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I still recall when first I breathed
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The long and the short of it is that Millie Jennings was mad. But not nice mad, or tolerably mad, just plain irreparably mad. And I can't say that I feel the least bit sorry for what happened, nor do I think it was wrong, for someone like Millie Jennings could destroy us all. It was the third June fourth of that year. And Bloom Drive just couldn't get enough of its annual June fourth communal BBQ and soccer game. Janis and I were whispering of our disgust for Betty Robinson, who had obviously not remade her sweet potato pie from the day before, when we first saw Millie Jennings. She was standing behind the bleachers with a piece of that horrendous pie actually congratulating Betty Robinson on her recipe and asking for it! Now, I know it isn't fair to pass such judgements on a person by their first mistake, but a woman of her age should know better than to encourage indiscretions such as that. Only a week later, at the Bloom Drive First Thursday of the Month Contra-Dancing Extravaganza, Millie Jennings made her second and third mistakes. Now, I don't think I have to explain the words "Bloom Drive Contra-Dancing Extravaganza" and what that means, but I'll be damned if I didn't give Millie a talking-to that evening. She nearly laughed in my face when I firmly stated that her companion wasn't welcome. For crying out loud, the man was from the Dargin Cul de Sac and everybody knew it! Then, not more than an hour later, fault lying only on her lack of grace, Millie twisted her ankle and walked out after only the sixteenth promenade! Two days later, the mothers of Bloom Drive were holding our weekly meeting at the third week rotation house of Pearl Howard, when Betty Robinson made the first complaint about Millie. I had to repeat the comment for discussion obviously, being that no response can be given to a recent duty-neglector, pie-recycler that she was. I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect the walls to come down on that one. Theresa Stephens complained, that while shopping at Great Lands, Millie had approached her, and in one question managed to use three unspeakables. Even worse, Theresa had then kindly left the Bloom Drive Dictionary on Millie's door step, only to find it in the trash three days later, during the Mothers of Bloom Drive Street Garbage Safety Search. Poor Janis Sloan could barely control herself while horrifying us with the news that Millie had turned down Janis's invitation to the Bloom Drive August Moon Cookout to which the entire street was to come. For a good five minutes the room was silent, all except for Janis's stifled wails and sniffles, while we all thought of what to do with this rebellious new woman. "Well, what is so wrong with everyone? Why does everyone need to speak the same way? And we do have an awful lot of community events." I remember those words like they're always being said only a minute ago; and the anger that arose in me in that instant is never far behind. I know it isn't the most ladylike thing to do, but I will never regret throwing my entire weight onto Pearl Howard the moment that unrepeatable pile of garbage fell out of her mouth. A faint gasp floated about the room for an instant as her head cracked on the old, brittle linoleum. It was so nice to see all those smiling faces, and hear the soft applause as I dusted the crumbs off my linen skirt and sat myself in Pearl's chair. It was then decided that something must be done to rid ourselves of Millie Jennings. If she could have so easily gotten to our poor impressionable Pearl, God rest her soul, there is no telling what she could do. I like to consider myself the leader of Bloom Drive, the improver and preserver, so when Officer Harrison asked me sweetly if I knew anything about Millie Jennings's relationship with Pearl Howard, I told him all I had to know. That Millie had always seemed a little off to me, and for some unspeakable reason, Pearl had always been frightened by her. The mothers of Bloom Drive reflect from time to time and laugh about the struggle for tears when we got word of the murder. Betty pinched herself as hard as she could, and Theresa turned from the officer to smear her make-up down her cheeks. I, on the other hand, merely covered my mouth in shock as I commended myself for getting the body into her cellar undetected. For God's sake, Pearl was fond of those Duncan Hines chocolate cakes! I always thought it would be a good idea for her to cut down. I didn't go to the trial on account of I had to set up for the Bloom Drive semi-annual auction, but Linda Kessler told me that when Millie Jennings heard the verdict she started screaming, crying, lashing out at the guards and all that nonsense. Since, Bloom Drive has never let me forget my importance to them for being the first to say that there was something not quite right about Millie Jennings, that, in fact, she was mad. |
The Day the Claustrophillic Met the Cremophobic
latch onto me
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"Yes, a boy, with sturdy genitals"
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I eat a hamburger for my father who loves the blood when it drips down the corners of his mouth "won't have meat like this in college" he says I nod and smile won't have meat like this I remember loving steak the way it was heavy and thick and my face feeling greasy after I finished how I could stuff my stomach till it almost hurt till it would balloon up a stark contrast to my flat chest and skinny legs I remember a car trip a long south-bound trip on I-95 downtown georgia a little strip mall where the girls wore a lot of make-up and a little bit of clothes two men red as the sunset deep lines around their eyes they looked at me twelve years old and beefy with budding breasts and one said cigarette dangling from his mouth "That's a piece of meat" in a big house in Brooklyn a college freshman tells his girlfriend he likes more meat on her that there is nothing to grab she looks past him at the freshly painted wall and she thinks oh no there won't be meat like this |
It is easy to love him, to gaze adoringly at that golden gem, the full pink flowers that surround his lonely monarch, the encasement of nerve endings and toothaches past. When he spoke to me, my eyes were inexplicably drawn to that solitary tooth, its deep yellow glow, its mesmerizing stench. Its peace never to be purified by superfluous mint. It consumed itself, demolished by its own decadence, from its virginal white to the deep gritty yellow of experience. I remember our first kiss, the way my tongue mushed into those swollen pinks, the parts of him that were both tender and numb. I remember the slimy film over the tooth, like warm caramel on unripe apples. His tongue swollen from innumerable obscenities, its mad frantic dance across my tedious whites. My pale plebian bite suppliant to his golden monstrosity. |
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darkness is in and we are all out. we wander the streets filled with meat. |
Crime Story: The Grisly Tale of Brown's Chicken Massacre
Oh, the horror!
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She fades into dim, candle-lit paper;
perspiring or dying? He drowns in the water lapping at his caked-on muddiness. His boots (removed and left by the door) had two laces, black and holy; they licked each other in her nervousness. In her home, she cries. Her mouth, her words cause his emotions to course with his blood. From his lathered hair she gazed at him with maternal eyes. She would sing. The sound sat in his skin with scar tissue and salutary mud. The warmth was unbearable. |
for simplicity and practicality for a return to normalcy for easiness for John the marble setter for Norah the survivor for uniqueness and sophistication for the sense of celebrity for the difference for the enigmatic man who left behind only his blue eyes staring out from the tattered photographs for the woman who was everyone's pillar of sanity and stability for the child who was born too early and walked too late, laughed very softly but frequently for the small girl who smiled too much and spoke too little, whose eyes gleamed for almost anything and sparkled when she got it |
So, there was this woman on the subway. This should not be a shock. I am a frequent patron of the subways, and I have come to discover that, yes, not only do other people ride the subways in addition to myself, but that many of these said passengers are women as well. Therefore it should not come as any sort of surprise to anyone that, yes, there was a woman, and yes, she was on the subway. I know that women on the subway are not usually a really hot topic, but this woman was different. Crouched between a massive, brawny man who would have looked totally at home behind the wheel of a big-rig and another, smaller man who was sound asleep and snoring (try saying that five times fast), this woman looked completely at home. Anyone who has ever ridden the subway at the peak of rush hour will appreciate this feat. She held a book in one hand, and with the other, occasionally turned a page. She might have been sitting there forever; she was there when I got on, and had not moved since, not even to change position. She held her back exactly straight, so straight that I could picture her falling backwards if she tried to stand up. Was she used to some kind of counterbalance? I couldn't imagine this woman ever wearing a backpack, or even owning one, although I'm not sure why. What if she had wings? I thought, so suddenly that I almost leaned across and asked her. The thought did not seem the least bit ludicrous, applied to this woman. If there ever was a woman to have wings, it would be her. She seemed made for wings, or maybe wings seemed to be made for her. Maybe, I thought, she already has a pair, folded away under the back of her immaculate blue suit. She probably does. You have to understand that she was exactly that kind of woman. How exactly would they look? I mused. Would they be wrinkled, and maybe even atrophied a little, after being hidden away, unused? Or would they be large and leafy, with fluffy, angelic white feathers? No; that image was a little too much. This woman clearly would not have angel wings. If she were to unbind her wings, they would be elongated and delicate, like the wings of a dragonfly. Translucent, iridescent wings, casting prisms of light up and down the subway car. Would anyone be particularly surprised? I considered this obstacle for a few minutes. Probably not. A few of the passengers might wonder why she had chosen to reveal herself just then, between Bergen and Jay, but hey, it's a free country, right? The only one to be even a little unnerved would be the burly truck driver; he might worry about crumpling the wings. People would probably make room for him, though, out of respect for the wings. No one else would want to be responsible for crushing the dewy, light-bending, rainbow-hued wings, either, so they would probably yield the right of all New Yorkers to shove, and therefore not crowd themselves around the woman so densely. The man on her left would probably not even wake, or be really disappointed to know what he had missed. But no one would be at all surprised if the woman chose to unveil herself. She was, after all, exactly the sort of woman to have wings. |
and when the black descended so did our inhibitions falling, in fits and starts as in silent syncopation tumbled, drowned in sweet nothingness looking up, seeing nothing and everything at the same time crossing the border from polite bondage to emancipation all is pointless except this moment this purpose this |
Gathering round my cross section, you'd see for the first time the body as a map: Sliced from cranium to heel in the hollow of lungs, there floats a gallon of breathless waiting. And the lines of spidery bones in my right foot tell of all the places I have walked, while the left predicts where I might go. And all the hills that I have climbed are remembered in my thighs, as are the bruises on my backside from the tumbling down. There is all the doubting in the nubby pendulum that swings in the back of the throat, tickling, scratching. And yards and yards of belly rope, intestines filled with all the savory sensations they have saved, there within a benign tumor sits, a cluster of frights, sinking, sinking. And in the rhythmic, hiccuping organ of the heart, from rage to lust, all the things that ever burned. And wrapped round every vein like vines, the promise of what I do not know that grows and grows. For all the salty droplets when we cry are absorbed by hungry pores and released into our blood, so that children are made of freshwater and old men of the sea. |
Staring invokes words like reality. Fatality. Whereas the truth really is reality has its own brand of fatality. Specially formulated—removing of course, the "E" "S," like powdered milk in a tin can. Or the food those astronauts eat. How autocratic. There are knots in everything. Even in not, knots arise, clink together like so many bells on a loose rattly chain. Loose, over easy. I watch as he pops the yolk into his mouth. Orange spills out through the corners of chapped lips, where the bottom overreaches itself, and strives upwards as the top one wearily sags down. Funny, is it not? How we can credit to one person's account/creation, another person? Would we lose individuality if we all lacked names? He lacks for nothing and so is discontented, not realizing that the heart of his discontent is rooted in himself, at the very core of his unacknowledged being. He tries instead to remove and remove until at the last, one day, left alone with his bodily organs only, he will be forced to look inside himself. He offers me some orange juice and I do not wish to take any, but I do. Because he offered. It tastes how it looks, how the yolk looks dribbling down into his mouth and staining his teeth a glistening yellow: Bitter (I am not!), fake, processed. And I am instantly reminded of airplanes, my own inordinate fear of fury. Of flying, that is. Of industrial air, despite my innermost desire to leave this world—not by means of death , but rather by space-ship. Sitting in a skirt with my legs spread like this I suddenly realize what must be visible. Earnestly important only because of its normal invisibility. But I do not care because somewhere, I am thinking, the overtures of Beethoven's Fifth have begun and the first stars of the night are beginning to twinkle. No wary Venus left on her own to guard the morning for the sun. Here it is broad daylight. Broad in the extreme and I am overcome by an urge to be in Texas where the flat, empty sky matches how I feel. Widespread over everything, almost touching, almost. If I were the sky I could touch your face. Just to feel the rough edges, trembling jaw, the outsides of your insides. I mean by that, the outskirts of your soul. In Texas, you know, the grass grows not like a carpet, but wild and free. Long. High enough to hide in, sharp enough to cut through miscalculations, mistakes, and sturdy enough never to admit defeat. My body is angry with me: you see, it knows your own as much as its own, and cannot understand why these extra layers have been abruptly torn away, peeled off until it stands weak. Puny and white, not in Texas but in New York City where the sun beats down, relentless, overbearing even through the first layers of a bitter, brittle winter. You have taken all the logic away and so now I have only a handful of City pebbles—which are, most likely, glass—to explain, appease my skin with. My stomach holds no compromises, puts the rest of me to siege, and wages violent war that knows no rest or anything remote to sleep, upon us. Does not even let us dream. If I could take us to Texas and lay our innards out upon the soothing ground, I think between the earth and then the sky, the grass would have us bronzed and metaled by the time we had to leave. (Although I do not get along with Mother and do not see why Mother Earth should be any different. Both long for immortality.) |
A meter mosqueter will bite you and then She might make you sick so don't meet her again She'll look mighty harmless as she passes by But never forget how she can make you cry: Frustrated, elated, deflated and then The last rhyme won't fit and you've got lyrical encephalitis again. |