her hand covered with a black-inked homemade tattoo of an enormous open-mouthed skull. “I’ll hear the splash and come running,” she guaranteed. Impatiently, she said, “Listen, Maggie, you don’t need to buy anything and you get a killer allowance, so you’re the richest little kid in Detroit. What gives? I’ll pay you back.”

“I charge interest, remember?” Maggie gritted her teeth and pulled crumpled bills out of her back jeans pocket. She reached into the other pocket, and pulled out a small flip notebook. She dated a line, and wrote: FIVE BUCKS. She was into page thirty or so. The thirty pages spoke volumes of her innate idealism.

Laura sucked her breath in sharply, imagining that first, blessed hit of nicotine. Suddenly, she seemed to realize the embarrassing quality of the situation, begging a child five years her junior for money, and got flustered and anxious to keep the continuum of motion in play. “Alright. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? I’m just going to the corner.” She turned to go, her sneakers squeaking, but stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing a lime green thermal that emphasized her paleness and freckles. Her eyes, black in the dim light, lifted Maggie’s up to make sure she was listening, “Can you stay upstairs to make sure Jerome’s okay while I’m gone?”

Maggie dropped her eyes and mumbled, “Sure.” Her sister was always covering her ass for something she wasn’t doing, anyway. Always multitasking.

Maggie looked up. She was gone.

SLAM! The door shook the windows.

Maggie reached up to grab hold of the chain switch between her fingers. She pulled. The basement stairs lightened with each step, and she soon found herself in the bright, drenching sun of the living room: beige carpeting, white walls, mirrors, family photos. The air had gone from basement-damp to late-October--indoors, windows-shut dusty.

She heard the water in the upstairs bathroom running, a dull, inner-wall sound. What the hell could a five-year-old be doing in the bathroom with the water running?

Surprisingly, the door opened right up when she test-jiggled the handle. Jerome was standing in front of the mirror, his huge head of black waves sticking out to shield his face. His hand was in his mouth, wiggling something.

“Dude, you got a loose tooth?”

The wide-eyed expression that met Maggie’s eyes was one mixed with surprise and fear, as still-baby fingers tugged and shook cautiously at the rooted foundations of primary teeth.

“Yea –aeah,” Jerome gurgled, spit and blood making a tiny river down his chin. Obviously, brave curiosity was at play, and he wasn’t crying y-e-t…so.

“Well, you need anything? An ice cube? A hug? A knuckle-sandwich?”

She knew this would make him laugh. It worked.

Blood sprayed all over the bathroom mirror in gleeful, red droplets.

“Thtop it. I’m thrying to thoncenthrate.”

Maggie squinted both visibly and mentally as she evaluated the situation. Should she just let her little brother go to town on his tooth without ‘adult’ supervision, or should she do the whole coaching thing that’s expected in these childhood milestones? She recalled her loose teeth memories, and just wanting to be left alone. In fact, she might’ve swallowed half of her loose baby teeth in her sleep, by accident anyway.

“Want me to stick around to watch the fun, buddy?”

“Eh.” Jerome stated, closing his mouth and visibly wiggling the tooth with his tongue. He had a lumpy cheek. He turned his attention to the mirror, opening wide to reveal the multitudinous future of loose prospects. Maggie looked cockeyed at the red-spattered mirror and shrugged. What more could he do, anyway?

“Well, if you need some help, just let me know,” She looked him in the mirrored eyes – the hazels were more calm now. “I’ll be right…” she pointed outside the bathroom door, “out there.”

“Othay,” he agreed, his tongue wiggling away at the tooth, again.

Maggie closed the bathroom door, and went back into the dusty warmth of the living room. Outside, dry, blowing leaves were wreaking havoc on pretty much any plant life that was still in existence on the ground. She looked out the window, and down the sidewalk. The thin, defiant figure of her sister appeared, her very jeans even arguing her every step, their hugeness blowing in the wind; any other direction than her. Her hair just existed. No movement. The original shoulder-length pigtails were just phantom images now. She looked so goddamn ridiculous. Maggie rolled her eyes, but went into the kitchen, anyway, to be there when she came through the door.

“Lose something?” Maggie shot at her as soon as she appeared through the door.

“What?” Laura asked, looking down and around at her sneakers, baggy jeans, green thermal shirt. She felt her pockets. “What’d I lose?” Her eye looked even more green with that shirt. Confused.

“Your hair.” Maggie inquired, “Where’d it disappear to?”

“Eff you,” Laura slapped down a crinkly, plastic supermarket bag on the kitchen countertop as she bent down to unlace her black Adidas. Maggie saw more than one object in the bag.

“Jerome’s losing a tooth right now,” she announced, craning her neck to get a better view of the contents of the bag. Cigarettes and something else…

“Huh?”

“Yeah. He probably has it out by now.”

“Why aren’t you up there with him?”

“I was. He doesn’t need my help, I guess.”

Laura raised her eyebrows for a minute, then finished shaking off her sneakers. She strode past Maggie authoritatively with her bag and within seconds could be heard knocking on the bathroom door. She waited and toed the kitchen floor. “You forgot my change!” she yelled after a full minute. She looked up.

Laura stood in front of her. “Come with me for a sec.”

Down the stairs and into the basement; on went the lone lightbulb.

“Everything okay?”

Laura was at the piano, lifting the top and peering inside its depths where shiny tines lay like musical teeth. “Uhm-hmm,” she responded. “It’s out – the tooth.” A flash of white paper was handed off to Maggie before the update could register.

“What’s this?” Maggie held a slightly wrinkled and very lumpy envelope in her hand. Opening it, she found several singles, fives…a bunch of twenties. “What is this?” she repeated. “Why’s there money in the piano?”

“It’s yours,” Laura said.

Maggie blinked.

“It’s pretty much everything you’ve ever lent to me over the last few years. I knew you never expected me to pay you back, but I didn’t want to disappoint you by following through on that.” She eye-cornered Maggie with a glance and nervously laughed. “You expect nothing but the worst from me…you’ve got every reason: I’ve been a pretty crappy sibling, but I always wanted to pay you back no matter what, so I’ve made sure to put everything I borrowed into that envelope within a week of borrowing it from you…I just didn’t want you to know yet. I wanted to give it all back to you in a few years to put towards a car, but I think you’d probably rather have a new piano right now? Maybe one that can stay upstairs?”

Maggie looked at Laura, then at the dilapidated piano, then at the envelope full of tightly packed bills. “How many packs of cigarettes is this?” she asked as she gave her sister a hug. She didn’t want Laura to see that she was probably going to cry.

Upstairs, Jerome tucked his freshly yanked tooth underneath his pillow, and ran outside to play catch with his pal, Casper. Maggie went upstairs and looked at the baby tooth under the pillow covered with flying Supermans. It had traces of now-brown blood at the root and caught the glint of the late-afternoon October sun from the window. She cradled it for a few seconds before pulling a fiver from the bulging envelope from her back pocket. She soundlessly slid them together under the flying Supermans and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

where were the breadcrumbs now?

2009-03-04T00:01:00.002-06:00

soft magics

2009-03-03T00:43:00.002-06:00

There were kittens everywhere. Crawling over armchairs and scaling bookshelves and popping tiny kitten heads out from behind doors and under beds. Gray kittens and white kittens and orange kittens and black kittens. Patterned kittens, in tortoiseshell and patchwork and tiger stripe and paint splotch. Purebred kittens, with pedigrees and lineages, from the finest schools. Street kittens, with chips on their shoulders and no breeding, but hearts of scrappy gold. Tiny kittens and giant kittens. Skinny kittens and fat kittens. Kittens sleeping and running and pouncing and meowing and stalking and scratching and dancing and eating and planning and dreaming. Kittens everywhere.

Kacey was a dog person. She’d grown up with dogs, liked their loyalty, their playfulness, the way they looked at her with nothing but pure adoration in their eyes. She still had a photo album back at her house that was filled with snapshots of all her old dogs, from Goldie to Snappers to Goldie Jr. She’d pull it out on autumn days when she was feeling nostalgic and remember the good times she’d had with her pups. But she wasn’t at her house now; she was at her aunt Gretchen’s, and Gretchen was most definitely a cat person.

Kacey stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind her, nearly catching a tabby in the doorway. She brushed past the brocade couch and felt Siamese paws grab at her skirt. She gingerly stepped around the chipped wood coffee table where a giant Maine coon sprawled, halfway falling off. Two twin calicos watched her from the top of the china cabinet, their green eyes blinking in unison.

Aunt Gretchen was sitting in the kitchen, playing solitaire and drinking lemon tea that smelled like whiskey. A Russian Blue rubbed against her legs and purred as she flipped the ace of clubs over.

“Hey Auntie. How’s Tuesday treating you?” Kacey dropped her bag by the kitchen table. Three white strays immediately ran over to inspect it.

“Same as always, which is nothing to complain about. Pour yourself a drink, sweetie. I’m almost done here.” Aunt Gretchen didn’t look up as she gestured to the cabinet where she kept the tea bags and the liquor. Kacey grabbed a mug and a bag of English Breakfast. She left the whiskey where it was. A black and white tabby peeked through the half-finished bottle of Jack from the other side, the glass distorting its oversized head, making its already huge kitten eyes immense. Kacey closed the cabinet.

As Kacey put the water on to boil, Aunt Gretchen kept at her cards, alternately mumbling to herself and throwing out conversation to her niece.

“How’s your mum doing? Been to the doctor yet?”

“No. She’s okay. I told her what you said, but… She says she’s okay.”

Aunt Gretchen let out a sad sigh. The Persian on her lap also let out a sad sigh.

“That woman’s stubborn. You know it as well as I do. She won’t listen to anything but doctors and science, but still, you just have to keep hoping.”

“I’ll keep at her, Auntie. Don’t worry.” The teakettle sang out in a tone like a high purr. Kacey lifted it off the stove and poured her mug three-quarters full, leaving just enough room for an ice cube. A Himalayan and a hairless Sphynx sat curled around each other, on top of the refrigerator. When she walked over, the Himalyan was kind enough to open the freezer door for her with its paw.

“And your sister? How’s she?” Kacey shrugged, though her aunt didn’t see it. The Sphynx reached a six-fingered paw out and closed the freezer door.

“I haven’t heard from her in, ah, two months now, I guess.” Kacey pulled a chair out from the table, brushed off the jet-black kitten with the missing ear from the seat, and sat down. “We kind of got into it over the holidays.”

“I thought as much,” Gretchen said, turning over an ace of diamonds. “The cards never lie.”

Kacey sipped her tea and watched her aunt lay down the cards in neat rows. Ace of diamonds on ace of spades. Ten of clubs on six of hearts. Eleven of ill-conceived wishes on thirteen of kittens. Gretchen’s deck was new every time.

“What game are you playing this week?” Kacey asked as the Turkish Angora in the chair across the table mouthed her words back at her as she said them. Kacey thought how much she missed Goldie and Snappers and Goldie Jr. Her dogs would never have been so presumptuous, so rude.

“It’s a prayer for the future, dear. For your sister’s well being.” She flipped the top card over, to the two of hearts. “I think she’s coming home.”

“That would be nice, I guess,” Kacey said, taking another sip of her tea. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Abby coming home. She loved her sister, but she was so difficult, so much work… Kacey closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

“Aunt Gretchen?” she asked, not opening her eyes. “Why kittens?”

Gretchen clucked her tongue at the question and Kacey could hear the deck being shuffled. She opened her eyes and watched a Korat stack the cards into a neat pile.

“You need something loyal and smart,” Gretchen answered, picking up the deck again. "Something full of energy but easily managed.” She placed the deck on the table and tapped it. “But really, I think I just like how fluffy they are.”

Kacey looked over to Gretchen, and her aunt looked back at her with bright green eyes. She pushed the cards toward Kacey and shrugged.

“You can pick whatever you like, when it comes down to it. When you’re done with your lessons, and ready to hang your shingle out. But I like kittens the best of all.”

Kacey picked up the deck and cut it three times. Aunt Gretchen began explaining the cards to her in low tones, the same lesson she’d heard before, which card meant good fortune, which card signaled trouble, how to read the face and position. Underneath the table kittens brushed against her ankles and purred under her chair and danced in a circle on their hind legs. Kacey began to deal, and thought about all the puppies she would have someday. Puppies everywhere. She placed the first card and dealt out her future.

you are first to hear

2009-03-02T00:01:00.004-06:00

Listen/download:

The Fitting Room
"Move to the Country"

(2:26)

Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society

2009-02-27T00:01:00.003-06:00

Dear Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society Members,

Mr. Seymour Reid, former Director of the Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society, now Assistant Director of same said Society, is a man of operational salaciousness. That is to say that, since our incorporation, he made the workings of our Society look infinitely sexier than they actually were.

Turns out Seymour Reid is a rat. That is the reason that the Board of the Society has hacksawed a leg from the chair of his appointment.

And now that we've identified him as rat, let us tell you what type of rat he is: He is pack rat. Yes, that horrid sort of rat who scrounges life's flotsam and jetsam, like a greedy squirrel guzzling more than his fair share of acorns. Reid's apartment teemed with canister upon canister of original prints of one-off films, coiled copies of luminary cinematic cartographic works of all genres: Drama, comedy (black and romantic and slapstick), chick flick, foreign, pornographic, and horror.

The list goes on, but if you're not getting the gist, well frankly there's something wrong with you. Maybe you should consider our continuing education course SRCCS095: Cartographic Cinema Studies for Beginners, Returning Students, and Complete Dolts.

Next round of classes start in mid-June.

But back to thick of the plot: When the Society's "alleged" "remote" "film shed"—the one that "only he" had "keys" to or knew the "location" of but couldn't map from "memory"—"allegedly" "burned" "to the ground", we members of the Society all sobbed together over our collective misfortune.

The insurance money came through though, and we cooed at all the zeroes that trailed the 7. Remember how we cooed? Oh we cooed. But no amount of cooing could ever quell the tremendous sense of loss we felt. Am I right?

Remember how, in the Twinesdale Library's Community Room, we all talked for what felt like weeks about how it didn't matter that we didn't have a single masterpiece remaining to fill what would have been, without all the talking, an evening silence and charting of coordinates? We shared our feelings, became One, which is so much more than Many.

It felt romantic, didn't it, to be missing something loved by so few? It did.

But the shed? There were never any films stored there. That shed may as well have been a leprechaun crowned king of the Bermuda Triangle, because it never existed.

This pack rat, our rat, (now) Assistant Director Mr. Seymour Reid, was at home every night, hosting private showings from our archives for a party of one.

He used an antique film projector to disperse the images and dialogue that express who were are over his filthy, off-white living room wall. He'd constructed his furniture out of some of the canisters and used others as artistically painted wall-hangings, and still others he used to warm tortillas on his stove. He was, almost literally, completely surrounded by things that are and should have always been ours.

Well, we've reclaimed them! They are in their rightful hands once more. Our hands. The Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society's hands. Now please set down those towers of life-saving canisters and smack your hands together in a little clap.

Haha. I'm giddy, giggly! Can you tell? But in all seriousness...

The rumors will continue to grow, and the Society’s official position is: Let them.

Let them be like a desert overrun with Jumping Cholla Cactus. Let them be like Romanian infants gone stir crazy in their cribs, who gets more aloof and angry as their flesh and bones bellow toward adolescence. Let them be like a bathtub full of snakes in a place where mice don't exist, so the snakes feast on each other until the strongest becomes the sum of their total.

But please, be civil when you see Mr. Seymour Reid at our meetings. And please continue to make your membership dues payable to him. The Society is his namesake, after all.

Sincerely,
The Board
Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society

2009-02-26T07:28:00.004-06:00

fold it up

2009-02-25T01:13:00.005-06:00

Listen/download:

Rench
"Fold It Up"

(3:24)

Letter from a loved one

2009-02-24T08:29:00.003-06:00

My dear
The time since we last spoke
Has passed so quickly
So much has occurred
In the moments
Of your life

My dear
You have framed so many photos
Hang them delicately on your walls
I see you look at them often
That pretty smile
Regretful tears

My dear
You have adorned yourself
In my jewelry
Items you have made anew
As you walk through this life
Watching it with you

My dear
You have questioned this life
I have provided for you
Paths chosen all alone
With strength
I have told you

My dear
Patience please
I hear you speak
The darkest of the night
May I still have this dance
For the rest of your life

David Attenborough's The Life of Birds

2009-02-23T07:47:00.001-06:00

2009-02-20T08:08:00.015-06:00

Good Boy

2009-02-18T23:55:00.002-06:00

I'd heard him scuttling across the floor of my bedroom all that morning, his claws tapping on the hardwood each time he came over to check if I was awake. He wanted to go on a walk and I was, in his opinion, rested enough. As I slid my legs off the bed and pushed myself upright he became excited and started doing little figure 8's by the door. I pulled myself into my pants and shirt and we headed outside.

While we were walking I noticed his claws were still making the same clicking sound and I decided to cut his nails when we got
inside. We returned up the stairs and he looked at me expectantly, waiting for his treat. Normally I just drop it on the floor, but this time I made him come get it out of my hand so I could snatch his collar. He crouched and backed away, but I was too fast. I dragged him into the kitchen and got the clippers.

I'd just started on the third leg when it happened. I misjudged the length of the nail and he yelped and jerked his paw from my hand. As the thick red liquid started bubbling from the wound I flinched and reached for the dishtowel hanging on the oven door. The blood was spilling on his chest and I tried to apologize as I wiped it from his fur, but he just looked at me and began to shake. I wrapped the dishtowel over the wound, hastily finished the job and freed him from my embrace.

He stood on the foot well and didn't appear to be in pain, but something would have to be done to stop the bleeding. He sat down and started licking his foot and I got some gauze and tape, competing with his tongue as I secured the bandage. He followed me into the living room, seemingly ok with his new footwear, and plopped down on his blanket next to the couch.

Later that day he got up and started across the room. I looked up from my book and noticed that the bandage was now completely red, so I rose and followed the little trail of paw prints he left on the floor from his bed to his water dish. I watched as he casually lapped up the water, ignoring the growing pool of red liquid forming around his foot. I reached down to lift his leg and the soaked bandage came off easily in my hand. As I secured a new larger bandage around his paw he continued to drink, annoyed at my interference. I cleaned the prints off the floor and left the house for the afternoon.

When I returned later that evening, I again found the room covered in small red footprints. I followed them into the kitchen and then into the living room, where the footprints were concentrated around my dog, asleep on his blanket. I changed his bandage once more and cleaned the floors, but the bleeding continued throughout the night and by morning I was worried.

I phoned the veterinarian and she suggested we come in, so I loaded him in the car, the blood pooling around him on the seat. I apologized to the Vet for the mess we'd made in the waiting room, but she was kind and said not to worry, that sort of thing happened all the time. She cauterized the wound and sent us off, but by the time we got home it was bleeding again. I took him back that evening, but that time only an hour or two passed before it opened up again. We repeated this many times over the next few days, until I finally convinced her to teach me how to cauterize the wound at home. It seemed to work for a while, but after some time the effect of my repeated soldering dwindled to nothing.

As the weeks passed I became increasingly consumed with his care, but no matter what I tried his condition remained the same. I made him a series of washable bandages that I changed many times a day, but he still bled through them while I was at work or sleeping. I spent most of my free time cleaning up the marks and stains he'd leave in the apartment, eventually buying scraps from carpet stores to cover the areas with the heaviest traffic. At night he slept in the bathtub on a little pile of blankets, a small river of blood flowing steadily down the drain.

The first few months were hard, but I'm getting used to it now. When we walk around the neighborhood he leaves a trail of footprints that becomes almost a solid line if it doesn't rain for a while. Everyone knows about us, and most cross the street when they see us coming. It feels as though every surface in our apartment is saturated with his blood, but I no longer mind. I've stopped scrubbing the floors, I've stopped changing the carpet scraps, and I've stopped making him sleep in the tub. I let him sleep in the bed with me now.

downtimes

2009-02-18T07:19:00.005-06:00

She chewed the top of her straw, then sucked up a sip of Diet Coke. Downtimes were a drag (she preferred to stay busy), except when Mr. Frey was around, inspecting the tables and the kitchen like some detective on one of those forensics shows.

“Sandy,” he called. “Something is sticky under here. Let’s hope it’s maple syrup.”

She set her soda down on the counter and grabbed a soapy rag from the tub, and approached the offending table. Mr. Frey pointed, his finger encircled by a heavy gold ring. Was she squidged out? No, she wasn’t. She was used to it. Plenty of other girls would be grossed out, were scared to get their hands dirty. But not Sandy. She wiped the goo with a hard-won resolve and then wiped it again. Syrup, she said to herself. Syrup.

When the table squeaked clean, Mr. Frey moved off to continue his examination in the kitchen. She tossed the rag back in the tub and resumed her straw chewing. Not as good as a cigarette, but at least it gave her something to do. She chewed till her teeth hurt. For a few days, she’d been strong, but a brutal arctic freeze had settled in, the days were dark, and she was damn tired. Weeks of double shifts were taking their toll. If she were busy all day maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but the slow times were killer.

“Sandy,” Mr. Frey said, the kitchen door swinging shut behind him. “Come here a minute.” She walked with a switch, crossing the dining room to stand close to him and his expensive-looking knee-length wool overcoat. “This weather, this economy,” he shook his head, surveying the empty room. “I know it’s been slow.” He handed her something, tucking it gently between her fingers. “If you need more work, just say the word.”

“I’ll think on it,” she replied. Then tossed her sand-colored hair, adding, “And you should think on adding sushi to the menu. You know, dress this place up a little bit.”

“In my experience, dear, dressing up has never been as profitable as dressing down.” He gave her a smile, his eyes lingering on her abundant breasts, then he headed out the door, bells clinging, and down the handicap ramp to his black Cadillac, motor still running. In her hand was a crisp twenty-dollar bill, folded in quarters. She slipped it into her back pocket. When the Cadillac had pulled out of the parking lot, Sandy stepped into the kitchen.

“So, I’m gonna run out for a minute.”

Bev gave her a stern look, maternal and disapproving. “You best not be smoking.”

“I’m not!” she swore. “I have to get to the Kmart. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“What is it this time?” Bev was the no-nonsense head cook. Despite thirty years between them, she numbered among Sandy’s best friends.

“I told you,” Sandy said. “I have a TV on layaway.”

Bev, who was finishing up the dinner rush prep, wiped her hands on her apron. Sandy expected her to lay in about paying down her student loan, but all she said was, “Put on a fresh pot before you go.”
Then the bells on the front door clanged. The TV would have to wait.

“Seat yourself,” Sandy said to a young woman with a small child waiting just inside the door. She trailed them to a booth and placed two menus on the table. “Cold out there today, huh?”

“Pancakes!” the little girl said from somewhere inside the purple scarf bundled around her head.

“Sorry, honey,” Sandy replied. “We stop serving breakfast at one o’clock.” She glanced at the clock on the wall; it was a quarter after two.

“But,” the mother said, “Mr. Frey said we could come for pancakes any time.” Up close, Sandy could see that she was just a girl herself. Nineteen, maybe twenty, with a four-year-old in tow. And if she knew Mr. Frey…

“Let me ask the cook.” She gave the child a wink.

In the kitchen, she asked Bev, “Mind whipping up some pancakes?”

“Pancakes?!” Bev was indignant, like she’d just been asked to slaughter a kitten, dip it in batter, and fry it up. “The griddle’s already clean. Can’t do it.”

“Bev,” Sandy cooed. “It’s one of Frey’s girls. She’s got a little kid and the kid wants pancakes.”

“God damn it,” Bev said. “I don’t care who it is. I said no.” Bev was hardened from twenty-five years’ active duty, serving on the front lines of the school cafeteria. She’d been to hell and back, she’d seen it all, and she knew when to take an order and when to go AWOL.

“Come on,” Sandy tried again. “I’ll clean the griddle up after.”

“Like hell you will.”

“Bev.”

“No.”

“Be-ev.”

She was built sturdy, short and squat, and with her hands on her hips, staring you down, she could be scarier than a Kubrick drill sergeant. But Sandy knew beneath her armor she was all soft and lumpy inside, and little kids, no matter how monstrous they were, well, they still had to eat. She turned her back to Sandy and fired up the griddle, then peered over her shoulder and said, “Where’s my coffee?”

Sandy brought the news back to the table, where the mother had just finished detangling the child from her puffy pink jacket. “And what’ll you have?”

“Just coffee for me,” the mother said. Her face was preternaturally pale, her eyes were sunken into gray pockets, and the rest of her was indistinguishable beneath a frumpy worn-out coat.

While the coffee was brewing, Sandy asked Bev to make it a tall stack, with bacon and hash browns on the side. Then she fixed up two glasses of orange juice and brought them to the table. She expected the mother to pick up the juice and gulp it eagerly but she didn’t touch it, and instead gazed over at the coffeepot, slowly percolating. “Coffee’ll be another minute,” Sandy said.

When it was ready, she poured a mug for Bev, adding one packet of Equal, just the way she liked. Then she brought another mug to the mother and poured it. “Bottomless cup,” she heard herself say, but the mother hardly noticed, as she watched the little girl coloring with nubs of crayon on the back of the paper placemat. A few minutes later, she brought out all the food. But the woman seemed embarrassed, agitated.

“I don’t think we need all that,” she said plainly.

“Nonsense,” Sandy said, putting on her perfect perky waitress act. She stepped away from the table, as the girl dumped syrup all over everything. Sandy resumed her perch at the counter, chewing on her soda straw, and spied the woman plucking a piece of bacon off her daughter’s plate. She even sipped at the juice.

Later, Sandy brought out the bill, charging them for a short stack and a cup of coffee, barely four dollars. The woman, only a few years younger than her, looked up at her with kind eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

“Is Mr. Frey good to you all down the way?” Sandy asked.

“Better than others I know,” she said. “But I’d rather be in here.”

“This ain’t much…”

“For her.” She tilted her head at the girl. Sandy looked at the child’s small face, hoped she’d grow up better than her mother, better than her, hoped she’d get away from this hardscrabble town a hundred miles from nowhere. A flash of gold and green stole her thoughts then, as Sandy saw the mother’s hands. Her fingernails were impossibly long, perfectly polished with a detailed design at the tips.

Did they make her angry? Probably they should have. Probably someone else wouldn’t have even noticed. But she did, and it made her sort of sad, sort of what-the-fuckish, who had money for manicures but not enough for food?

She stood dumbly for a minute, then the mother gathered up the child, helped her into her jacket and wound the scarf around her neck, slipped her hands into her mittens, then threw on her own coat. She deposited four single dollar bills onto the table and fished the loose change from her pocketbook. They left, bells clanking in their wake. She’d tipped a mere twenty-two cents.

Sandy sighed, got herself a new straw to chew on. Mr. Frey made it seem like the answer to all her problems. After all, the diner did not afford him that Cadillac, the strip club did. She’d thought about it. Just do what she was doing here, but without her top on and for better tips. These double shifts were really getting to her. Maybe she’d be better off working nights at the club. She felt tired beyond her years.

Bev, who had finished scraping down the griddle for the second time that day, came out front and asked, “Manny here yet?” It was three o’clock and her shift was ending, but she couldn’t leave until Manny the night cook arrived. He showed up at ten after, and Bev took off. Sandy knew that as soon as she got home, she’d start cooking supper for her husband and her daughter who had moved in with her three children. A lot of mouths to feed. And Bev would feed them all.

Before the dinner crowd trickled in, Sandy grabbed her coat and stepped outside into the frigid wind, the snow piled in clumps, and lit up. Not because she had to, not even really because she wanted to, but because that’s just how it was. She needed a day off, a day to stay at home, to lie in bed, to watch movies all day. One day to recharge. Forty more dollars she owed on the television. One week’s worth of cigarettes. But it was just so hard. All of it.

HoodRich, 2009

2009-02-17T00:01:00.003-06:00

Original photograph that I also embroidered.

puppy love

2009-02-16T11:24:00.003-06:00

allesthesia

2009-02-13T07:47:00.004-06:00

The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and runs an ivory comb through its long, ghostly hair. The comb, thinks Elizabeth, looks like the type that Victorian ladies used to use to pin their hair up, an ornately carved piece that fits perfectly in the hand, ivory from a real elephant or a real whale or a real something that used to be alive. Just the same as the ghost used to be.

The ghost is dead. Transparent. Overall deceased-looking. The comb is dead and solid and as real as any other object in Elizabeth’s room.

The ghost is wearing a dressing gown. The ghost is wearing a nightgown under a dressing gown. The ghost is humming softly to itself as it combs through the insubstantial wisps. The ghost raises its head and looks straight through Elizabeth, deep, gaping holes where its eyes should be, but aren’t.

Elizabeth thinks how strange the word “comb” is, how it’s one of those words that loses its meaning with repetition. It’s an odd word to spell out, too, with that strange combination of the M and the B. She would close her eyes to visualize the word spelled out, but unlike the ghost, she can’t see without eyes, and it’s important to her to be able to see right now. Now, with a ghost with no eyes at the end of her bed.

Sydney is down the hall, in the kitchen. She is probably making toasted peanut butter and jelly, her favorite before-bed snack. She is probably untying the twist-tie on the bread, pulling out two pieces from the middle of the loaf, putting them in the toaster. She is probably laying out the peanut butter, the jelly, the knife and plate. Sydney is doing all of this without any idea that at the same exact moment there is a dead woman in her bedroom, staring at and through Elizabeth. Sydney has always been Elizabeth’s greatest defender but this time Sydney isn’t there. She is in the kitchen and she is not thinking that Lizzie is maybe in trouble, maybe paralyzed with fear. She is probably thinking about how she hopes she doesn’t burn the toast.

+++

(Another ghost lives in the space between their kitchen wall and the wall of the adjoining apartment. Every night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. it floats into their neighbor’s kitchen and begins to make a ghostly meal. It chops nonexistent vegetables, dices spectral meat, stirs unreal pots of stew that nevertheless come to a real boil. One night, months from now, Elizabeth and Sydney’s neighbor will wake from a strange dream about a woman he once loved, and he will stumble to the kitchen doorway. He will be searching, he thinks, for a glass of water, and he will see his ghost standing at the stove, stirring a stew that will never be real enough to eat. He will look at it, and he will whisper, “Elizabeth,” shocked and hopeful. Not Elizabeth his neighbor with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice, but Elizabeth, the woman he once loved.

His ghost has no eyes either, only those same dark, gaping holes, but it seems like something’s buried down there, if only he could stare deep enough.)

+++

Neighbor-Elizabeth knows about portents and she knows that the eyeless ghost at the end of her bed is not a good one. Elizabeth’s mother was a gypsy, after all, and she instilled in her daughter the knowledge of how the world really works, along with a healthy dose of fear. Elizabeth knows what things to be afraid of, which signs are meant to reassure or give fair warning. She is not afraid of muggers, of flying, of getting hit by a car or caught in a fire. Her mother taught her that death comes in cleverer disguises.

Up and down, up and down the comb goes through the ghost’s long hair. Over and over, mesmerizing.

+++

(“A candle to burn to keep out the spirits,” her mother tells her, “and this charm to ward off the evil eye. This other one’s from your grandmother’s grandmother, for good fortune and safe travel, and… Are you even listening?” Elizabeth was, but not in the way her mother meant. “If you don’t take this seriously, who knows what will happen to you? The world is not a safe place, tehara. The world is not soft.” But Elizabeth is only fourteen and her idea of danger is still undeveloped. She nods and pretends to listen while she doodles hearts and arrows in her notebook, mixing her initials with various crushes, casting unwitting love spells of her own.)

+++

Elizabeth is sitting upright at the head of her bed, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. The ghost’s gaze hasn’t changed, but Elizabeth knows that now she is being looked at, not through. She can’t imagine this is a good change. From the kitchen she hears the toaster pop and a sharp intake of breath as Sydney touches the hot bread and quickly drops it on her plate. Elizabeth can hear all those little sounds; they are that close. She would just have to whisper, “Syd,” and Sydney would hear her, come down the hall, find out what was wrong, save her. But Elizabeth knows inevitabilities as well as she knows omens, and she is on a high-speed train hurtling toward a clearer and clearer fate, and no whisper or shout will derail it now. Why even try.

+++

(When their neighbor addresses his ghost by his departed beloved’s name, nothing happens at all. The ghost keeps stirring, staring at him with no eyes, and the ghostly pot keeps boiling, and the seconds tick by. But that is not what he will see. He will imagine a spark of recognition. He will think he sees his own Elizabeth somewhere in the depths of those black spaces. He will feel the air around him change to spring, to be infused with love like he used to know it, making the world Technicolor again. He will shake his head and turn around, glass of water forgotten, and he will go back to bed, to sleep. He will think it was a dream. He will feel somehow reassured.)

+++

The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and stops combing its long, long hair. It stares at Elizabeth without eyes, and wisps of hair fly around its face, lifting and falling as though in a breeze. Elizabeth’s mother taught her about portents and warnings, safety and danger, and somewhere in the back of her mind are all those lessons still. Elizabeth lets go of her legs and comes to her knees, leans forward. The ghost holds out its ivory comb to her, a solid thing in its spectral hand. The details of the engraving are so delicate, so intricate, so amazing, and their swirls and symbols never seem to end. In the kitchen, Sydney has started humming, and Elizabeth wishes she could stop for a moment and kiss her. Instead, Elizabeth reaches out her hand.

Queen Lucille

2009-02-12T07:28:00.003-06:00

Polite Society to Receive Honorable Mention

2009-02-11T08:10:00.013-06:00

Listen/Download:
"Polite Society to Receive Honorable Mention"

This is a song composed by me and my band The Olmsted Ensemble, mixed and mastered last night just for Showed & Told! This is an illustration I drew to accompany the song.

Apocalypse Monologues: Nuclear

2009-02-09T22:54:00.004-06:00

B is offstage the entire time. A is on stage with a walkie talkie, or some other device. All communication with B is through the device. Every lights up/lights down should accompany either an electrical humming or walkie-talkie static.

[Lights up.]
B. It’s your move.
A: Okay. I move my horse up two and left one.
B: It’s a knight. Knight to G4.
A: Yeah. I believe that’s checkmate.
B: No, no it’s not. Not even a little bit.
A: Did I sink your battleship?
B: What? Bah. No. Do you want to do something else? We can watch a movie?
A: Yeah, okay.
[We hear B start a movie. A listens on his end via the walkie-talkie. A opens a bag of pre-made popcorn. We hear the crunching as lights go down.]

[Lights up.]
B: I spy with my little eye something that starts with the letter G…
A: Green beans.
B: Yeah.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
[A is loudly weeping. B is consoling him.]
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: When my mom had this bunker made, it was just another sign of her mental wacky. The preacher fed her this fairy tale, and she just believed it. For whatever reason, it just made total sense to her. My dad put up with it, because he pretty much did whatever it took to placate her. She promised she’d take everything in a divorce, and he feared losing his money more than a lifetime of misery. So, Mom got her Rapture fortress. I never got the logic of that. If she believed in the Rapture, wouldn’t she assume she’d be saved? If so, she doesn’t need to hide in a hole. I mean, nobody thinks "The Rapture is real and I am fucked!" Only the self-righteous believe in the Rapture. It was like her carrot on a stick, which was also what she used to beat me.
B: Maybe she built the hole for you, sinner, what with all your Krispy Kreme gluttony and Alyson Hannigan posters.
A: Ha! Yeah, well, if she built the hole for me, I really wish she would have populated it with more DVDs of Buffy and porn and less Ten Commandments and VeggieTales. I mean, VeggieTales? What the fuck? I’m not eleven! She doesn’t know anyone who is eleven! Instead, here I am, whiling away the rest of my, what?, years? months? memorizing the commentary track to the 1923 version of the Ten Commandments. I mean, really, if I survived the Rapture, doesn’t that mean my soul is a lost cause and she could just allow me to happily wallow and die in my degenerate filth?
B: It would be pretty awkward for everyone involved if your mother stocked her Rapture bunker for you with porno. Can you imagine your mother shopping for you for porno? You’d probably get VeggieTales-themed porno.
A: Ha! Yeah, with titles like --
B: You know, what? Let’s not go down that route right now.
A: Okay. But when it all went down, of course, it wasn’t angels or demons or fairies or unicorns or whatever. It was crazy religious nutjobs.
B: Like your mother.
A: Ha! Yeah, I guess so. Except my mom didn’t have nuclear weapons. If she did, she would have bombed San Francisco a long time ago, in an attempt to please God? (That’s the kind of logic she would work with.) So, it all went down and my parents were, you know, in Cabo and I was at home on the couch.
B: Watching Buffy.
A: Watching Buffy. And now Cabo’s gone and I live in their basement.
B: …
A: What about you? Any funny stories about your mom?
B: … My mother was a school teacher when she was younger, but she had been living in a nursing home when the strikes landed. She had Alzheimer’s-related dementia. I don’t know if she would have known what was happening. Cognitively, she probably wouldn’t have been aware. I like to hope not, anyway. I would like to think that it would have been over before it hurt her.
A: Did you ever visit her?
B: Rarely. I loved her. Of course, I loved her. But visiting her… I would be with her and find myself missing her. Missing her in her presence. It was awful. I didn’t like seeing her like that. And she had no idea who I was. It was horrible. After a while, I found myself going more to keep up appearances with the staff, so that they wouldn’t think I was a crappy son. Maybe if they thought I cared, they would be nicer to her. I don’t know. Soon after, I slowly stopped going. My visits became less frequent. I would just pay the bill. That was my way of visiting. … Man, sorry. This is miserable.
[BEAT.]
A: Are there good memories?
B: Of course. Of course there were. She taught me to drive. That was funny. Even though she was a nervous wreck, she still tried to be patient and lighthearted, though she was obviously going nuts in the passenger seat. I wasn’t doing anything crazy. We were in an empty parking lot at the mall, going fifteen miles per hour in her station wagon, and she was still grinding her foot into her invisible brake and clenching the dashboard, as if I was driving like Steve McQueen.
A: Who?
B: As if I was driving like someone in The Fast and the Furious.
A: Ah.
B: She was clearly going nuts. It was like her smiles were all just well-intentioned lies to help me feel comfortable and confidant, while, really, the fear was tying her up in knots, as if she expected me to accidentally hit the auto-destruct button on the car. And the noises she made! Just inarticulate sounds that kept her from cursing! But she suffered through with this horribly ineffective façade of pleasantry. And, of course, this did not at all make me feel comfortable and confidant. It made me feel like I was doing everything wrong and I was about to kill us both in a fiery wreck! It was definitely not a fun afternoon for either of us, but a good memory. That’s the mother I miss. And I had been missing her for years before she died.
A: …
B: …
A: What do you think the surface is like?
B: Poison.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: How long will we be down here?
B: You should stop thinking of here as temporary. You live down here now. There is no up there. This is your world. The hole you live in is your home.
A: But for how long? Months? Years? Decades?
B: Forever. There is no surface. The world is an evil, burning husk. There is no civilization. There is no culture. There is no surprise party waiting for you to poke your head out like a groundhog.
A: Damn, man, how do you know? How do you know? You don’t know that!
B: I do know that, and so do you.
A: There must be other people out there.
B: I bet there are, but they’re other mole people, like us, living in holes, watching DVDs, eating canned goods. Maybe some people are living communally. Maybe some families are living in luxury holes. Maybe some people were able to make contact with others, like us. Maybe some people are living alone, without even VeggieTales.
A: It sucks not knowing.
B: You know. You know you know, you just don’t like the knowing.
A: Maybe someone’s coming.
B: No one’s coming.
A: …
B: I’m sorry.
A: At least I have you.
B: At least I have you.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: Do you think the mole people who aren’t alone are trying to make babies? To keep the human race alive?
B: I bet there are people trying to procreate. I don’t know how smart that is, with limited food, water, air, space. With no health care. No nothing.
A: If there were another person in my hole, I’d want to have as much sex as possible.
B: You’d probably have as much sex as you had before.
A: Damn, man. Why you gotta go there?
B: Plus, what then? You’ve added another person to your hole. What happens then? Where do you go from there? It’s not like the holes are going to be connected with a series of tubes, where all our holes will form some underground city.
A: Shouldn’t they try to reproduce?
B: Reproduce with what? Their siblings? What’s the point? Why would you raise a kid in a hole? What would you teach it about the world? "This hole is the entire world!"
A: There’s an existentialist crisis waiting to explode.
B: And why? Just to check "Did my poorly thought-out part to save humanity" off a list? Do they just plan to keep filling up their holes with inbred offspring? So, that, what?, when the space aliens of the future come and open our holes they’ll find a cluster of dead mutants? Doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.
A: Man, sometimes you sure do suck.
B: Sorry.
A: You talk as if we should all just be patiently waiting to die.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: I think about all the petty, stupid shit a lot.
B: Me, too.
A: Like trying to hunt down the various issues of the Buffy comic book. Like it fucking meant something. "Hey, look at me! I have a perfect collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books! Bask in my oily sheen!"
B: Squabbling with my then-wife.
A: Not talking to that girl at the comic book store.
B: All the moments of potential squandered with bickering.
A: I watched a Hell of a lot of TV. Like, I really studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know? And Angel. You could have asked me anything about it, and I would have the answer for you.
B: We would fight over the stupidest things, like leaving the lights on.
A: Like, of all things, that was my specialty: the lives of fictional characters. That was what I was really good at. That was the one thing.
B: Or vacuuming. God, I hated vacuuming, but, really, it was just vacuuming.
A: I never fought back.
B: I became so small and dark.
A: My life sucked sometimes, and I never fought back.
B: It was like my crappy life was a kingdom, and I fought to preserve it. Preserve it from stupid crap, like having to vacuum.
A: I never stood up for myself.
B: If I were her, I would have left, too. And if I could be me, again, I would have done a better job.
A: I just took the beating.
B: I loved her. I should have really done a better job.
A: I took the beating, and then watched TV.
B: I think about things I should have done differently thirty years ago. What kind of life is that?
A: I should have done a better job with me.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
B: So, the clock is ticking down, it’s 37 to 35, [STATIC]
A: What?
B: [STATIC] dribbling down the court, and even though the crowd is going absolute—[LONGER STATIC] can’t hear a thing
A: Hey, man, you’re breaking up.
B: and I leap out from half-court and hurl the [STATIC] worth and the clock is ticking, [STATIC]
A: Hello?
B: ball flying through [STATIC], buzzer’s about to [STATIC]
A: I can’t hear you.
B: 3-2-[STATIC]
A: Hello? Hello! HEY! Are you there? [rattles device around] HELLO?! Hello? No.
[Lights down]
…

For the love of February...

2009-02-09T11:58:00.001-06:00

Romancing the winter...

2009-02-06T13:21:00.003-06:00

jumbled people-names

2009-02-05T07:26:00.006-06:00

Upon arriving early in the morning, I was paired with a very experienced hospice nurse. The first patient’s room we entered was occupied by a man in his 70’s and his wife, who was watching her husband die of metastatic lung cancer. He had been a client of the hospice unit for about two or three weeks and she hadn’t left his side. In his room was his bed draped lovingly with a handmade blanket, a collection of family photos, and his wife’s cot in the corner, impeccably dressed with sharp plaid sheets. Her suitcase was packed with care, neatly pushed under the cot. The nurse told me she had done this every morning, by 7 o’clock, since her husband’s admission. I remember thinking how strange packing that bag would have been. What type of clothes are appropriate for this setting and, worse, how many days worth should be brought?

The man in the bed had recently made a significant change in condition. Two days prior to my meeting him, this dying man had stopped speaking, stopped responding, and slowly slipped into what appeared to be unconsciousness. He was receiving ample pain medication as well as a medication to help keep his airway as clear as possible. This man with whom I never had the pleasure of speaking took slow, irregular breaths, often with many seconds between them. I noticed that his breaths produced a unique, calming rhythm as we all sat with him in near silence.

When we walked back into the corridor, the red-haired woman with the tightly packed suitcase ran to us with an unmistakable urgency. “I think something has happened” she whispered, “He hasn’t taken a breath in a long time.” The nurse and I hurried into the man’s room. Indeed, his slow, off-tempo respirations were eerily absent this time. He lay there, in his bed, without even his chest moving up and down. The three of us stood surrounding him, saying nothing, watching. Then after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the nurse went to the nurse’s station to retrieve a stethoscope. With it, she listened to the exited man’s silent chest, waiting in vain for any sound to be made. The nurse removed the stethoscope from her ears and took a step back.

“He’s gone” she stated. The man’s wife started to slowly shake and cry quietly. The nurse, who had developed a very special relationship with her, went to her to offer a very soft touch on the arm. Seemingly, with the sensation of this touch, the woman’s quiet tears became one long, loud wail, the sound nearly animalistic. She began to violently shudder, her shoulders wrapping in on her chest.

“Don’t go, Dad” she sobbed. “I won’t know what to do without you.”

I stood alone at the foot of the bed while the nurse and the newly widowed woman cried and touched the peaceful man. I attempted to hold in the tears which threatened to burn my cheeks, but listening to the woman’s guttural pleas to her dead husband forced them from my eyes. While I cried, I began to realize the overwhelming power of lifelong love and the devastation of losing it. I began to envision myself as an old woman, standing by the side of my future husband. I could see our life together, rolling up a screen like such slow film credits; a life of love, of struggle, of joy, gone in one moment. Now, this woman was left to continue a paired life alone. I began to wonder whether the life with this man was worth the devastation of losing him in the end. Would it be better to live and die alone than suffer the pain of such severe loss and longing? Amidst my naive mid-twenties thoughts came a pain in my chest--MY heartache I felt for the broken heart personified standing beside me. At that moment, I knew the depth with which I felt for this stranger’s lost love, all emotion is worth it in the end. However, the END was no longer the finale of some metaphor or extended romance novel. The end of this shared life stood before me in such explicit, blinding detail. Real heartbreak is something my 25 years had no way of preparing me for. So…I cried.

Yup.

2009-02-04T04:03:00.005-06:00

Found in NYC, Wooster Street Between Grand and Canal.

a particle through

2009-02-03T00:02:00.010-06:00

I'm cutting the shapes of all my concerns into folded sheets of white paper of a standard dimension. I have dilations of apprehension and contractions of doubt, tonight. The moon is cutting through with a cocky grace you can't really be sure of.

For now, the sun's absent from the scene, totally blotted by an opposing meridian.

Here's the crux of my problem: I'm terrified that the bulb up there has popped and is forever gone; that it won't ever buoy up again.

It's love, I guess. One that bubbles up your skin, makes you recoil from even gentle touch, and then makes it come off dead in layers. It's a love that impregnates itself in your pores, latches to your tissue and metastasizes.

It's something to love in beaches and parks, bringing stained glass to life, cleaving through dastardly gray clouds, breaking up the dull eave of woe that overhangs winter. It's something to pray for, or beg for if your prayers aren't answered quick enough.

I keep cutting and the scissors start to dull from my constant snips. The result of my work is piling up around me. I'm like the jut of a mountain whose foot has been erased.

Somehow, cutting helps balance the scales of my worry.

There's a pattern that's starting to emerge.

The house is waking up. Slippers scrape softly from all of the rooms and converge in the kitchen. There's drowsy, bad-breathed laughter and the acidic threat of caffeine. There's the dry tumbling sound cereal makes as it gets dumped into a ceramic bowl.

And footsteps once again. Predatory footsteps this time. Many feet gently swarm outside my door. A hand encroaches upon the long brass doorknob.

The door opens without any kind of plea.

Mom shakes me. Dad shakes me. Sister and brother shake me. They take what I've done in handfuls and let it fall over me, laughing.

And the edges of the windows warm with the first indication that there will be another day.

paper kisses

2009-02-02T00:58:00.004-06:00

Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA. December 2008.

2009-01-30T12:27:00.002-06:00

The Apocalypse Monologues: Disease

2009-01-29T15:26:00.001-06:00

We were in the subway, which was a terrible idea. My mom’s plan was to get us to City Island. She thought it’d be safe there. It wouldn’t be, but we were just looking for direction. We wanted to be told and we wanted to go. The subway platform was heaving, hemorrhaging sweat and fear. The sound was immense. You couldn’t hear the subway trains over pre-panic noise. Imagine: we all feared the touch of strangers and here were three hundred strangers crammed into a space to get onto an even smaller tube that would already have been full of sweaty, fearful strangers screaming to and failing to avoid one another’s touch. The disease spreads through various bodily contact: blood, vomit, spit, semen, shit like that. Sweat. And it spreads rapidly and horrifically. Loss of bodily control. Bleeding out of orifices. And agonizing screams. Howls, really. It’s animalistic. The disease fucks up your throat and nose, so that your vocals change. You don’t sound human, because you’re deforming. The infected seek people. As the disease starts to fuck them all up, they don’t want to be alone. It’s not malice on their part. It’s loneliness. They’ve got no cognitive capabilities. It’s all instinct. And they don’t want to die alone. They want help. So they go to people. And here we all were. A hateful, convulsing mass all doing the wrong thing. No good would come of this. And then the bad came. One of the infected stumbled down the staircase into the platform. There are supposed to be police officers containing the people who are obviously diseased. But, really, the people do a good job of policing the problem themselves. This guy was a mess. Not just from the bleeding out. Not just from the disease, but from the bludgeoning he received from whatever good Samaritans tried to beat him down. They were right behind him. You could hear the howls. The howls of the now-diseased vigilantes silenced the crowd and lit off a panic. But there was nowhere to go. Violence erupted, and the infected rolled their way toward the crowd, pushing against each other, stampeding on each other, climbing over each other. There was a rush to nowhere. The other end of the platform was locked. Dozens of people fell or jumped into the subway tunnels. Falling over each other, crushing one another, third-rail electrocution. Though the sudden noise was alarming, it was no surprise when shots rang out. People had started to conceal handguns. The distance with the gun seemed safer than beating away any of the diseased, unless the wounds sprayed blood on the shooter or anyone unfortunate enough to be close-by. Then a chain reaction would start. The people on the subway platform were shooting to clear a path for themselves, not at the diseased. At fleeing people. And then the subway train arrived. The conductor didn’t plan on breaking. He just planned on speeding by the platform. But the tunnels were full. Of people, healthy and otherwise. The train plowed through, I don’t know, a mass of, what?, a hundred? It sprayed people all over the train, the tunnels, the platform. Just a wave of blood. A mist of infected blood rained down on the riot of fear. It rained massacre. Fuck, the noise. It was like a God damned choir of howls. The infection was spreading. Every heartbeat spread more disease. My mom was screaming. But there was nowhere to go. I yanked the strings on my hoodie, trying futilely to protect my face from any sick. It was useless. My mother turned around toward me and gasped. My sister was on my shoulders, crying. I looked up to try to calm her, and she was painted with a film of gore. Blood was cascading out of her noise and ears, bubbling out of her mouth. She began to screech. Like a monster in chrysalis. She was six-years old. So small. She weighed, I don’t know, fifty pounds. I don’t know. Her body was so small. So small. So light. So light.
I threw her.
I threw her at the infected.
I threw her at the infected and ran.
I ran to the stalled train. Somehow, infected blood got into the train and I could see the process of fear and disease spread. The uninfected were like a steam of gasoline waiting for the fire to catch up to them. I scaled the train and ran down the length of it toward the end. To jump into the tunnels. To get to the surface. To run. To run. To run.

The last few moments of my mother’s life were unimaginable. I saw it. She saw me. She watched me do it. I destroyed Katie. And fled my family. The last thing I remember on my mother’s face was a look of horror as she starred at me, palpable disappointment, shock at betrayal by blood, confused dissonance at who I am versus what I did, before bloody hands dragged her to the ground.
She was screaming my name, before the screams turned to howls.

the caretaker

2009-01-29T14:13:00.004-06:00

The caretaker
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.

I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.

That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.

As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.

He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.

The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?

I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.

A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.

The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.

2009-01-28T08:55:00.003-06:00

Her teeth were the least of her problems.

Growing Up

2009-01-27T00:01:00.008-06:00

Dad pushed himself back from the table. Looking down at the space he had made between himself and the table he started to speak, but then stopped himself and sighed. He looked over the round kitchen table at my plate. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I just shrugged and pushed the noodles around with my fork. Dad got up heavily, took his dish and walked past me into the family room.

He paused in front of the enormous potted plant that now took up most of that drab little room. Looking up at the canopy it formed above his head, he reached into the branches and plucked a brown leaf in a quick motion. I saw the edges of his mouth turn up slightly. He let the leaf fall to our floor and continued into his room. I heard the TV turn on and looked back down at my plate. I slid forward in my chair and let my feet touch the ground. I collected my plate and put it in the sink, watching the noodles slide slowly into a little pile near the drain.

Dad came out of his room with his small hand shears and started pruning his plant. He took enormous care in this, looking for any errant growth or sign of fatigue. After 10 minutes or so he stuck his thick finger into the soil, took it out and moved it under his nose. He inhaled deeply and went back into his room, returning with a small watering can. He walked past me in the kitchen and filled the can in the sink. Returning to the plant, he poured the water around its base in practiced motions, careful to let each dose absorb before administering the next. When he was done he looked up again into the plant's branches, glanced at me, said goodnight and went to bed.

Every night went like this, I'd come home from school, let myself in and wait for Dad to return from his job. He'd get home, ask me how school was and start dinner. We'd eat in near silence, then he'd watch TV or take care of the plant. When Mom left the plant had been small enough to fit in the corner behind his chair, but in the weeks and months that followed I watched it grow at an alarming rate. Dad was constantly fertilizing, pruning and repotting the plant, and his work paid off.

The plant soon became too large to keep behind the chair and was moved to the main part of the room. A few months later it became so large it blocked the television, so Dad moved the TV into his room. That was ok, I didn't like watching TV with him anyway. He always laughed in places that weren't funny and sighed anytime someone said something he didn't like. I preferred to stay in my room and look at magazines.

One night I awoke to go to the bathroom, which was directly off of the kitchen, and stopped in front of the plant. It was a nice plant really, tall and proud, its branches healthy and heavy. I could still hear the TV coming from Dad's room, but I could also hear him faintly snoring through the door. I looked at the plant again and undid the snap on the front of my pajamas. With my eyes still trained on Dad's door, I took out my penis and peed a little bit into the pot...not a lot, just a little. I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and finished peeing.

Every night for the next few weeks I repeated this act, growing bolder as the weeks went on and my sabotage went undetected. Dad was starting to notice changes in the plant however and his concern with the plant's health increased. The once luminous leaves had started to brown around the edges, slightly at first, but now it was noticeable.

Dad checked out several books from the library to try to diagnose the problem and started brewing up remedies in the kitchen. Fish parts mixed with vinegar, diluted bleach solutions to spray on the leaves, ground mint on the soil to deter pests...but none of his cures had any effect. He became increasingly desperate until one morning he emerged from his room to find 5 or 6 leaves on the floor around the pot where the plant resided. He reached up quickly to touch the plant, horrified when another leaf fell to join its siblings. Still every night I repeated my ritual and every morning he awoke despondent.

He stopped going to work, calling in sick with imagined symptoms that seemed to mirror those of the plant. Weak limbs, no appetite, hair loss-his boss said it sounded serious and agreed to give him a few days to recover. None of this deterred me though, and the plant’s condition continued to worsen. Now whole branches were dying and breaking off and it looked like the plant's days were numbered. I returned home a week later and found Dad sitting on the floor, his shoulders shaking. He was surrounded by the fallen leaves and branches of his plant and I felt the corners of my mouth begin to turn up slightly.

freehand

2009-01-26T08:52:00.006-06:00

5/8 x 5/8" of green plaid

January to date: high/low, actual/average

extra large dippy egg

2009-01-23T02:29:00.002-06:00

red right ankle

2009-01-22T01:11:00.003-06:00

“You are finished!” Umberto hissed before flitting away, the queen bee off to round up her drones.

Arguably, she had not even truly begun yet. Gwendolyn, having ridden this planet around the sun nearly twenty-six times, was not ready or willing to be put out to pasture just yet; but she was keenly aware that she’d gone around a few more times than the others. A chill shook her bare shoulders, as another fiery bolt of pain crackled up her leg. She winced at the sight of her swelling ankle, the black-and-blue already creeping out from under her pasty skin.

Sitting in a canvas-backed director’s chair, she waited. Her cue came and went with a small eruption of verbal chaos; she would not make her next and last cue, either. Umberto barked orders into a headset, while fiendishly re-fitting Gwendolyn’s final ensemble to another girl’s fragile frame. This was the grand opening of Colette’s new store in the Place Vendôme, and Gwendolyn was in a brash leather belt with tassels shooting out from her hips and swishing against her thighs as she walked; a silk and silver braided necklace that graced her cleavage perfectly; these were not the problem. Nor was the problem that she’d strutted out in these accessories wearing nothing but lingerie, a plain ivory cotton bra and panty set, to give the illusion of a clean palette, no clothing, no distraction. The problem, simply, ostensibly, was the shoes: an impossible six inches high, her feet gingerly balanced atop needle-thin spikes, barely held in place by gauzy golden straps.

Gwendolyn did not question, she did not fear. She would pull it off with dazzle and flair, as usual. She’d guarantee her high-profile spot at the next night’s Hermès show. Four years on the road may have matured her features, but they’d also taught her how to play the game. She was well positioned, head and shoulders above any of these other girls. Especially Shanta, the vaguely Indian girl who couldn’t be a day over sixteen even though she told everyone she’d just turned eighteen. She was a child, trying to do a woman’s job.

But it wasn’t always the vicious girl eat girl world that Tyra Banks painted on TV. Exemplified by Clarice, a sweetheart from Lisbon who’d done a handful of shows with Gwendolyn and who, now, was acting as her primary caretaker, bringing her an ice pack for her ballooning ankle.

“It wasn’t bad,” Clarice said. “You took the hit so graceful.” Her voice was gentle, her smile kind, although the stark way her hair was pulled off her face made her look angry, as cold and mean as Nurse Ratched. The hit, as it were, was a defect of neither shoe nor ankle but of the combination. The two working in tandem failed, such that the heel lurched left, snapping apart, and the ankle went right, with a crunch, and though there was a considerable wobble of her body and an awkward swinging of her arms that required a Nike-like effort to regain her center of gravity, Gwendolyn did not fall. If only the athletic shoes named for the goddess of strength and victory came in size haute couture.

She landed on that ankle, and the video will forever preserve how ugly it appeared to Johnny Audience. But by some miracle she maintained a bipedal pose, and limped off the runway to the sanctuary behind the curtain, where she collapsed in agony out of the eyes of the press. Clarice had been immediately behind her on the catwalk, had followed her behind the curtain then pulled her to her good foot and helped her into a chair in the dressing room, telling her urgently, “Please must elevate!” She lifted Gwendolyn’s bad foot up onto the makeup counter before twirling off to her wardrobe change and hitting the runway again.

“Oh, Gwen!” said a heavily accented voice behind her. “You are hurt?”

It was Shanta, of course; false concern oozing out of her bright-red-painted lips. The fact that Shanta repeatedly abbreviated her name to that of the tacky Ms. Stefani offended all of Gwendolyn’s sensibilities. She pretended not to hear.

“But you are next!” Shanta said loudly, coming around to face her. “You cannot go?” Innocent tone, but barely concealing a wicked grin. Whereas most of the girls simply ignored her plight, Shanta singlehandedly brought high school-style bitchery to the backstages of the highest fashion exhibitions around the world.

“Heels break, Shanta,” Gwendolyn said, nonchalant. “Someday yours will, too.”

“Forty seconds!” Umberto called. Shanta winked at Gwendolyn as two attendants slipped a long sheer dress over her head and fixed her sleek black hair, then tightened a small knot at her back, to better accentuate her narrow waistline.

Gwendolyn watched her sashay toward the stage, almost glad for the distraction as she waited, nearly nude, her ankle throbbing in time with her heartbeat. More than a small part of her hoped Shanta would trip or fall, wished her own fate upon her, but she made the walk successfully, exalted at the end as she smirked her way past Gwendolyn without even batting a single voluminous eyelash. The show was over. Clarice, now wrapped in a terry robe, brought Gwendolyn her street clothes and helped her dress, helped her outside and into a taxi, helped her to the hospital and back to the room they shared with four other girls.

She’d be on crutches for a while, but she would recover. She wouldn’t do Hermès the next night, and she wouldn’t go to Rio the following week, but she’d be damned if this was the end. Just this once, beauty could not, would not be so fickle. She’d worked too hard to get where she was. She had a few good years left. She would return to New York for fashion week then hop over to London, then she’d be back in Milan by the New Year.

Her heel broke, her ankle broke—it was not the end of the world.

For the next few weeks, as she was laid up in a hostel-like room-and-board just off the Rue Saint-Honoré, reserved exclusively for working models, she would be ostracized; might as well be a seventeen-year-old runaway leper trying to break in to the biz.

She would hang around, anxiously awaiting text message updates from Clarice, to find out everything she’d missed. The big buzz in Rio would be the unveiling of a transsexual model, with whom none could compete—not Gwendolyn, not Clarice, not even Shanta.

Staying off her bad foot meant staying away from the gym, so Gwendolyn had no choice but to fast, planning to be thinner when she recovered than she’d been previously. She’d make ankle-twisting the next hot thing in the modeling world, she’d make millions hocking her new weight-loss secret. Her comeback would be better than Kate Moss’s coke-fueled front page. Sure, she wasn’t as high as Kate Moss had been to start, and she didn’t have quite so far to fall, but at the end of the day, Kate Moss was thirty-five and still going strong, and at twenty-six, Gwendolyn’s world, when it healed, would be wide open.

Plastic Prisoners

2009-01-21T01:13:00.004-06:00

Maybe today we can go out to play?

2009-01-20T03:05:00.001-06:00

is the heat even on?

2009-01-19T00:01:00.006-06:00

1.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.

I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.

I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.

2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.

But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.

Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.

3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.

She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.

Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.

Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.

One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.

My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.

We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.

4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.

Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.

It just happened. It always seems to happen.

She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.

Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.

I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.

5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?

By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.

Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.

6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.

We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.

The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.

Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.

Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.

With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.

Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.

They followed, throttles pulled.

Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.

The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.

7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.

I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.

They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.

The runoff stained the snow bright red.

cold comfort

2009-01-16T11:25:00.007-06:00

2009-01-15T08:24:00.004-06:00

I could feel that the day was coming. I knew the day was coming since I had started that two year long series of humiliations called nursing school. All I could do was wait and dread and hope that it would be a wrinkled, papery, old man in suspenders who would be the one.

My first suppository.

Though I was mentally and, perhaps, visually a little thrown when the day shift nurse told me what I would have to do, I mustered up all of the professionalism that had been forced down my throat over the previous one year of nursing school. “Okay, I am ready to meet this rectum, I mean guy…” I thought; and then I entered that fateful room. On the bed I see a man. He was not exactly the frail, sick older man with a heart problem I had envisioned. He was definitely not the kind of man a student nurse, a woman of 25 wants to give her first ever suppository to.

The man sitting on the bed in room number 204 was a 29 year old, handsome black man with a large number of tattoos and a large number of even larger muscles. As my eyes widened, I remembered what I was there to do. I introduced myself to him and he to me. His drawl was recognizable, his voice low and rolling. I asked the patient- or the fantasy of every woman from Martha Stewart to Lil’ Kim- whatever, to lie on the bed on his side and (oh my god oh my god) pull his knees up to his chest. This extremely understanding guy obliged and assumed this extremely vulnerable position. I tiptoed up behind his behind, gulped and placed one of my gloved hands on his hip. With the touch of my hand the patient leapt from the bed with the speed of lightning and ran into the bathroom, screaming “Oh HELL no.” My face began to burn, my armpits began to drip, and I wanted to run from the room, not to mention out of the hospital and the school of nursing.

After the longest one minute I haven ever sweated through, the hot black man came back into the hospital room. “Sorry,” he said and re-assumed the position. I took a deep breath and another step toward the bed. When I placed my hand on his hip this time, I flinched. And for good reason, because my patient once again jumped from the bed, tripped on the remote control cord and ran into the bathroom yelling “oh my GOD!” This time, he came out right away shaking his head and walked back to the bed without looking at me. I knew the longer I waited, the more nervous each of us would become, so this time, I went right for the…target. I was able to place my hand on his hip, and although I could feel him tense his muscles through his hospital gown, he stayed where he was. I moved my hand south and began to expose the aim of my lubricated finger. When the separating began my very impatient patient yelled “Oh my GOD” and exploded from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Again. This time, embarrassment did not come to mind. Swear words did. “That is IT,” I thought, “I have GOT to
stick this thing in his ass.”

My red face had turned from embarrassment to anger and back to embarrassment by the time my very fit patient came out of the bathroom. “I am so sorry,” he said. I reminded him that he could do it to himself or that I could have a male nurse come into the room to perform the task. He then reminded me that those options made him way more uncomfortable and that he promised he would stay in bed this time. So we began again as we had so many times already: his knees to his chest, the gown removed, my hand on his hip. I could feel him tense and shaking beneath my fingers as I made my move. However, my determination was strong and my reflexes were quick. This time, the insertion was imminent. With one fast motion, a blur really, cheeks were separated, fingers were thrust, and a suppository was placed in a beautiful man’s rectum. Sigh.
When it was all over, I carefully peeled my gloves from my hands while my patient sat up in his bed. As I walked around the bed, his eyes shifted and his shoulders slumped while his dark face darkened with a blush. I moved quickly, trying not to slip on the sweat dripping from my brow. The tension in the room was palpable; it felt as though it was the morning after an embarrassing, drunken sexual display the previous night. Unable to meet eyes, I told him I would be back later to check on him. I instructed him on how to use the surgical scrub when he showered, which somehow felt a little dirty. Once on the outside of the room, I felt safe and was finally able to breathe. I leaned against the wall and picked up his chart knowing that somehow I would have to write down what I had just done to this man.

Put Your Tiny Hand in Mine

2009-01-14T08:00:00.002-06:00

Corner of Houston and Avenue A

eyes closed, face first

2009-01-13T10:06:00.007-06:00

At the top of the hill it’s quiet, peaceful. Just how you remember it. Below is nothing but perfect whiteness, no breaks in the snow except for trees dotted here and there, all the way down to the end of the field and the start of the street. It is all orderly, all complete. School hasn’t let out, maybe one more hour to go. It’s been so long since you’ve been a kid, you don’t know when the school day ends anymore. Maybe an hour of quiet left, and then chaos will erupt on the hill.

When you were a kid you were the chaos, the constant noise and movement and color obliterating the quiet. The rush of the red plastic sled as it went down. The back and forth swish of your army green snow pants rubbing together as you pulled yourself up the hill once again. The yelling as you face-planted or got a spray of snow in your mouth or were crashed into by other kids on orange inner tubes and brown toboggans. The laughing as you snuck up on your friends and pushed them before they could get their gloves back on, making sure you put some spin into it. Noise and color everywhere, crashing into each other, clashing as it tumbled together, bounced back and forth, slid past.

What was that like, those days, can you really remember? There was abandon, that’s for sure. Did you really run up and down that hill for hours? Were you really able to ignore the cold and the soaking wet gloves and socks? Are the things you are trying to reclaim really there at all, were they ever? Could you really have had that much fun?

From the top of the hill the snow is blinding in the winter sun. You wish you’d brought your sunglasses, you wish you’d brought a visor, you wish you’d brought a hundred children to tear up that whiteness with all the enthusiasm their little hearts can muster. We all had that enthusiasm once. But there is only you and a giant hill and untouched whiteness everywhere. So do your best. Raise that sled high above your head. Take a running leap. Throw yourself into the void.

2009-01-12T08:10:00.004-06:00

oil and water

2009-01-09T10:50:00.007-06:00

Magical forests

2009-01-08T08:06:00.003-06:00

For years I would sit in the back of my grandfather's 1975 muted gray Cadillac that we only took to funerals or for a drive to our cottage, and I would stare anxiously out the window. I was always looking for one thing as I gazed patiently at the Wisconsin prairie and farm scenery whizzing by. My grandmother sits in the front seat and tells me that they are coming up soon. I squirm in my seat, belted in, anxious in my small six year old stature and its limits on my Cadillac window viewing. The seconds pass so slowly and thoughts excitedly raced through me head. Will I see one today? Will one of them sneak out into the daylight? Watch out brown cow-they might come out today and spoil your chocolate milk!

My grandmother nudges my grandfather to turn down the radio, Willie Nelson calling for his lover, and I look and look out the window. Little hazel eyes glancing and darting, peeking through the slightly tinted glass for the tried and true signs of their existence. There were their remains, the enormous round balls randomly sitting in the cleared farm fields! Always so perfectly round, these brown and golden spheres of hay were part of the necessary deeds we all had to do. It made sense to me, they ate hay, so they would have to expel hay, regardless of how perfectly round it appeared and the size of their waste only proved to me the real size of the creatures themselves.

I continued to scour the empty spaces between the giant globes, hoping to see one of their horrifically amazing faces. Hoping, wishing, with only the enthusiasm of a whimsical girl to think of how I could tell my friends at school of what I saw, how I could tell them this secret existence that only my grandmother knew. She has shared her secret with me.

My eyes meet the mindless rows of yellow corn, so I sit back into my seat. Another missed opportunity at a sight of them, a sight I wanted so badly. My dismay was fleeting, the ride was long and there would plenty more opportunities to catch a glimpse. My grandmother asks if I saw anything and I tell her no and smile. I know that someday one of them will come out during the day, even though my grandmother said they only come out at night, and the first one I see, I will name them Penny, same as my cat, I can only image them being best friends. As the forests fly by in the tips of the window next to me, I know they will come out of their magical forest home for me to see, a real Wisconsin dinosaur, my grandmother would never lie...

2009-01-07T03:35:00.002-06:00

Failure of the New Gods

2009-01-06T11:45:00.013-06:00

There’s a woman with her feet planted in the surf of Coney Island,
waiting for a bottle to bob her way.

During the day, she works as a contortionist at a freak show.
"Come! See Freyja the Human Pretzel!"
("Freyja the Human Pretzel" is not her legal name.)
She bends and twists her body into the alphabets of long dead languages, spelling out all the stories you’ve ever wanted to read, but didn’t know you were reading.
She becomes the sheet music of every song you’ll ever be married to.
Her body is your next tattoo, spelling out, in what should be Celtic, the word "YES".

A few years ago, she graduated from locksmith school
and now spends her weekends opening car doors for grateful tourists and
safety deposit boxes for newfound orphans.
She picks broken-hearted pendants based on a sliding scale of questions whose bottom line currency is whether you really deserve to ever see that face again.
Under Thieves Moons, she breaks into the safes of the Russian mafia, taking nothing and leaving behind the love letters of their parents from the old country just to remind them that, with patience, nothing is impossible.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya budu lyubit tibya cherez nashi DNK.
...
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I will love you through our DNA.

At night, she works as a teacher/stripper/goddess
dancing backwards into clothes, stirring memory within the confines of a song, breaking hearts at the speed of 70 beats per minute.
She teaches men to reflect upon the nature of time and motion and void, realizing just how short and poorly spent 3 minutes can be.
For $10 a tutoring session, she gyrates a telepathy, pushing them to invariably think "Please let this be the extended remix version!"
(It never is.)
"You smell like home," they breathe.
She whispers, "Call your mother."

When I was in high school, she was abducted by the KGB
trained for espionage, becoming character in instants, and disappearing in the spaces between.
Her backstage was a compact mirror and she traipsed through all the stages of global theaters of cold war, seducing diplomats with poison lipstick and pirouetting with knives.
(What she really wants to do is direct.)
"You could be anyone," her handlers boast
She admits, "I always will."

Getting her doctorate in cryptozoology involved
1) becoming a cult leader
2) and committing deicide
For her post-doc, entire pantheons fell before her.
She measured fate in alchemical missed connections while casting spells through rolled eyes at misguided undergrads.
Tracking legends was merely for lesser cryptozoologists, while she reeled the unreal, proving that even monsters need love, too,
and then she loved them,
soothing men who would be wolves within a song
deciphering fingerprint messages in the half-hearts of tin men
bending crooks to genealogical memory and Kaisers to ideals over ideology
uncovering apocryphal dances to trap time
applying for headmistress positions at girls schools.

There’s a woman standing amongst the flotsam and jetsam of Coney Island waiting for a message in a bottle that I’ll never throw,
because,
Lynn,
this locksmith contortionist will never fit me like you.

2009-01-05T12:37:00.002-06:00

christmas is over

(because I dreamt of zombies 2 nights in a row)

2009-01-02T00:34:00.002-06:00

Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? I never said it was a zombie. I mean, I could see how someone might think it was a zombie, but do I actually think it was actually a zombie? No. Not unless you want to get into a debate about crack addicts being, quite literally, the living/walking dead. When it comes down to it, I think it was just a crackhead. Standing there in the middle of the street, at the end of the exit ramp, just looking to get hit. I didn't hit her, though, more like she hit me, you know, like how they say half the time deer get hit by cars except that what really happens is the deer is just running, running, and (boom) smashes into the side of your car. Nothing the driver can do about it.

I hit the brakes because I saw her, or I saw someone, something in the road, and I slowed down, and she was doing this weird jig and then she turned and, I mean, yeah, I've watched a few horror movies in my day but there was something feral behind her eyes, inhuman like with costume makeup and special effects, trick lighting or whatever. Her hair was wild, kind of Tina Turner meets Labyrinth-era David Bowie, and she started clawing at the lights and the grille, all but throwing herself on the hood as I came to a stop. Reminded me of some TV program I watched about a kid who was locked in the basement his whole life with rats and when they found him he was like an animal, possessed by urges we right-thinking folks could never comprehend. She was like that, clawing and climbing on the hood, which I’d only just had fixed from all of those acorns dropping on it last fall when I had to park in the street under that big oak tree, I’d just had the dings hammered out and she was looking good (the car, not the crackhead).

And you know how in every horror movie at the height of the suspense the people do something amazingly stupid, like split up or fall down or enter a dark room or hallway or whatever, and just like them I did my own stupid thing.

Me, always the Good Samaritan, always trying to help, and you know what? I get shit on, every time, and you'd think I'd stop being so good, but no siree, that's just who I am: a nice guy. I rolled down the window partway and yelled out, "Hey there, you all right?" and must've given her a fright, because she jumped straight up, catlike, and spun around and glared at me through the windshield. The particular bent of her elbows as she reached up then out made me think of a spider dressed in chewed-up clothes.

I yelled again, "Hey!" but she carried on, and like I said, I'm a nice guy, but I'm not always as patient as I could be. I'm aware of it, I try sometimes to work on it, to better myself, you know, but at this point, my impatience was growing and I beeped the horn. Lightning-fast she was at my window, so quick I didn’t see a flash in the headlights, and she was reaching in, her fingers slipping through the opening, her nails clicking and clacking on the glass, like a crab clawing its way around a tank. The lady, now that she was so close, had a real bad smell, and her skin was gray, graying, and she looked unwell, like she needed immediate medical attention.

Everything inside me was telling me to just hit the gas and drive off, you know, none of my business and best not to get involved and whatnot, but still I wanted to help her if I could. She was increasingly irate, and I thought she might break my window, so I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, but it was busy. Can you imagine that? You ever call 911 and get a busy signal before? Crazy!

I was just plain dumbfounded but I'd be damned if I'd let this wacko wreck my window, so I said, "Excuse me," but she didn't stop, so I hit the up button, sliding the glass window shut. She was slow to pull away, getting her fingertips caught, but she managed to yank them loose, all but one. The window mechanism groaned then closed all the way, the topmost knuckle of her pointer finger on her left hand popping off and landing in my lap. The lady, who evidently was feeling no pain, made no sound, did not cry out, and I was sickened a little and she started pounding on the glass ferociously, and I looked down at that little gray nub and saw that there was no blood, it was a clean break, as though bending off the coarse end of an asparagus stalk. I put the car in drive and slowly inched away, trying not to look at her groping and clawing at the car, and instead fiddling with the radio, but nothing came in clearly, stupid piece of crap radio, never did work right.

I heard a thud behind me when she threw herself onto the trunk, but she couldn't hold on as I sped off. I was worried that she'd still be there, clinging to the tailpipe when I got home, like when I was a kid and a praying mantis had wound itself around the car’s antenna, hanging on for its life, and I begged my father to pull over, but he wouldn't, not worth stopping for some dumb bug. But that dumb bug, with its long spindly legs, held on and held on and made it all the way to school, and I hopped out and gently plucked the delicate creature off the antenna and set it in the grass. So relieved it was still alive, though probably it was never the same again. Unlike the praying mantis, the lady must've fallen off around one of the sharper turns.

I left her alone somewhere in the darkness, and was shaking my head over it, confused, when I felt a pang near my, uh, groin, and again; it didn't hurt but it was more than a little distracting while I drove. Pulling over was NOT an option, so I flopped my hand around down there, couldn't figure it out. In my driveway I switched off the engine and flipped on the overhead light and, I shit you not, that little gray nub of a fingertip was jumping around, poking me.

Don't believe me? I've got it right here. I carry it around everywhere I go. Here, take it out if you want. It’s only a fingertip, can’t hurt you. No? You sure? Okay, then. It’s just a fingertip in a jar. I never said it was a zombie fingertip. I never said it was a zombie at all.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? I never said it was a zombie.

In His Eyes

2009-01-01T12:26:00.009-06:00

You

Hallelujah?

four times four

2008-12-31T14:17:00.015-06:00

Annabelle India Cynthia Knox did not like Michael Hurley, and she let it be known throughout the fifth grade. She did not like his shockingly red hair, too bold for an eleven-year-old. She did not like his thousands of freckles, so distracting when one is trying to figure out multiplication or concentrate on diorama building. She did not like his habit of running everywhere – to the bus, to lunch, to recess, to class, to the bathroom, to the chalkboard even, for goodness sake! – which lead to his habit of crashing into things, like the wall or a tree or his desk. Or Annabelle. Twice. Michael Hurley, Annabelle decreed, was a giant loser, and not worth anyone’s time.

Michael Hurley’s only response to this, when Jason P. came back from recess and told him what Isaac told him Steffi told him Annabelle said, was to spin his right index finger in a tight circle at the side of his head, in the universal sign for “looney tunes.” Then he turned back to the picture of ninjas he was drawing, and continued his work, whistling.

When Annabelle heard this, through Jason P. to Gretchen to CJ to Steffi to her, she was furious. She kicked the monkey bars and crossed her arms and blew out a frustrated, emphatic “hmph!” and turned to her four best friends – Steffi and Liza and Reeca and Jules – and declared war.

The first thing they did was switch seats. A small opening shot, but an effective one nonetheless. Michael had problems with multiplication, and everyone knew he cheated off Reeca during tests. So Annabelle raised her hand in the middle of class and asked if she could be moved, “because I’m having problems concentrating with the smell and all,” and after an affronted “Hey!” from Michael and a lot of sighing from Mr. Palmacci and snickering from the class, Mr. Palmacci let Annabelle switch with Liza, who switched with Jules, who switched with Reeca, into Annabelle’s original seat behind Michael.

When Michael saw the girls getting up and gathering their books in a well orchestrated maneuver, he knew what had really happened, and he looked over to Jason P. and narrowed his eyes. The war was on.

Retaliation came the next day at lunch, when all five girls opened their bags and reached in for sandwiches and pulled out plastic baggies of worms instead. Annabelle’s were the fattest and most squirmy. The girls screamed even louder than expected, and none of the guys, Michael or Jason P. or Carlos or Billy, could stop laughing, it was so funny. They were still laughing when the girls turned to them with evil glares. No one said anything, but everyone knew more was coming.

There was the hall pass maneuver. The swing set attack. The prank call offensive. The frog guts incident (involving a daring raid on the sixth grade science lab in order to get the necessary parts). The Field Day retaliation. The Valentine’s card betrayal. Until, finally, there was four squares.

+++

Every Wednesday recess, Annabelle and her friends played four squares. It was only Wednesdays, because four square was the most popular game amongst the girls at school, and there was only one court, so a schedule had to be made as to who got playing time when. Mr. Palmacci’s fifth grade class got Wednesdays, Recess B, and Annabelle always declared herself fourth square to start. Annabelle rarely lost.

Four square was a girl’s game; the boys never wanted to play. They always ran for the kickball field or the basketball court or to the corner of the yard to dig in the dirt and plan mischief. This was fine with the girls, who were orderly and patient as they waited their turn in line, planning what games they’d make up if they landed in the fourth square. They did not need the chaos of the boys to ruin their game.

It was a beautiful spring day and Annabelle India Cynthia Knox surveyed the playground from her fourth square domain. They were six games in, and no one had managed to get her out. She didn’t plan to let them. Liza had already rotated in and out twice, she couldn’t catch a ball if her life depended on it, and Reeca had just been knocked out on an alphabet game. Annabelle thought about what to try next and watched as Reeca left the square to join the back of the line. Annabelle’s eyes followed her absently, thinking of double-bounces and animals that might begin with the letter X. Reeca passed the Schaffer twins at the front of the line, Sarah Caulk behind them, and then, to Annabelle’s shock and horror, she saw it. Standing behind Sarah, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his horrible red hair shining in the sun, was Michael Hurley. And right behind him was Jason P. And Carlos. And Billy.

The other girls noticed the interlopers just as Annabelle did, and they looked to her for a cue. But what could she do? Recess wasn’t even half over, and it was four square. The game must go on.

Lindsey Schaffer missed the ball on the first toss. Anna came in. Jules forgot to triple-bounce. Sarah came in. Liza couldn’t think of a fruit that began with F. And Michael Hurley stepped onto the first square.

Annabelle didn’t pause for even a second; she couldn’t afford to show weakness, and she’d been plotting the game she’d use to end this encroachment immediately. Double-bounce, name a character in The Baby-Sitter’s Club, bounce-pass. Boys didn’t read those books, Annabelle knew. She doubted they could even read at all.

Annabelle double-bounced, said “Kristy,” and bounce-passed to Michael, who eyed her funny. He double-bounced too, and said “Stacey,” and bounce-passed to Sarah. Annabelle couldn't believe it. How could an annoying, loud-mouthed boy like Michael Hurley know that? Sarah got Claudia and Anna said Mary Anne but forgot to bounce-pass, just tossed it to Annabelle, so she was out. Jason P. stepped in and Michael Hurley moved to square two.

Annabelle always had contingency plans, and she would not be bested. “Next game is bounce, name a Miley Cyrus song, bounce, then toss pass.” She knew Jason P. would get it, he had a younger sister after all, and he did, but Jason P. didn't matter. She could knock him out once Michael Hurley was done. Annabelle had her priorities; her eyes were on the prize.

But Michael Hurley got it too, and Sarah didn’t miss of course, and they had to go another round. Annabelle was so shocked she almost blanked on a song, almost forgot to bounce before the pass. And then Jason P. again, and Michael again, and this time Sarah said “Start All Over,” which was right, but was also the song Jason P. named, so she was out too. And Carlos came in and now Michael Hurley moved to square three, right next to Annabelle, and that red hair was so distracting, but not as distracting as the challenge in his eyes.

Annabelle expected the boys to be aggressive or mean or chaotic. She expected them to hurl the ball, make up rules, try to hit someone in the face. But they didn’t do any of that. They played like the girls played, orderly, and they didn’t talk to each other or crack jokes. In fact, the only time they spoke at all was to give their answer for the game. “Stacey.” “7 Things.” “Yak.” “Water buffalo.” “Viper.” Annabelle thought as quickly as she could to try to trip them up, but they go round after round, without forgetting a word or a bounce.

After five rounds of animal names, reverse alphabetically, she called for a new game. It was a rule the girls made up to keep the game challenging, and for a second it seemed like the boys might rebel. But Michael looked at each boy in turn, and no one said anything. Annabelle thought for a moment, the ball balanced on her hip, and it came to her. The perfect solution to getting Michael Hurley out.

“Triple-bounce,” she said, “double-bounce pass,” she continued. “And the multiplication tables for nine, in order.”

There was an audible intake of breath from the line, which had grown as fifth-graders around the playground gathered to watch boys take over the four-square court. Annabelle put on her sweetest fake smile and looked at Michael Hurley. There was sweat on his over-freckled face, and he chewed his lip in that nervous tic Annabelle despised, but his eyes were narrowed in determination and he didn’t look away. Michael Hurley took the challenge.

“Nine,” she said after her triple bounce, and double-bounce passed to Carlos. “Eighteen,” he said with all the right bounces, and gave her a look that mades her feel about as big as a toothpick. “Twenty-seven,” said Jason P., but slowly, and he bounced slowly too. Annabelle figured he was trying to give Michael time to remember the answer.

“Thirty-six,” Michael said, and looked Annabelle directly in the eye as he passed.

“Forty-five,” Annabelle said, surprised he got that. But there’s no way that he could know the next one, he’d cheated off Reeca from almost the start of the year. She took a breath and monitored the boys, checking their math and their bounces.

“Fifty-four.”

“Sixty-three.”

“Seventy-two.”

A pause before he said it, but then a gasp from the crowd when he did. And now it was a crowd, all of fifth grade, both classes, gathered in a half circle around the players. Even if Annabelle got one of the boys out, Billy still waited on deck, she’d still need at least three games to clear the square of all the intruders, send them back to their dirt and their ball fields. “Eighty-one,” Annabelle said. This round would be her triumph, good-bye to Michael Hurley, once and for all.

“Ninety,” said Carlos, easy as anything.

“Ninety-nine,” said Jason P. Bounce, bounce, pass.

“One-oh-eight,” said Michael, without a pause, and with triumph in his eyes.

And then there’s the ball, bouncing up to Annabelle, and then there’s Annabelle, holding it for a beat, her mind blank. They’d only gone up to twelve on their multiplication chart, she didn’t think they’d get this far in the game. Another beat. She should’ve been adding the nines in her head, she should’ve been ready just in case. A third, and that’s all you get in four square. She waited too long, she didn’t even think to triple-bounce to buy time, she just stood in the fourth square, holding the ball, unable to move, defeated.

From the sidelines the girls were stone-cold quiet, and then a cheer went up, started by Billy, that all the boys in the yard picked up. Shouts of “you’re out!” came from some boy in the back, but Annabelle still couldn’t move from the shock. They'd moved their desks so he couldn’t cheat, so Michael Hurley had started studying. How could she have known? Ninety, ninety-nine, one-oh-eight, the end.

And now Michael Hurley is coming toward her, stepping over the line between square three and square four to claim his new rank. Annabelle is still standing, rooted to the pavement, holding the ball in front of her where it bounced. He is going to grab it, she supposes, maybe elbow her out of the way to get her to move. She doesn’t think she can move, so he might have to. He is walking toward her, that bright red hair like flames in the sun, his grass green eyes locked on hers triumphantly. Around them there is cheering from the boys still, and now arguing from the girls, and general mayhem, but the sound fades out as Annabelle watches the end of the war approach.

Michael Hurley is in front of her, and he puts his hands on the rubber ball like she thought he would, but he doesn’t elbow her aside. He holds the ball on the opposite side from where her hands are and he leans in and she thinks he might whisper something to her, something mean and victorious. But instead, in front of the whole fifth-grade class and under the spring sun, Michael Hurley puts his pursed lips on Annabelle India Cynthia Knox’s own and kisses her chastely in the middle of square four.

It is only a second, but she drops her hands from the ball in shock. Michael Hurley steps back and smiles.

“One seventeen,” he says with a bounce. “I win.”

oh dear!

2008-12-30T09:00:00.004-06:00

beaten by the sun

2008-12-29T16:39:00.005-06:00

These kids, there are so many, and all of them look so different from each other. We have cameras fixed on them, and the bulbs of our mics capture what they say, though they talk without sound. Right now I'm interviewing this rod who has what resembles a chandelier of carrots sprouting from her scalp. Her eyes are squinted, so I can only guess that there's an intensity to her answers. A second later, she's sprinting back to the mound.

A neighbor, one who feeds rabbits to swell them for skinning, tipped us off to the kids and mound, but swore us to a secrecy we won't uphold. He told us that the kids came to the land on the coattails of dusk and started stabbing at the dull yellow drought weeds. He slept inadvertently through the night, in a chair on his porch, with a virulent, unloaded shotgun balancing in his lap.

He woke up, beaten by the sun, to see the kids impregnate the mound with a single frisbeeish landmine. They kept digging at the earth, the kids did, growing the mound with each shovelful. The man contacted us a little before noon. We came right out. He was the first one I went to see, but he refused offer up anything more than, "I already said all I know." Then he pointed to the other side of his property line to where the kids were, made tiny by the distance of two acres.

We trespassed only because we couldn't think of what else to do.

I'm serious about these kids. Not one of them looks like the other. They're moving though, really moving. They're bounding up and down the mound. Some spin like a maple's helicopter seeds, others are doing different types of jumping - rope, jacks, jumps that hadn't been invented yet when our news team was their age. So the opposite of alike, they are; damn so. One similarity though: all of their mouths are wide, un-volumed O's.

I knew immediately that we were the right choice to break this story. Finally we were getting what we deserved, even if we didn't understand what it was.

Something else I can say is that these kids are polite. They've really taken to the whole idea of being seen and not heard. From a ratings perspective, this troubles me a bit, but from a personal perspective, I'm immensely happy. I tap one on the shoulder, interview him for a bit, and when he starts to get antsy, he runs off, tags a friend and sends her to me; the friend moves her mouth in front of my mic, grins into the cameraman's shoulder-cam, and then darts away. I tap another on the shoulder, etc. Each time it's a verbal flat line.

Still, there is no shortage of volunteers. They are all so damn happy. Since they all look so different, they're easy to tell apart, even as the day teeters to its edges. I can follow each past interviewee as he or she moves around on the mount. Their gestures, though each unique, are all equally ecstatic.

A couple is grinding their heels into the mound as they twist in and out of each other, square dancing. An angelic blond takes up pantomime. A boy in a red cape does the Robot. An egg-shaped one genuflects, rolls down the mound, races back up it, genuflect, rolls down again, lands spread out at the bottom.

The cameras roll continuously.

My questioning lasts several more hours. I'm keeping each of my subjects straight, never posing the same question twice. The inquiries get more outlandish because, as I learned in broadcast school, the further you get from the crux of a story, the more likely you are to find it. I'm shouting into the vastness of this piece and, I think, I'll eventually hear an echo back.

We keep documenting, call in more tape.

Finally, some girl's kitten heel finds the land mine. It detonates and undoes the mound in a split of a split second. The kids are joyous, happier than ever. They ascend into the heavens, these kids do, mouths ringed beyond reason, and then just as quickly, they return in stumps to the flat of the earth.

When our piece aired, the station manager made us edit in their screams and the loud aftermath of gurgles as the valves of their throat opened up and fill with blood.

For dramatic effect, he said.

Ode to My Favorite Bar

2008-12-26T18:39:00.005-06:00

So,
take a look at me now.
[ahem]
So,
take a look at me nooooooooow! There's just an empty space!

I've got a thousand stories inside me, and 954 more to go.

So,
here's to alcohol
and here's to long nights and hard times and everything that makes you feel tired
and here's to all the bands I'm quoting right now that no one knows
and here's to 20-year-old martyrs
and 25-year-old retirees,
30-year-old virgins
and 40-year-old wussy boys.
So,
hold me closer tiny dancer.

There, Jeff Knight. There's my bar poem.
Now you reread me yours.

And thank you.
And you're welcome.
And I love you, too.

Let it snow!

2008-12-25T10:00:00.007-06:00

Before the city turns into a world of treacherous black slush, stinky yellow snow and subway delays there is one moment. One fantastical moment where all of Brooklyn is a beautiful snow globe world. Running around in the streets is encouraged. Trash can lids are uncomfortable sled rides. And you finally meet your neighbor after a mean snow ball fight.

Merry Christmas!

Release on Two

2008-12-24T00:00:00.002-06:00

Listen/download:
Release on Two.mp3 (2:10)
(a story in sound)

2008-12-23T02:10:00.002-06:00

again.

2008-12-22T07:35:00.003-06:00

The parking lot is empty. They sit side by side on the curb. It is late. Overhead, the fluorescent light buzzes and hums, casting a pool of brightness around them. She follows his gaze and sees hundreds if not thousands of insects swarming around the light in a miasmic bug cloud.

“They’re so stupid,” she observes. “Why do they go into the light like that? Over and over. They never learn.”

“They can’t help it,” he says. “They’re just drawn to it.”

He steals a glance at her, while her face is turned bugward. She’s not as thin as she used to be. Fine lines surround her eyes and mouth where before there were none. But she still looks good, he thinks. After all these years.

He cracks his knuckles, shifts his weight on the hard concrete. Their knees are almost touching. “You didn’t call me out here to talk about bugs.”

Slowly she puts her hands out, spreads her fingers wide. No rings. “It’s over.”

“Over,” he repeats. “Again.”

“Over.” Emphatic.

Fifteen years at least he’s waited to hear her say that. He reaches for her naked hand, takes it in his own.

She leans in to him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. Her smell is alien to him, and for an instant, he is outside his body, looking down at them from the bugs’ point of view, these two people, near strangers now, but who pulsate under the weight of their intertwined pasts. To the rhythm of the buzzing fluorescents.

A far-off dog bark stirs the moment. She sits up, studying his hand on hers. A sigh in the night air.

He retracts his hand, twists the gold band, tight around his sweaty finger. He pulls at it, fiercely works it up over his knuckle, and it’s off. He stares through its empty center, the hole, then tries to crush it in his fist. Futile.

She stands. She watches him until he looks up at her, squinting a little, she’s backlit with a halo of bugs.

“Come on,” she says. Leaning down, she kisses the crown of his head. “Let’s go.”

He bites the insides of his cheek and feels his chest cave in. He slips the ring back on, but it feels different, weightier.

“What?” Her question hangs between them, electric like the chirring light. They hold each other’s eyes for a spell. She looks away first.

“God.” Thoughts flitter around his brain. She’s right here, so close. “What the hell are we doing?”

“I thought this was what you wanted,” she snaps.

“I’m just… I’m just confused.”

She paces, a tigress locked up. “This should be simple.”

“I loved you,” he whispers. “I loved you and you never gave a shit.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“You never reciprocated.”

“That was then.” Her cheeks flush. “This is now.” She peers up into the night sky, concentrates on the bugs fluttering around the streetlight.

“Fuck!” He spits a little at the eff sound. “What the fuck is this?” He considers hoisting his foot up to meet her kneecap, a few inches in front of his head. Reconsiders. Maybe gripping her shoulders, shaking her.

His heart pounds furiously. He sweats. And, god, he just wants to take her, kiss her, hit her, make her stop, make her his. He can’t think. He just…

The buzzing from the lamppost grows louder, then the light overhead blinks, sparks, goes black, silent. Gradually his eyes adjust to the dimness. He breathes, calms. Nothing makes any sense. Maybe it doesn’t need to.

In the darkness, she resembles more the girl she used to be. She’s eying him tenderly, nervously, an unfamiliar vulnerability. Suddenly she swats at a lone moth that flies near her face.

“Sad,” she says. “The only thing he ever wanted and now he can’t have it.” Flashes the white teeth of a smile.

“But there’s another light over there, and right over there.” He points, needlessly. “He’ll find another one.”

The sky between them shifts. He extends his arm, hoping she’ll help pull him to his feet. But he’s groping in the dark. She’s too far gone, drawn away.

“Uh, look. I’m going to get out of here.”

He can see the outline of her body, but can’t make out the details. He can’t see her face. It must be four a.m. The outline fades, farther and farther, vanishes. He is enveloped in the night, spotlights illuminate circles of macadam in the distance, but where he is there are no bugs, no lights, nothing.

“Go!” he shouts into the blackness. A car door slam reverberates in the silence. He’s alone and she is gone. “Again.”

holy smokes!

2008-12-19T09:02:00.007-06:00

when she got angry, she got angry!

I HUNGER FOR GOLDEN PUFFS!

2008-12-18T10:30:00.007-06:00

You know that comic book The Fantastic Four? The Thing. Human Torch. Invisible Woman. All that. Remember Galactus? Giant purple space god who eats planets?
…
People in New York have been text messaging photos of a giant purple space god eating our planet. Starting with New York. Apparently he likes the taste of theme bars.

sigh

er, this morning I’m eating a bowl of Golden Puffs (they’re like Golden Crisp, which used to be called Sugar Smacks, but they cost seventy-five cents at Big Lots) and checking Facebook. My friend Kevin’s status reads “Kevin is watching a giant purple space god eating the planet.” And then there’s an accompanying picture of a giant purple space god eating the planet. I open a tab and check Yahoo and, sure enough, there’s lots of to-do about the end of the world. I plug my phone into the charger and there’s a bunch of text messages about the end of the world and mom leaving all sorts of voice mail, telling me I never call her and the world is coming to an end without her having any grandkids and blah blah blah. I open my blinds and the weather is weird. Lots of colorful wind, like currents of energy moving west toward New York. Trees are being uprooted and the ground is fissuring open. It looks like Earth is hurling spears of energy toward New York, but I guess they’re more like broccoli spears than pointy spears. (Hello, end of the world? These are some puns! You are welcome!) You can hear it. Loud, high-pitched screaming, as if air itself could emote. Apparently, these are symptoms of the end of the world. It feels like one of those odd things you learn, but never need to apply again, like, uh, something. Maybe Galactus is also draining me of my cleverness.

Turning on CNN, I see some crazy footage of this giant purple space god with his giant purple space kilt and giant purple two-pronged space helmet and giant planet-eating space machines. Damn. Look at that. There’s something you don’t see every day, or ever again. Thank God the Pentagon has sent the Air Force! I guess the White House needs to put up a good front. I guess. It’s not like they need to impress anyone for the next election. Because there is no next election. Nor is there a tomorrow. Nor is there a Fantastic Four. Apparently, we’re one of those example planets that has to be devoured before the audience meets the planet that stands a fighting chance. I can’t imagine what must be going through the mind of one of the Air Force pilots, to stare into the eye of a hungry god and then launch a missile into it. That is some hardcore military basic training right there. Rather than spend the last day on Earth with his family, that pilot is throwing ice cubes at the Sun.
And then that fleet of aircraft just vaporized.
I guess I just found out what goes through the minds an Air Force pilot starring into the eyes of a hungry god.
Anything that hungry god wants!
HEY-OH!

Ahhh…
I check the blogrolls on Fark. CrooksandLiars believes that the U.S. Air Force strike over New York City is an irresponsible and impeachable offense. National Review blames the coming of Galactus on the homosexual agenda.

I open that expensive bottle of bourbon I’ve been saving since graduation for something awesome. Well, here’s to not ever getting married or having kids! Ideally, I’d like to go out masturbating to Briana Banks, but, well, I doubt I could get an erection at a time like this.

I check MySpace and some teenager in Missouri has posted a bulletin denouncing Galactus as a faggot. U.S.A. #1! Take that, National Review!

The Galactus Wikipedia page is blowing up. Nerds have their comeuppance! Unfortunately, it’s on the last day of life as we know it, so it’s a bittersweet victory.

I bet there’s a whole lot of people on Earth right now thinking they spent their lives worshipping the wrong giant space god.

CNN has a tickertape notice about store lootings and general nonsensical mayhem. Apparently, poor people want to watch the apocalypse on a really nice, big, high def plasma televisions.

The world map on CNN goes insane, with landmasses curling upward toward New York, like he is bending the world toward his mouth. The world is flat again.

I put the bottle to my lips.
And then the TV cable pops out with my innerwebs connection.
And then the power goes down.
And then

by thousands

2008-12-17T09:38:00.010-06:00

Sadie holds her breath under the water and slowly counts to ten by thousands. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. When she breaks the surface, things will be different. The world will have changed between the time that she dipped her head under the horizon and when she emerges. Four one thousand, five one thousand. The world changes by seconds, she knows, whether she’s under water or not. Seconds and less than seconds, infinitely and forever. Six one thousand, seven one thousand. But in this case, Sadie wants specific change. Eight one thousand, nine one thousand. When Sadie lifts her head out of the chlorinated pool and looks around her, she wants to see that her life is markedly and noticeably different, that she is ten pounds lighter or that there is no boring office job to return to or that Greg is not still sitting poolside flirting with the Swede from room 202. When she lifts her head out of the water, Sadie wants it all to be new.

Back on the east coast it is snowing. A blizzard, in fact. Sadie called her mom when they checked into the hotel, and her mom told her that Buffalo got twenty inches. Sadie thought that was a weird statistic to share, since no one they knew lived in Buffalo, but she let it go. Sadie has been letting everything go lately. She likes to think she’s attempting a Buddhist form of non-attachment, but she suspects it’s just a more mundane giving up. Even the trip here to the Keys was a giving up. Greg asked if she wanted to skip out on the holidays and go sit in the sun, swim in the ocean, drink cocktails by the pool. Sadie didn’t. She wanted to go visit her best friend in Portland, hang out in coffee shops, listen to bands, get drunk in bars. Sadie hates the relentless sunshine; she prefers the calmness of overcast, rainy days. But Greg’s question was more of a statement, like he knew she’d be excited, like he’d already gotten the tickets, like he only wanted confirmation. So she’d said sure, okay. He’d pulled the tickets out of his back pocket with a grin and handed them to her. Surprise.

Sadie has been dating Greg for exactly one year and six days, and she thinks that if she wasn’t so busy giving up, one year and six days would be just about long enough. She doesn’t understand why Greg doesn’t realize he feels the same way. It’s obvious he feels the same way, when he spends much of their first two vacation days chatting up lovely Swedish ladies by the pool.

In a move that surprised even herself, Sadie packed a sketchpad for the trip. She wasn’t sure why; she hasn’t sketched in over a year. Or painted. Or even doodled. Not since before she met Greg. In fact, if Sadie thinks about it, which she begins to do as she waits in the airport and thumbs through trashy celeb magazines, she stopped drawing around the same time she started working reception, because she thought benefits would be nice for a change. Which was around the same time that her best friend moved to Portland and she started going to clubs she wouldn’t have been caught dead in before, because that’s where her work friends were going. Which is how she met Greg. Who came after Adam. Who she met when she was bartending and who was an artist too and the two of them used to spend whole Saturday mornings sitting at the coffee shop together, sketching out notebooks worth of the ridiculous and the sublime.

Adam. Adam was the last time that Sadie remembers anything being well and truly new. It is halfway through this line of thought that Sadie begins to suspect she is giving up on the wrong things.

Under the water Sadie’s lungs are starting to burn. She’s counted by thousands up to nine, but it’s so peaceful down there she couldn’t bring herself to finish. The kids that are usually infesting the pool must all be at lunch or enforced naps, and the tourists are out doing touristy things. Miraculously, they’ve got the pool almost entirely to themselves, just Sadie and Greg and two other couples and the Swedes. Sadie is the only one in the water, posed in what they called the dead man’s float when she was a kid. She plans to stay in there as long as her lungs can hold.

A memory floats back to her, under the water. When Sadie was eleven, her grandmother came to visit. It was only her second trip, and since it was summer, the family took her to Coney Island. Sadie showed off her knowledge of the boardwalk, and steered her grandmother toward the shops and games, but her grandmother made a beeline for the Cyclone. She had never been on a rollercoaster before, she told Sadie. They didn’t have them in the old country. Sadie’s parents had gone for hot dogs, and Sadie wasn’t sure what to do. She was worried for her frail, seventy-two-year-old grandmother in general, never mind in a wooden car on a rickety rollercoaster that was older than she was. Sadie tried to talk her out of it. She told her grandmother that she wasn’t missing anything, that the coaster was overrated, that there was nothing exciting about it at all.

“So says you,” her grandmother answered. “Maybe it is true, but how will I know except to try? When you stop trying, Sadie, your life becomes blah. My life has been blah for too long.” She grabbed Sadie’s hand and marched her into the line, and nothing Sadie said during the wait could deter her.

Finally, they reached the front and were put, to Sadie’s utter horror, in the very first car of the coaster. As they were strapped in, Sadie’s grandmother turned to her granddaughter and grabbed her hand.

“The only way to get through this world,” she told Sadie, “is to flee from the blah and chase after every new thing with a greedy heart.”

Sadie feels the first drops hit her back just as she’s beginning to see spots from lack of air. Raindrops. It’s raining, a summer storm. Through the strange echo chamber of the water she can hear the Swedes sending up fake shrieks at the idea of getting wet, and she hears footsteps running for the hotel. Sadie stays in the dead man’s float a moment longer, until the drops have become a torrent, real water covering her better than the chlorinated stuff ever could. She drops to the bottom of the pool in a crouch, ready to burst up, and opens her eyes to the rain clouds overhead, to the new and different sky that’s waiting.

One one thousand, two one thousand

Ten.

Back and Forth, 2008

2008-12-16T12:59:00.007-06:00