with variations on two lines by Kafka
At some point, the stars stop looking
at us. For them, life is a costume ball,
but we attend wearing nothing but our
real faces. And our debt. We have our
tea and naps. Our struggles to be kind
to the jackboots. There is infinite hope,
but not for us. The stars have plans
about opening a boutique that wouldn’t
allow them inside. They want nothing
to be left of them but their names
and stylized drawings of their eyes.
Before they got famous, they spent
their evenings looking at portraits
of the backs of their own heads.
We can barely afford cable. Every
door, every eye on the street could
belong to tomorrow for them. They
say light won’t make you happy,
but they’ve never drowned in the dark.…
...continue reading
It is the worst summer on record
not because the woman up the street is dead—
I think it’s more likely that she shot herself
because July was already untenable.
When June withered and rotted on the vine
we were left with nothing but the realization
that you can’t outrun something that’s saturated the air
as heavy as humidity. There is only the slow dizzy crawl
out of the path of the sun, the endless laps I traced
around the cul-de-sac, noting 9806 only for its anthills
dead and vacant as the windows
with their dust and their cobwebs.
I hover at the cracked front door as the cops
descend like a clutter of blue-backed spiders
and wrap the street in a web of yellow tape
tying up every unfortunate delivery man;
the husband on his knees in the driveway
the only one immobilized of his own accord. …
...continue reading
I remember the night I met God. She was living in a rent-stabilized apartment on 76th Street just east of Amsterdam. I was delivering a DVD for the last store in Manhattan that still rented the damn things. It wasn’t much of a job, with crappy pay to be honest, and no benefits, but I was back in school and you did get to meet all sorts of interesting people in the city. You don’t know what melting pot really means until you deliver a box set of Tarantino to some downtown dive at three in the morning. I suppose I could have delivered pizzas just as easily, and at a more normal time of day, but then I never would have gotten to meet God.…
...continue reading
My son called to say they had set a date for the wedding. Then, he told me it would be held in south-central Pennsylvania. Wedding costs being what they are in the metro New York/New Jersey area, my future daughter-in-law scouted out venues that were more in line with their casual, non-city style and more close to being a smidgeon sane in price. It didn’t hurt that the venue was only an hour or so away from where her family lives. My son and his then fiancé were happy with the venue she found. So, I was, too.
As a mom, I want to support my children. I cheer them on. I confirm their excitement. And so I did exactly that when he told me we’d be heading for Wrightsville, Pennsylvania.…
...continue reading
It’s a bitter moment when you realize the best and sweetest parts of you are gone. My hollow eyes in the rearview mirror are a firm reminder of that. Have I ever been happy? Maybe when I was a kid. So, I put my sad eyes back where they belong, on the empty road ahead.
In the midst of feeling sorry for myself, I think I missed the turn. Whatever.
The navigator says the highway entrance is zero-point-five miles away. But the on-ramp is a thick red string attached to a blinking light that reads: accident.
“Guess I’m gonna be late for the party,” I mumble to myself.
The navigator blinks: Alternate route found, and I press to proceed. Cortège Rd next Right.
Incoming call.…
...continue reading
A refusal:
burnt and grounded,
blunt, unfounded, to set
aggression alight.
Breakfast is deserved.
Are you going to
bring it back to the kitchen
before you dismantle your nearest orifice of
all bored holes;
burrowing bacteria in those empty sockets?
After last week’s surgery, it’s
best we
buy our deaths from the government.
Accepted, though only apathetically, amazingly.
But still, we stopped at a Wendy’s…
...continue reading
Izzy’s brow pushes up and she smiles. I made this for you, she says. She passes him a thin brown paper bag. The professional sleeve sort of bag with a smooth sheen.
Awesome, Jude says. The sleeve makes a crackling sound as he unfurrows it. He draws from it a parchment paper. The paper is thick and impressed with ink. Thank you, he says as he studies the parchment.
I did it in my printmaking class, she says. She cranes her neck forwards and nods. She was a sophomore in art school.
He’s not much older. It’s wonderful, he says, flicking on the dome light above to make sense of the lines, as he sits in the passenger seat of her parked car.
There’s like, boars, and they’re trying to eat the woman’s face.…
...continue reading