Q uiet L ightning

sPARKLE
& bLINK

as performed on
May 3 10
@
Mina Dresden Gallery

© 2010 by Evan Karp + Rajshree Chauhan

ISBN 978-0-557-43396-4

Design by Evan Karp

Cover art by C.R. Stapor
Back by Benjamin Berger

Promotional rights only.

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individual authors.

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Your support is crucial and appreciated.

For information:

http://qlightning.wordpress.com
lightning@evankarp.com

[ 2 ]
 Q uiet Lightning
is

a monthly submission-based reading series

with 2 stipulations
you have to be able to be there to submit

you only get 3-8 min

submit

!
!

each month

1 attendee of those who put their names in a hat

gets 2 weeks to respond

via mail or email

to the last reading b4 break

it will be published

on the blog

and read at the subsequent

Quiet Lightning
!
!

[ 3 ]
contents
nic alea
joan | backbone 7
cave paintings 8

anhvu buchanan
hypochondriac | bipolar 12
mornings 13
post-traumatic stress 14

meghan thornton
the terrorist 16
follow 22

julia halprin jackson

the dumbest parasite in the world 24
granada 26

jerry ratch
laughter 27
pigeons having sex on an air conditioner in new york 29
man running from a bar 30

elise hunter
false advertising, or how I learned to love my feet 32

m.g. martin
a town called modernism 38

[ 4 ]
 chris cole
let music make me whole again … 43
there is wisdom in no escape 46
the piano has been drinking 49

paul corman-roberts
ode to the invisible 51
ode to my writer’s block 53

pam benjamin
all thumbs notice 55

amy e glasenapp
wizard son 60

ian tuttle
mixing with the regulators: a cautionary tale 64

roger porter
revelations from the inside 69

c.r. stapor
poor people 74

tess patalano
a day in the life of a day in the life 82

[ 5 ]
[ 6 ]
[ May 2010 ]

jOAN
i heard that some women go crazy after childbirth, that pushing another
human out of them is sacrilegious and something clicks. sometimes these
women kill their babies in bathtubs or in basements that have the drip drip
dressed as prom queens. and the living have to share their space with the
dead because we are all just wandering souls picking up bread crumbs like
pigeons parading on mass graves. and the crazy have to share their space
with the verbal and if joan of arc was a valencia street hipster she’d be
popping pills for schizophrenia because when you talk to god it’s called
praying, but when god talks to you it’s called insanity.

bACKBONE
before your mother birthed you, before she even had thought you up like a
lucid daydream on a passenger train, she drew a picture of a whale with a
charcoal pencil on butcher paper. she pressed her fingers down on the page
and ripped out the whale’s spine, shoved it in her belly to form your
backbone. and i know your backbone is nothing close to human, so it must
be rigid angel from the sea, malleable and tasteless and maybe i’d lay you
down on kelp bed or maybe you’d take me first and all i know from days
spent shadow boxing your jaw line is when you cry it sounds like lights
flashing underwater and when you moan it looks like your voice in an
alleyway and when you touch me your eyes are two dead beads that need
sun to melt away the gray space.

[7]
[ May 2010 ]

cAVE pAINTINGS
the night my mother called me
i had enough clouds in my chest
to turn cumulus to nimbus raining,
she said to me,
baby,
are you trans identity?
i said,
mommy,
when they come for me
i will be carrying baskets
of barbies
with circumcised gender.
i will be ringing out rags
of queer apocalypse
that cuts from my clit to my breasts
and i don’t need to show you anything
i don’t need to show anyone anything
that in this moment
i’m content enough
to not surgically change
my body
but conduct enough prayer circles
and rituals to make sure my soul
is full enough with
neutrality
and when you carve away
at the sediments,
chisel away at the fossilized sap
there are cave paintings
with drawings in red clay
of men with breasts
and women with cocks,
underneath the rocks
of our foremothers
we are all dancing zodiac

[8]
[ May 2010 ]

believers that gender

is just a mark on a birth certificate,
choice is no matter
until you’ve swung
your first baseball
in tomboy hat,
painted your lips pink
to over shadow the blue
that was assigned to you,
baby, you look so good
in your identity.

and i said,
mommy,
i am not
i am not
abutchlesbiangirldyke
m a’ a m s i s t e r d a u g h t e r m a m a
and i’m especially not a lady
carry me away in slick armor
erect a queer umbrella
watch he/she/ze pronouns
do the drip drip off the tip of your nose
if you need to define this being
i’ll set myself up on the binary
pick apart each pore on my body
and my gender is human
my sex is passionate and sweaty.

and some boys cry over spilt poetry

and some boys cry over how
big their tits
they don’t want to be,
but real boys don’t cry
instead conform to gender roles
that have machismo
undertones
because if you don’t have a dick
then you are just a chick
[9]
[ May 2010 ]

with a “psychological problem”.

and i’ve seen flowers bloom
out of the bruises from T shots
and kade found his own name
in a pocket full of prose lines
i’ve dreamt of ashes
falling down soft skin
but i have never confirmed
with myself
which box of identities
i’d like to be put in,
so i’d say
that if gender
is two tin cans
strung together like a
telephone messenger
then i am the vibration
of secrets pulsating across
this makeshift telephone wire,
i’ve got not box to be fit in
because
i am switzerland
i am handicap bathrooms
i am yellow
i am a milk hotel
i am the collective tarot
i am crater face
i am diclinous flowers
i am neutrality
i am not
but i am
identity.

[ 10 ]
[ May 2010 ]

hYPOCHONDRIAC
I wake up from naps bloated with broken knuckles my spine tingles when I
stare at goldfish and sometimes there is a pain in my side when I cook
meatloaf my face is always flushed when I enter a bingo hall my throat gets
sore when dogs bark at me my knees are stiff four days a week I yawn
excessively but I’ve never seen anyone yawn before my legs swell up when I
shower in the afternoon I lose a bit of hair riding in a taxi after board games
I limp for five straight hours the tips of my toes get discolored in February I
get shortness of breath eating at a salad bar my vomit is always blue but I
can’t stop coughing when I listen to morning radio whenever it snows I have
back pains my eyes bulge anytime I’m around squirrels I twist my ankle
anytime I speak in public my skin gets itchy when I sit on hardwood floors
reading the Sunday paper gives me the hiccups my face twitches on
birthdays I always fracture a bone after shopping in thrift stores I have
difficulty swallowing food in the spring every time I blink I think I’m dying
I blink at least sixteen times a minute

[ 11 ]
[ May 2010 ]

bIPOLAR
This is my hand clutching the razor blade slicing off my left ear. This is the
kitchen where I am dressed in nothing but bra and panties icing a cake. This
is the heart of my father beating from the grave. This is a garage sale where I
will buy all my Christmas presents in April. This is the yogurt shop I have
decided to open up this morning. This is a howling baby, which I will
ignore. This is my arm rummaging through purses and lockers. This is my
weeping eye after ten straight days. This is the cigarette I am fiddling with
while figuring out life. This is how I feel when I put on my silk dress. This is
my leg made of bricks growing heavy with weeds. This is my brain cranking
out essays and articles and speeches and letters and emails and poems and
stories and notes. This is the way to misspell exact. This is my mouth
moving. This is my mouth closed.

[ 12 ]
[ May 2010 ]

mORNINGS.
The windows are barely open and the sound of traffic is an alarm clock I
couldn’t turn off. I woke up and thought of all the things people wanted to
say to me but couldn’t the night before. There were times in my life where
memory was a rainy day that would never come. The dog is nipping at my
toes underneath the covers. I wonder if we dreamed the same dreams. If I
was the poet and he was the show dog or if he was the playwright and I was
Lassie. His barks are poems I wish I had written. There is a world still
moving on outside my window without me. The newspaper readers and
sandwich makers are playing their roles. My girlfriend and I fist fight for
bathroom time but she always wins out. I was taught never to hit a woman
so instead I sit on the couch in the morning with a bloody nose waiting to
pee. There are things we all want to lock up in a dark cellar. The shine of the
city light hits my eyes and all I can smell is burnt bagels. At the grocery
store the eggs are hiding in the cooler. Because being hungry is hip again.
One can only wonder how many starving words linger in the streets. The
dog is chewing on a cow hoof next to me. And it is finally starting to rain
memories. There was a book, a pat on the back, and bitterness in the berries.
The berries sink to the bottom of my cereal. She comes out and tells me its
all mine. Except I don’t have to pee anymore and she says I am strange with
issues. I have issues and even more issues. The shower is still running. The
apartment is now moist. Morning is morning and again the birds are
chirping.

[ 13 ]
[ May 2010 ]

pOSTTRAUMATIC sTRESS
it’s the broken bulb in the back of the eye. the dirt beneath the footsteps,
anthills like landmines ready to explode. it’s the lip service at the back door.
it’s the soldier in the supermarket, restocking ripe rifles and tossing around
the grape grenades. the gust of the garden hose dripping at the thighs. the
camera in the clouds recording every move. it’s the splatter of fingers in the
frying pan. it’s the wet anvils crashing down from the sky. the army of baby
strollers approaching slowly like tanks. it’s the listening at the bottom of the
stairs. the runny nose right after dinner. it’s the way the tires burn at dawn.
it’s the fear in the ear, just before

[ 14 ]
[ May 2010 ]

tHE tERRORIST
Carrie glanced over at the young man nervously. His eyes were light but

everything else about him was dark. Smooth brown skin, coarse black hairs

along his arms. Spidery lashes and black flint colored brows. He was

walking beside her in the narrow jetway. He did not appear to be on a cell

phone, yet he was gesturing with his hands, muttering under his breath

words that she couldn’t make out. He stuck his palms out emphatically, and

then he seemed to sense her watching him and he looked over. Her eyes met

his strange light hazel eyes as he regarded her with what she felt was uneasy

suspicion. Then he looked away and kept walking down the seemingly

endless jetway towards the invisible 747 aircraft. He flipped through his

passport as though marveling at some novelty. Carrie felt a chill go down

her spine.

She put pieces together quickly: He was a terrorist who’d nearly

gotten held up by security. Now he was checking his passport again, looking

at the perfect forgery, thinking perhaps of just how lucky he was for having

gotten through. When she veered towards the business class entry, he

followed. Carrie’s heart thumped in her chest. He looked so young—too

[ 15 ]
[ May 2010 ]

young to be in business class. He was too underdressed in his striped hoodie

and wrinkled trousers. But if he were a terrorist, it would be quite a clever

plan. No one expects a terrorist in business class.

Carrie listened to the dull thud of his sneakers on carpet behind her.

Ahead loomed the smiling flight attendants. She thought about telling them

—asking them to check the boy again. She could lie, say she’d seen a knife

on him. Her conservative nature won in the end, and fear of being looked at

strangely, and fear of being wrong. But still, she would watch him. She

would keep a very close eye on him.

As it turned out, the dark boy with the light eyes was seated just

across the aisle from her on the upper deck. She watched him as he put his

backpack in the overhead compartment, first removing a book. He settled in

to the window seat and looked around. Carrie glanced away quickly. When

she dared to look back he was reading. She pretended to scratch her neck so

she could crane it forward to see the title. It was the Kite Runner. She hadn’t

read it, but she’d heard of it. Wasn’t it about the Middle East? Her fears

returned, multiplied.

[ 16 ]
[ May 2010 ]

When the first meal came she noticed he ate no meat. She thought that

might be further damning but then realized she had no idea if terrorists ate

meat. She didn’t understand them at all really. She stared at the boy, trying

to picture him with a knife, or with a bomb strapped to his leg, and she

found she couldn’t. But still, he had that twitchy, nervous flutter.

She hardly touched her food.

Four hours into the flight he took the programming remote and hit it

forcefully against his hand. He pressed many buttons at once, then resumed

the pounding. Carrie frantically wondered if this was it—was the remote

somehow a detonator? She sat forward in her seat. A stewardess caught the

boy at it and blocked Carrie’s view of him for a while. When she could

finally see him again the boy was reclining in his seat, watching the screen

in front of him. His face appeared tranquil. Looks can be deceiving, she

reminded herself.

Carrie’s nerves were on edge. She could not bring herself to tell

anyone of her suspicions, could not imagine justifying them to anyone else.

Yet she could not quell them either. The dark boy played at the corner of her

watchful eye, every movement a cause for Carrie to look over. She braced
[ 17 ]
[ May 2010 ]

herself in her chair when he tied his shoelaces. When he went to the

bathroom she found it difficult to breathe until he returned. Her heart raced

during their second meal as he cut his small chicken fillet with a metal knife.

Who had decided that planes should allow metal knives again?

The boy ate sparingly and she wondered if he was dreaming of the

many rewards he would have in heaven. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t

true; that it wasn’t worth it.

She thought now that he looked exactly the way she’d always

imagined a terrorist to look—down to the striped hoodie and the wrinkled

trousers.

The captain announced that they would be landing. Carrie no longer

cared that the boy looked back at her as she watched him. She wanted him to

know. Wanted him to see she had her eye on him. Wanted him to see that

she knew.

And then they were on the ground. Her body jolted at the touch down.

She almost couldn’t believe that they’d landed safely. She looked at the boy

and his eyes regarded her under furrowed brows. Had she single-handedly

stopped a terrorist attack? Had he been unable to act under her watchful

gaze?
[ 18 ]
[ May 2010 ]

Standing with her bags, in the throes of stilled passengers looking for

an exit, she came face to face with the boy. He was taller than her and

looked down at her as he spoke. “Do I know you?” he asked in a perfect

American accent.

But she’d heard that they were well trained. They looked and sounded

just like us, that’s what she’d heard. She said nothing in return, but held her

bag tightly in front of her body as though it were a shield, as though it could

keep anything from getting to her.

[ 19 ]
[ May 2010 ]

fOLLOW
I think in another time you were an elf or woodsman,
perhaps the one who saved Snow White's life.
How lucky I am to have you as my guide
through these enchanted winter woods.
Look, There are hoof prints.
you say, pointing to the trodden ground,
broken snow filled with upset mud and emergent, haphazard stalks
And there, Droppings.
drawing your arm up along the trail,
You still quickly and I mimic reverently,
your blue eyes and horse-bristle mustache working like a compass needle.
Hear that?
you ask.
A crack in the distance.
Another crack, then a smack.
It's a bull—cleaning the velvet from its antlers.
I try to picture that
giant, muscular stag standing up to its knees in snow
calcified blossom upon his head
lowering then raising the rack
to thwack against tree trunk
splintering gray bark
snow dislodging from branches above
falling unnoticed upon the deer.
Your breath comes out in a white cloud
as you grin from ear to ear; your eyes wrinkling in that
extremely Irish way
and all memories of time between us less beautiful than this
evaporate into the winter chill
to skate upon some distant ice pond.
I grin back and giggle softly and
I am twelve again—
lost in the wonder of that first hike through our new forest
behind the cut ground into which all of your

[ 20 ]
[ May 2010 ]

sweat and dreams were tossed then used as mortar, as bricks, as steel. 
We begin to follow the trail of the deer.
Our boots marry snow and mud.
My feet hurt but I say nothing.
I would do this forever if I could—
follow you through clusters of pine,
over bubbling icy streams,
relishing the discarded bits of beaver dam,
the relics of old hunting perches,
the call of the hawk,
the glimpse of the woodpecker,
the dash of deer. 
I would follow you through eternity
in my three-inch-thick green down jacket and red mittens,
scarf wound tightly over my mouth and nose, moist against my breath,
red and black striped possum hat pulled snugly over my ears,
our thirty-one and sixty-seven years behind us,
crusting over with snow. 

[ 21 ]
[ May 2010 ]

tHE dUMBEST pARASITE

iN tHE wORLD
aN iSLA vISTA lOVE sONG
He leans back in a sofa with the padding popping out of the seams like rice
exploding from a stuffed bell pepper,
And she picks off nail polish in even lines from the shells that are her toes,
and they are sitting in the same room, sharing air more than words, when he
expresses how he truly feels.

You know what I really think about you? he says in a tone like the metallic
flaking off of his 1987 Mazda

She doesn’t look up and so he says,

You make me want to light a match to my farts so I can shoot myself to the
moon
and before she can snort he adds,
Before falling back to earth like a collapsed balloon

Her eyebrows furrow like the San Andreas fault, and suddenly her
earthquake shakes
You are the dumbest of the dumb parasites in this house, and there are a lot
of dumb parasites in this house, and as her voice rises so does her hyperbole:
If there was a contest to see who was the dumbest parasite in the world, you
would win, pincers down

their scowls fuse in the chilled air, and the temperature drops so when they
exhale, they can see the air escaping in blue bubbles from their open lips

he leans forward in his chair like a stuffed bell pepper and she pulls her gaze
away from her toenail polish (polish so red it is called “I’m not really a
waitress”) and slowly, slowly pulls a book of matches out of his back
pocket.

She makes no move to protest, so he leans forward, lights the match, and lets
it dawdle over the open space behind his posterior. Just as he is doing so, she
[ 22 ]
[ May 2010 ]

pulls a large trophy out from underneath her chair and places it on the table
between them.

“The Dumbest Parasite in the World,” it reads.

He farts, and they kiss.

[ 23 ]
[ May 2010 ]

gRANADA mEANS
pOMEGRANATE
Granada is a pomegranate, people spilling out of the cathedral like
little ruby seeds spreading over cobblestone, tacones clicking, smoke
billowing, motos careening. I’ve never lived in a place where one can buy
pornography with a Diet Coke, nor have I ever seen bull blood or ham bones
like baseball bats hanging in every corner store. The air here rushes quicker
to my lungs, the cigarettes make my eyes water and the fountains surprise
me on every corner. I am a salmon pushing upstream, slipping in and out of
the walking mob, fully aware that a Jansport backpack and pink
snowboarding jacket (with lift ticket still visible) marks me as undeniably,
embarrassingly americana. There’s this thrill of being anonymous and being
conspicuous, as if the people who do stop me recognize me for a reason.
Usually they want to sell me something—hashish, olive branches for church,
pañuelos, pirated Black Eyed Peas albums. It’s funny what stays on my skin
—Moorish tea and lentil soup and the scent of canela—and what falls off
me as I walk: anti-war stickers and post-it notes with directions and fortune
cookie messages. I’ve got a Nalgene of Kool-Aid, an inadequate cell phone,
a Spanish-English dictionary and a map, and somehow I’m stripped bare,
flayed open like a discarded pomegranate, ruby seeds spilling out for all the
world to see.

[ 24 ]
[ May 2010 ]

lAUGHTER
“We can walk anywhere and we can stop at some new café where
we don’t know anyone and nobody knows us and have a drink.”
-- Hemingway

At the center of the world

our bodies float over each other
near to everything, at the center
of being

Not like arrows pointing in three directions

but like our own bodies
pulsing in and out

Laughter can cure nearly anything

it is said
it’s so precious
It’s like an undiscovered metal
no one knows anything about
yet

And when they discover how rare it is

O look out!
They’ll come to wage wars over it –
that’s how badly it is needed

It’s widely known

how we could live on laughter
alone

Not air, not water nor land

is more precious
Who cares about the apples hanging from trees?
Who cares about the lovely pomegranate?

[ 25 ]
[ May 2010 ]

We come to care little for the perfect orange

But for a small glassful of laughter

we would kill. Yes, kill.

[ 26 ]
[ May 2010 ]

pIGEONS hAVING sEX oN

aN aIR cONDITIONER
iN nEW yORK
“The place is great”
we told the rental agent
“except for one thing

“Pigeons are nesting

on the air conditioner
in the bedroom window

“At 7 a.m. the pigeons

were having sex
on the air conditioner

“They started getting really wild

and throwing themselves
against the window”

There was a pause

while you could distinctly hear
the rental agent swallow

He cleared his throat

“That sounds kind of hot”
he said

[ 27 ]
[ May 2010 ]

mAN rUNNING fROM a

bAR
A man alone in his paid-for living room, with his hands folded behind his
head
A man running from a bar, a bald man seen from behind
Someone who made a wide circle to avoid your laughter

A man undressing at the side of the road saying: “How you doing?”
“Okay. How you doing?”
“Okay.” And we look – both of us liars

A tired man, eating pork chops. Someone who had to stop drinking
because the wine that strengthened the heart, weakened the veins
Because the time wasn’t right for acknowledging pain

Someone who’s watching the rain fall in rivulets, when it’s possible
for one’s innards to wander off among those tiny columns of rain and
become lost

Of being so lost, while the rain continues to drizzle down

A long strand of hair hanging over the back of a girl’s chair at a reading
A man sitting behind her, rubbing only the ends of it between his thumbs
ready to let go

Red dog, dog with big teeth

Golden toes on a clown
Running man
Clown with yellow hat
Clown with red lips
A woman fleeing

Of course all of this presumes we have enemies

[ 28 ]
[ May 2010 ]

Woman with a rag doll, a pretty woman

with red straps over her feet
Does she still cross herself before having sex?

And what are they singing now

on the way to the liquor store?

[ 29 ]
[ May 2010 ]

fALSE aDVERTISING, oR
hOW i lEARNED tO lOVE
mY fEET
I felt his presence as a warmth, sidling up to the right side of my body.
His footsteps were silent, or the plinking on my keyboard had drowned them
out. I turned to face a paunch, and looked up to see a middle-aged man with
wiry black hair and fogged glasses.
“Hi there,” he said,” look, I don’t mean to disturb you, but I’m really
in a bind and thought maybe you could spare a few minutes to help me out.”
He rocked on his heels.
“Well, sure, I guess. If it’s just a minute.” I said.
“I’m in the business school at State,” he explained, “and for our final
project we have to create a poster and some brochures—marketing materials
—for a fictitious company. My company is a shoe company, and my idea is
to make a poster with pictures of feet, different shapes and sizes and colors
of feet, with a slogan at the bottom, something like ‘We’ll Cover You.”
He cleared his throat. Was he asking for my advice? It was a stupid
concept. Advertisements are supposed to tease the caged beast in the
subconscious that responds only to beauty and sex. Nothing could be gained
from displaying those unsightly slabs of flesh that anchor us to the ground
and destroy any fantasy of human elegance.
“And how would I help you with this?”

[ 30 ]
[ May 2010 ]

“This poster is due in two days and I don’t have all the pictures I
need,” he said, “I want them to be very tasteful pictures you know, well
composed. And I noticed the light in here is good, and you happen to be
wearing sandals.” He glanced down at my feet, still pink and clammy from
the rain.
“So you wish to photograph my feet.”
“Yes, if that’s alright with you. We can do it right here by the
windows. I would just take a few shots of your feet on that footrest.” He
spoke quickly, gesturing toward the armchair facing the windows. “I’ll move
the lamp.”
I saved my documents, closed my laptop and sat down in the
armchair. The worn tweed engulfed me. It would be easy to nod off here and
lose an entire afternoon. I had decided years ago that the Mechanics’ Library
armchairs were dangerously comfortable. Rain streaked the misty windows.
The usual pair of gargoyles sneered up at me from their perch on the frieze
of the law office across the street. My feet felt better, being elevated and
aired out, away from my waterlogged sandals.
The man shuffled towards me, fiddling with an expensive looking
shutter camera. My jaw tightened and I couldn’t muster the same surliness as
before. I was immobilized. When he started clicking his camera around my
feet like a hovering insect, I realized that I could not remember the last time
someone took so many pictures of me at once.
After he had flicked the shutter rapidly for several minutes, he stood
up and moved the floor lamp closer. It was then that I noticed his face had
flushed fuchsia and sweat beads had formed on his forehead. Dark spots
bloomed in his underarms. He panted with labored heaves. I couldn’t

[ 31 ]
[ May 2010 ]

determine if he had become so flustered from the simple exertion of

pivoting, or if some visceral bandit had hijacked his bloodstream.
I got my answer when he asked me to point my left foot, and when my
adjustment was not to his liking, he grasped the arch and gently rotated it,
fingers tracing the concave in an unmistakable caress. He knelt as if in
prayer, whispered something indecipherable under his breath, and readied
his camera once more.
A combination of horror and pity yanked me out of my stupor. I
briskly swept my feet down from the footrest.
“I hope that will give you enough material. I have to get back to my
work now.” I said, and stood up.
He looked up at me alarmed and walleyed, but quickly blinked it
away. Sudden tranquility washed over him as he stood up. “Thank you,” he
said, “this will really help me out.”
I nodded and returned to my desk. I roused my laptop from its
slumber and bent over it until my nose was mere inches from the screen. As
the tips of my toes found my soggy sandals, my feet curled under the chair.
“Hold it, wait, don’t move, just hold your position,” he warbled from
behind me. “It’s perfect.”
Grunting and quivering, he crawled under my chair and began
shooting the creased soles of my feet. “Just a few more, I don’t have any
shots from this angle yet.”
I felt the chair teeter as he tried to shove his massive shoulders
between the wooden legs. The chair creaked menacingly. I was afraid he
would get stuck. I hoped he would get stuck. I glanced around the room for
the librarian, a chess player, someone to save me.

[ 32 ]
[ May 2010 ]

Enough. I swatted at the wagging torso under my chair. “I said we

were done!”
He squirmed out with surprising agility. Upon standing, he offered me
his meaty hand. I did not take it. His gaze seemed glassy, faraway. He
opened his mouth as if to apologize or explain, but then shut it. As he turned
to leave, he looked askance at my feet and said, “I’ve never seen their
equal.”
I watched him lumber down the stairs until his bramble of hair
disappeared out of sight. I contorted my legs into a lopsided cross-legged
position with my feet stuffed under my thighs. Trying to concentrate on my
reports, I spent half an hour changing the colors on a pie chart from tropical
scheme to primary colors, back to tropical.
A few rows down, I heard the scrape of a book being stuffed back on
a shelf, and I flinched violently, nearly falling out of my chair. My
productivity had been derailed by a raw display of unorthodox fixation. I
wondered about the man’s domain. Did he only troll within the exclusive
halls of Mechanics,’ or in the public libraries as well, where he would have
to compete with chatty teenagers, schizophrenics and the children’s reading
hour?
Time to leave.
I walked quickly through the haze lulling around the smudged
concrete buildings toward my apartment. I thought about the object of the
afternoon’s caper: my feet. Come to think of it, they were quite nice. They
were symmetrical and narrow with deep arches, which were beginning to
hurt from treading on the sandals’ flat slabs. In these shabby sandals, my feet
were a bargain, gold coins in a consignment shop. Any oaf with a camera

[ 33 ]
[ May 2010 ]

and a psyche full of childhood trauma could indulge without hesitation. If

what I had was valuable, I needed to appraise them as such. That evening, I
purchased the first of many pairs of long leather boots, the high-heeled kind
with steel shank soles that reverberate every stomp. Footwear became a
fortress, protecting the prized treasure within. I often think about the roll of
photos borne of that afternoon at Mechanics’; I would like to see how they
came out.

[ 34 ]
[ May 2010 ]

a tOWN cALLED
mODERNISM
she collects them & leads them into the shed behind the slaughterhouse. they
are taken into the night when the winds run east to west in opaque sheets.
they are given one last drink of brandy before it all begins. a bonfire grows
at the edge of town; its glow is blurred behind the slow grind of the wind &
rain.
from our lens we see a girl no more than twelve. struggle walking
through the night she is wearing an overcoat & smoking a hand rolled
cigarette. she lives in the slaughterhouse. it’s simple really, she had a
mother & father, but now she doesn’t. they were thrown into the shed.
now she assumes their duties. she stops & looks back at the slaughterhouse.
she lets the cigarette drop from her lips. the rain is running horizontal,
now. she takes off the overcoat & kneels. digging her hands into the
earth, she slides to the ground & writhes, naked, in the mud.
some of them have prepared for this night since they could operate a
typewriter. some have locked themselves in linen closets, petrified, clinging
to hardbound anthologies of 20th century poetry. others have no inkling of
what this night will bring. they are the laureates, the formalists, the
professors. they are expired.
when her parents died she had not yet learned to read. she still doesn’t
know how to assemble letters into pictures. these last eight years the
girl has done nothing but collect them on the nights when the rain &
wind fuck. she remembers that her parents were the collectors. the girl

[ 35 ]
[ May 2010 ]

has no other memories, but the ones she has made since. these memories,
all of them, are of her wandering around the slaughterhouse, scavenging for
flowers & grass. flowers & grass are the only things the girl eats. this
floral diet & the collection nights are all of the memories that make up her
ability to remember, to reference. if she can reference, she exists.
none of them know exactly why the collection happens. but these collections
are as much a part of their small town pastiche as modern plumbing & they
accept it. like the way the fly will, after hours of struggle, accept the fate of
the web. on the nights when the rain & wind fancydance the whole of the
town organize their writings & wait. some of them wait to be collected. some
wait for the girl to pass by their houses without incident, without the knock
of collection. without being collected they can write until the next storms
when they will, again, cease their writings. when they will organize their
writings as they choose & wait.
naked in the electric mud, the girl’s body undulates like an ancient
earthworm. her arms burrow into the wet ground. she pulls up small
roots, the rain erasing the silt from the roots before she brings them to
her open mouth which closes once the roots are inside of it. her earth
craving satiated, the girl rises, as slowly as the sun, from the ground. still
naked, she stands & from our lens, we can see a faint smile born on
her mouth as the rain pummels her, as she swallows the last of the roots.
this town that they live in takes its name from Modernism. it was a charter
town, established by
writers seeking to make the written & spoken word new. established by
writers seeking a

[ 36 ]
[ May 2010 ]

community of literary totality. these people, the they, the them drew up a
contract of residency,
an ordinance of justice built upon the sustainability of the written word. it
was written into
Modernism town law that if a resident had ceased to produce writing with
the virility of spring
fruit, then they would be banished. mortally banished. as the town
Modernism was established
during the birth period of the literary movement of the same name, we know
that Modernism is
an antiquated place.
from our lens we follow the girl as she walks toward the town. the
rain is harassing her body, but the wind blows so hard that the rain
skids off her body keeping her in a state of constant dryness, constant
nocturnal warmth. as our lens zooms in on her body we see that the
girl is running an unwinnable race with pubescence. her hips have
swollen some since the last collection, her buttocks now take the
shape of two small pears, her breasts have grown to resemble infantile
cloud pockets & her pubis now sprouts a handful of hairs, like an
archipelago over a vast ocean. she will soon collect them as a woman.
tonight, however, as the wind & rain try to breed a new elemental
element, the girl walks slowly towards them, towards the they that
have & will always perish for their writings.
after over a century of existence, the they, the them, the people of
Modernism know not why they

[ 37 ]
[ May 2010 ]

all will expire in the same way. they know not why a nude girl will come
during the night to
collect them; they know not why they will have organized their writings
which they will bring
with them; they know not why they will build their own mausoleums out of
their own writings;
they know not why she will lead them to the slaughterhouse on the edge of
town where this will
happen; they know not why they will willingly, completely & exceedingly,
willingly walk into
the shed of fire where their ashes will mix with those of their neighbors, with
the other they, the
other them of Modernism town. but they & them are like us, the people of
the world who don’t
understand & don’t remember our own histories, our own small town
pastiches. but we & they &
them accept the hell out of them.

[ 38 ]
[ May 2010 ]

lET mUSIC mAKE mE

wHOLE aGAIN aND
wORDS tELL mE hOW iT
mAKES mE fEEL
inside the pockets
of jeans that i wore
for three days or more
before they came back to life
and walked away
on their own
the scraps of paper are still there
where i wrote your name
in so many different ways
stuck together
from when you tried
to make them clean

and if i tried
to pry them apart
they would just dissolve
like all the thoughts
in my head
that never make it out
'cause
things fall apart
otherwise
they would get stuck
and never fit through
the tight spaces
that we have to travel
we are a part

[ 39 ]
[ May 2010 ]

even when we're apart

even when we come apart
and sometimes
i just want to hold you
and to be held
without holding on

i practiced
different ways
to be natural
only to find out
that practice
makes perfect
and perfection
has no place
in art
the letters that connect
to form a pattern
are uneven
the words that bind feelings
to meanings
often have no meaning at all
poetry
destroys the pattern
and sets our language free
it breaks the glass
so that we can find our words
out of context
so that we can find our selves
out of breath
so that we can find out
who we are
and
who we are not

how many times

have you woken up
and realized
it was just a dream
[ 40 ]
[ May 2010 ]

how many times

have you lost track
of which is which
reality doesn't need a resurrection
it needs a burial
and then
once it has come back
once it has risen
we will know it
for what it is
and what it is not

[ 41 ]
[ May 2010 ]

tHERE iS a wISDOM iN nO
eSCAPE
there is a wisdom
in no escape

when the wild wolves surround you

and there is no chance for survival
the opportunity
to be torn to shreds
the lessons that it gives
for the little that it takes

there's nothing left

after they're done
except what can't be consumed
what remains is who we are
as the flesh of our ego
is ripped from the bone

more than death

has its teeth bared
so much more
than muscle and blood
is at stake

when we hear the call

from the next room
we know
it's a power
we can't contend with
a god that we have made
as much as one
who has made us
who just wants to talk
but whose teeth
[ 42 ]
[ May 2010 ]

are so sharp
and whose claws
seem to call ambulances
to take us away

but each of us
is a flower
reaching up
through the earth
where we have buried ourselves alive
out of ignorance
out of shame
out of boredom
out of our minds
reaching out
with petals
as pretty as we can make them
for a way out
for a way in
always on both sides
reaching for someone
who cares too much
to just leave us there
buried in the dirt
someone
who will pick us
up
and give us
the water
and light
that we need
to survive
that we need
to grow

'cause we all need to die a little

every now and then
so that we can learn how to live

[ 43 ]
[ May 2010 ]

[ 44 ]
[ May 2010 ]

tHE pIANO hAS bEEN

dRINKING
my arms aren't long enough to reach you right now
but my desire is
it won't let go
even though it's gone
you're gone
these days, i'm gone

i walk the night

and sleep with eyes open
in bars named after streets
that no one walks anymore
why in the world doesn't anyone walk anymore

i knew the song

the singer was about to sing
before the first notes stumbled
out of the drunken dime store piano
i watched as they spilled across the empty room
like an accident no one was rushing to clean up

we didn't so much end as stop beginning

i have always been moving towards you

even as i pulled away
the best parts of me are still trying to find you
in the places i thought you would be
the other parts are thinking maybe you’re hidden
at the bottom of this glass
or maybe the next one

you are so much closer

now that you've gone

[ 45 ]
[ May 2010 ]

i can finally see the color of your eyes

without having to look
and i can trace your shape
with an anatomical certainty
on the back of this barroom coaster
your dna is in every fiber of my clothes
an emotional crime scene
with forensic evidence that
there was something there
something more than circumstansial

i carry a scent that was left from the last time we touched
we brushed up against each other
as you were making your way out the door
into the wild
i want to brush up against you again
even if it's just in passing
even if it's not really you at all

at some point i forgot who i was

i lost the me that knew you
i am around here somewhere though
the city isn't big enough
to hide me from myself
and when i find him
maybe he'll know where to find you

[ 46 ]
[ May 2010 ]

oDE tO tHE iNVISIBLE

 
…and still I can’t help but think you contain 
not multitudes
nor all races
nor all genders
nor even all worlds 
but all galaxies
all universes and all meta-universes.
 
These spiral patterns of yours, which manifest and echo in each and every
medium we can speculate, are not motion so much as they are frequency.
 
Bits and pieces of you 
cramming themselves 
out of and into 
the perceptible reality 
and it is there
between your Scylla of wavelength 
and your Charybdis of shadowed anti-matter
There, where all the philosophers 
& shamans 
& alchemists 
& visionaries 
& poets 
rend their hearts and dash their minds against the impossibly dense
contradiction of existence.
 
It can’t be easy cycling in and out of the dimensions relative to your own
journey through the realm, but I wanted to be among the first to thank you
for all of the hard work you’re doing to forever birth an armada of Prince
Caspians, who are themselves forever sailing toward the gravitational
barriers, where oceans of poppies and poesies inevitably smother our brave
and lonely vessels in a coat of pollen and nectar…many of us, never to
return.
 
Around and around you go

[ 47 ]
[ May 2010 ]

you little foundations 

with whom I surely share bits 
with Whitman who inhabited all
or Christ who tried to show us we were everything; 
or Buddha who tried to show us we were nothing; 
or the first opposed thumb primate 
who discovered the practical value 
of murder

it is you whom we all share.

 
So here’s to your long night’s journey into day preoccupied as you are with
eddying in the fringe cul-de-sac’s on the edge of town, on the perimeter of
the campfire where cold and dark things reflect just enough of the
candescent light to make them hypnotizing, horrifying and everything
between just long enough to keep all of you hanging around…and maybe
this would go a long ways to help and explain everything.

[ 48 ]
[ May 2010 ]

oDE tO mY wRITER’S
bLOCK
 
Every morning we get up and fight like this:
You screaming in your sleep
Me pretending to be awake…
It was all so promising just a few hours back.
 
Now it’s 11:12 in the afternoon
I stare a thousand yards
Into a neon acoustic Mordor
With long legged lightning gods

gettin’ down
gettin’ funky
 
In the goat dog’s backyard New Brunswick
And you
Slip through the comforter
As if in my mind you had never existed.
 
So we pour out of the futon
And you’ve really left me for good now,
Other than the glimpses I catch of you
Naked and prostrate on the floor, screaming
 
GRAB ME!
PICK ME UP!
PICK UP A GODAMN PEN AND WRITE SOMETHING...ANYTHING!
 
But by then we are so sick of one another.
We distract and distance ourselves
Convince each other we’re separate and individual
Got to have that space you know.
 

[ 49 ]
[ May 2010 ]

Perhaps some time later this evening we can crawl back to our mutual pining
society
But for now I feel
I should be completely honest
Yes, I should be brutally frank and let you know
I wrote something really very compromising and revealing about you.
I’m feeling pretty special about it,
I’m feeling pretty full of myself,
So leave me the fuck alone now.

[ 50 ]
[ May 2010 ]

aLL tHUMBS nOTICE

 
Susan spent three hours cutting the carrots into tiny orange diamonds before
tossing them with the peas, butter and salt to accompany the apple stuffed
pork loin with mashed potatoes. She loved her family and refused to stop
chopping when she sliced an inch off the top of her thumb. She placed the
white lifeless tip in a jar of salt water, wrapped her throbbing stub in paper
towel and continued with the diamond shapes. Three drops of blood marred
her crisp apron; no blood escaped into dinner. She didn’t have time to make
the apple brown betty with crunchy sugar topping; hopefully, they wouldn’t
notice.
  Susan didn’t tell her family about the thumb incident. She refused to
look at it fearing white bone peaking beneath French manicured nail. They
didn’t ask about the red paper towel swaddling her left hand. She ignored the
pain and tried to eat right-handed with pearled smile; no one noticed the
diamond carrots. 
  “What’s for dessert, mom?” Margaret spit ribbons of pork onto the
starched tablecloth. Susan hoped to get another night out of this embroidered
heirloom, but would have to wash and iron tomorrow. “Mom, I finished all
my peas and carrots and potatoes and I want dessert.” She whined and
pouted and slammed her chair into the table with a pre-teen huff. Timothy
said nothing but Susan could hear the squeaking shriek of his knife against
the china. He slid his pork fork through the potatoes, chewed with force and
swallowed.
 

[ 51 ]
[ May 2010 ]

An hour later, as Susan one-hand-washed dishes, Timothy slid up behind,

grabbed her hips and whispered, “The pork was over-done.” He slapped her
tush and returned to his televised something and gin.
 
Susan didn’t go to the doctor. She waited three days and slowly pealed the
painful red towel from her gooey mangled thumb. The Valium helped her
ignore the skin sticking to the paper mess, and she barely winced when
holding it under the kitchen tap. She needed to deal with this quickly, the
laundry called from the garage and dinner didn’t exist.
  “Fuck the laundry; call out for pizza.” 
  “But Margaret doesn’t like pizza. She says it makes her feel fat.”
  “Fuck that little ungrateful cunt. Wash her clothes with hot water.
Shrink that shit and don’t tell her. You make her feel fat.” The thumb
opened its red skin mouth and laughed until she silenced it with band-aid. 
  Susan shrunk the clothes and giggled with the thumb, “They never
notice anything. Let’s see if she feels this.” She folded Margaret’s smaller
clothes into piles and hung tight dresses into closets before dialing pizza
delivery. 
  “Mom, pizza?” She rolled her almost teen eyes and flounced to her
seat spilling diet something brown to the newly pressed table cloth.
Grabbing hungrily for the pizza, she didn’t notice the pepperoni oil slither to
the once white cloth; Susan had new laundry for tomorrow. Timothy said
nothing through chomping jaws.
 
The screaming felt sublime.
  “MOM! WHAT DID YOU DO?”

[ 52 ]
[ May 2010 ]

  Susan sauntered up the stairs holding pressure to the mouth of the

laughing thumb. “What dear? What’s wrong, Sweetie?”
  “My clothes!” She shrieked. “I’m fat. Look how fat I am. Nothing
fits.” She crumpled to the floor clutching too-small outfits and sobbed.
  “I guess we’ll have to go shopping this weekend.” She answered
buoyantly. “It must have been the pizza. What are you eating these days?
Are you sneaking seconds on dessert?” Her voice was sweet and caring and
she tried not to giggle with the thumb as she descended the stairs. “Another
gin, darling?” Timothy grunted and raised his glass; he hadn’t noticed his
daughter’s crying shrieks.
  Susan retreated to the kitchen and noticed her old thumb in the jar.
Had she cut off that much? It was the size of a full thumb and seemed to be
sprouting finger nubs from the hilt. She ignored its growth and un-wrapped
her little friend who loudly sucked in air.
  “Why do you wrap me up? It’s hard to breathe under that plastic
thing.”
  “Shhhh. I can’t let them know about you. They’ll send me away.”
  “You need to leave.”
  “I love them.”
  “You put the Valium in the gin and mix it all up. You put the Valium
in the gin and put them both together …” The thumb sang and jiggled until
Susan re-wrapped him in brown bandages. She could barely hear him
singing as she moved to the medicine cabinet. The little blue pills tinted the
alcohol slightly but Timothy wouldn’t notice.
 

[ 53 ]
[ May 2010 ]

He slept sounder than ever off two glasses of gin. He and Margaret refused
dinner, so Susan ate off paper plates and had no dishes. She wouldn’t have
to wash and press the tablecloth tomorrow. She smoothed the covers over
her passed-out husband, smiled her perfect smile and crept down the
darkened stairs into the kitchen. Before she removed the covering, she
looked at her old thumb in the jar. It was a full hand now, with wrist,
complete with wedding and large diamond rings. She wanted to ask the
thumb what was happening, but she knew her replacement was coming soon.
  “You hate them.” It grimaced. “You could be free.”
  Susan watched her clone grow with every word from the thumb. It
was a full arm, then a breast, a belly button, a hip.
“You and me, we’ll leave together. We’ll go to Mexico and sleep on
the beach, get sun burnt and rub aloe on each other…”
  A fuzzy bush, perfectly manicured, a leg, a foot, and toenails grew.
  “No more laundry, cooking, cleaning for ungrateful slobs who never
notice your perfect details…”
  The other half of her new body materialized. The last part of the new
Susan was her right thumb. She looked at her new self, then to her talking
thumb.
  “I’ve taken the liberty of packing a bag for you.” The thumb and new
Susan tandem spoke. “It’s under the stairwell. Everything you need: clothes,
cash, jewelry, passport, bikini. It’s time to go.”

Susan grabbed her bag. Her thumb laughed as she slammed the front door,
but no one noticed.

[ 54 ]
[ May 2010 ]

wIZARD sON
The great wizard Moltzav lived for centuries in a cave up north.
You might be wondering if his cave was in, like, Finland or Iceland or
Siberia. And that’s not important, but I’ll tell you, it was father north than
you’d ever imagine anyone living.
I am his son, Flexniprov. Yes, it sounds like one of those new arthritis
or osteoporosis or osteoarthritis drugs. But it’s actually totally original, and
really, how could he have known about the future of the drug market way
back in the seventies, when he named me? Yes, he named me, because I
don’t have a mother; wizards are generally hermaphrodites.
I am not a hermaphrodite. I am, however, polysexual, polymorphous,
and polyamorous. Meaning I can have sex with a number of people and love
them all for their many differences while I myself am turning into other
people. Sometimes my partner-of-the-moment looks up or back or to the
side or under his/her blindfold and doesn’t recognize me halfway through
intercourse. And I know this sounds like a lie, but it never scares anyone
away; in fact, I have had my fair share of stalkers, anonymous letters sealed
in pink envelopes smeared with perfume, and strangers offering to buy me
dinner after midnight.
This is always good because, being a wizard son, I don’t have a quote-
unquote job. Neither did Moltzav, and I suspect that was why he lived in a
cave all those years and never had sex with anyone but himself. I say it like
that, but self-love is not really that funny or strange, like everyone pretends
it is. I practice self-love up to five times a day, as a rule. It is as important as
any aspect of grooming or hygiene, and more so than stale traditions such as

[ 55 ]
[ May 2010 ]

manners and etiquette. I also practice an au curant offshoot of Buddhism

called Cubhism, wherein I try to cure all the world’s pain through self-love,
polyamory, and the vision of many, dueling perspectives coming together in
perfect harmony on my living room sofa. Warren G is one of Cubhism’s
many monks, though I am just a follower. Former president Bill Clinton is
also affiliated with the religion somehow.
I didn’t know I was in any way like my father until after he was killed
in 1984. It was your typical auto-da-fe, the way wizards, witches, spinsters,
drunkards, adulterers, and other social deviants have been disposed of since
the early days of the dark ages. A local mob, maybe they were Scandinavian,
maybe not, heard him making noise up in his cave dwelling and took him
down for questioning. He wouldn’t answer them—he didn’t even speak their
language—but he kept shooting black dust out of his wand, which, when he
was nervous, was about all he could muster of his great powers. The dust
made one of the babies in the hall sneeze, then cry, and that was it for my
poor father—he was dragged out to the village square and stoned to death. I
wonder if that little baby grew knowing she was indirectly responsible for
my father’s death. Anyway, it happened when I was fourteen, when I’d been
traveling for a while in Nepal, and when I came home, I found the cave
empty but for a note stuck to the icy wall with a sword: Dear Son, it said.
Please take care of Lefty.
When I’d heard through the grapevine what had happened, it not
being widely known in the village that the wizard had a son, I wondered how
on earth he had managed to leave me that note. Then again, he was magic,
which explained pretty much all the inexplicable things I’d ever wondered
about him, except for why I wasn’t magic, too. Lefty was my father’s pet

[ 56 ]
[ May 2010 ]

snake, who veered perpetually to the left and went round and round in
circles whenever you picked him up out of his glass-walled habitat and put
him on the floor. When I had nothing left to do in town, I gathered him up,
put him in my knapsack, and left the cave, never to return. Since then, I’ve
found out more about myself than I ever would have as a hopeless
apprentice, a fate I’d have been doomed to fulfill as the son of a living
wizard. I moved to LA, into an apartment with the woman who created the
Thighmaster (although I will not say her name out of respect for the dead).
Then we went our separate ways, and I had a string of faceless lovers, all of
whom let me bunk with them for a time. I started finding out I was magic in
these little ways, like smiling to get a free cup of coffee, or brushing my hair
one morning before going out and getting practically abducted by a
modeling scout. Also, I’ve been doing these little dances for Lefty, turning
on his favorite salsa music—this one Tito Puente song he goes crazy for—
and now he turns to the right. It is a tragedy my father did not live to see
this, because he thought his way was the only way. He’d been working on a
Lefty-righty spell for years, but his abilities were really bottoming out after
his three-hundred-year tenure on earth, hence the nervous wand-dust. And
some time after I fixed Lefty I realized that this was what my father had
wanted all along—a wizard son—but it was many more years before my
religion let me adopt that as my official title.

[ 57 ]
[ May 2010 ]

mIXING wITH tHE

rEGULATORS: a
cAUTIONARY tALE
DJ Couch Wing leaned back in his chair as the first strains of his sign-
off trademark sang through the radio station’s speakers. It was the Close
Encounters of the Third Kind theme, meowed by the Christmas jingle-cats.
On the other side of the studio’s glass, in the patronless adjoining cafe the
barista Donna stuck her tongue out and fake-wretched along with the cat
choir. The jingle-cats did sound like they were throwing up a little. DJ
Couch Wing shot her with a gun made from his thumb and index finger.
Pow. A single lock of her short, chlorine-blue hair fell in front of her shining
eye as she wiped down the espresso machine’s steamer, tugging at it
suggestively.

Things were good. Couch Wing, just thirty-two years old, was riding up
the DJ escalator; tomorrow he’d finally take over the prime time golden
broadcast hour: 5pm to 7pm. “Oh bring me the bumper-stuck and homeward
bound, the locked-in and beaten down!” He’d croon in the shower. For DJ’s
are anointed ones. After all, the world has deemed their taste top notch. To
rise through the disc jockeying ranks is to bask in the praise of the listening
masses. A properly cued playlist can and will induce the whole glowing
spectrum of emotion: love, sorrow, hypnosis, and allegedly, even sex. Couch
Wing dreams of sex as, culling from the muck and dirge of wheedling indie

[ 58 ]
[ May 2010 ]

bands and noise-fuzz wannabes, his private longing cries: Oh lick the
sweetness from my breakbeat thighs! I comb the honey tree to play you the
best!

There is power in music. Even more so in other people’s music. Why

waste time learning and practicing when you can just hit play? And that is
where the true test comes. For anyone can just hit play. But only the greats
get paid. The only thing that had blocked Couch Wing’s rise through the
local radio station’s ranks was his great nemesis, DJ Driller. Driller with his
pop, his techno, his Coldplay and his Kesha, Driller with his top-20
countdowns to platitudination. But that smarmy spinner had finally fled back
East from whence he came for his Freshman year of college. Driller’s
privileged summer reign was over.

Couch Wing ticked his many hatreds off on record-stroking fingers.

Hate Number 1: Driller had poached every single one of Couch Wing’s
little-mermaid-eyed interns. Every single one. Well, except for Donna. But
she was a lesbian so that didn’t count. Oh Donna, I’d amputate myself for
you. Hate Number 2: Driller once hijacked Couch Wing’s tracklist, played it
backwards at doublespeed on air, then corrupted the file. His most
honeycombed playlist ever, mocked and flayed before the world’s upset
ears. Hate Number 3: Driller had the primetime slot because his uncle owned
the station. He hadn’t even interned! He never did his time! And Hate
Number 4: Driller had, during one of his shows, auctioned off Couch Wing’s
reproduction Mao jacket for seven measly PBR tallboys. It was an eighty
dollar pleather jacket. And Driller stole it then traded it for fool’s gold. He
wasn’t even of legal age.

[ 59 ]
[ May 2010 ]

But the vile DJ Driller had left this morning for college.

And DJ Couch Wing had sent him a parting gift fit for the king of the
douche bag kingdom.

Smiling at the thought, DJ Couch Wing cinched his messenger bag to

snug his vinyl in. Loose LPs singe hips. He scooted around the mixing
board, opened the studio door, entered the attached cafe, and froze.

DJ Driller was standing right there, clean shaven face, popped collar,
docksiders and all. Driller!

He was spinning an espresso cup like a top on the counter. He said,

“Ah, Couchy, nice to see you again.”

“Thought you’d be back in Providence by now.” Couch Wing kept his

voice steady, but barely. Beautiful Donna stayed neutral as cool milk,
studying the adversaries.

“Me too,” said Driller. “Turns out there was some trouble at the
airport.”

Couch Wing twitched. He gripped his shoulderbag’s strap.

Driller said, “Know anything about the TSA?” His accusing tone made
Donna look from one DJ to the other, unsure who to root for.

“Uh, just that they, ah, keep terrorists off planes.”

“Know why they might think I’m a terrorist?” Driller didn’t wait for
Couch Wing to answer. “Cause it turns out I’m on the watch list. Someone
made a phone call and put me on the watch list.”

[ 60 ]
[ May 2010 ]

Couch Wing’s palms were getting sweaty around his bag’s strap.

“Good thing,” said Driller, “that I’ve got a cousin in TSA management,
Rocky Mountain division. He pulled some strings, traced some calls,
couldn’t get me boarded ‘cause this is out of his territory, but he found out
who called me in.”

Couch Wing started backing into the broadcast studio. Public service
announcements were playing now, promoting pet neutering, spaying, general
hygiene. The next DJ would arrive in ten minutes. Donna was friendly but
Couch Wing wasn’t so sure she’d die for him if the opportunity arose. There
was nobody else around. Driller loomed.

“So the number that placed the call was this one. And when I listened
to a recording of the call, sitting in the TSA office under armed guard, guess
whose voice I heard? Go on, guess.” Driller was in the studio doorway,
Couch Wing was up against the matte black wall. “I’ll give you a hint. The
jingle cats were singing in the background.”

Couch Wing dashed for the microphone. Maybe he could put out an
S.O.S. Maybe at least he could name his killer.

Driller didn’t budge from the doorway. He stood there coolly. “Well,
after my cousin talked to the SFO Lieutenant, we all concluded that I was a
victim of genuine treason. Citizen abuse of the TSA special alert system is a
federal crime, after all. So I felt it my duty to aid them in capturing the
culprit.”

The small station cafe darkened as outside three navy blue vans halted
at the curb, eclipsing the lone window.

[ 61 ]
[ May 2010 ]

“It’s curtains, Couchy.”

[ 62 ]
[ May 2010 ]

rEVELATIONS fROM tHE

iNSIDE
There comes a time in the life of the young black man when he

realizes that nothing stands in between himself and the fate of the many

thousands of black men that have failed in order for him to be here. This is

the moment where everyone who loves him begins to share in the

hopelessness that he has always had for himself. The teacher who used to

give him several warnings about his behavior before losing his cool now

quickly kicks him out of class shortly after the bell rings, he whispers in his

ear as he gives him the referral; “Maybe you shouldn’t come back.” It was

the only class that he actually went to—now he goes to none.

The young man’s mother no longer screams at him over his poor

grades nor does she ask to see his report card. When he doesn’t come home

for two days she does not call around to find out his whereabouts. She does

not mention his name to his younger brothers and sisters and neither will she

allow them to speak of him. If he wants to be a thug then let him be a thug,

she says, for there is nothing else she can do. He comes home and smiles at

[ 63 ]
[ May 2010 ]

his little sisters then finally at his younger brothers who smile back before

looking at their mother; then they promptly stare down at the carpet. The

oldest boy who is standing in the open doorway looks down at the carpet as

well but then something in his mind starts to change. He looks up and stares

his mother full in the eyes. She has no more tears to cry and no more

questions to ask. All she has left is one final demand. “Get your black ass

out my house and don’t come back.” The oldest boy says nothing. He looks

down at his youngest brother who he catches looking up at him, but he still

says nothing. He walks back out of the open door, up the street and back to

his place on the curb. The other boys on the curb see him and they see the

fully realized look on his face. They need not ask him any questions for they

know that he’s all in.

This moment comes after DARE when the young man held the

profoundly naïve idea that it was cool to not do drugs and it was alright to

talk to cops. This moment comes after boy’s camp, after juvenile hall, and

after youth authority. It occurs sometime in county jail when he dials the

number to the only home he has ever known and no one accepts his calls. He

sits in his cell and languishes month after month without any visitors and not

one letter. He comes to understand that his mother was really serious this

[ 64 ]
[ May 2010 ]

time. There will be no double shifts worked, the house will not be put up,

and there will be no money borrowed to raise his bail—he’s all in.

He consorts with people who have done far worse things than he has;

they break bread together, they work out together, and they sit down on the

bench in the yard together and share stories. There are four of them and one

spins a story about a carjacking, the other about a home invasion robbery

during which he kicked in the front door like the police, the second to last

guy tells a story about a shooting he committed during a turf dice game. The

young man listens when appropriate and laughs when necessary but now all

eyes are on him, the stage is his.

He begins talking about a time in elementary school when he got

straight E’s on his report card. His mother kissed him five times on the

cheek and gave him a long hug. She squeezed him so tight, the young man

told the other inmates, that she cracked his back. Then she took him and his

younger brothers and sisters out to eat. As he recalled this moment it

occurred to him that his mother was trying her hardest to hold onto

something that she knew would disappear. He concludes by saying this was

the last time he had ever made his mother happy.

It was a terrible story to tell and when he finished there was silence

on the bench and no one would look in his direction. He went quietly back to
[ 65 ]
[ May 2010 ]

his cell to think about it more but the more he thought about it the more it

bothered him. He honestly could not understand how he had arrived at this

point in his life. After he got that report card it was as if something unseen

and unknown began pulling hard at him like a B.A.R.T train being sucked

through a pitch-black tunnel. He got under his cover and cried onto his

pillow. For it is at this moment that he realized his failures were as

inexorable as fate, and his life felt like something used. Like some old filthy

thing that had been lived a thousand times before it was given to him by a

pair of pale hands, with an almost unbearable repugnance.

[ 66 ]
[ May 2010 ]

pOOR pEOPLE
(A dialogue on inequality between Jermaine DeSantis,
14 & Chester Wickfield, 15 while walking home from
band practice September 17, 2009. Overheard and
recorded for posterity by C. R. Stapor.)

> Poor people are dumb as hell.

> Poor people are for the poor.
> Yeah, poor people are so stupid –
> – That's why they're poor!
> I know I know I was just about to say that poor people are so stupid
that they're still fucking poor.
> Fucking idiots.
> Right? How hard is it, not being poor?
> I bet poor people are so fucking retarded that they don't even know
that they’re poor.
> Poor people don't even know what money is.
> Poor people think money is magic.
> Or science.
> Poor people think science is magic.
> Poor people think rich people are magicians.
> Rich people aren't magicians because magicians don't exist but they
are rich as hell and that's why God loves them.
> Fuck 'love'. God is money!
> Poor people are always crying about work.
> Like work is so hard.

[ 67 ]
[ May 2010 ]

> 'Oh look at me I'm poor as fuck and dumb as hell and I have to work
all day and I don't have any time to see my family or work out or get an
education or stop being so fucking poor.'
> Ha! That's it. That's exactly how they sound!
> Fucking slackers.
> Poor people are so stupid and ugly and diseased that they expect
every one else to take care of them like every one else gives a fuck.
> Who cares about poor people? Can't even wipe their own ass and we
gotta do it for them? What the fuck?!
> Poor people never wipe their ass.
> Poor people have crusty asses.
> Poor people have swampy asses.
> Septic tanks are cleaner than poor peoples asses.
> Poor people could live in a septic tank and not even notice.
> Fucking disgusting.
> Poor people have no idea how goddamned good they have it and
still they're always complaining.
> Like anyone gives a fuck.
> Poor people are too stupid as hell to realize that no one gives a fuck.
> Fucking pathetic.
> That's fucking poor people for you. Dumber than hell.
> Poor people are so stupid they don't even know what hell is.
> Yeah, they're all like, 'I'm a freaking retard and if I can't touch it it
don't exist blah blah yap a yapa do doo.'
> Fucking poor people make me sick.

[ 68 ]
[ May 2010 ]

> They all have fucking aids and diabetes and hepatitis and cancer and
are illiterate and have small dicks.
> Yeah, I bet poor people like to suck small dicks.
> They have to, that's the only dick they can get.
> Right, like a rich person is gonna whip out his big dick and say,
'Here you go Mr. Poor Person, why don't you suck on my big rich dick for a
while.'
> Poor people have tiny dicks and flappy cunts.
> Poor people like tiny dicks and flappy cunts.
> Probably don't even know the difference they're so dumb as fuck.
> Poor people waste anything that you give them.
> Can't give a poor person shit before he spends it on crystal meth or
moon pies.
> Some bullshit truckstop tee shirt.
> Fucking dollar menu diet.
> Faygo.
> CDs.
> Shitty pot.
> Pork rinds.
> Fucking pathetic.
> Fuck poor people.
> Poor people are always crying, you know, like the whole world
owes them something or something.
> I know, like when that hurricane came through and they were all
stranded and helpless and drowning and dying and their bloated bodies were
everywhere fucking up the place.

[ 69 ]
[ May 2010 ]

> Fucking right on, I mean, you didn't see any rich people getting all
fucked up and drowning and crying about how no one ever does nothing for
them.
> Fucking A, because rich people saw it coming, and because they're
so fucking smart and wise they got the fuck out of there.
> And if they have some disease or get fucking sick because they're so
shitty they all go crying to the doctor and want to get better but not pay
anything for it.
> Fucking idiots. I heard one of them crying the other day 'Oh I don't
have any insurance and if my daughter doesn't get this surgery she's going to
die. Boo Hoo. Blah Blah.' And I was like, that's the fucking point cunt.
You're poor as hell and deserve to die, not get better.
> Ha!
> Fucking stupid.
> I like it when they say they can't get ahead because no one will give
them a chance or they can't afford school and I'm all like, if you went to
school you'd just embarrass yourself because you're so fucking retarded
anyway.
> Poor people going to college, that'll be the day. As if rich people
could learn anything around a bunch of idiot faggot poor people always
sniffing each other's assholes in the library.
> Or that fucking tsunami couple years ago. Didn't see any rich people
getting fucked up.
> Hell no you didn't. The rich people were all like, 'Hmm, seems that
the Wrath of God is approaching, maybe I better leave.'

[ 70 ]
[ May 2010 ]

> Right, it's like, 'Maybe this isn't a hard choice, but, let's see; A, I
could stay and get fucking murdered by Mother Nature. Or B, I could get the
hell out of here before Mother Nature fucking murders me.'
> Rich people are smart as hell.
> Yeah, rich people don't take shit from Mother Nature.
> Rich people aren't lazy and ask the government for everything.
> Hell no. They fucking go out there and make that money.
> Rich people get paid while making money to get paid.
> Rich people don't flinch at shit.
> Fuck no. They hire some poor person to do all their flinching for
them.
> Fucking idiot flinching poor person getting paid to flinch.
> Then going home to some shithole to complain about everything
while he puts his tiny dick in his whore wife's flappy cunt.
> Poor people make me sick.
> Fuck poor people.
> Poor people don't have souls.
> Right, like, if a poor person starts talking you can be all like, 'I'm
sorry, but you're a fucking monster and poor as hell and I can't be seen
talking to you because I have this dog to pet who actually does have a soul
and isn't fucking poor.'
> Poor people throw up in their mouth and call it dinner.
> Poor people are too stupid to call it dinner. But they do throw up in
their mouth all the time.
> And swallow it back down.
> Poor people love that shit they're so disgusting.

[ 71 ]
[ May 2010 ]

> Poor people should be put in cages and dropped in a volcano.

> Poor people should be shipped to China.
> China's already full up with poor people.
> Fuck China.
> Fuck poor Chinese people.
> Fuck.
> Poor people are dumb as hell.
> One of these days I'm gonna be rich as shit and then I'm gonna
fucking kill every goddamned poor person I see because I can and because
no one will stop me and because rich people will call me a hero.
> Dude.
> Fuckin' A.
> Fuck poor people.
> Poor people are dumb as hell.

[ 72 ]
[ May 2010 ]

(The author should note that at this point he had to throw up

behind a lamppost ((a most disagreeable, yet unavoidable,
consequence of drinking champagne till six in the morning
accompanied by a sashimi tasting buffet)) and as such missed what
was said next, suffice to mention that when he did turn back to
these thoughtful stewards of sociology they were engaged in a very
bitter argument which seemed to revolve around some tiny object
being held in Mr. DeSantis' hand. It was then his most extreme
displeasure to witness Mr. Wickfield pick up a rock and crush Mr.
DeSantis' forehead rather crudely through his frontal lobe. The
gasp of horror that escaped the author then was enough to
frighten the assailant away before he could claim his prize, and as
he was scurrying off the author made haste toward Mr. DeSantis
to see if he could be of some assistance. Sadly, by the time he
arrived the victim was most dead, and spilling out of his coveted
hand was the grand total of seventy-two American cents.)

a dAY iN tHE lIFE oF a dAY

iN tHE lIFE
 

“Hey Johanna, this is your old buddy Dr. Strorke, I noticed you had an
appointment today at 3:20, it’s 3:40 right now so if you don’t show up just
give me a buzz sometime soon. It’s hard to get an appointment so call my
voicemail, I hope all is well.” My first contact with the outside world comes
through a pre-recorded message on my cell phone. Old buddies, like good
friends die hard. And friends shouldn’t let friends sleep through
appointments but I couldn’t get up this afternoon. The bride’s son was a loud
tie in my dream and his come-ons kept me sleeping. Every time I hit that
fucking doctor’s office and they ask me for that list, you know, that list of

[ 73 ]
[ May 2010 ]

medications you’re on before they prescribe you that drug for the sniffles I
have that can’t be mixed with certain other drugs, I shudder. I sound them
off, thirty milligrams of this and a sprinkle of that, and nothing else, I assure
them. “Well that’s enough,” sometimes a nurse practitioner will scoff, but
I’m usually answered with a downward glance due to my downward
appearance. Then they wax all sympathetic. No one else seems to mind,
which is nice, especially not Mike. I found him traveling through the dark
one night. He’s been sleeping on my couch for a few weeks now—he really
doesn’t seem to mind much. My couch has outlines of liquids that dissolved
there. Amorphous watermarks, I’ll call them watermarks for the sake of
euphemism. Crusty caked and gross. I walk past him sleeping during most
daytime hours, this hour being one of them. My phone rings.
“Come downstairs and I’ll tell you all about how I got arrested today.”
Oh Dave this is exciting. How could you have possibly broken the law this
time? Then again if noise was a function of weight, you are a pretty good
target for anyone to notice. If I saw you driving a truck, I probably wouldn’t
look twice either. Maybe you were speeding and after you were pulled over,
got out of the car and started to talk to the officer about how you hated the
snow, and how difficult it was to drive in this sloppy sludge, the police
driver really loved the snow, and it was a fucking disgrace to comment
otherwise, so the cop turned you around and PRESSED your face on the
hood of his car with his hand splayed on the back of his head. Back and
forth, like the hood was a toilet, rubbing your face on the hood. This is what
I think in the elevator. I meet him in the lobby.

[ 74 ]
[ May 2010 ]

“This is the third time, I’m a veteran at this stuff, I guess I should be a
little more surprised, or at least peeved. Look my thumb is still inked, I
knew the drill, followed them around the precinct like I was their bomb-
sniffing dog or something. I’ve really got to get my intolerance up.”
Still wondering what happened, I interject during his ejaculation.
“I was going door to door giving people literature about 2012.”
Apparently you’re not allowed to scare rich people after six o’ clock at
night, only during dinner hours. He works for a charity that collects money
to build this spacecraft type thing that can send enough people into outer
space on December 28th, 2011. All contributors are allowed on board. He
bums enough cigarettes from me that I’m pretty sure I’ve paid my way on
board, maybe just a backspace standing area, but salvation all the same. “I
don’t feel bad when people turn me away because they’re gonna die,” was
how he made himself feel better when not getting a sale. I’m disappointed
that the arrest wasn’t a little more violent and that I didn’t have to bail him
out and I’m pretty sure it showed on my face. Also the wind is making me
wince and I wish facemasks weren’t just for skiers and bank robbers because
then it would hide my ruddy cheeks and I’d feel better about walking around
with him for a while, no one staring at those pink puppies. We start to walk
down nineteenth street passing strings of rushing cabs, water rushing streets
rushing canals. He’s talking about the normal stuff. Ranting about the
hexagon on Saturn that is visible from satellite pictures and is way too
perfect to be the product of a natural coincidence. He swears he’ll show me

[ 75 ]
[ May 2010 ]

the literature someday. Seeing is believing, believing is casting a net over

everything I see and calling it truth. 
“Truth is for people who die, who aren’t getting on the spaceship,”
Dave once mentioned.

[ 76 ]
[ May 2010 ]

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