Review of katebush by Primitive Bush.

(Hey Marty, sorry I didn't have time to edit it, dude. I'm like falling asleep. I think you get the basic gist. Work your usual magic. And yes, I do cross maybe a few boundaries, but I'm pretty sure they'll be fine. Take whatever liberties you must, though - I understand. Tell Tori and the girls I said hi or whatever. Merry Christmas also. - D.)

I remember in grad school I had this roommate named John. I'll say nothing in print about his character, but I will tell you of one of his habits, possibly his most irksome to me. He would sneak into my room while I was gone (I'm getting chills just thinking about it) and he would touch my love. He would pick her up, play her with his awful dirty hands, knocking her all out of tune, and he would write songs, these godawful, drunk-prick-at-the-campfire ballads. "Hey dude, real quick: just check this song out," he'd say when I'd come home, catching him in the act. (Though, on the occasions that I didn't return home and he was afforded the opportunity to cover his tracks, he did as such, but his methods were mind-boggling, totally preposterous. You don't throw an orgy to cover up lipstick on your collar. You don't turn over my desk to put the pick back. I'd mention it in passing - as he passed me to "bum" something of mine in the refrigerator while I did the dishes - and he'd say: "I don't know, dude. You ask the cats?") But I'd listen to the songs. I don't know why - morbid curiosity? Admittedly, I still get "If You Were a Dude" stuck in my head, but for the most part his songs were some of the worst I'd ever heard; often I wondered how a grown man could be so out of touch with reality, so oblivious to everything. Yet he was. And that brings me to my point: so is this band, Primitive Bush.

When Marty asked me if I wanted to do a last-minute album review - "just a quick eight hundred worder" - before the Christmas issue went out, I said "sure" and figured I'd just stay at home some night and get paid to jam a record, drink a little tea, and kill that bottle of black label I bought myself to celebrate my son's first year alive on this terrible planet. "Great!" Marty said, "I'll drop the tape off later. You gonna be home?" Tape? As in cassette? Are you kids serious? If you wanna be retro, put it on wax. Cassettes were a digression in the evolutionary journey of sound, the stumble between analog and digital. However, I am a professional music listener and I do have the means to listen to a cassette tape - though I have almost zero understanding of how they work. So - you know - my girl left to go see The Blind Side or something, and I stayed home and got drunk with my son (he wasn't drinking, I promise that's just a dangling modifier) and jammed katebush, the debut album by Austin's Primitive Bush. As I put in the tape, I said to myself: If this band sucks then so does this album title; but if they rule then so does this album title.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing could've prepared me for what I heard when the tape came on. It was John, the ass I lived with back in Pittsburgh for almost three years, and some girl, some - I don't know? - girl. But it was John! It was sneak-into-my-room-and-molest-my-stuff John! Apparently he had met a girl, founded a band (possibly these first two could be switched, I'm not sure; I know I usually do my homework on this stuff, but I couldn't bring myself to this time, whatever) , named it Primitive Bush, (somehow) got a record deal and cut a ten song album since I'd last spoken with him about four years ago. He ended up in Austin somehow, too, I guess. Last I heard he was possibly doing time for possession. Had he fled and started a band? I flipped through the liner notes - John's unmistakable nasally baritone bellowing the opening track "Long-haired Alleycat" in the background -but found nothing. Really? Had John finally learned the simple art of discretion? Was this some kind of Chestertonian joke providence was playing on me? I was certain the idiot playing guitar and singing in a flat maudlin affectation was John, but I could find no proof. Usually labels or bands give you these things we in the biz call "one sheets." The purpose of the one sheet is to provide useful information to the reviewer, DJ, label executive, etc., information such as the biography and the history of the band/artist, influences of the band/artist, current record sales, countries thus visited/rocked, plans for the immediate and distant future ( but not beyond the myopic vision of the fanbase), and sometimes interviews from zines are included, and the listener is given a peak at the psyche of the band/artist. Primitive Bush actually had a one sheet. At least I got a one sheet. Whether or not anyone else who reviewed or promoted this album got a one sheet, I am not sure, for my one sheet was a custom one sheet. It was addressed directly to me, signed John Prince. It ran: "Told you."

An attempt at sketching perfection.

I was down in the basement looking for a human pile of shit to show Tim. Goddamnit! everything of mine that I haven't sold to The Exchange for a quick couple of bucks for a warm meal has been ruined anyway by cat litter or flood. But then I found you. All four of you. Down south in the early summer's sun with blonde hair - ah! I never knew you with such golden features - doing some sort of cheer. In the first frame your forearms mirror your white v-neck shirt as your breasts are pushed together and your countenance seems to say: 'WHA!' in a coquettish, peppy sort of way. The second frame shows a similar position with the arms, but composure is lost somewhat in the countenance: the brow is focused, the face is in a delightful sneer. I struggle to write this now as I am transfixed on the third frame. This was the frame that brought the first tear from my eye. Your teeth are hidden behind your pinched face, but I don't mind because you look so goddamn happy; and the sun is shining brighter in this frame than any of the other three - so much, in fact, that it burns out the focus a little, makes your black capris seem dark grey and lined with light pink lines. I cannot even begin to accurately describe the fourth frame. To look at it hurts. You're radiant. You're perfection. And what is this? Just a quick sketch; a way to get over the little heart break it caused me when I found it among my dusty, old death metal records.

A scene from Trash Night as told by a young woman who witnessed the event.

("21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson should be played while reading this.)


"Oh my god! You guys will never believe what just happened at the bar!" a young woman says as she slams the door of her studio apartment shut and throws her purse and then herself onto the bed where two cats - one slender and all black; the other - some kind of Siamese breed - mostly white with a little grey on its chest - are asleep in yin-yang formation. They awake on impact and start crawling all over her and each other, purring and crying with rapt elation. "Frankie, it was perfect! I wish you guys could've been there to see it.

"It was so perfect! My song - 'Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man' - had just started playing on the iBox an like the moment it kicked in the door of the bar like flung open and in walked these two mean lookin' guys, dressed in black suits and wearing sunglasses (despite it being, like, midnight at the time). At first it looked like one of them was carrying this crazy, giant snake, but after looking a little harder, I could see that it was actually just a crazy, giant chain and the flashing hot lights of the bar were making it look like a writhing neon-blooded snake. He said something to Bull the Bouncer as they walked in and Bull the Bouncer stood up and said: 'Hey, what do you two think you're - '; but just then the chain guy did this quick like spinning-swinging move - and seriously, it looked like a firework had gone off in in the air between them with that metal chain whirling around and reflecting all the flashing lights of the bar - and then it wrapped around Bull's neck like three times and the guy jerked his arm toward himself and pulled Bull the Bouncer's stupefied, red face towards his own, like got real close and said, real viciously: 'Didn't I say "don't mind me?" ' Bull just stood there, grabbing at the chain that was asphyxiating him and gasping for air. The guy let the snake uncoil a little from around his wrist and just as Bull was backing away, starting to regain composure and breathe again, the chain guy cocked back and cracked him with his free hand. Ha! I remember Gene used to fall asleep standing up in the shower and I'd come in and he would be just standing there, swaying a little to each side, completely unconscious; and that's exactly how Bull the Bouncer looked (only not naked and hot, more like gross and sweaty and hairy), but just like that: standing on his feet, swaying a little to this way and a little that way, eyes closed, knocked out cold. 'Well, that was certainly demonstrative,' said the other guy - who was a little taller than the chain guy, and up until that moment had not said a single word, had not even moved except to light a cigarette - as he walked past Bull the Bouncer, saying 'pardon me, sir' and brushing up against Bull just enough to knock his massive body off-axis so that it fell with a huge crash that like jingled all the empty glasses and made amber ripples in the others. Which - I should add - was also perfectly timed to my song - the crash happening just as the verse kicks back in after the prog. medley.

"After that everyone was just kind of stunned, but the two mean lookin' guys seemed totally unaffected. They just - what's that, Sake? Oh, yes! that was one of the best parts actually: they were both terribly handsome, and pretty young, too. About my age, I'd say. Well, I'll tell you: they were both wearing sun glasses and black suits, like I said already, with white shirts and black ties and nice, shiny black shoes. The chain guy was pretty tall and he had short dark brown hair and a heavy five o'clock shadow; the other guy - the one who smoked and pronounced demonstrative correctly (which is rare!) - was a few inches taller than him and had a light brown mustache with slicked back light brown hair. He was the one who did most of the talking. I remember he was like standing in the middle of the bar with a cigarette in his mouth, he touched delicately at his hair, and said: 'Allow me to apologize for my friend, Mr. Haymaker. He might still be a little too sober to deal with the public.' Then, turning to Erika, the new girl they've got tending bar down there, he said: 'Miss, please get Mr. Haymaker a double Jack.' And as she was quickly acquiescing, he added: 'And a pack of ice for your bouncer.'

"The chain guy - Haymaker, I guess - was struggling to unwrap his chain from around Bull the Unconscious Bouncer's fat neck when Erika shakingly placed the glass of whiskey on the bar before him. Then he like nodded in gratitude to her and took the entire drink in one gulp and slammed the glass back down onto the bar just as the song ended. 'Feeling better?' the smoking guy asked him, but he didn't answer. He just yanked up the rest of his chain and kicked Bull hard in the ribs after Bull's unconscious body released - what I imagine was an involuntary - groan, or like a sigh of relief after the chain was removed.

"The smoking guy turned again to face his still-stunned audience and said: 'My friend and I are looking for someone; and we were told we'd find him in this shithole.' The chain guy hung his weapon on his shoulder and produced a silver cigarette case from his inside breast pocket; and, without interrupting his speech, without even looking back to see that the chain guy had put a cigarette to his mouth, the smoking guy - the taller of the men, I mean - flicked open a lighter - where it came from, I have no idea - and lit his friend's cigarette; and kept right on talking: 'So I'm going to ask this once - and only once - and if I get the right answer, my friend and I will walk right back out that front door and you'll never see us again. But if we don't get the answer we're looking for - and really, folks, all we're looking for is an honest answer, that's all. But if we don't get an honest answer my friend here is going to tie his little pet chain around these door handles and not one of you - I promise - not one of you lousy pieces of shit will get out of here alive.'

"I was so scared, Frankie! I seriously thought they were gonna rob and rape every one of us. But - if I can't tell my cats this, who can I tell? - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty excited by everything, too. The smoking guy just had this towering presence, ya know? It's one thing to control a party or something with dance moves or a nice outfit, but to control a dozen or so lives with just your words . . . That's something. And, yeah, the chain thing helped a lot. I mean, Bull is a huge guy - that's why he's called Bull. But even before the violence they had the entire room's attention. The violence was exactly what the smoking guy had called it: 'demonstrative.'

"I see that now. But at the time I didn't. At the time I did something very stupid: I got out my phone and started to call the cops. Intuitively, the smoking guy saw this or sensed it or something and walked up to me and grabbed my phone out of my hand and hung it up and handed it back to me and said, in a very calm and measured voice: 'Miss, you're very pretty. So pretty in fact, that if, by some miracle, you happen to survive the next five minutes I'd like to take you out some time. However, if you fucking try to call the pigs again, you will not - I swear to you on my grandmother's dead, blue eyes - live to see your sweet cats again.' No, Sake, I am not lying! He said that, I promise! Well, he must've seen the picture I have set as my background. What do you think I did, Frankie? I said I was sorry and he started to soften up a little, acted like maybe he wasn't going to definitely kill me; but the chain guy was like: 'Pretty Boy, what the fuck are you doing? Haven't your philandering ways gotten us into enough trouble already? Don't get distracted by the scent apple pie now; we've still got a rat to kill tonight.' 'You just mind your whiskey, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said over his shoulder, 'I'm taking care of a situation here.' 'I doubt that little Jewess knows where - ' 'She squealed for the pigs, Haymaker,' the smoking guy said, standing up and facing his friend. I'm not sure if Pretty Boy was like his pseudonym or if it was a popular invective Chain Guy used to belittle him. I didn't have much time to dwell on it at the moment as the next thing to come out of the chain guy's mouth was: 'Then fucking kill her and stop wasting my time.' I almost started crying when he said that, but the smoking guy seemed to ignore him - thank god - and went back to addressing the bar: 'My friend - though quite coarse and very rude - is right. I'm wasting his time and I'm wasting your time. So here's what we we would like to know, here's the million dollar question, the one that everything's riding on. Answer this question honestly and go home to your beds tonight. Tell us: Where is Ron Domino?' "

I got it.

He was standing at the top of the stairs smoking a cigarette when I pulled up. Behind him, the house was dark and quiet, but his face was lit up with a triumphant, evil grin; and immediately I knew what had happened. With his head cocked a little to the right, he stood looking down at me as I climbed the stairs towards him; all the while, he was beaming that peculiar smile of his. It was not even a smile per se. With his lips curled downwards, almost as if he was frowning, and his slightly crooked teeth bared, and with that pale incendiary ardor burning behind his eyes, it was a much more complex expression than the word 'smile' can express. Thinking back on it now, I'm reminded of Spike, a cat I had growing up on my parents' farm, and how he would come stalking into my room with his proud, long-grey-legged gait and jump on my chest while I was trying to read and ram my face and chin with his face and chin until I followed him outside to see the little, brownish and white corpses he'd left in a pile at the front stoop. That's what I was reminded of. During my climb, I said nothing, trying my best to seem unimpressed, taking my brother's advice. When I reached the summit the wind picked up and he stepped back a little, taking shelter behind one of three red brick pillars that stand like sentinels on the front porch of his and my brother's house. I stood, arms akimbo, looking at him, my nostrils tingling with the piquant scent of his cigarette.
"Well?" I said, giving him the bait I knew he wanted.
"Well what?" he feigned.
"You know what."
He took a drag, fished through the grey stream for a loose piece of tobacco, and said: "I got it."
"Ha! I knew it!" I couldn't believe it. Yes, I could. Why lie? I knew he would. I knew he couldn't resist that challenge. "I knew that's why you were standin' up here grinnin' like a retarded kid who just got a kiss from the school nurse, or something!"
"Marty," he said, grabbing my right arm and putting his head down in mirthful shame, "you - no offense - don't know shit."
"Then what do you mean: 'You got it.'?" I said, somewhat violently jerking my arm from his genial grip.
"Well . . . I'll give you the ending first, then I'll lay out the story for you. First of all," he stopped to ponder something only he could see hanging in front of his face, "or would it be 'Last of all?" He considered this for a few moments before I reminded him with a shove that he was telling me a story. Coming to he said: "Anyway, I got your tea."
"Yeah," I said, a little agitated, "You told me that on the phone."
"Yeah," he said, "but that's the ending. I told you I was gonna tell you the ending first. The ending is: 'I got your tea.' Now I'm gonna tell you the rest of the story, picking up where I left off, which is the beginning.

"So Elle didn't get out of work 'til like nine thirty, and Tommy was out doing whatever 'til like quarter past, so it was, like, one of those instances when too much shit needs done all at once, and instead of just setting out and doing it, I decided to put the kettle on and do some serious thinking about it first. Like, I knew I had to go get your tea from Tommy before you got here at - what time is it? - ten, but I also had to pick up Elle from work, but she said she wouldn't be done 'til like ten after nine or later possibly, and I needed to make it to the bank in time to get out money for the transaction. (You know ever since that dude tried to rob the ATM with a sledgehammer, my life has been seriously inconvenienced.) So, like I said, I just sat here 'til, like, ten after nine, watching Ren & Stimpy with the cats before realizing: 'Holy shit! I have a lot of shit to do!' Not only was I beyond, I was late. And there was no way I was gonna have the money to get your tea; I just plumb forgot to hit up the bank. Figured I could probably bum some money off Elle, but I've been figurin' on that a lot lately. She doesn't seem to mind, but it sure makes me feel like an asshole. So that's where your money's goin', pal: straight back to my wetnurse."
I broke his oration with a startled, repulsed look at "wetnurse."
"Ha! I get ya with that one? Sorry, brother. Anyway, I picked up Elle and bummed twenty bucks off of her and then broke the news that it was for tea and that we'd have to head out to Tommy's before we could do anything else. Did she want me to drop her at home while I went out there and then swing back around and pick her up on my way back into town? No, she didn't mind going out there. 'Well, are you sure? It's kinda weird. I mean, he's kinda weird.' That was fine, she dealt with weird people all day. 'Maybe a little racist, too.' 'Well, that's kinda fucked up,' she said. What did I mean by "a little racist?", she wanted to know. And she's right: tt's fucked up for sure. I agree completely. You know what it's like, Marty, when he goes on one of his tirades. It's like a huge, belligerent elephant in the room when we watch Steelers games. I confessed this all to her, too. Then, like, lowering her brow and kind of like glowering" - (this word was mispronounced, but I knew what he meant when he said "glow-ring") - "at me she said: 'Do you think it's cool to buy -' 'Hey, babe,' I said to her, kind of, like, putting my hand over her mouth, ya know? I said: 'No, I don't think it's cool necessarily, but it's kind of one of those weird, personal type things, ya know?' And people always get silent when I talk about this, but - well, first let me tell you this: I didn't even encounter racism - honest to god - until I moved to the city. Sure there were no black people back home to be racist against, or whatever, but when we saw them fumble a football or sell something on TV we never used The N Word, or anything like that. I told her all that at one point, too, I think. But she was right, and I told her that, too. I said: 'You know you're right. It's totally fucked up; and I vacillate so much on the issue. But I already told Marty I'd do this for him, so I gotta see it through. If that's a lame excuse, that's fine, I'll take it, but I gotta go.' She just turned in her seat to face the road rather than me, and said: 'Okay, I understand. I know the meaning of the word forbearance.' And then she looked back at me, kind of sideways, but with this little twinkle in her eye.'
"Dude, she did not say that."
"Yes she did, I swear to god!"
"Whatever, get on with your story. This better be leading up to something."
"Don't worry, my friend. You know it is."

He pulled out his pouch of tobacco and orated the next chapter while he rolled himself another cigarette. An ambulance sped past, its sirens blaring, just as he started to continue.
"What?" I shouted with freezing hands over my ears.
"What!" he shouted back with his red coarse tongue against the cigarette paper.
"I couldn't hear what you were saying with the ambulance going past," I said at a steadying volume after the siren had faded.
"Oh," he said, "you said: 'what' huh?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'll tell you what: fuckin' pigs, man. Fuckin' pigs on my ass constantly these days. I thought that was a pig scream at first. I was 'bout ready to jump in this house and run out the back door and up through the landslide. Ha ha!" He punched me in the arm; it still fucking hurts.
Not letting him see me even wince, I said: "Did you get pulled over again?"

He was pacing and smoking now . . .
"Say: 'Possessed of inebriated inspiration and dispossessed of all good will and judgement.' Type that dude! Seriously, just keep it. Fuck the fourth wall. Fuck final edits. New chapter."

"I just had this feeling the whole time we were at Tommy's, right? Like, I could just tell that existence was bored and wanted to fuck with me. 'The shadows of things enter our lives before they do.' I think maybe Capote said that. I'm not sure though. But that's what I mean, you know what I mean? I could tell something was coming. Sitting there, with Mollie drooling on my lap, staring at me vacantly, blinking, staring more, panting in short, snotty heaves, growling for my attention, and Elle at my side, nervously fingering one of the belt loops on my jeans and kicking her leg to some frantic cadence only she could hear, and Tommy in one of his light afternoon comas with a cigarette burning away in his limp fingers while the giant high definition television - 'mos def out' according to Tommy - flashed and blared Rock of Love season 3 with absolutely terrifying intervals of barely subliminal - in fact, downright fucking obvious - messaging via McDonald's and Target and SUV and cell phone commercials, I felt awkward as fuck. But not awkward enough to leave. Something was keeping me there. Not the tea either. Though, it probably did stimulate my already frayed apprehension, I will not - especially in hindsight - give much credit to the tea. Seriously, though, it's good shit, and doesn't 'noid you out. If anything it facilitated me divining what I did. But right after I had the premonition I had the realization: there's no getting around it. The hand is dealt. And yeah, that's how I think the universe works. Or at least that's how I see it as working. There's probably more up ahead, maybe millions of years worth, but my headlights only let me see so far ahead into the darkness. They're brighter than most, though. I'll swear that 'til my grave. I knew it was coming. I knew I had to leave at some point, and when I did I'd get pulled over by a pig. I couldn't see what would happen. That'd be like asking me to see leaves on a tree on top a mountain. I just see the green shape the leaves make. I can't see each leaf for itself. Such was this, ya know? I knew I'd get pulled over, but I had no idea how it would turn out. So I spent the last ten minutes we were at Tommy's exploring and digging around in the various nooks and orifices of my outfit and person, in search of the very best spot to conceal your bag of tea. I settled, finally, on this pocket here," - he opened his grey pea coat and removed the bag from the inside breast pocket - "And when the rear view mirror of my car suddenly lit up with red and blue flashes, I gotta say: I was a little worried.

"It wasn't easy leaving Tommy's either. And, I don't know, maybe I could've avoided it by hanging around for a little bit longer. He'd just gotten a peach blunt and really wanted to enjoy it with some other people. As nervous as I was about my premonition, I knew Elle didn't wanna hang around my gardener's all day, smoking peach blunts and tolerating racism disguised as politically incorrect sarcasm. You know what I mean?"
"Definitely. You're right: that shit is weird."
"Don't I know it. But as I was leaving he was like: 'Well, I got two, so at least take one and try it out,' and tossed a flesh-colored plastic tube across the room. I caught it and laughed, remarking that it looked like a cock, and Elle blushed and rolled her eyes."
"What a prude!" I had to interject. In his defense, I've seen those peach blunt tubes and they do look like male genitalia. Clearly a plastic one, a replica, but the resemblance is obvious. "But how would she know anyway, right?"
"Dude," he said, "she's seen one before. She told me she's had sexual -"
"I know, I know. You've told me this a millions times. I was just kidding anyway. What happened after you got pulled over? I'm still confused how this all adds up. How this has anything to do with how you 'got it' as you so eloquently put it."
"I'm gettin' to that, man. If you'd just let me tell my story, you'll see how it all adds up. Alright? Be patient, man. Anyway, for about a minute, while the pig was running my plate or something, I stared into my rear view mirror, transfixed by the flashing red and blue lights, with this clamorous fugue in my skull. The whole council was in an uproar! One voice was shouting: 'Gun it! You can outrun this pig if you take 'im by surprise! Trust me, you gotta better chance outrunnin' him than you do a shower full of hungry, soapy animals!' Another guy suggested I force Elle to stash it in her purse, and then if it's found there to plead total ignorance. But the most sensible voice of all, which at first seemed the craziest, wasn't really a voice at all. It was more like an echo, but an echo of an image. Like, this one time when I was pretty young, I was helping my mom can some homemade spaghetti sauce. I was rinsing out the Mason jars and handing them to her. I guess the jars were a little wet 'cause she was fumbling around with the lid on one of the jars she'd just filled and it slipped out of her hand. It was bad. You couldn't tell the blood from the spaghetti sauce. For weeks after that, I had this, like, video clip that played over and over again in my head, coming on sporadically, like when I'd close my eyes or something, of my mom looking down at her gashed-open toe, looking up at me, looking back down at her toe, then looking above me and screaming bloody unintentional matricide! It was like that. But the image this time was of that plastic cock floating in slow motion through the air with the heavy kettledrums in that Strauss song from 2001 thundering away: the dawning of an epiphany. But I had to act quickly, casually, and the hardest part wouldn't be quickly and clandestinely concealing your bag of tea inside the plastic cock, but convincing Elle to deflower herself with it in order to preserve my own precious chastity."
"Oh. My. God."
"So when I say: 'I got it,' you - "
"Oh," I said, putting my hand up, "I get it."

Work boots.

There we were: tearing apart my recent, but somehow remote childhood with borrowed crowbars and sledgehammers and mirroring stigmata, counting the echoes of the grunts and the falls that bounced between "them woods over there" and "this brown 'luminum wall back here." The skeletons of bike ramps lay drawn and quartered all around us in the wild ankle-high heather; the sun hadn't quite reached noon yet; and the pangs of hunger were sinking deeper into our guts as the morning's blaze attenuated and diffused to a familiar murky hue of hazy, cosmic grey. Blood did not seep where blood could not reach, still the pain was sharp, constant and (when left unchecked) debilitating. So together we limped, the reluctant participants in a three-legged race, paired together by circumstance, with only blood and blind chance binding us. On the dusty barn floor, we removed our boots and socks and compared wounds. "Yers go the whole way through, too?" Of course it had. Mine had been the first, the initial attack; his had been dumb luck, "fuckin' karma;" wasn't supposed to happen to him at all: "not just steel-toed, but steel-soles, too." Finally given the chance to breathe, the holes gaped and, when squeezed with dirty fingers and clenched jaw, spat rust-colored ooze from their pallid, wrinkled mouths. So the accidental blood brothers bandaged up their wounds, using strips of cloth torn from an old Purchase Line Varsity Track and Field shirt, split a hoagie from the gas station down the street, and got back to work; looking to get done before the old man got home from his meeting in town with the judge.

He mostly stood and watched me; but he stood well and statuesque and, framed by the sun at its highest point, discoursed in a homely, but uniquely eloquent vernacular on his favorite topic: women. "To me it's all about the morning after," - looking up at two turkeybuzzards circling the pasture beyond the barn - "they gotta shine in the morning." He spoke of golden down, tawny hairs that cover them all over, like stretching fields of wheat that captivate and affront the sun's morning light with their brilliance. This, he said through azure exhales (in an excusable moment of ignorance to the malicious truth of the vast, spinning world around him), was the closest a grown man could get to the amazing agony he once felt as a young boy just discovering the "differences between her and me."

And just as he had picked up his sledge to get back to work, the new and shiny black truck of the old man's pulled up; something heated and static buzzing in the old man's aspect. "Why the hell ain't you limpin' then?" he asked me after the incident had been divulged. I looked down at my hands, tightly sheathed by my father's old, ever-shrinking, once-light-tan-now-dark-brown, suede work gloves, and saw that all but two fingers (both pinkies) poked through holes worn in them long before my palms were ever callused with labor; my toes throbbed with a secret pain. "Cuz both feet're sore and it won't do no good to favor one more'n the other." Staring down at the moribund purple pressing its ghastly face against the window of my left big toenail, the old man arrived at a decision: "Sammy, take the rest the day off'n go'won inta town and git that boy some goddamn work boots." The old man scribbled his name at the bottom of a check and handed it to him: "Take my truck if ya want, but git back here 'fore too long: Rita's cookin' venison fer supper."

Midnight spaghetti.

In your absence I've returned to some of my old habits. Coming home to a sleeping, disquiet house, stumbling and burping and singing the Pixies off-key in the empty kitchen, dancing with frozen feet on the wet tiles, huddled and rubbing my hands together over the pot of boiling water. Just a few drops of olive oil, and then I delight, stoned out of my mind, at how they dance and converge and separate again.They are like amoebas. We are like amoebas. We are all from one singular nothing. Return me to me this blissful simplicity: spinning drops of olive oil in a Teflon-coated pot of boiling water. . . .

But I am not completely alone without you, my dear. He keeps me, for the most part. While I'm eating over the stove, he's threading between my legs, purring loudly, and biting at my jeans to mark his territory. Eventually I must succumb to his demands, and we climb up the stairs to my bedroom, and slam into the wall - grabbing at the air after an involuntary "ouch!"

What looks will the morning bring? What blood-shot eyes part and widen when the trumpet sounds at sunrise from the humming, coughing, hacking bathroom? There is no sleep to be had anywhere in this house. My bed is shared with him, and his nocturnal wont for arbitrary kicking and clawing. Loneliness is a thumping bass drum, a closed door framed in pale luminescence. Love is an arm deprived of its blood, ticklish hair that stays in your nose, and stifled giggles in the quiet night. I fit somewhere in the middle, in a closet between the two.

Hollow & On Hollow.

Hollow.

We shouldn't have been out drinking; we didn't have the money. But there we sat, on All Hallow's eve, in a booth tucked in the corner back by the shitters and the Terminator 2 pinball game, beneath the cruel glow of the only lights burning above 30 watts in the entire bar. Her hands were busied with tearing apart and reconstructing a cocktail napkin into a flower of some kind or a spider or maybe a tiny umbrella. The music was loud but we barely uttered a single word between us. We conversed with our eyes and thoughts. Two beers sat sweating on the black table. She picked hers up, but only dried the bottom of it with her napkin and tossed it, soggy and unfinished, in the ashtray.

Our waitress came over, grabbed the full ashtray and asked if we were all right. We hesitated to answer. Then her eyes lit up like flares with sudden inspiration. 'Wanna get some shots of whiskey?' The waitress came back with an empty ashtray and deftly tossed it beneath her burning cigarette - her eighth of the night. Her feet tapped as the shots were then placed in front of us. No eyes wandered to the waitress' thighs pushing against the table. The shots were in the air.

'To . . .'
'To overdrawing my bank account to save our lives.' She said this smiling, before she jerked back her whiskey in one gulp, but there was no mistaking the plaintive melody. The shots burned like siphoning a car. Her cheeks caved in around her teeth as she took a deep drag. Combustible breath shot grey smoke like a geyser into the air above our heads. We watched it hang and linger, terrified by its meaning. An unwelcome apparition, its every form told of woe and regret. Finally, it dissipated into the general smog of the bar. Thoroughly spooked, she released her following drags into the crotches of headless passers-by.

I started to say something, but she stopped me. 'Don't.' She grabbed her beer and took a gulp and signaled for the waitress.



On Hollow.

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."

Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon



'So I read it a few more times, and I really like it a lot; the writing is great, but -'
'Awesome, thank you. But you didn't really pick up on what I omitted, huh?'
'Honestly, not really. I don't know maybe I'm just not smart enough. I mean, now that you've explained it to me I get it. I definitely felt like a life had been lost; and I felt a sense of overwhelming gloom, but I think some of it was lost on me.'
'No, I was afraid I made it too subtle. Kent always told me I needed to learn subtlety.Guess I went too far. Next time I make chili I won't be afraid to make it a little spicy. Though, I do think the napkin part is a dead giveaway, ya know? She throws away the napkin before it's turned into a flower or whatever.'
'Yeah, I guess I missed that. But - what I've been meaning to ask you - was the title intentional or coincidental?'
'What do you mean?'
'Like the Hemingway theory of omission. Did you name it "Hollow" for that reason?'
'What reason? I named it "Hollow" because the girl got a baby sucked out of her. Like in "Hills like White Elephants." It's a straight Hemingway ripoff, that's for sure. I mean, I'd just read a chapter from A Moveable Feast called "Hunger is Good Discipline" and I was alive with the Hemingway spirit and I decided to write using his iceberg theory.'
'Right. I get that. But did you call it "Hollow" because of that also?'
'Because of what?'
'Well, Hemingway said that if a writer tries to write about something he's never actually experienced it'll turn out hollow. So that's why I thought you called it that. Kind of like a jab at yourself in a way.'
'Whoa. Hemingway really said that?'
'Yeah. You didn't know that? It's in his book Death in the Afternoon, which I know you've read. (I remember you wouldn't shut up about wanting to go see a bullfight).'
'Yeah, I have read that, but I don't remember that part. That's crazy. That's really crazy actually!'
'It's definitely a little spooky. Especially considering you've never went through that before. At least not as far as I know.'
'No, you're right. I haven't ever went through that. Man, it's like Hemingway called me out from beyond the grave.'
'Definitely weird.'

This empty bed is a tomb.

In the five minutes between the alarm clock's initial report and the snooze alarm's follow-up, I journeyed through space and time, and saw the man who kills me. He wears a black double-breasted pea coat, swollen with misgivings and wrong turns, with tufts of grey hair like a defeated crown on his flaking, sun-marred pate. Dark brown leather shoes, dark brown like blood dried on wood, click-clack on bleak pavement: the cadence to my fall. As he approaches me, closes in, I should be able to make out his face, but I cannot. Where a visage ought to be there is instead a swirling abyss, a gaping chasm, an ineffable gulf, the underlying, inevitable nothingness that patiently awaits each and every one of us, swallowing whole all matter intrinsic to me, imprisoning it forever and always in the frozen burial of a tan turtleneck. There calls a hollow howl; a ball of ice thirty thousand miles long hurls through the blackest ink at fifty million light years per second and strikes the full face of the moon: the knell to begin the harvest of darkness. From the burgundy, piss-stained carpet: maggots, spawn of filth, sowers of disease, harbingers of calamity. A hand is raised and a bony finger is pointed at me. Shadows take definitive shape and an emaciated jaw forms around the vast emptiness. The abyss clears its throat; pellets - the surviving remains of ensnared virgins young - rattle in its unfathomable depths. A fetid word is uttered: 'You . . .'; with the ellipsis, tangible and ad infinitum, like smoke from the barrel-end of the yawning void. There is no escaping, now, the destiny that awaits me. Soon I will have to wake up and go to work.

Digressions on a late summer's cloud burst.

'Ain't rained like this in years,' the man said as he looked out across the dug-up frontyard, through a fall of rainwater from the roof so steady it held the man and his son's reflection, distorted and quaking. The boy said nothing, just nodded.

'Doubt we'll be able to do any more work this day. Hell, I'll be happy if our efforts so far aren't completely undone by this rather unexpected downpour. God must got a broken heart to be lettin' 'er loose like this, huh? Yep. Looks like it.' Again, the boy nodded, thought of the time he saw a flash flood hit somewhere down south; remembered his mother saying to his father: 'The caskets are floatin' up outta the ground! It's Revelations: the dead are roaming the Earth!'

'Hell, I remember when I was about your age,' the man began as he lighted a cigarette and leaned back in the green metal chair, just out of reach from the jumping splash, 'We got a rain like this, didn't quit for five days.' The boy looked over, incredulously, at his father, seeing only his stolid profile framed by blue smoke hanging heavy in the cool, damp air, the roaring rain came down loudly, pounding, on the white aluminum awning. 'I ain't shittin' ya, bud, it rained cats and dogs and pigs and horses and lizards and sharks for five days, non-stop. Your uncle Ben tried to hold an emergency town council meeting on the fourth night to suggest building an ark, but only Bup showed up. Probably because it was at Ben's house and Bup was over there watchin' the game and drinkin' beers anyway.'

'Whole basement was flooded out; this entire backyard was a pond, complete with swimmin' fish and leapin' frogs - figure they fell with the rain, or maybe they swam over from the river. Now this was back before the Susquehanna was a shitstream; back when you could actually catch some trout in it, and not just old tires and drunk Ledbetters,' - winking at his son - 'So if you figure the river's flooded up over the bridge with several days' hard rain, and 219 is a veritable tribituary that's spilling into each and every estate that lined its . . . banks, then you'll just have to believe me when I tell you that the whole damn town was under water; that Gram damn nearly got bit by a water moccasin when she was swimmin' around in the basement to get some canned tomatoes for supper. She screamed bloody murder, but no one heard her. Bup was sittin' right here, fishin' 219 North, and probably yodelin' (as was his merry wont). God only knows where any of my sisters might've been. Me: I think I was probably swimmin'. Matter of fact, I know what I was doin' now: jumpin' off the roof of the Corny twins' house. When Paul Senior - the grandpa, not the dad; the Corny twins had an older brother, Paul, and he was the third Corny to be given the Pharisee's name. By the way, did I ever tell you how many people in this town are named after me? Dave Gregg's dad - for that matter Dave Gregg, too; Dave Morley (who also named his son David John, but you wouldn't know that, I guess, he died before you were born - cat sat on his face, suffocated 'im; which they say happens pretty often). Anyway, when Paul Corny Sr. - that's the grandpa, now - when he dug the foundation for that house, he measured wrong and dug way too big o'hole. The Corny's are like that: hardworkers, golden-hearted, but - like Bup always said - a little dim. Hell, the Corny twins barely shared a full brain between 'em. They could play ball, though. Jesus could Paul crack a ball outta the field! I remember pitchin' against him when the little league played the pony league - most of us were used to playin' our older brothers, but they were out for blood that day. I'd imagine it was because they all had their babes sittin' on blankets and cheerin' for homeruns,' the man butted his cigarette and reached out his hands into the falling rain. The boy did the same, and splashed the cold water onto his face, rubbing his neck with his icy fingers, too young to actually feel the tension his father felt, but eager to help him carry it. Wiping off his face with a red handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, the man said: 'Or strikeouts, I suppose, respectively.'

'What happened when you pitched against him?'

'What's that, bud?'

'What happened when you pitched against Paul Corny?'

'He cracked it outta the field; damn near went across the railroad tracks and into the Sportsmen Club's property that's back there behind the old park. Jesus those Cornys were athletes! They had a cousin, Christine Corny, lived over in Barnesboro, went to Northern Cambria - real good lookin' broad, fiery redhead with legs that went on for days. I took her to prom my senior year. I remember the twins - boy, they gave me a rash o'shit. Gram came home from work just as I was leavin', covered me with kisses, and gave me a dozen pink roses she probably bought at the last minute from the hospital gift shop to give to Christine; said she didn't want me showin' up lookin' like some heathen tryin' to kidnap Gert and Bill's little girl. (Think Gert might've been a nurse, too). Bup ran out of the garage and fixed my tie and told me he didn't wanna have to kick Paul Jr.'s ass to defend his son's honor; which was his way of telling me to have a good time, but be conscientious, I suppose. Then again, maybe he meant that I should take any and all available liberties. Ol' Bup was full of wisdom, but never cared too much for coming out and givin' it to ya straight. He was a very cryptic man. Which, I suppose, is where I get it from, and I'm sure people will say the same thing about you, too, some day.'

The sun peeked its head over the clouds, and the golden down that scarcely covered the boy's legs fell back against his skin. His father stood up, and with a hand at his brow, regarded the horizon with tentative concern. Into the dissipating fall he said: 'I miss 'em so much sometimes, bud.' The boy looked at his feet, ashamed he might have to witness his father crying again. But the man cleared his throat and broke the silence. 'Looks like we can get back to work after all. Go get me another wheelbarrow full o'shale, would ya, bud?'

Fart imitating life.

(2009 Winner of the annual Robin Redson Award for Best Freelance Contribution.)

It was just one of those days when you had a big wad in your pocket and a nice heap in the bank too; the day after payday. Our stomachs were empty, our wallets full, so we headed to a corporate burger joint where they serve booze and allyoucaneat fries. We dined al fresco, and neither my friend nor the waitress - a large black woman with an appreciable gap between her teeth and a name that mutilated several of the early romantics - knew what that meant. 'It means outside,' I explained to them as the waitress placed my abominable drink in front of me. I looked at my friend's giant glass of Oktoberfest beer shining like ambrosia, then back again at my frozen raspberry margarita. It tasted of fake sugar and sat, pink and lewd, in a rainbow splotched glass: a severe blow to my already fragile masculinity. I looked at my friend and shook my head, granting him permission to laugh. 'I can't believe you got a margarita!'

But this story isn't about us. Sometime after our drinks had arrived, but before our food came (which, by the way, took a very long time, especially considering they were veggie burgers) a couple showed up. Quite possibly the most tragic I've seen in all my life. To the right of our table - if the story is being seen through my eyes, which, so far, it is - sat a cute little family: cranky mom, impassive dad daydreaming in his nachos, two little siblings fighting over a balloon, and widowed grandma getting toasted on vodka or gin behind her big cataract shades. To the left of the table sat a nondescript couple of forty or so: your runofthemill Polish blobs working on their fifth or ninth basket of fries and still pleading with the waiter to 'cook the fries a bit longer; don't be afraid to burn 'em.'; and a middle-aged, fairly normal woman with a man I'm assuming was her elderly father, who sat with a fixed grimace aimed at his empty beer glass. Also, somewhere in that golden light of the downing sun which only occurs during especially nice and calm weather in certain hours of the day at certain times of the year there sat a group of three high school girls gossiping with pursed lips so as to not cut themselves on their braces, nonplussed by my predatory stares.

These groups might as well have been framed pictures adorning the walls of the patio as commonplace and uninteresting as they were. And with no fodder for the conversational fire, my friend and I were running out of topics, having already exhausted the band, the movie we both just saw, girls, god, and drugs. But just as an interminable silence was beginning to creep towards our table, the tragic couple was led onto the patio by their mildly attractive waitress. I saw the girl first: greasy brown hair pulled into a tight, very tight, headache inducing ponytail (the tail of which was only about three or three and a half inches long, like a limp muskrat pecker hanging from the back of her skull), wireframe glasses resting dirty and smudged on her pale, misshapen face, wearing an ill-fitting black babydoll tee with hearts of various colors and patterns stretched and wracked by her many folds and flaps, and dark metallic blue jeans that fell too far below her hanging spigot-like navel and hung too high above her black and purple Sketchers. One could quickly perceive by her countenance and walk that she hated the light, hated public and absolutely hated herself.

Then out came the dude: her date I proposed to my friend upon seeing them settle down uncomfortably across from one another at the table behind my friend's right shoulder; where I would spend the rest of my meal gazing with indelible curiosity. Her 'blind date, or internet date,' I pronounced more specifically, as I intimated with a quick point, a mere flick of the wrist to any suspecting onlooker. He casually glanced behind him and got a read on the situation. The guy - I should tell you - was totally average, and besides a sharp, lacquered fauxhawk had almost no characteristics worth mentioning. He was of average height, maybe about twenty pounds overweight, but he wore it well thanks to his broad shoulders and outfit of shorts (khaki) and a tee shirt (dark chocolate) of neutralizing and slimming colors. My friend said: 'No way. That's no date. Those two have a standing relationship, I guarantee it.' We had ourselves a bet.

She sat with defeated posture, her forearms resting on the edge of the metal table, her wrists on top of one another, with folded hands like a dead bird lying prostrate in front of her. She glanced around nervously, as if ribaldry lie in waiting from any one of the eating patrons. Her date (or boyfriend if you - at this point - are ready to align yourself with my friend's opinion) sat with clasped hands as if silently praying, and stared at his feet, or his phone, or at the smirking abyss; shading his eyes against the mild sun any time he would look up to acknowledge one of her mumbled comments. My friend was talking to me about something he'd heard about the upcoming G-20 Summit the city was soon hosting when the tragic girl's date excused himself and left her sitting there alone, probably wondering if he'd even return. I interrupted my friend and said: 'He just got up and left!' My friend seemed uninterested, said he probably just went to the bathroom, and continued talking about what he'd heard on the news about the G-20 Summit. A little girl gawked at me with unfledged curiosity through a window all over which she'd left tiny, greasy paw prints. I contrived a hateful glance and tried to get her to look away, but she just giggled and stuck her tongue out. I turned my attention back to my friend, but he was staring pensively out at the river peeking through the line of trees that stood just beyond the patio.

The tragic girl's date returned - a little to my chagrin - wearing sunglasses; and the tragic girl flashed him a half-hearted half-smile. I told my friend: 'Maybe they've known each other for a long time, but there is definitely no romantic past between the two. But I still believe this is, like, a Craigslist date situation.' He shrugged and offered a plaintive whatever. I was growing perturbed with his disinterest when our waitress arrived with our poorly assembled burgers and mushy, pallid steak fries. I told my friend I didn't know the allyoucouldeat fries were steak fries, that I hated steak fries, and he agreed that steak fries were not the best but the fact that you could eat as many of them as you wanted made up for it. 'Just because there's a lot of something,' I told him, holding a limp, ketchup-tipped fry in my hand, 'doesn't mean it's good, or worth it. Take the girl behind you, the tragic one, ' - pointing with the fry now - 'I wouldn't want to eat her.' I laughed unabashedly, and my friend looked at me with furrowed brow. 'Are you drunk off half a margarita?' 'No,' I said, defensively, but had no excuse for actions.

We ate, for the most part, in silence. At several points I brought up things I'd observed the couple do like when they both reached for the ketchup and the tragic girl recoiled quickly and her date shyly gestured 'no, by all means, go ahead', but these observations were dismissed or flat out ignored. My behavior, it seemed, had become priggish and I hate the idea of spoiling someone's meal, so I talked of things I knew my friend was interested in and made no more mention of the tragic girl and her date. The waitress arrived just as my friend was finishing my second basket of fries and asked us how everything was. I replied by asking for the check.

'I just gotta go to the bathroom,' I said, signing the check and throwing a five dollar bill onto the table, 'I'll meet you out at the car.' My friend said okay and got up and left, his pockets bulging with napkin-enveloped fries. I lingered at the table and watched him leave. The moment he was out of sight, I walked over to the table where the tragic girl and her date were sitting, chewing silently on their massive, bloody burgers. 'Excuse me,' I said in my most polite manner, 'I hate to bother your meal, but there's just something I dying to know.' They both looked up at me: the tragic girl still chewing, a look of absolute horror in her eyes, her date gulping down a bite that wasn't quite ready to be gulped down. They said nothing, so I continued: 'You see I'm in grad school for Sociology and I'm currently writing a paper on internet dating. You two didn't happen to meet on the internet, did you?'

My friend was leaning against my car smoking a cigarette when I came out twirling my keys on my finger. 'Well?' he asked. 'You owe me a beer.' 'Sure you wouldn't prefer a margarita?'

Ran out of stamps.

Dear Neil D.,

I've already written your letter and I'm pressed for time so I won't transcribe it now. But a response was written just not sent. Don't feel slighted. It's like a night in white satin.

- Wunderbar.

Dear Buck,

It was great seeing you last night and sitting on the couch on your old porch with you. I wish you really were able to hear me when I say my life isn't as good as it used to be since you moved away. I love you.

- The thigh against yours.

Dear Chicago,

I saw New York State in the cave of inertia. It's fucking brilliant. That picture of the pensive Barbadan is my favorite. Though the haughty king looks awfully tired. We should return to that castle soon. First week of being dead would be best for me.

- Naked eye.

Dear Cowgirl,

Sorry my door was closed. I wish I'd left it open. I wish there were more sunrises while the Buddhist Jew crooned and the bagged wine drained and the sexjuices dried to a falling dust, but at least we had that one.

- Mr. Clean (I promise).

Dear Snotrag,

You are so loyal. You are my piece of driftwood in the maelstrom of influenza. Bury me in your loving, stiffening folds.

- Foghorn.

Dear Miss Craft,

I lied. I haven't finished it.

- Stephen D.

Dear God,

I have felt you once again in my life. I'm sorry I forgot about you.

- Me.

Behind blank stares.

I've stared at you from across the room, upstairs from where we've both played; screamed my contrivances into the guarded chakras of kids still too young to get it, kids too close to admit it, kids too old to care, but felt only the words I'd written for you. I've watched you, more drunk than I let on, more desirous than you'd put out. Thoughts of mauling you; a dry penetration that excoriates the hide from the bone, the gushing blood to do the rest. The cigarette in your mouth to affront God; the guitar in your lap for show, a single chord played again and again. I heard your quiet humming; felt the soft brush of your timid melody; knew there was ardor hidden just beneath all that shyness; knew all that shyness to be an invention, feigned, but somehow still sincere, an idiosyncrasy you'd fashioned yourself out of parts you were told to jettison long ago. I've stared at you, concocted plans, wondered if you'd resist; considered giving it a shot. Once, I almost mouthed the words 'follow me.' But you never looked my way to give me the chance.

I would've taken you to another room, a dark corner, tucked away behind the refrigerator, the hanging cupboard. Pushing you against the wall, trying my hardest to push you through it, leaving you embedded there forever, like a fossil, like a trophy of my libido's. Like a butterfly alighted on my finger, now pinned to cork board behind glass, never to fly or make love to another flower again. I would enter you without your consent. In someone else's kitchen, with people only a few feet away, I would turn you around, pressing your chest to the wall, palms flat against it like a criminal, one hand full of your hair, the other my own spit. Arming myself I would penetrate forcefully, and begin drilling you with violent, malicious intent. You'd come in seconds, as much to my surprise as your own. You'd come with white horses, with horns blaring, nails digging into the cheeks of my ass, teeth chipping against the unrelenting wall. You'd come with a devouring conflagration, killing both of us instantly.

I've stared at you from across the room, counted the stripes in your shirt, the rivets in your cords, the hairs on your head; traced you with my memory's brush when you weren't looking, or pretending not to. I've made love to you so many times in my head. Other times I've seized you, raped and murdered you, bashed your face against a sharp corner of cement, skull-fucked your broken mouth, tore myself on your jagged teeth, bled to death beside you.

But most times we just lie together, so close we become blurry cyclopses with messy bangs and sour breath. This is how I'd like it to be, how I want it to be. However, I can't be kept waiting for much longer.

Bequeathed Reveries.

The boy was sitting on the wooden porch steps watching his father dig a hole for a fence post in the backyard when he heard a sound like a thousand worker ants running in a tight, frenzied circle; each of them compelled solely by a staggering sense of misplaced purpose. The mysterious noise continued in a steady, but urgent cadence. The boy looked at his father, but the man didn't seem to notice the sound; he just kept shoveling at the same mechanical rhythm, pausing only to take long, desperate drags on the cigarette protruding from his beard-covered face. The sound stopped as abruptly as it had begun and his father looked up at him and smiled knowingly.

"Don't worry about it, bud. That one's not for you," his father said, returning his attention to his work. Looking up again, the boy's father added: "You'll know what I mean in a minute."

As if his father had divined it to happen: the sound suddenly broke out again, startling the boy. Looking around, the boy saw nothing that could be making this terrible din and, trying his best to ignore it, he went back to watching his father who had somehow aged significantly in the few moments since he'd looked away. His skin sagged with resignation, his once brilliant blue eyes had paled, and his beard was now gray with only one defiant, black patch on the right side of his face, like a man who had fallen asleep mid-letter and awoke to find his letter ruined and his face stained. The low, rumbling clamor continued, as did his father's shoveling. The former still reporting of dubious alarm; the latter now slower and dispirited, like a man bored, but nevertheless biding his time against inevitability.

The sight of his withering father was inexplicably familiar,the boy looked away and went back to searching for what might be causing the sound. Surveying the sloping, lethargically undulating yard, the boy found nothing; he scanned the horse's meager pasture, and the dog's trampled patch of dead earth; he studied the fallow garden his mother had attempted summers ago, and, finally, he looked as deeply as he could let himself into the forest surrounding the house's periphery, rampant with banshees and werewolves and other horrors his sister had years ago imbued in its darkness. But he found nothing. Giving up, he asked his father what he should do. The man looked at him from behind a thin, bluish veil and paternal amusement and replied: "Wake up and go to work."

Divinity in a broken bed.

The whole night was like slow music played on new strings still learning to use their voices. Red wine sucked the moisture from our mouths, and with parched lips we rationed our spit, and she let me eat her, face first. We played Lady and the Tramp with licorice, and then I watched her undress in the light seeping through her blinds, wan and covered in verdigris. I peeked at her shapes and curves and felt the knot in my throat tighten and threaten to choke me when the firmness of her austere buoyancy held even after the support was removed. Her skin was a flower's petals, delicate and tasting of natural birth. I played the only song I know on her ribcage; my pinky making her ass tickle and twinge with bit-lip anticipation every time I hit the high note. I didn't sleep very well as I had a bone in my prick all night, strangling me of my blood-flow and pressing into the small of her back, like a warm, pulsating lumbar support; a seven inch elephant between us, all trunk and balls with indefatigable persistence. I'd pull down her shirt, and kiss her neck and spine, and bite at the feathers on her shoulders, and - tracing the dips in her loins with my index finger - I 'd write her little poems in the space between her belly-button and my desire. All the while, her little creature was scurrying disapprovingly across the hardwood floor. Its shadow - giant and deceiving - cast upon the wall by the glowing basement light escaping through the expanding cracks of the cold floor. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick - stop - tick-tick-tick-tick-tick - stop - all night long. I didn't mind. The little thing is neurotic and has crooked nipples from what she tells me. I doubt it'll ever like me.

Irrecyclables.

My family used to string our recyclable plastic jugs on thirty pound fishing line that reached all the way down to the darkest and dampest depths of our basement. I can still hear Roo's shrill calls for food, or play, or attention - or just singing the hours away out of sheer, crepuscular boredom. We kept him down there on a chain because this was years before we knew anything of interspecies empathy. But he taught me the real meaning of empathy when one night he broke free from his ceiling-hung moorings and appeased his curiosity with the remnants of a recently-stringed anti-freeze jug. Painfully, over the course of two days, his innards crystallized and hardened as that poison sucked dry every drop of warm blood in his entire body. When it became too much for my mother to handle, she had me pick him up and carry him outside - an act she couldn't perform herself due to Roo's large size. His coat, which was usually surprisingly soft and thick, felt like the dry, dusty grass beneath a large, dying ant-infested pine tree. The once soft, warm hands which so many times had held grapes in curiously familiar delight had become cold and callused. When I picked him up, his weight was already spilling out on its own whims, no longer held together with the rigid attentiveness shared by all creatures when picked up and carried without consent. He was entirely limp in my arms; so distant from the cub I once fought with my sister over whose turn it was to hold and bottle-feed him; the cub that would playfully attack and wrestle with the lazy, impassive house cats. For the first time, I'd considered the life of something beyond myself. The life, and now the death. We reached the summit of the outside basement steps and saw the large, aluminum tub sitting beside Xena's house with a shared sigh of sad relief. I held him level to Xena and they touched noses and said good-bye to one another in their own universal animal way. Then Xena began to bark and test the strength of her chain, as I pulled him away. But when we reached the rim of the tub and I held him over it, almost ceremoniously, she sat still, seemed to understand. My mother - crying and kissing his masked face - then said good-bye as well. There was no resistance as I lowered him slowly into the cool water, shattering the bright noon sun laying placidly on its still surface, and let him sink to the bottom. My hand guided him all the way there, rubbing his neck until the heaving stopped.

A break and then the fall.

Yesterday, my boss told me he was going to take a swim in the Allegheny. His last swim, he said. He confessed this all to me in short, emphysemic breaths over a half-eaten raspberry crème brûlée, the other half still aflame in his guts. Meeting his still, unyielding stare, it was plain to see he was not bluffing. As a man, he'd by no means lived a full, passionate life. He hadn't given it his all and lost. He made no futile attempts at reconciliation or return. He was not resigning after a long, arduous battle against which he no longer had the strength to fight. He left no legacy; no mark on this world. He was born feet-first and clinging desperately to his umbilical cord. He wasn't aware of the deterioration of society. He knew nothing of the cesspool in which he floated, prostrate and blowing bloody, phlegmy water from his rectum. He had not given up, as he'd always been down. He had no clear motive for his decision. He simply found himself buckling beneath the weight of this world. Most who knew him would say he had never borne more than one could usually bear, but in a few weeks, he said, he'd tie it all around his ankle and, holding it close to his chest, he'd test God's faith in him. He looked at me with grave disconsolation and had another spoonful of the dessert. I asked him if he'd set a specific date yet and he told me he had: November 3rd, this year. When I inquired if that date held any kind of significance he said no, he just wanted to do it after the weekend. Mondays suck, he said. I told him he only had a few more to worry about and he laughed capriciously, sending specks of creamy, white spit flying into the air between us. They lingered, with balletic defiance, like the first eager snowflakes of a colder-than-usual early November and, finally, fell with precocity and self-assurance. But the moment they hit the ground they disappeared and it wasn't long before they were forgotten entirely.

Sometimes you do.

Today I wrote you a seven thousand word poem on the sidewalk on my way to work, but the homeless people gobbled it all up before I could memorize it. They said they needed it for their spirits. I tried to tell them that science says there are no spirits, but they can't afford science. They can't afford the ends of their gloves or blankets without obituaries. They just floss their teeth with all that hair you cut out of me last week and they're smiling all over it. You fucked it up on purpose because when you're away you don't want other girls to notice me. You can hang with my hair being too high above my ears. You can get used to that. Spock kept it that way and you've got your mind-meld all over this free heart. Shit. The poem sucked anyway. A homeless man, stretched high and sucking at the trickle, belched out the only line worth remembering: "And the Good General doesn't keep his gun by his side for his private misfortunes, but for when the whiskey stops burning them up." Your daddy spent a lot of money to put that book in your hands, so keep your thumbs around it and not my throat.

But I guess that's just one more weight for me to carry; one more face to fashion. No matter, so long as you never see who I really am. You, the stench that's not the air, but my insides rotting; the sizzling Coke concentrate dissolving at the scene of the crime; the bent nail that snags the elbow and breaks the skin. You. You, the multi-headed succubus benighted in my window, screaming into my nightmares, your tits crashing like death knells, hypnotically spiraling tongue of lies and misfortune - be they private or publicly operated - digging your nails through my karma and ruining my life. Goddamnit! Is there a sentence in this mind to contain you? Leave me to my petty devices and my demons, you Siren! Leave me!