big enough to feel the stress not small enough to escape notice not blank enough to fill in the gaps not smart enough to earn the gran mal treatise of world affairs not shit enough to consider all angles not real enough to need to be made not better enough to dance on endlessly not hype enough to be on the street and hang with a forty by abdu’s not quick enough to make it through the cracks not beat enough to read my namesake up on the wall not soft enough for two minutes against the clock not bright enough to lay on the sidewalk and curl into homelessness not political enough to feel the sun not hurried enough to make it matter not hot enough to feel the breeze not feather enough to be looking through windows not straight enough to cut through the bullshit not heavy enough to keep it.

I lead you from one room into the other and the tv is so loud and you say that I speak so loud and we can tell that this thing inside me is so loud (the loudest sound allowed) that I can only not drown in other sounds but this sound as when I ask you to repeat a small sound and all sounds are then drowned by the sound of your mouth saying, No, which is like this sound that I am trying to drown inside you.

When we had walked the earth on stones and heels my mother’s sister whose leatherbeaten hands upheld our intestines used to say that the shores were the figments of storyshells strewn across the backs before speaking.
We sleep jarred from this night where it is as stark. We were once wine amongst our men, a time when history was something. Do you remember, do you remember the feel of grasstems beneath your feet wet, the wind like leaves to greet you? On your grave the tombstone in you like this flat rock that time fell and crumbled against.
Has he kissed you then? Has he held your mouth open to the taste of what is crackling in the back of our throats? Did it burn to have his tongue roll with the sea and sand of our apocatástasis?
Did the body ever leave you as it did us? Did the ache, the arché of your skull twist left of what we had brought ourselves to? Did you hear the strain, could you hear how our knees propped up our chins and we could not form thoughts in our mouths?
Had you held yourself for once against this night, this night where we hear the tearing of jaws against our gums, where we scream for the names that have left us, this night where the shore never leaves the hearing of your never coming, where we placed our rosy knucklefists to spit the shells out of our mouths, this night where you were seen heavy jowlskin dancing in cigarette smoke, dangling our ears in your belt, had we seen you too at least held against this night drowning of all our voices, of all the sound that is not howling but the something of which we will never forget the splitting of nothing at all.
Whisper to us of that night when our beast was strong and it bespoke of generations, of what was torn, of what was rendered. Of our jaws made right edges with our necklines, of leatherdust and of the sun aching to be at our feet.
Speak to us of these days after night where we scramble in fields of broken cornspines, bent double over backwards, our hands as white as corpses, as white as words.
There was a pebble on the shore that a mother had bent to keep away from the tiny footfingers of her child by placing it in her mouth, her teeth ragged. The mother straightened her back, in years.

the door is blue she leads me to it i swear she said my name but i can’t hear anything she leads me to this orange bed without any curtains but the sun’s bright outside she tells me to be quiet i want to tell her that i haven’t said anything she tells me to her promise something i ask her what she says she knows that I won’t do it i say that i will do anything she calls me a liar i tell her that i love her she says that i don’t even know her name

***

“You really should just ignore them. They’re just dreams, y’know.” Sammy says this with a mouth full of nachos and three hundred pounds of gut squeezed in the other side of the booth, which, in relation to Sammy, is tight and small and just as dirty as he is. The diner is a clash of the fifties with its trailer park shell but slapped with the neon signage of eighties excess. It sits in the middle of Hunt’s Point, the edge of Brooklyn and Queens and some other softer parts of hell. I look at Sammy again and can’t help thinking that big people like Sammy fear nothing because their heart is surrounded by all the shit they stuff in their mouths.

“It’s easy for you to say. Do you sleep at all?”

Sammy stops to think about it. He wipes off his chin some salsa and shakes his head. Every loose part of his face moves or wobbles or does some kind of movement that turns my stomach. The bottommost chin quivers. “Only after I get laid,” he looks down at himself as if he could see past his stomach that lurches over the top of the table, “and I ain’t no fuck muffin, know what I mean?”

The waitress avoids looking at him when she comes by our booth and asks if we want anything else. Sammy’s been riding her from the minute we’ve been in and has had his hand on her rump more than the silverware. She hasn’t said anything but makes silent suffering expressions like gripping her eyes closed and biting her lip and I think it’s because she knows Sammy is connected, but there’s something else to it, like disgust and regret, like it was more for herself than for the slob across from me. Of course Sammy picks up on her ignoring him and kicks me under the table. He doesn’t want me to talk so I just look at her and smile. Sammy taps on her behind and says, “Lady, I’m the wop you want to talk to. I’m fat because I got the loot. That one over there ain’t got a thin dime, capiche?”

She breaks. “I don’t need this shit.” She storms away from the booth, untying her apron, tossing it over the counter as she makes her way down the aisle, grabs her jacket from the coat rack and Sammy doesn’t turn around to see her leave not even once.

He watches her instead through the window as she makes her way across the parking lot and stick him the middle finger from fifty feet away. Sammy side glances me and smiles, pops a chip in his mouth. “I slept last night though,” he says and giggles.

I catch the innuendo but I don’t want to imagine it. Just watching Sammy eat is bad enough.

***

“So let me get this straight, you think the dreams are coming from this next job you got, right?” Sammy says this to me later, driving down 21st street into Astoria.

Looking out the car window, staring at hookers weave behind gas stations, sun strong across the bricks just before the day gets lazy and its bright eyed edge dims into night, “Yeah, you can say that.”

Sammy pops another Hershey’s Kiss in his mouth, maybe his third. “So,” he chews, sucks on a chocolate stained finger, “you think the two are like related, right?” He wipes his finger on the steering wheel. “Like one has something to do with the other, other than the obvious.”

I turn to him. “Which is what?”

“That both of them have to do with you dickhead.” Sammy tries to smile but his mouth is all brown and wet and gooey and all the wrong things for a man his age. Like a child eating shit and not knowing any better. “All this I can understand, you see. All this is fairly simple, no degree for that shit, know what I mean?”

Sammy stops at a light at Astoria Blvd and leans back. You can feel the whole seat carriage rock with his frame. “What I don’t understand is why you want to do this sooner.”

Staring straight ahead I can see kids playing basketball on the cement courts underneath the Tri-Boro off to the right, and the harsh sun etch shadows past the trestle. The light turns green.

“I figure the sooner I get the job done, the better.” I turn to him, “It’s got to be the last one.” I stare at the kids as we drive by. Lean and all moves and jabbing and ego dancing on the cement. I add, “I wont be able to get the girl of my dreams if I keep this up.”

***

her again her skin is pale we’re on the bed i tell her that i love her but there’s so much blood around us i ask her what’s wrong she says it’s nothing we’ve made love during a bad time that’s all i want to touch her i know we’ve just made love i can’t remember i reach out to hold her because it looks like she might need some holding even though i can’t remember touching her when i reach out to tell her that i love her i can’t feel anything

***

“Are you alright?” She asks me in the dark, head slightly raised from the pillow, her elbow against my side.

I’m awake in the darkness. I want to close my eyes away from this. I mutter, “Yeah…yeah I’m fine..”

I feel Lorelei move. I feel her reach over me in the darkness for her cigarettes on the lamp table. I feel three feet of long thick black hair dance on my stomach. I hear flicking.

My eyes burn to sparks. “I told you, no smoking in bed.”

She reaches over to the lamp and snaps it on. She picks up the ashtray from the beside and sets it on my chest. Ashes drop off the edge. Lorelei takes a deep drag and blows it out the side of her mouth. Blue ice cold eyes and all that hair in the dark. “Since you make it your business to fuck me, I’m allowed a few privileges.”

I close my eyes.

“What?” Lorelei says, blowing smoke in my face. “You decided to quit or something?”

I open my eyes, snatch her arm.

She pulls back, “Hey!”

I grab her by the back of the head with my other hand and pull her to my mouth. Me and her. Lorelei breaks off, puts the cigarette out in the ashtray on my chest and then moves it back to the side of the bed, starts to lick down the rest of my body.

I close my eyes and try to imagine what it would be like.

***

Three days later Jacob licks his lips, eyes all bugged out, blonde hair stuck on his forehead and asks me, “You ready?”

“Yeah. Good as ever.”

“You sure? Because you’re usually very pissy about these things,” Jacob smirks.

I put the ski mask on. “You know who I am Jacob. Don’t fuck with me.”

***

Two minutes later and we’re out of there and the rest of the people in the restaurant are still screaming and we’re running out the door through the kitchen out into the alley into the van and the adrenaline is roaring through my chest and the air hits me hot because Jacob took off his fucking mask and stuck his tongue into the wife’s mouth right in front of every fucking body and while the contract is shitting in his pants because Jacob is tearing off her blouse ready to come in his pants a detective what the fuck was a detective fucking doing in there a detective comes out of the bathroom slow like he knew what was going on and was waiting for it and Jacob swings around and sees the guy and he knows like I do that the guy’s a pig and Jacob goes apeshit and blows the fucking wife sticks the barrel of the gun right between her tits and blows her away still holding onto her arm her whole body limp like a rag doll and the contract whigs and the detective says something like “holychrist” and I take him and the contract out and the place turns upside down more cops popping out of the wood work or suddenly everybody’s got guns these days and shit’s flying all over the place with smoke and wood chips and I slap Jacob on the back of the head to get the fuck out of there and in the van in the van now with traffic crawling he says some shit like “Now you can retire for that imaginary bitch of yours” and I snap and I slam the van short and his head hits and bounces off the dashboard but I know it’s not enough so I shove the barrel of my gun into his skull pushing his head between his legs so hard that he’s staring at his asshole when I pull the trigger and my other hand doesn’t even slip from the steering wheel coming out of the Tunnel Queens side blanket over the bloody mess next to me that was Jacob and nobody notices shit.

***

Payphone in a diner off the Midtown Tunnel at Hunts Point looking at the dinky pool table scar up the bar, Sammy doesn’t give me shit on the phone.

Sammy tells it to me up front. He tells me that he dropped his cookies when he heard how it went down. Sammy tells me that it’s alright. He starts on some shit about ‘damage control’.

I can hear him clearing his mouth of whatever food’s in there just as he tells me that I fucked up.

He tells me that there was a better way to get out of it if I was serious about it the other day last week, that knocking off Jacob wasn’t the way.

I tell Sammy that hiring professional psycho-fucking-paths wasn’t the Zen-fucking-way either.

Sammy doesn’t give me shit on the phone. He tells me straight I’m a dead man.

Sammy says he’s going to shit on my grave.

I don’t waste words and hang up before he can get a trace. The barmaid notices me or maybe how wired I am and she says to me, “The wife giving you shit?”

I look at her and she gets nervous when I don’t say anything as I walk over to the bar. I see one of her hands slide underneath the counter.

“Yeah”, I say and sit on the stool, tipping a bit, “while your hand’s on the shotgun under there, you think you can grab me a beer?”

***

she holds my head up stares at me i tell her what are you looking at she says something it’s suddenly lost in the noise jacob comes crashing through the skyline he’s screaming something on a motorcycle like the headless horseman i’m trying to reach for my gun she won’t let go of my face jacob is circling around the bed the motorcycle making chainsaw noises or is it that jacob’s chainsaw is making motorcycle noises i have to get him out of here she won’t let go of my face i’m sweating as she whispers over over again, ‘your, your,’ i can’t feel her fingers i’m supposed to feel her hands i keep thinking i’m supposed to feel something or the gun somewhere on the bed that jacob’s motorcycle is ripping to shreds

***

I can understand that I’m the last person she wants to see, but I don’t understand how she knows already.

“He called me,” and she backs away from the door not like she used to with her back turned to me almost ready to go at it, practically taking her clothes off. Instead she backs up and faces me all the way in to the kitchenette but stops. Her hand rests itself on the counter and she quickly glances at the knife rack. It tells me something and my stomach flips and the room becomes tighter to breathe.

“When?” I step in closer, she doesn’t twitch but I’m sure another step  and she’ll try to butcher me on the very same counter where I had my hands under her buttocks and I lifted her up on it, as she told me over and over how much she didn’t care to have me or not, she loved me all the same with her legs wrapped around my hips. So much confuses and rushes up to greet me. Everything I touch reminds me of something else, some other flaw. How could I ever have felt safe here? How did I ever sleep?

“I don’t know, yesterday.” Her eyes dart to counter, making sure of just where that knife rack is, which one would be big enough to handle me.

Lorelei looks back up at me like she’s remembered something, eager, “What the fuck happened?”

Then I think of the waitress, then I think of Sammy and then I think of Lorelei no longer backing away because the bedroom’s just around the corner and maybe I’m not the only one who sleeps here. I wonder suddenly how much he pays her, there’s no real way in ever knowing anything of the truth out of her mouth. It all comes fast and before things get ugly, my balls climb back into my belly at the thought of ever having slept with her, I turn around and calm myself. Try not to touch anything try not to picture it or him or her, him on her and the revulsion hits me just at the breaking point at the door and ready to leave this sorry mess. Behind me, Lorelei says, “Hey, what, what? Where do you think you’re you going?”

And I can’t hear another word, I can’t let myself hear her voice, but I swear I hear him in the background. I hear him lurching off the bed, behind me. I know it’s impossible to hear at such a distance and because I know this I don’t turn around, I don’t answer, I make my way down the hallway to the ratty old staircase where the lights have been out for years. Down the hallway, halfway to freedom and I don’t know what’s happening to me, when did it start falling apart? I hear him grab her from behind I hear them laugh I hear her reach behind her and start to undo his belt I hear her kneel and before I hear her unzip his pants just as I’m at the staircase I hear her scream in the hallway, “Fuck you, you sonuvabitch! Fuck you and your make believe whore!”

***

in the room i haven’t slept in i know that i am dreaming but i haven’t slept and it’s in tatters plaster and exposed brick and dust caught in the twilight of not having slept but still dreaming i feel her behind me breath on my neck for the first time, ‘there was never a door’

***

Sammy the slob is a liar, the fat shit sleeps all the time with his hand on his dick no less. Watching him sleep I’m reminded of a bad ‘your momma’ joke, the one that goes something like at the beach everyone tries to push your momma back into the ocean cause they think she’s a whale. Sammy on his bed and the fat just seems to spread out all over without stretching the pale blueish skin. How does a man live like that? I peek underneath the cover, lifting the sheet with the muzzle of the gun from between his feet just out of curiosity. Does it go and hide from all that blubber? Sammy feels a draft and I notice his foot twitch. I step back and aim.

“C’mon you fat sonuvabitch let’s get this over with.”

Sammy does this slow rubbing fist in eyeball yawning bit like he was just waking up and takes his time until he sees me and plays it off like he doesn’t remember what went down last week. “Hey…what time is it?”

He tries to reach over to the dresser by the bedside making like he was going for his watch. I blow his hand off at the wrist and he goes off the hook, squealing like the fat pig he is. It careens onto the dresser and knocks over the alarm clock and right behind it his gun. Little shitty Dillinger that I swore he kept up of his ass to hold all his shit in.

After that it doesn’t get much better. Something goes off in me and I don’t let him have another word, I don’t even remember hopping on top of him, but I drop the gun on the floor when I’m done working him over. By the time I come to my senses, Sammy the slob has got the shakes and about fifty pounds of his face and chest flung around the bed in pieces. From the looks of the butt of the gun, it’ll be impossible to clean after this, bits stuck where the clip locks into the handle, bits in the trigger guard, bits along the muzzle. Sammy the slob laughs and it scares the shit out of me, how the bubbles struggle their way through his throat and out of his mouth and I find myself laughing too. He reaches out to me as if to touch my face, like a brother would, and then he starts choking and I move closer to his hand. But he heaves and chokes, the hand drops, and before you know it something red and heavy dribbles out his mouth and he’s dead like it was his soul leaving.