COUNTRY BOY RETURNS TO UNIVERSITY
The night stars, I’m going to miss them
light up the dark sky, like Dante’s god.
From here, on this cold hill, it seems
the earth is dark but heaven is bright.
Category: Writing (Page 30 of 50)
Lindie lit an Old Gold, letting it catch on her upper lip as she peeled a tangerine. Her long fingers slowly pulled the skin into a snake, one she could mold into a hollow sphere and use as an ashtray through morning. With the ritual complete, she set the fruit on a napkin, next to a tube of peach lipstick, a plastic unicorn lighter, and a Styrofoam cup of coffee, dramatically lightened with powdered cream and sugar. With the cigarette still hanging from her mouth, the ash bending to gravity but never breaking, she leaned over and unfastened her sandals, deliberately emphasizing the length of her legs.
Lindie knew the man was watching from his room. Where else was there to look? The motel, constructed during the Cold War, had no windows facing out. From within its walls, there was no way to view the medians stuffed with palm trees and crab grass, the causeway beach, narrow and crowded, laid out beyond the lines of interstate. There was no bar, no pool, no cabana or casino. A giant echo, all the motel rooms above the second floor looked down onto the sundeck, its surface a smooth, brown rock at the bottom of a well. Lindie pressed her toes against the tiles, each oval a turtle on its back, the smoothness cold and slick with morning dew. She set her sandals on the glass top table, along with most everything else she owned, and pushed her sunglasses closer to her brow.
. . .
Panic Scenes in a Green Room
Lately my nights are gripped by research
on Christine Chubbuck’s suicide, hers the type
of public spectacle that pits a noxious smell
in the stomach, which I find to be a far-out,
wholly alien emotion responding to the difficulty
of a strange death. Freshly attuned to my own Continue reading
on Christine Chubbuck’s suicide, hers the type
of public spectacle that pits a noxious smell
in the stomach, which I find to be a far-out,
wholly alien emotion responding to the difficulty
of a strange death. Freshly attuned to my own Continue reading
While the daggery brush held its color, evergreen and everbrown, cottonwoods leafed out above their heads, patterning yellow and occasional red against the sky. Ahead of G, impatient and unconcerned with minor scratches, A drank in sunlight as strong as bleach, trying to tell time. Ten a.m. at the leafy, dry confluence between Hackberry and Devil’s? Ten in the morning, and the obvious signs of place: campfire circles and cairns. Couldn’t the others move faster? A. Could. Not. Wait. But she found a sienna-dun bed of leaves and nestled herself until the rest of the group caught up. C came first, sitting on a rock, now that spot looks good too, unzippering trip directions from inside his pants. “Todd’s hiking guide says go right.” A closed her eyes.
B stomped through ankle-high weeds, sat between A and C and relaced his boots; one by one, E, G, and the others came into the clearing. A stood first, looking at the sky again. If she’d known them, she would have said Let’s go, but the group was B’s friends, not hers. She waited, shifting from boot to boot. “Gotta pee?” asked F. Continue reading
BODIES/BALANCE
by Leah Cappelli
Languishing in a state of dire straits,
he contemplates the rate of his life,
the ways of his strife,
the days and the nights.
An abecedarian learning to speak again
in his most recent reincarnation,
walking fine lines between monstrosity
and virtuousness.
(A viewing room at a funeral home. An open coffin, subdued lighting. Enter DAVID, age 44. He approaches coffin with trepidation. He comes to at ease by degrees. Finally………)
DAVID:
Well. Well well. Just look at you. All decked out in your astronaut’s garb. Dressed to kill, aren’t you? Was this how you planned it? To do your exit as a starman? It does become you, you know. Really, it does. So tell me, are you braced for tomorrow? Have you dialed in your humble mode? You know they’ll be sending you out as only the Air Force can. Full military honors. A flyover with the missing wingman. And they’ll retell how one time you flew so high, you clipped the chinwhiskers of Zeus himself. And they’ll retell how you throttled that demon out at mach seven. Yes yes, I know it’s all true, but remember, the order of the day is humility. They’ll want to see your aw shucks side. Not funny? Sorry. I’m trying to be clever. Guess I’m not very good at clever.
The streets are clogged
with heat and horns
the crash of sliding metal gates
sidewalk steams where it’s been hosed
in the paper
I search for mention of people I used to know
the sun bakes my face
The Worst Hangover
by Adam Kluger
He was pretty hung over.
So bad that he was burping into a glass of water. He hadn’t noticed the waitress right away. She must have been new. It was wintertime. The morning after the Smart-TV Christmas Party.
Booger had secured the location for the station and he put together a very bad Christmas reel. The bureau chief cornered Booger at one point and asked what happened with the reel… why was it so lame? Booger was mortified and the only thing to do at that point was drink heavily. He ordered a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser and kept hitting the same number until the embarrassment gave way to stupor. He got home, smoked a bone, whacked off and went to sleep. When he woke up in the morning his mouth was full of cotton and his stomach was doing somersaults. He threw on a coat and went across the street to “My Most Terrific Dessert Company.” It was expensive but he could sit there order a soda and a croissant and feel a little better. The waitress moved across the floor like a ballerina. She was friendly too.
Very friendly, Booger thought. Continue reading
Daughters of Anomaly
(for Traci Lords)
All the cock-sucking,
all the cunt-lapping,
all the butt-fucking
in the world
can’t forge a bond
that lasts beyond
the bounds of flesh and boredom;
time, a river with
Charon waiting
patient as Job,
shuttling busy
as a bee
from bank to bank
carries us all.
old hundredth
a sparrow flit through
the Great White Sanctuary
with august men in suit jackets
and thinning hair
and their wives appropriately uncomfortable
in mauve Manolos and hose. she made laps back and forth,
l an Olympic swimmer
swimming a breaststroke
of pure panic—
“why am I here?” (echoing the thoughts
of us below), and
“how do I get out?” (ditto) thirty feet above,
pacing the giant ovals of glass
cruelly streaming light
on a bright Sunday morning. she alit
on an organ pipe, only briefly
before the explosion of sound
saw her shit
on the organist’s cotta
(a true martyr—he played on)
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