The City of Hate, the city that titles Timothy S. Miller’s forthcoming novel, is Dallas. It’s a relatively modern version. Dealey Plaza buzzes with tourists come to see the Sixth Floor Museum and relive the events of President Kennedy’s assassination, but this Dallas still has answering machines, printed glossy photographs, and storefront bookstores as (mostly) viable business models. More striking, though, is the emptiness within this busy, thriving city. It’s not the buzzing, numb kind of empty, but an emptiness that writhes and howls and demands to be filled.
We walk the streets of Dallas in the shoes of Hal Scott, a cynical, triggered alcoholic clinging to sobriety by his fingernails. Hal, himself empty, fills up his inner monologue with paranoid speculations of other people’s lives.…
a girl wore pajamas to look her age halved
and gutted for its hard-to-reach testaments
to a body that awakened and grew in the night-light
that now contoured the face of the bathroom mirror
with the aftershock of the worry that she was home alone for the worse
that she was inside while her mind turned out
but a creak from the staircase caused her jaw to slacken
and bloat to its over-glory when it didn’t put words to fear
right then she put a shadow to the noise and a towel to her mouth
to anesthetize the area before it could scream or do wrong
by the man who saw the light from the second-floor window
as a signal of a challenge left alone to be overcome
but then he saw the girl exit the bathroom like her bones needed longer to fuse
before she was more than a cavity for this silence to decay
so he gave her that time and an apology before exiting the way he came
and she waited until she remembered to walk
before she descended the stairs that strained under her fresh
weight until she saw the mosaic of her front door on the ground
that her bare feet were tempted to walk across
as a rite of passage from her broken home
but she stood in place until the siren-sounds
replaced the rising screams of heat
warning her to sleep through the night
Bachelor’s buttons, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace and baby’s breath; my mother loved great swathes of riotous colors, threaded leaves, seed heads bent by hungry finches.
She never bothered with hybrid teas or careful chrysanthemums, boring rows of marigolds and petunias.
In tiny towns with manicured lawns and spindly evergreens, she filled beds with mounds of sticky, swollen peonies, let wild roses climb the windowsills.
When it was time, my mother gathered buckets and tubs, cardboard boxes lined with black garbage bags. She dug it all up: flag iris, daylilies, coneflowers, bee balm, Sweet William, tickseed and feverfew.
While the truck filled with beds and chairs, foot stools, dishes, linens and books, blankets, clothes, curtains and dolls; she filled the station wagon with her flowers, covered with damp newspapers and rags.…
Amelie Brashar reposed on the wooden floor. Her bloodless
complexion, and the hair sprawled messily around her head both gave the
impression that she lay in the thralls of death, but Amelie was only taking a
nap. If Mrs. Brashar had been in, she would’ve tutted at the place her child
had chosen to rest, but Mrs. Brashar never did seem to be in. This was not due
to some great recent tragedy, but rather to an infatuation Amelie’s mother
seemed to have developed for wide open streets and adult conversation. It was
rumored that when Amelie’s father left, Mrs. Brashar had first cursed him, then
slunk away to unpack her own suitcase.
With a small sigh, Amelie finally awoke from her catnap. She
looked surprised to find herself on the floor.…
Jeremy
gazed down at the shapely pale nude woman on the queen bed, her eyes closed,
and her long auburn hair spread about on the flowered pillowcase like a Playboy
centerfold. What’s going on, he
wondered. Just yesterday he and his wife
had fought about the two of them not having sex and here she was stark naked
before him, rather than fast asleep in her usual overlarge white t-shirt that
hung far below her plain white cotton panties.
“So, are you trying to tell me something?” Jeremy asked, with a slight smirk on his face.
Catherine, his wife of 14 years, opened her eyes and with a blank bland expression said, “No, I’m just hot. It’s hot tonight.”
“I see,” he responded, as he stormed out of the bedroom and bolted back downstairs in such a rage that to have remained would have meant an involuntary manslaughter or temporary insanity plea in court.…
