the waking dream of walking up slides, wet, puddle at the bottom and a slip of the tongue. there is much more dirt than this, she said, laughing as i chased her, stupid boy that i was. and when we hung upside down on the monkey bars, there were no rubber mats then, only the cement we had long grown accustomed to, chipping away at our teeth. she had a smile that was goofy, just this side of pretty, but eyes that knocked out all awkwardness, a certain kind of wisdom. she would have become beautiful if it wasn’t for where we were born or when, the ravages of living on the outskirts, with only empty hallways to find shelter. there were times we’d get stuck in the narrow elevator between floors and my breathing would stop as her heart raced. i too have left this place, she said, walking away from the apartment buildings and ice cream trucks and subway stations, right into the middle of the busiest boulevard we had ever known. and she was gone just like that, the curls of her hair faintly remembered between my fingers before letting go.
Category Archives: words
mean vicious irritation
november and the scars have begun to itch. a mean vicious irritation between the vein and the surface of the skin. i dreamt of dancing in my own bile, as the winter wind kicked up leaves heavy with snow. the streets curl open a forgotten friend and i drop against a sharp curb. how many more times like this, of nails tugging against the gum line, of stars lost behind thick clouds.
trick or treat
“let’s go to that one!” and she runs, her bag already open, as fast as her little legs can carry her and she manages the big steps and almost trips over the little ones and she screams in delight as the next house comes into her field of vision, with its ghosts and frankensteins and halloween elmos, and she knocks on the door, rings the doorbell, extends a careful hand into a bowl of candy, then runs off saying “thank you!” already lost on her way to the next stop on her halloween dash.
(the wife later tells me, after i left, the little one gathered all her little purses, filling each one to the brim with the night’s bounty)
times when
there are times when
there are times
when i am
there are times when i am
times when i am there
when times i am tired
when tired of there
tired times
i am tired
of times when
i am tired of
there are times when i am
tired of when
there when
times i am of
there of tired times
this is of course a beckett kind of thing, minimalism and repetition, the suggestion of a gesture and its fractured echo, the idea being a wearing thin, polishing a gloss until it turns, again, into something else and then folding back over itself, again and again. it doesn’t work here, not with this set of words -too obvious, trivial- but it’s a germ. what i should’ve done was this first:
there are times when i am tired of
are times when i am tired of there
times when i am tired of there are
when i am tired of there are times
i am tired of there are times when
am tired of there are times when i
tired of there are times when i am
of there are times when i am tired
do a reduction, a subtraction
there are times
times when i
when i am
i am tired
am tired of
tired of there
of there are
then a little more, adding a fourth word, picking up the back half of the initial set
when i am tired of
i am tired of there
tired of there are
of there are times
there are times when
are times when i
times when i am
when i am tired
then from here, i would pick perhaps every other line from the sets above, maybe like this
there are times when i am tired of
times when i
tired of there are
when i am tired of there are times
when i am
there are times when
i am tired of there are times when
tired of there
i am tired
blech, still doesn’t work, wrong set of words for this kind of thing
mouse trap
we found a mouse in the house. a little mouse, a house mouse. i did nothing about it the first day, but with the newborn and all, she went and bought glue traps, snap traps. she set them on the kitchen floor with little pieces of cheese, straight out of the cartoons. a trap snapped within the hour. couldn’t even tell what was sticking out of the trap, whether it was its hind legs or torso but it didn’t twitch or anything, so it was dead. turned a plastic bag inside out and i scooped it up like dog poop. but the very same night we caught sight of the tail of another. there had been two, so the wife breaks out the glue traps and i placed where we had seen it. i finally read up on it and it turns out that peanut butter was the way to go, not the salami i had replaced the cheese with. so i dab it here and there and set the snap traps by the glue ones. an hour later there was the other one, stuck on its side, moving its head as it saw me approach. turn another bag inside out and scooped it up, still twitching. i tied the bag, then slammed it on the granite counter. it didn’t move after that.
he puts on a hat
tim puts on a hat. he puts it on and tilts the brim a little down in the front and a bit to the left. it showcases his eyes a girl once told him and he’s been doing it ever since he began shaving his head, his eyebrows still thick and lustrous. he thinks they make him looking haunting. something straight out of a book, haunting eyes and a fifties styled brimmed hat. while pouring shoots at the bar he works he wonders sometimes if he should’ve been born then, when men were men and women knew their place. he wouldn’t be one of those kind of men, but he would’ve fared better off then because he would’ve been different than the others. instead he was born in the city, where all sorts of people have come and gone, and he thinks he’s pretty much figured them all out. just by looking at them, how they sit, how they order, what kind of drink they drink. like some lower east side bukowski, he leans against the liquor cabinet with a book in his hand, jots down a line or two, thinking he too will write his way out of this, but never leaving. real men like him never leave where they were born.
restaurant dreaming
i dreamt i was out eating alone. i had snagged some down time after work and i wanted the greasy kind of goofy fare that are offered by corporate chains, that odd fusion of a meal where the staff are all bubbly at your table but express utter contempt everywhere else. all was fine and dandy, you can never complain about anything in a place like that, until i wanted to leave. and for some reason i had taken my finished plate up with me while i looked for the cashier. and every stop i made i was redirected and no one offered to take my dirty plate. by the time i had gotten to the register, one of the staff was yelling, “you gotta fire him, i caught that mexican licking my utensils.”
all these with no place to go
all these with no place to go. an old chemistry set, the wick of a candle that’s been burned off prematurely, a quilt that’s been stretched open like a chain link fence. they leave grooves on the skin when pressed, the stray eye lash that falls in your coffee. a rock that tumbles out of your shoe to alleviate the pain of having crossed over, clean and unblemished. your son wobbles his head as you hold him tightly above you, up and over, erupting with a laughter he has yet to understand. rubbing her eyes in the dark, your daughter asks you to sing a song that you can’t possibly remember until you begin to whisper the words in the dark. the sum of a foreign set of limbs that were once your own curling up for warmth.
tongue fist
you cannot escape the necessity of language to explode tongues into fists. or knives for that matter. fists and knives that bruise and cut, and sometimes cut you open into a whole new kind of thing, be it pain or wonderful. nor can you escape a fistful of words crammed down your throat. stuffed to the point where you cannot breathe, to the gills with guilt or sorrow or happiness. but you can turn your lungs inside out and shock the shit out of everyone, which i do from time to time.
barefoot on slate
i walk barefoot on slate, mice run around about. she sleeps above me, nestled in a odd mix of sadness and delight: she has a son, her husband has betrayed her. it is like walking on ice, feet pressed firmly with toes splayed, the night hints at winter but i am not cold. she wept into my hands and i shivered and shook, cigarette now dangling from dry lips, hearing the distant echo of a car making a tight turn.