Four people sit in a parking lot. Their cars are scattered throughout the different levels as if by some unspoken rule. A huge hackberry tree stands watchful in the center. The sky is choked with huge gray cotton balls and the wind whips furiously at the glass of their windows in bursts, beckoning them to come out into the chilly afternoon air. Each person is still. In each car, silence.
There's a placid place,
an unfulfilled space, where poets roam, singly, searching, singing the mystery marrow through their poem. I wake up slowly with an aching head and a dry mouth. I remember drinking too much last night. Slowly it occurs to me that I don’t smell coffee brewing. Sarah has made me coffee every morning for almost eight years now. Then, reluctantly at first, I remember the argument we had last night; it was a bad one. We were both plastered and apoplectic. Hell, we were both apoplectically plastered.
Grandfather who died or traveled west
when my mother was three, what grows in the soil of you? Are you the Cherokee rumor of my ancestry, A panel of twelve contestants was led in by four armed, ex-military guards. With their heads bowed, they took their seats in the designated area at precisely 7:48 p.m. on Monday, November 30, 2037. The audience, whom were already seated, roared to life. Their cheers echoed throughout the studio.
Roald Amundsen was seeing strange things in the middle of Alaska. A portrait of himself inside a school house. The Inuit men who accompanied him were seasoned, but they had never seen a man quite this hysterical. Amundsen’s glasses fell off of his face; the shake of his madness had left it bare. Suddenly the young Roald disappeared and before the older, non -photocopied and wrinkled Roald was seeing a postman. There were bags and bags of letters around him, none of which were addressed to anywhere in Alaska, or even addressed at all.
“If someone ever gave me flowers, why would I want red roses? I love roses, but red ones are such a cliché. Everyone gives red roses. No, if anyone ever gave me flowers, I would want a colorful bouquet. It would show that they put thought into it. Pink, yellow, white, purple, maybe a red or two thrown in for variety, and orange, lots of orange roses. They’re my favorite, the most beautiful.”
I once buried a horse in my backyard.
The hole was exactly how I had imagined it when I was child. Two fixed eyes, an unintelligible soul. I kept it all, then walked to through the presidio. Off to the hospital, for a nappy nap. I have wanted to open the earth,
to split the crumbled dirt with sinking spade. Dig slowly down, carving towers in the depths, exact in their geometry. The sun cuts into my eyes like flashing hot coals as salty rivers of sweat run down the hills and valleys of my masked face. The crowd has grown unbearably large around me, the faint hum of hushed whispers building and crashing against my ears like a tidal wave. Amidst this torrent of sound, a thousand eyes are turned to me. My legs quiver like a child’s as he takes his first steps and the weight of the axe in my hand is going to tear my arm from its socket any second.
“…always where men came together to exchange ideas, to laugh and boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days, always they came together over alcohol. The thousand roads of romance and adventure drew together in the saloon, and thence led out and on over the world.”
John Barleycorn When I awoke there was an immeasurable darkness, immeasurable and endlessly cold. A puddle of water had formed around me in the darkness to further chill my bones, and as I felt against the wood of my coffin the sloshing water took me to the great seas of my mind. I could recall lying in a row boat in the dead of night, the thousand stars gleaming as diamonds above me, the gentle rocking of the sea setting me to sleep. I breathed in the cold salty air and felt the water with my finger tips. Below me was an entire world of darkness, filled with the nothingness of the void and the few demons that could subsist in such nothingness.
What was found: creaking hinges, unoiled for decades, on trunks dragged in by unseen porters; the musty, dull odor of crudely ripped tickets to concession stands; the sharp convex curves of a rhinoceros horn, shaved at the base with the name Plunder etched into the ivory; the sickly pink sheen of a baby pig fetus, labeled "Fat Punk" on the dusty, large jar containing its soft mounds; yellowed, crumbling advertisements hand-painted to draw the eye to bearded women and cooch tents; a flurry of beating wings courtesy of gray, miniscule moths clamoring for egress from folded jackets rimmed with gold trim and iron rivets.
I’ve never met him, but they say I have his eyes. Hearing this amuses me because the hue is constantly changing and it makes me wonder if his did the same. The majority of the time the iris is green with specks of gold outlined in charcoal. Often, strangers will tell me that I have the prettiest eyes they’ve ever seen, and my friends will tell me that I have an old soul (I suppose I equate the two since they say the eyes are the windows to the soul).
It really smells in here. It always smells like fading urine, drying feces and blood, and dollar store disinfectant. Here comes one now--they just stare and point, then they walk on to the next one. Maybe it's my snotty nose or my one crooked, seeping eye or my bloody bandaged ear or my hairless tail. It doesn't bother me though, just that awful smell.
Strife, depression, anxiety, disappointment; these are several feelings that defined your childhood. From a young age you were forced to grow-up quicker than most. You became accustomed to your chaotic life.
Poison. Right in the jug of filtered water, waiting harmlessly in the thrice-shared fridge. Something clear, unscented, so he never sees it coming. Take it back to her room and drink deep, babe. He'll set the glass next to the mass of food he helped her prepare from the groceries I bought, on the dishes I washed. I sit, hungry, praying for the end to finally come. Concentrated detergent with bleach substitute never worked as well as the real thing. I hear the laments as the plate tips our of his butterfingers from my seat in the room between his near and certain death. Lysol canister, rigged to explode at the slightest touch. The one time he cleans will be the last. I hear the boom from my seat outside her door.
The prick of the thorn
drew a single drop of blood a brilliant, perfect red that grew, spreading over my body Some vague image of you as a mother cooking eggs frying bacon or
you hopping with foot on a heel and one foot almost on a heel with your business suit or you painting gulls flying over a New England morning as fishing boats float by with one gull perching on the remnant of a fallen pier The pier was the self-portrait you never posed The room looked like it always looked–sterile, white, cold. She’d been here too many times to count. Everyday, Monday through Friday, nine to five. And for each day, she felt the room grow colder, hungrier. Today, she had to meet with Rachel. Rachel. Her favorite patient, her most deranged patient. The only patient she saw from the institution anymore. Dollar signs, she thought.
if I had, perchance, darling--
now I’m strictly speaking hypothetically, two doves, one white and one sort of greyish, you know, dirty and with a broken wing, probably sickly, about to ‘kick the can’ Somewhere northern, farther than they'd meant to go, the ship had faltered to its end. When the disease struck them, Phillip had not cried. Not when the captain had plunged Mr. Peterson’s body into the ice, or when any of the others were flung. When the captain had no one strong enough to drop him into the depths, it had been a last straw of hope in everyone’s eyes. Like the teasing of a sonata's careful end, the cries of the passengers had died down from three, to two, to one. The ten year old boy that he was, Phillip somehow found adventure in the silence. There was no illness for him. It was like a story, he thought. And he would be the hero in the end. Blond-haired, brown-eyed, of a smaller stature than his classmates, he had an opportunity to guide a ship to port, to be welcomed home to prestige. Everyone else, after all, had met their own demise.
Bow to Stern. Bow to Stern. Like the rocking of a newborn babe, the black acrid ocean cradled sleep. But not the kind of sleep I deserved. The sideways, necromancy, arching, bursting slips of sonar curses. Squalls forever find my nights. Aft to Port. Aft to Port. Aft to Port. And Port to Aft. Shearing starboard bulkheads of issued grey matter falling out of my head. Stern to Bow. Aft to Port. Mid-ship flip. Stomach storms are the worst. And Castle-way, sanded with white crystals stinging singed exposed skin. Bow. Flooded berthing and lowered rails. Port. To the Stern I look for the wall of sea. Onix and toxic and consuming and bleak. Aft to Port. Then, Stern to Bow.
He stood there gasping as stars fell from her mouth. It was a brilliant display. Small embers of white-hot static fell from her tongue, one after the other, in a fine mist of white. Then, after a moment of stupid deliberation, he ran to get her a bucket. When he returned, she grasped it delicately with two softly glowing hands. Like seafoam, the particles spilled over the sides as she moaned them out. “Shh,” he said, patting her hand. “There's nothing to be afraid of.”
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