he found caterpillars for gravel and pulled from his teeth the roots of a tree and when he brushed them aside stuck underneath his fingernails were the tracks of a scar he could not stop ripping. he asked her, “have i left you? have i left you beyond repair?”
and the sun had gone from orange to crimson, a horizon in the howl of a wolf beaten and she peeled the skin off her knees where the wound bled thick pearls made of silver atop ants of gold. she replied, “you left me blind, you licked all the color out of my eyes.”
he pried open the space between them and drew out molted lilacs and handfuls of sheared wool caked with blood. he sealed it all off with spit and coughing as the moon yawned the sky, “i’ve ruined you, you’ve destroyed me, we’re nameless without a home.”
divisions of a man
“there’s a place,” the grizzled man said, whittling away at the stick they found near. “there’s a place where the divisions of a man suddenly seize up and come this close,” he held the stick inches from the younger man’s eyes, “to breaking him.”
he went back to whittling the stick until it was sharp, “never go to that place boy. never go there.”
this singularity
looking at the corpse, sieged by reefs and flowers, two placards set off to the side overwhelmed with photos of a life that has been reduced all down to this singularity: you can’t take it with you and you leave everyone behind.
you run with it
you run with it, leap one foot in front of the other
& dash, across busy streets, uneven rooftops
you avoid tripping over orphaned cables & broken glass
barefoot to feel the dirt & the gravel, the crunch
of having tread over time accelerated, your body
flung at high velocity, your mouth a smear
of laughter braced by yellowed teeth
& arms willing to grab hold of anything
angeliki vlamakis
i am sorry my friend that i could not extend her life by giving her some of my own.
garbage man
garbage piles up, the scattered refuse of toilet paper and pizza boxes, the lost hope that we will be clean, that someone else can take this all away. the streets become mired with sewer rats and roaches, crawling up the thin veil of my skin as i lay between cool black plastic bags, my legs trapped between steel dumpsters, green and hard. i would speak if my voice wasn’t sore from swallowing the dregs of beer bottles and pulp from nearly empty cartons. instead i twitch to keep them all at bay, to keep them from my nostrils, the stench of having thrown away something vital and necessary amongst the heap, wet and unusable.
echo through time
i tell her, “these things echo through time.”
and we look at our daughter and talk of the little i remember of my father, the four or five memories of him beating my mother, throwing me aside, the night he raped her, the feel of his palm on my cheek as i was terrified of him. these scant moments have circumscribed me, defined certain limits and obviously have opened doors within me that i might have been better off if they were closed. perhaps it is those open doors i fear the most and pray that i am never the one who opens them for my children.
the malaise
sometimes the malaise comes over me and although i know it’s a sickness of the mind, it is difficult to think through it, to imagine the other side where i am alright and my thoughts are not tinged with rot. that there is a dawn where i will be able to take deep strong breaths and fill my lungs without sharp pain or a heavy sense of futility. i curl up on our love seat with my newborn son cradled in my arms and i want to stitch him there, safe and sound and smelling his father, a buried memory he will always carry within him even after i am gone. i kiss him and in turn reach out to my daughter to kiss her soft cheek as well, and each time she veers near me i whisper, i love you, because one day i won’t be able to say anything at all. i only remember fear and the sickly sweat of my father’s death. it is difficult, despite everything, despite this new thing i have become, to abandon myself effortlessly, to hold myself still enough and breathe it all in.
promises of a calm winter
down to 250ml, my friend’s mother gasps for air at a quarter of a liter throughout the day as he watches over her until she falls asleep in the early morning. another friend brings his daughters, all three of them, and they fill my house with squeals of laughter, running between and over us. my father pines for the earliest recording he has of his father singing, his voice tinny, hum and hiss filling the speakers, the distance between the microphone and the music. in our room, my wife brushes aside my hair to kiss me, our son cooing in the same bassinet our daughter once slept in. the night is cold and clear and the fierce wind has died but holds no promises for a calm winter.
aren’t enough skewers
there aren’t enough skewers in the world to stab out my eyes, pierce my tongue, pin my hands from reaching out and stealing everything from it, stuff it all into my head, my heart, pack the little piece of a soul i have left until i vomit happiness and kindness and love and all the things that make any life worth living.