--words

Daily Walk

— I followed the sidewalk home, uphill, my course along a stone wall; my ears swallowed by headphones; my dizzy head hungover, my chin buried, spine lazily slouching. Evasive thoughts collected in brief sections of detail- soft clicks of plastic from my headphones in time to my step; large white spots of paint on the brown-gray textured pavement, dog shit and moss in the cracks by the street. I rattled forward confused, searching, alone.

At the top of the hill there was Galway, in all directions. Looking out I saw maroon rooftops poking out of troughs, the college covered in afternoon fog, bulky clouds sitting silently above the looming Cathedral, and a bright blue patch of surreal sky at the western horizon, over another distant hilltop. Over the wall along the sidewalk there was a clearing of long grass and dandelions with rows of discarded lawn trimmings left to decompose. A collie trotted toward me in the distance as a light rain began to fall. My eyes returned to my pace. In a pile of dead leaves on the sidewalk, I noticed a bright, translucent ball of phlegm I might have coughed up in the morning, dodged it just before my foot fell.

As the sun broke through the clouds, the rain continued and the dog approached, quickened, closer to the wall, then leapt and landed at the top, peering over a row of hedges grown closely to the other side. At the horizon, the surreal sky appeared whiter than before, tinged with brilliant blue. The dog leapt from the wall and pounced over the weeds and grass, zigzagging and wagging its tail. My song continued.

“Slingshot”

This is written in response to “Walkaways” by Marcia Aldrich

Hello to twenty-twelve. Hello to inconsistency, the elasticity of the timeline. Hello to a new beat, a new narrator unlatching, unpacking his new suitcase; to heading for twenty-thirteen and waving hello to the afterthought; to every thought. Hello to thinking ahead. Hello to twenty-thirteen.

Hello to brief, uncomfortable pauses between stanzas; a coughing break. Cardboard boxes between cardboard boxes between bookshelves packed into the back of a U-Haul parked between U-Hauls. Hello to uncomfortable unpacking; to pauses. Twenty-thirteen. Hello to changing resources; another coughing break between. Hello to filling a new box, early in the century. Hello to head starts, to thinking ahead; to slower speeds down the road, the careful search of overhead highway signs in unexplored territory.

Hello to digitalia, a text message from hell, moving closer to the speed of light; to holographic sex shows, real to the touch. Hello to telepathic sexting, early in the century and it’s all up from here. Hello to awkward interactions, miles apart, moving only the fingers. Hello to naked mirror snapshots; perfect ass and tits and we’re still just kids. Hello to probing fingers; to poems scribbled onto iPad; to screensavers, auto-savers, lifesavers. Hello to marine rescue; to stores of memory; to newfound apathy. Hello to a new standard of living, the iPad. Hello to lack of pubic hair; the shaved generation, who still want their privates smooth as a baby’s. Hello to rising conflict: Gillette Fusion versus iPad stylus; to the smooth and the handwritten, the handwritten into smooth surface; the shaven stanzas; it is still early in the century – soon they may be gone. Hello to good morning, unpacking into goodnight. Hello to stiff as cardboard, musty like aftershave, rising from the car door; cardboard between cardboard between old seat cushions. Hello to useless language; to exercise; to boxes of notebooks burned as kindling for the first bonfire in the new world; to rethinking; to relocation, Montreal café, sunny-windy morning, new city smelling like an old motel with smoking rooms. Hello to twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen; to twenty-nothings, old friends – I’ll never figure them out again; they’re hippies and poets; like ashtrays and outstretched elastic, suburbanites; maybe I can stretch them into twenty-thirteen, but after that they’re hopeless. Hello to hopelessness, early in the century; a pause for recollection between stanzas.

Hello to the slingshot; to settling in; to exponential expansion. Hello to fresh faces, distant old ones; to loss. In a sense we are hopeless, you and I; the reader and the hippie-poet; the reader himself; hopeless all because we cannot reach each other; the reader himself especially; who else is he reaching for, the reader? Himself? Twenty-thirteen; closer to the speed of light. Hello to contact; to my fountain and your chasm; to our connections, overflowing pubic manes to hide the swelling, the smell of sweat, lingering aftershave, and latex. Hello to love and freedom in each other; to unlatching the last bra strap on the hologram. Hello to telepathic reincarnation; to sending yourself to me through muddy airwaves without moving a stubby finger; to relocation. Hello to depth of solitude; to longevity of interaction; to elasticity between the two. Hello to moving on; returning to the moment. Hello to the present, your presence. Hello to the real thing. Hello to twenty-twelve.

A montage.

Days later, punk music in the back of a shabby bar. A full crowd of mohawks and shaved heads moshing. Shoulders clash. Black sneakers shuffle, an unopened Heineken bottle on an amplifier. The music and the crowd drown the sound of the sneakers. He pushes her against the wall. A wrist tight in his hand, tongues explore the mouth and neck and down. Eyes over breasts. A finger twists a belt loop on black jeans. Knees collide. Then silent. A Heineken bottle, empty on the floor, laying on its side as though it wants to roll. 3 a.m. The final guests exit. Change rattles as the cash register opens. The bartender’s shoes squeak on the tile behind the counter. The amplifiers are gone.

Five openings: an exercise in fiction

Each of these introductions presents a truth followed by a half-truth followed by a lie.

1. The air was cold in my bedroom as I entered. It sent a chill through my body. My vision shook, and for a second I knew what it was like to really be alive.

2. When Liz called last Thursday, I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was crying. I could hear her tears falling from where I stood in the kitchen.

3. Amelia wants to play a board game with you this Saturday night. You want to go, but you have other obligations. You accept her invitation.

4. “You see son, every once in a while, a squirrel decides to team up with another squirrel, so that together they can gather more nuts,” my father explained to me. I was searching for a handle on an overhead cabinet, a shine in the corner, looking anywhere away from his goofy face. “My partnership with your mother was always based on financial benefit.”

5. Already, the world was feeling warmer, but John was still plagued with anxious thoughts about his nose. “Everyone says it’s too long,” his own voice told him.

The weeping banana.

The banana peel folds into itself after its fruit has been eaten. It hides its head under the lid of the coffee mug, ashamed, like an empty woman, sobbing. But it doesn’t shake or rock. It rots and quickly turns brown. Within twenty minutes, it is prepared for the soil. A thin sheet of wax paper inhibits the banana’s decay. It longs for the earth, for a new birth, to feed the trees with nutrient-energy; the essence of life, still within it.

The banana weeps into the shoulder of the lid of the coffee mug, its only comfort in the wax state the table provides. If this wood had life it would welcome the peel, break it down into pieces small enough to fit through tiny straw-like fibers, which would suck up the peel, and use it to color its leaves in November. This wood has been cut, though. Used and most likely recycled. It leaves the banana peel to bleed over it, onto the carpet floor in time, the coffee mug still full; the wax paper wishing it could melt with it. The narrator watches the lifeless decay, jaw forever dropped, tonguing the back of his teeth.