The Burnt Girl

If only she hadn't said anything.

"I don't know why they say such things.  My goodness.  No one has ever died like that, here."  She twisted to look over her shoulder, stare at the brick farmhouse.  We stood in the thick shade, the afternoon heavy with summer.  The sun bounced hotspots off the top floor windows.  I watched her jowled loose-neck profile and felt the flood of memories she could actually see as she stared at my house.  "When we lived here, I was just a girl, and the trees were not so tall to block the house from the road. Ooh!  My father'd have a fit if he saw how the trees grew up in the field.  We'd sit on the porch.  Watch the cars.  Bet you can't do that now," she smiled, tenderness soft in the creases, gray hair wispy in the late day heat.
     "Nope.  But...you can hear them."
     The denial reminded her of where she'd left off.
     "So don't believe them, honey."  I still had no idea what she meant but I guessed it was coming in the next breath.  Her pale eyes found the stiff grass as she said, "No one ever fell in the fireplace and burned up.  We was the only kids that ever lived here," the old woman told me, "and no one got burnt and there's no ... no ... you know... dead soul haunting this place.  Just crazy talk.  People get all hyped up about nothing."  She twisted to check the house again as if it had moved an inch to the right while her back was turned or was about to nod in solemn agreement.  "Just an old house."  She turned to me then and found my face if not my eyes.
    "Its ok.  I hadn't heard any ghost stories anyw-"
    "Ghosts, " she grumbled.  "Well certainly not."
     Her husband came up behind her, big-bellied and shrunk in the chest.  "Yut, takes him a good three 'ours just to mow it all himself...." and the conversation drifted to Toros and lesser lawnmowers.  A spider hung by a gossamer thread from high in the boughs coasting on the heat rising and the humidity looking for a catch to spin his web.  Later, the older couple left, rolling down my dusty lane in a crossover SUV, waving like grandparents. 
     A month later she came back with an elderly niece.  They brought a photo album and flipped gluey pages turned yellow of my house before it was my house.  Her mother's garden lined with sugar snap teepees and tall marigolds.  A love seat strangely under the only window in the kitchen.  The breezy wraparound porch a previous owner tore off and left bare.   She stayed in the kitchen, so overwhelmed by memories of her long-gone mother she'd clasp the buttons on her shirt, eyes turned glassy.  When they left she promised to visit in the spring.
    Summer caved to fall, trees dropping colored leaves like skirts.  Fall fell gracefully to winter, when tendrils of smoke sailed out of my chimney top, a wood stove cranking in the fireplace.  I'd feed the hungry flames great mouthfuls of firewood, every time feeling the shallow depth of the hearth with my eyeballs and wondering how a child could fall into the fireplace and not survive.  It wasn't deep.  The mantle slung low.  And I wouldn't revisit the rumored story until I shoved more wood in the iron stove, the thought forgotten even as I swung the door shut with a thick suede glove.
     That winter, I dreamt of smoke.  I woke up with it full in my nose.  Sat up in bed in the dark and would sniff the air like a dog.  I got up sometimes, so convinced something some where was on fire, and after checking the burners and the oven in the kitchen and then for candles left glowing in the dark, I'd swing the creaky metal door to the wood stove wide as my family slept uninterrupted upstairs.  Safe in the iron box, red embers slept in a bed of graying ash.  No fire.  No smoke.  I climbed back into bed, annoyed at my dreams.
     One night, cool with the promise of spring, moths already tapping at the windows at night like fingertips, I woke because I heard a door shut.  Feet moved like a sleepwalker.  I waited for another door, a flush of a toilet, a child of mine making their way back to bed.  I waited.  Awake, I waited.  Warm under the covers in my bed, eyes open to nothing but the outline of the closet door in the darkness, she floated down my stairs.  A girl of no more than 12.  Clothes burnt away revealing raw skin, charred and sooty, especially at her shoulders, leaving trail of scent like smoke.  She floated.  Down my stairs.  
    For days I was jumpy.  I climbed into bed at night  flinching at squirrels racing across the metal roof, squelching goosebumps at the owls calling to each other in the pine trees, squeezing my eyes shut to push the burnt girl's black and red skinned shoulders out of my mind, which only made them more vivid.  If only she hadn't said anything.  It was my imagination spinning the words she had planted there.  The cat made those footsteps.  I mentally discarded the sound of the door, shaking a defiant no against the pillow seams.  I couldn't blame the cat for that, too.
    Several nights of only my mind retrieving the image of her floating down the stairs, one hand, shiny and wet in its rawness, on the rail, careless of my eyes impossibly watching her descend, left my days groggy and hampered by the weight of sleeplessness until eventually I could lie in the dark without clenching the quilts in my fist.  After a few weeks, the thud of the cat leaping to the floor in another room sliced my eyes open but let me drift back to sleep.  A month, and the daffodils nodded at me in the rain as I slept lulled to sleep by the drum of it.
     Their pert little SUV strolled up the muddy lane after churchtime on a Sunday.  As they eased themselves out of the car we spilled out of the house.  I suppressed a smile as she made her way towards me, full of old lady eagerness, determined to step firm on the wet flagstones to get to me.  I barely knew this woman, I lived in her childhood home, she was born in the bedroom I slept in, and she reached out to me, her hands light on my elbow, tipping in to speak to me.
     "Hi -," my space invaded, my nightmare fresh at just the sight of her: the smeary roasted skin, the charred hair matted around her melted ears, the smell of smoke on this day still fresh with passing rain showers.
     In my face, close, her breath yeasty like pancake brunch, she asks, "Did you see her?"  
     I could feel the muscles in my stomach lace up, my breath still.  "See what, who?"
      She studies me, her easy grip on my elbow childlike, tugging until she lets go.  Her husband's protruding stomach comes up behind her first, followed by his man-shy Hello.
      "Welllll," he drawls.  "Survived the damn winter, didn't we all."
      She shakes her head at me, the house behind us.
       "No?"  she says.
       Both of them stare at me, for separate reasons.
       Knowing exactly what she means, "No," I tell her.  Putting to death the image of a young girl supposedly burnt and hallowed in my house, that wafted down my stairs in the middle of the night like smoke and scent and letting it go.  I wished she'd never said anything about the burnt girl, but I let her go.
  

The crows are coming for us

The June 30-Day Challenge Thing w/ Monetary Incentive

Okay...here's my challenge: write 30 stories in 30 days.
plain and simple.
Poetry and/or flash fiction of 1000 words or less (or 2 Word doc. pages, which ever comes first).

Yup, one each day for the month of June.

The winner will receive a $20 Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

Winner will be judged by:
--length of pieces in adherence to 1000-word-or-less rule (i will copy/paste it into Word to count them)
--number of works submitted. (if you submit 27 and everyone else submitted 25, theres a good (but not definite (other factors ARE considered)) chance you'll win).
--i CAN'T judge on creativity because we'll just get into a big cyclical 'art is relative' debate which i'd rather not have now.  or ever for that matter.  BUT, if all yr pieces are pretty much exactly the same w/ just a few words changed, its gonna work against you.

Honor System Rule:
if you have 30 short stories ALREADY written, please don't use 'em.  anyone can pilfer their files for old stuff.  The challenge is to WRITE 30 stories/poems in 30 days.
Jotting down ideas is okay.  just don't have it all pre-written BY June 1st.


SPECIAL WORD TO ADMINS :
 You may grant the ability to self-publish onto the blog to anyone you wish FOR THE MONTH. after that, it's out-ski with 'em...unless you really like what they have to offer, then you can make a half-hearted case to which i'd undoubtedly crack under.  OR, have them submit to you and you post.  whichevs.  I'm easy.

So, all you artsy-fartsies, sharpen yr pencils, buy a pack of black Bic fine points, put on a vat of coffee.  The literary world awaits our words!!

Onward and upward,

e

the first quasi-expository pages of something larger that i'm consistently working on and will eventually finish

Elliot Wythe-Pulk couldn’t feel anything, yet felt everything, numbly, from his intangible center up to the dark lids of his own universe.

            He wasn’t sure how long it took him to adjust to his surroundings, to figure out the actualities of what his senses told him as they slowly, almost reluctantly, switched on and laboriously sent messages to his brain, giving him the best evaluation possible, given the circumstances and information received.

            He was on his back.  That was the first thing he was privy to.  His breath came out in vapors, the warmth in a tango with the cold, floating up and disintegrating light years before they reached the stars.  The sight of his breath told him it was cold before he even felt it, and reminded him it was winter before he registered it.

            He hadn’t tried to move yet.  It seemed immediately less important than trying to simultaneously slough off the lingering dreamlike fogginess he felt and page through his current memories, looking for a stray clue as to why he was (obviously) a. outside, b. at night, c. in the winter, d. on his back e. in some (as of yet) unknown location.

            He moved his legs and arms, relieved that they functioned.  Which made him ask himself why he thought they wouldn’t.  His jacket, stiff with cold, crinkled with his movements.  In his mind, Elliot saw the picture of a man—dirty, bedraggled, not-right-in-the-head.  He didn’t know if it was the image of himself or someone else.  He put his hands to his face.  The wool gloves were cold, but not as cold as the air.  He huffed out warm air into the gloves, which spread thru the material and engulfed his face for a warm moment.  He repeated this a few times until he gathered up enuff personal initiative to sit up.

            A big ‘C’.  A gigantic capital letter ‘C’ was the first thing he saw.  It was light blue and outlined in white and it was huge.  He felt the distance between him and the majuscule C, the depth of air between him and the large chunk of rock it was painted on and the towering building, with a crux of its lights out, upon that rock.  Elliot focused on the depth between himself and the C.  Stretching out before him, a swatch of grass led to a river, on which large blooms of ice wiggled slowly downstream, barely moving, as thick veins of water coursed around them, peering up into the night.

Night?

            Elliot lifted his watch to his face.  Or, he meant to.  His watch was gone.  He looked to his left.  Trees.  Woods.  Beyond that, a bridge.  His neck was sore.  He looked to his right.  Tan-colored lines of dirt converged on one another.  He followed these lines.  They surrounded him.  He glanced down to where he was sitting and it, too, was tan dirt, which was connected to one of the corners of the square he was in.

Of course, he thought.

A baseball field.

            He sighed with accomplishment.  He started putting it all together.  Woods on a slope.  A river.  A baseball field.  He looked around with more scrutiny.  Foot paths.  Iron lampposts.  Beyond home plate, a metal cage, and beyond that, vacant bleachers and still further on, apartment buildings peeked over into the park—standing sentry, watching but not getting involved.

            The big C, he knew, stood for Columbia.  As in, University.  Good, he thought to himself, I’m still in the city.  Sporadic shushing sounds came from the bridge on his left.  The latticed metalwork gave off a hushed luminance as if it imbibed light instead of echoing it.  The clank and whine of subway brakes made their way from somewhere distant into his ears.

            Elliot’s head filled with geographic maths.  The subway must be an elevated one, he figured.  That would put him, he pondered, maybe somewhere between 125^th and 145^th?  Because, he blinked, the train comes above ground after 116^th, and goes back underground before 137^th.  Although, no, probably not.  He didn’t know of any parks around 125^th, at least on the west side of Manhattan, which is where he was assuming he was.  There was a park near 145^th, right on the river.  But hearing the train, underground as it was at 145^th, would’ve been darn near imposs—

Or!

            The train came up above ground around 200-and-something^th Street, he rationalized.  Which would place him in the Fort Tryon Park or Inwood area.  Which would ultimately place him on the Bronx-bordered upper tip of Manhattan.  Elliot looked again at the big C.  Yes, it was definitely the Bronx lurking sleepily behind the giant rock and building at this hour.

This hour.

            Elliot patted his pockets—first his jacket, then his pants.  He felt the familiar rectangular block of his cell phone.  His cold fingers dug hungrily into his pocket, both for the device and the warmth

Did I have gloves?, he asked himself, unsure.

            He stared equally as blankly at the crack in the cellphone’s darkened face as the crack was staring back at him.  He closed and reopened it a few times, pressed every button.  Still nothing.  He had to find out the time.  He had to find out where he was.  He had to figure out how he’d gotten there.

            First things first, he told himself as he stood up.  His legs were also sore.  Pins and needles shot thru his left foot.  He shook it to get the sleep out and the blood in.  The cold air blew thru him.  His limbs felt frozen, trapped in slumber.  To clear his head, he filled his lungs with a huge helping of air.  It only made him momentarily dizzy.  He put his phone back into his pants pocket, then burrowed his hands into the warmish confines of his jacket pockets.  He turned toward the apartment buildings and headed off the baseball diamond.

Wood Sage

mouths w/ nothing to say & eyes w/ nothing to look @

            The metal railing feels cold on my elbow, even though we are in the stuffy epicenter of summer.  I’m leaning back, both elbows up, wondering of I’m coming off as being too self-conscious of how I look, distanced as I am from just about everyone else while trying to give off the impression that I’m just indifferently relaxing in this low-trafficked corner of the roof.  I don’t care how I’m coming off, if I’m even coming off as anything at all.  But, I feel that if I saw me w/ my own eyes, I’d see an anti-social party-pooper flashing false grins and staring blankly out over the city.

            Although, my wooden stolidity has its own splinters of lies wedged in it.  I do care, but only up to the point where I know I’m neither anti-social nor a party-pooper.  I find it irksome—though, yet, not enough to rally against it—that I’ll be perceived as quite possibly the opposite of what I am.  Why am I grinning?  I’m content in the moment I’m in.  Why am I staring out over the city?  It intrigues.  It hums.  It hypnotizes.

            I should probably mingle more than I have been.  Earlier, I’d put minimal effort into a few conversations which I’d either excused myself from or just totally went blank in the middle of.  I didn’t even offer any obligatory uh-huhs or nods.  I just stared at mouths as words came out, most of them dropping names or  trying to convince me of the amazingness the here-&-now speaker embodied.  While someone I didn’t know and, by the mixture of the Laws of Probability and the good luck juju of crossed fingers, would never see again prattled incessantly & nauseatingly on, I’d scan the entire rooftop gathering for someone else I’d have the dubious fortune of feigning interest in.

            So, I took my drink—a scotch rocks which I still haven’t even touched and is now just an air-temperature watered-down scotch which is surprisingly creating a mist of condensation on its tumbler—to a corner of the roof where I’m currently standing, looking out over the parallels and perpendiculars of the city streets.  I have a vague knowledge of where I’m located, trying to figure out which thoroughfare down below is the ambiguous territorial line between Chelsea and Tribeca.

The deejay has been hitting my mood perfectly with his song choices.

            And I can’t seem to put a finger on what my mood actually is.  It’s not for lack of trying.  When I think I know if I’m cheerful or melancholy or bored, it gets out from under me and gets replaced by something else that doesn’t transition smoothly at all.  I feel like I’m being jostled.  My moods have hopped into bumper cars and aren’t listening to the underpaid ambivalent acne-infested teenager yelling to enjoy their ride safely.

            I can feel my cheeks wrinkle upward into the most infinitesimal of smiles.  I’m aware of my calm, regulated breathing pattern.  But I can sense a quickened pulse.  It’s not flowing thru me, not yet, but I feel it building up.  It is tightening its bootstraps, rolling up its sleeves, tucking in its shirt because it knows it is going to be called upon to act.  Soon.

            Large white outdoor Christmas-type lights are strung above the party, wound around pipes and poles and railings and antennas.  Some are burnt out.  Some reflect off the ever-shimmering surface of the water in the kiddie pool, in which is kept the soiree’s store of ice, beer, and soda.  Some give the party-goers luminescent domes, like haloes pressed down into their hair.

            There is a scuffle somewhere.  Up here.  On the roof.  My eyes dart around the goers, making everyone a phosphorescent blur, losing their defining line where skin & clothes end and the rest of existence begins.  They all look like giant glowing commas.  I can’t place the argument.  I hear shattering.  No heavy clunks, just the gentle chime of glass coming apart at newly-created seams.

            The deejay miscalculates a musical segue and I can see everyone subconsciously pick up on it.  A shift from one foot to the other.  A roll of tense shoulders.  A quick squinted glance upward into the starless night sky.

            I look across the street to what I have decided is an apartment building.  I am eye-level with one of the floors and, for the past 20 minutes or so, I’ve been keeping a sporadic eye on one window in particular.  Thru this window I can see the length of an apartment.  And pacing the length of this apartment is a man on a phone.  He walks up to the window, turns, walks to the far wall, turns, then returns to the window.  The almost half an hour I’ve been keeping track of him making this loop, his arm has been curled to the side of his head.  It reminds me of a mug handle.

            The gait of his pacing is not what I would call spry or bouncy.  He is, in fact, lumbering up and down the length or width of his apartment with a tilt to whichever side his foot falls to.  I can’t even imagine what he could be talking about for this long while pacing the same invisible path, without switching phone hands.  He’s a big guy, too.  An over-exerciser, I decide.  I my mind, I have him hurling the phone out of view, smashing the window with the double-team of his fists, leaping to the sill while pounding his chest and roaring.

            In reality, he only turns again at the window and heads back to the far wall of his pad.  In reality, I’m talking absolute nonsense to someone I don’t know…and enjoying it.  In reality, I’m the center of attention and greedy for it.  In reality, winter has fallen and I’m up here alone on the roof, shin-deep in snow.

From Skyscrapers to Silos (Intro, Revision #2)

Sunday June, 5 2005. New York City’s top 40 radio station Z100 blared from my surround sound stereo system within the walls of my spacious room in the town house that I had appropriately and most affectionately dubbed the “Brooklyn Blue Stone Estate” in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. There were clothes everywhere; I was trying to construct a cohesive Vogue worthy ensemble, which was absolutely necessary since I would be ushered through the velvet ropes of one of Manhattan’s hottest celeb hangouts: Marquee. In preparation, I danced around my room (dancing in stilettos is an art that must be practiced) sipping on a glass on Veuve Clicquot, periodically chemically bolstering my enthusiasm (i.e. confidence), excited that tonight I would be in the company of who’s who in New York’s entertainment scene. Seven miscalculated years in New York and, finally, I had it all: a high paying job at a club US Weekly Magazine had just named young Hollywood’s hottest new hangout, an amazing, over-priced place to live, a glammed up wardrobe, and a social network entitling me with VIP access and treatment at it clubs. I partied like a rock star surrounded by rock stars, unbeknownst to me that after reaching the pinnacle of that dreamlike existence I would stubbornly shake slumber mid afternoon on June 6th to reluctantly greet a cruel new world, with a champagne hangover Keith Richards would be proud of.

I woke up groggy and seriously dehydrated, with half of my two hour make up production, permanently transferred to my pillow; still fully dressed with one strappy stiletto on, my cell phone voice mail was maxed out with messages from my mother. The impact those messages would have on the course of my life was equivalent to the Mets’ left fielder, Endy Chavez, robbing Scott Rolen of a homerun, then completing the double play by throwing Jim Edmands out at first base in the sixth inning of game seven at Shea Stadium (the winner of this game would advance to the World Series). It was the intense, uneasy emotion in my mother’s sob-stricken voice as she informed me that something was wrong with Dad that kept my attention, clenched my diaphragm, restricting new breaths. Apparently, he had collapsed opening the doors to the hospital where he was to get his Monday morning dialysis treatment. His status was unclear. Still somewhat drunk and now both light-headed and jittery, my nervous system responded, fully alarmed; it countered with profuse alcohol-laden sweat and delirium, I thought…I thought I was dreaming. Why was my mother using a phrase like “status unclear”? My mind was combative, confused. MY dad…unresponsive? MY daddy…died, resuscitated, and in a coma? WHAT? After seven years of diligent faith in the unknown, I suddenly chastised my own indefinite beliefs. Up until this very specific moment, everything had been falling into place for me--this happening, did not seem possible. Quietly, ghostly apparitions began to frantically grasp at my phantomlike world as it began to dissipate.

Pacing, well, more like limping since my right foot had three and a half extra inches, I tried to comprehend what the fuck was going on. With each message I listened to, the more frantic I grew. Hysterics set in and with an expedited exhale, I collapsed right there on my beautiful hardwood floor: a true diva in distress. They don’t permit you to keep your cell phone active within the confines of the hospital’s intensive care unit, so I had absolutely no new contact with my mother outside of the voice mails, no confirmation (or explanations), nothing to contradict the gruesome scenarios playing repeatedly in my head.

When I boarded the plane out of JFK a few hours later, I had no idea if my father was dead or alive. And no amount of in flight vodka sodas could calm or at least stabilize my frenzied thoughts.

For the past seven years, I had been the sole focus of my life. My father was never a day to day necessity in my life, had not even occupied a passing thought in my day to day life. It sounds awful. But it’s true. It’s not that I didn’t love him, because I did. I idolized him (surreptitiously, of course). He was more like my secret weapon, always ready to intercept a late night phone call, redirect and reassure me, feed me his old school wisdoms. With this laid back, slightly cavalier presence, he skillfully educated me. I have been able to recite his (our) favorite poem, “Invictus” for as long as I can remember. According to my father, within each verse of this poem lay the answer to any and all of my life’s puzzles. But without him to repeatedly dissect it with me, would the words lose meaning? All of this time, I had him in my wings, at my disposal, and I was more concerned with whether to accessorize with a vintage clutch or a trendy boho bag.

An emotional wreck on the plane, selfishly whining “This is not fair”, I was consumed with guilt, tortuously playing the “what if I-coulda, shoulda mind fuck” roulette with no promise of producing a winner.

When you’ve learned to discard an upbringing in a neighborhood full of unlocked doors and have finally mastered the rubric’s cube-like puzzle of existing in a city of eight million people anonymously, you start to question the motives of anyone who looks you square in the eye. On that plane, for the first time, I truly embraced the fact that I was surrounded by strangers who didn’t want to know why I was a complete walking basket case, who avoided even looking in my immediate direction. If I had been allowed as much as tweezers on that flight, I might have been tempted to gouge out the eyes of each and every one of those carbon-copy cheery flight attendants (except when they were serving me). Welcoming my anonymity, I was almost annoyed when the lady sitting next to me took an interest and began to query. When I tried to order another drink, she ordered me milk and cookies (seriously). She had white-blonde hair full of curls that are only achieved after sitting hours in those bright pink foamy curlers. She asked the flight attendant for tissues (something this bitch neglected to offer me as I steadily and continuously cried and snotted, leaving the debris behind on my favorite stuffed animal, a puppy named Bunny). Through all of my emotional turmoil, this lovely old lady next to me continued to comfort me, even holding my hand at times. This random stranger, looking like she stepped off the set of “Golden Girls”, pried and pried and pried, not easily allowing me to brush her off as callously as the born and bred city residents had done me. Clutching Bunny, I slowly began to regain some composure, sipping what would be my last vodka on that flight (per grandma), wiping various limbs, now dripping faucets of snot. This old lady seated next to me, deprived of the most single detail of the nature of my flight that night said to me, “Now is not the time to be placing blame on yourself.”

Recently widowed, she explained, life is about moments like these. I was puffy and swollen, buzzed from the cocktails served at a high altitude, and yet, here was this angelic woman telling me that I was facing a moment that would ultimately define me and my character. There was no reason why this woman should have consoled me. She could have sat in her window seat, gazing out at night-time New York, pretending not to hear me crying, pretending not to see me slowly rocking back and forth in my seat, hunched over a soggy stuffed animal, sucking down cocktails. But she didn’t, she got involved and she redirected my fears and worries from me to my mother. She said (and I’m paraphrasing) you’re young and independent here in New York. Remember when you de-board this plane that your mother will need your support. Imagine what the past twelve hours have been like for her. This little old Miami bound lady was right. And when we landed in Burlington, Vermont, I hugged her and thanked her for reminding me about the importance of family and my place within that sacred circle. I thanked her for re-establishing a sense of clarity for me. She wished me well and said (and I quote) “Remember Sugar, clarity doesn’t mean clear liquor”.

I think back on that nosey granny and I smile; she restored my faith in happenstance on that flight. I was ready to give up; give in, relinquish my fidelity to fate, but I was seated next to her and not one of those hardened, citified people who would have gazed out of the window the entire flight.

Years later, my father is dead and I still look for the clarity in clear liquors, but as I search for personal meanings, asking questions, I hear my father’s voice. He’s still relentless in educating me; still my secret weapon, he armed me with an arsenal of information throughout my life. I venture forth still needing clarity, but I no longer ask “Why me?” because I know my father would lean back in his big blue recliner, adjust his glasses and reply, “Excuses don’t matter, results do”.

600 wordish

Some people swore the house was haunted. I couldn't understand why. It wasn't built on a burial ground, no one lived in it before us, and it hadn't been standing long enough to gain self-awareness. In the state it was in when my mother and her new architect husband moved into his “grand design,” as my mother called it, the house hardly seemed worth inhabiting, forget haunting. I managed to avoid its superfluous trimmings and pompous wanescotting for the better half of a year before the state declared my grandmother unfit to look after me. After one hundred and ninety seven days of inhabitance, when I first set foot in it, the house looked like a motherless child.

Around my sixth birthday, the glamour of being a single mother wore off and I was left in legal care of my grandmother. Maybe good sense skips a generation; my grandmother waited to have children, while my mother buttered her bun in the oven as if stocks in yeast were dropping. Or, maybe grandma's to blame for waiting so long. Either way, at 78 she was too old to take care of me and at 14, I was too young to take care of her. Together we moved into the lascivious, three story anachronism.

It's shocking how little you can accumulate in the first six years of life. I had nothing except clothes when grandma took me in. So I adopted grandma's things as my own and those are the things we moved in with. At first everything was in one room. “To sort through,” my mother said. It was clear her husband was uncomfortable with our things entering the house, but slowly grandma spread out. Whenever everyone was out, we'd return to another two tone lamp tucked in a corner, the paper towel stand replaced by dish towels, and generation by generation the entire family watched as you descended the stairs.

Two months after we arrived, grandma hung the last portrait while everyone slept. In the morning I was glad to see them together again, somber as ever, if not a bit more faded. I walked into the kitchen, hardly minding the faux-rustic stones under my feet that felt abrupt after coming off carpeting so thick grandma could loose her teeth in it. My mother's husband was reading the paper, only mildly perturbed by someone other than mother entering his life dream.

“Good morning!” My mom's forced pleasantry came from behind me.

“Is that what you would call this?” His tone grated against my skin. He never talked much, but when he did something inevitably negative came out. It made me want to tear down a wall and expose his ugly insides. Instead I went out to the yard. He acted like the only one having a hard time. The kids at school avoided me because of the rumor of blood-curdling screaming coming from the house after it was finished.

My mother started when she thought i was out of range; “How long are you going to blame me for losing the baby?”

“I built this house for our family. It's not easy to sit here and watch it fill up with someone else's, when our child was stillborn in the goddamn foyer!”

“You think it's easy giving birth to a dead thing just because I have a daughter? She might as well be a stranger to me!”

“Why did you invite these strangers into my house? To hang photos of their family as reminder that my family line died? All because you had your first child too young and it created complications?”

“There you go again. 'Your' house, 'your' family line, and my fault, my--” There was the sound of skin on skin and my mother fell silent.

“Without that baby, we share nothing.” Her husband's foot steps receded and I looked for somewhere to hide, but the landscaping, like the interior decorating, was unfinished. My mother came out of the house, check red and eyes stinging. I thought she might apologize for years of absence, or marrying an asshole. But she just looked at me and said, “Nothing was ever the same again after that.”

A Valid Attempt at a Dizzying Sort of Dialogue

“You really shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”, Edgar said, focused a little too intently on slicing up the log of pepperoni.  He was trying to cut them into equal thicknesses but, either one was too thick or too thin, or it was cut at a slant, making the next piece malformed as well.

            Thom sat on a stool on the other side of the counter.  He drummed his fingers and snatched coins of pepperoni despite Edgar’s half-hearted protests.  “But”, argued Thom, “the source is a friend.  A good friend.”.  He kept his eyes on Edgar’s, looking for something telling.

            “A good friend?”, asked Edgar, his eyes still on the knife and meat.  “Or a great friend?  Like, one who would never lie.”

            “A good friend…who would never…lie…”, Thom started to trail off, “…I think…”

            “Nothing has changed in there since you last looked five minutes ago.”, Edgar said over his right shoulder.  “And all my food is gonna go bad.”

            Behind him, Martin was bent at the waist, examining the contents of Edgar’s refrigerator.  “What food?”, complained Martin, “You don’t have any food.  Man, you own an eatery, yet you have no food of yr own…in yr own place.”

            “But”, Thom lifted a finger, eager to make a point, “why would this good friend lie to me?  Like, what would they have to gain by it?  It doesn’t make sense.”

            “Would they have something to lose by telling the truth?”, Edgar asked, lifting his eyes.  Thom squinted back at him.

“Nothin’ to eat at all.  Seriously.”

            “Martin, there’s a ton of menus in that drawer.”  Edgar nodded to his left and down.  “Why don’t you order something?”  Martin sighed loudly as he closed the fridge.  He grabbed a slice of pepperoni and opened the drawer.

“Yr out of Bactine!”, came a declaration from the bathroom.

            “Check the medicine cabinet, Lew!”, Edgar hollered back.  “There might be some Neosporin in there!”.  Lew popped his head around the corner, nodded dramatically at Edgar and disappeared back into the bathroom.

“But he had nothing to gain by telling me that.”, Thom concluded.

            “Thom, seriously.  I have no idea why someone would say that about me”, Edgar shrugged as he, by habit, cleaned the knife blade on the side of his pants.  He put the knife in the sink and ate a piece of slivered meat.

            “Pizza…pizza…”, Martin rattled off as he shuffled thru the menus, “…Chinese… vegan…sushi...pizza…Thai…”

            “Who said what about you?”, Noah piped in.  He was kneeling in front of a crate, admiring Edgar’s LP collection.  He kept his place with the thumb of his good hand as he looked up.

            “It doesn’t matter.”, Edgar said, coming out from the kitchen and sitting on the couch across from a blank piece of wall on which should’ve been hung maybe, like, a TV or something or maybe a poster?

“If it doesn’t matter”, Thom spun to face the room, “then why not tell him?”

“…Mexican…pizza…sheesh, another pizza…Italian…burgers…”

            “Yeah, why not tell me?”, Noah innocently agreed, rubbing his cast against an itch on his torso.

            “Rumor has it”, started Kareem, from over on the other couch located under the front window, “that two girl—who shall remain nameless but can be easily guessed—stopped by the coffeehouse the other night right after they closed.  These two girls were drunk—linens in triplicate in the wind kind of drunk—and Edgar was very…shall we say, ungentlemanly? toward them.”  Throughout his entire explanation, Kareem kept adding small pinches of pot into his rolling paper.

            “Yr not smoking that in here.”, Edger said to him.  “What are you--? I don’t even want that in my apartment.  You know that.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Edgar”, Noah pondered confusedly.

“Thank you, Noah.”

“Fine, I’ll go smoke this outside.”

“Away from my apartment.  Like, down the street, in another town.”  The door shut.

“…There almost, like, too many food choices here…”

“What’s this medicine for?”

“I can’t see thru the wall into the bathroom, Lew.”

            “Just because it doesn’t sound like something you’d do,” Thom mulled, “doesn’t mean you wouldn’t. Or…would.  Wait.  Which one do I mean?”

            “I know what you mean, Thom.  But what would I have to gain from having done that?  From having the rumors be true?”

Thom just smirked and chuckled.

“Yr twisted, man.”, Edgar dismissed.

            “Mitochondricine?”, Lew walked into the room brandishing the bottle.  “Edgar, did you have ACES?”

“No.  That was just precautionary.  Just like everyone else in The States.”

            “But, no, wait.  I still don’t understand.”, Thom shifted himself on the stool, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.  Finding none, he just leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.  He looked as if he’d pitch forward at any second.  “Why would this person lie to me?  Or make it up?  They would have no reason to.”

            “I don’t know”, shrugged Edgar, “Why don’t you ask this person?”  Thom was a bit frustrated that Edgar wasn’t the least bit rankled by neither Thom’s persistence nor the existence of the rumor itself.  “Did you ever think, Thom, that maybe what one sees isn’t always what is?  Could yr source have seen something and come to their own conclusion?”

            “Wait, so”, Lew shook the prescription bottle with his thumb and index finger, “…where did…how did you get these?”

“From my doctor”, Edgar slouched a little deeper into the couch. “Why so…?”

“I never got these.”, Lew shook his head and returned to the bathroom.

            “Y’know, Thom,”, Noah’s eyes skimmed down the liner notes of R.E.M.’s ‘Document’ LP, “this seems to be a bit of a riddle for you.  I mean, more than usual.  And I also mean more than things usually present themselves generally as a riddle to you.”

            “Bite it, Noah.”, then, turning back to Edgar, “Well, can you just answer whether it’s true or not?”

            “Who wants pizza?”, Martin waved the menu around above his head.  Everyone answered “Me.”, except Lew, who answered, “What?”

“Dude. Lew. Pizza?”

“Yes.”

            “I don’t even know what the exacts of the rumor are, so I’m not about to—I’ll have pepperoni, Martin—I’m not about to say Yea or Nay to anything.  And don’t look at me like that, Martin.  I do realize the irony of the fact that I just cut up some pepperoni and that I also want it on my pizza.”

“I didn’t say nuttin’”

            “Then, let’s ask Kareem”, Thom says, wagging his finger in the air.  “He seems to know about it.  Pepperoni for me, too.  Oh, and sausage.”

“I don’t see Neosporin anywhere.”

“Then I’m probably out, Lew.  What do you want on yr pizza?”

            “Mushrooms and olives.”, Lew came out of the bathroom and went straight to the plate of pepperoni, “and extra cheese.”

            Noah pulled out a pressing of ‘Mingus Ah Um’ to examine it.  “Pepperoni and mushrooms for me.  And, yeah, extra cheese.”

            The apartment door opened.  A chilly spring wind blew itself around Kareem, carrying his residual scent into the room.  His eyes were red and glassy, and he had parts of a smile stuck to his face.

            “Just the man I wanna see.”, Thom swiveled back and forth on his stool.  Kareem eyed him suspiciously.

“Me too.”, added Martin.

“…about what?”, Kareem ventured.

“Pizza.  And do you want any?  And what do you want on it?”

“Yes, just plain, Martin.”, Kareem answered, not taking his eyes off Thom.

            “Well…”, Thom patted the stool next to him for Kareem to sit on, which he didn’t.  He just stood by the door with his arms crossed as Thom spoke.  “…you seem to have the most details about this rumor.  And Edgar isn’t admitting to it or denying it because he doesn’t know the exact—“

            “Ah! I get it!”, Edgar blurted out, pointing from Thom to Kareem.  “This is yr quote-unquote good friend.  Kareem is yr source.  I just figured that out.”

            “Very good.”, Kareem congratulated, unfazed.  He stared at Thom and spoke slowly and condescendingly, “Thom.  I have a great idea.  Why don’t you just ask Edgar staright, flat-out what happened?  Or was that option too easy?”

            The apartment got quieter.  Lew continued smacking his lips as he scarfed down the pepperoni.  Martin was drawing circles and diameter lines on the menu, trying to figure out how many pizzas they should get and which ones would have which toppings.  Edgar suppressed a chuckle as he looked back and forth between Thom and Kareem.  Kareem’s smirk became more and more smug while Thom’s face grew redder and slowly angry.

            Noah finally broke the silence with, “Dude.  You have all these albums. Why don’t you have a record player?”

Sung In D

The sun won’t rise
Until you wake up
I won’t breathe
Until you kiss me
The clock won’t change
Until you dance past
I’m not here
Until you see me

The night won’t fall
Until you’re tucked in
I’m not clean
Until you thrill me
The end won’t come
Until you say so
I won’t live
Until you love me

The Artist And Society

Blogspot doesn't host audio files so I made this into a "video". This song is meant to inspire each of the artists that contribute to this blog.

The Artist And Society contains elements of the following:

• The Artist And Society - Howard Zinn
• Well-Tempered Clavier (Book 1), Prelude and Fugue no. 1 in C major, BWV 846 - J.S. Bach (performed by Glenn Gould)
• Flower - eels
• Guest List - eels

All samples have been used without permission. If you own the copyright to any of these materials and would like them removed from this post, just ask.

The Beginning of Something Bigger (or maybe just a disembodied beginning doomed to be just that)

“Do you need a ride?”, Japeth asked the older man.  The older man didn’t stir.  He sat motionless on the cracked concrete steps legs out in front of him and his hands softly on his knees as he squinted out past the parking lot, out past the rusted fence around the drainage basin, out the past the backs of houses and backyards of the suburban tract housing that seemed to sprawl itself in an oppressive crescent on the horizon.

            The last hurrah of a cigarette stood sentry in the corner of the older man’s mouth.  It’s smoke trickled up past the man’s eyes.  This is why he’s squinting, Japeth thought.  He thought he felt a cloud pass overhead, but when he looked up, the sky was clear.

            “No ride”, the man said.  The voice was steady, but a bit higher than Japeth had imagined in should be.  It didn’t have any of that old-man raspiness he sort of expected it to have.  The old man took the cigarette butt from his mouth and laid it on the step next to him.  Smoke still seeped out from it.

            “Well”, started Japeth, “do you need…?”, he trailed off, perturbed that it was so difficult for him to talk to this old man.  Most people react, he thought.  Most people use body language or vocal inflection as clues to how they’re feeling, or their thoughts on a matter.  But this old man here, in the clean, pressed chinos and white v-neck t-shirt, was giving nothing away at all.  He was impossible for Japeth to read.  I think I’m pretty good at talking to people, Japeth tried to assure himself.  The tail-end of his unfinished question wagged away into silence.  The cigarette went out.

            Behind him, Japeth heard the door continue to open and close.  There was a small bouquet of jingling bells above it which was nudged into music whenever the door was opened.  And every time the door opened, the smells of the bakery wafted outside, enveloping the front stoop in a cloud of sweetness.

            “Will you be the one?”, the old man asked, w/o turning around.  He wiped his hand across his chest, then his pants.  He reached into a pocket, took out another cigarette, and placed it, unlit, in the corner of his mouth.  His hands went back to rest on his knees as he continued to squint way way past the nameless purple smudge of a mountain range way way off in the distance.

            “Well, sure.  I have…--“, as Japeth gestured with his thumb, he turned his head around.  The sun stung his eyes a thousand times as it reflected off a thousand different angles of glass and metal in the parking lot.  Red and green blotches bloomed in his vision, then faded to yellows and grays.  He looked from car to car.  “…I have…”.

But his ride was gone.

            He found himself walking away from the old man, then away from the bakery.  Cars pulled in and pulled out around him as he staggered, dumbfounded, across the gravel lot out to the highway.  Once there, he turned around to take in the parking lot and bakery as a whole, as if this new perspective might lend him a more concise and total view wherein he would finally notice his ride.  But, no.  It was gone.

            He looked both ways down the road.  To his left, a billboard stood towering over a cluster of scrub-brush and cacti.  To his right, about a half-mile down, on the other side of this 2-lane interstate, was a gas station.  Somewhere between him and the gas station, a wall of heat shimmered, making it seem unreal.

            Japeth took one last look around the lot and one last glance at the old man and the smoky plume from a new cigarette, then set himself toward the gas station.

House Off Cemetery Street

The Happiness Fades

“No! Get in the lifeboat! I must stay with the ship! I must stay with the ship! I must …”

I was ripped straight from my dream into consciousness by a searing pain shooting through my body. It was as though a witch doctor in the darkest jungle could see my dream and at the moment of climax stuck a long, sharp needle into the head of a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth.

It turned out to be the alarm clock, bellowing through the apartment like a squadron of police cars in a tin can. I realized, as I crossed the room to shut it off, that I had absolutely nothing to do today. It was 6:45 a.m.. I sat on the bed for a minute and tried to figure why the alarm would sound if there was nothing to do. We have an agreement, my alarm clock and I, to always heed each other’s schedules. If I have plans he must always be exactly on time. No plans and he gets the day off. Free to sleep in, take a long breakfast, go out with friends. He doesn’t complain and his union doesn’t give me any trouble about it. Some alarm clocks never get a day off. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Day after day after day. My clock should consider himself lucky.

Nothing came to mind that needed doing so I decided to write a nasty letter to my clock’s union representative and went back to sleep. I thought long and hard about that fateful day in April, 1912, hoping I could pick up the dream where I left off. What seemed a split second later I was stabbed in the head again. It was 10:17 a.m.. I was immediately seized by an overwhelming sensation of guilt. I must have slept through something. I got up and made my way to the bathroom.

The phone rang. I answered it.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?” It was Rose. Her voice muddied by disappointment and disgust.

“Just got up.”

“Of course you have. I want to tell you something.”

“Hey, was I supposed to be somewhere today?”

“Yes, but I’ve been and come back already. Listen to me now, we have to break up.”

“Again?”

“Yes, for good. I’m sorry. It’s over.” No drama, no empathy, just facts.

“But doesn’t love blossom in the spring?

“Only in France … and certain Shakespearean plays.”

“Julius Caesar?”

“No, he gets killed in the spring … ‘Beware the ides of March.’”

“But it’s June.”

“You never could get anything right.”

“I keep having this dream …”

“The Titanic?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“No.”

“I’m sure you have. How else would I know?”

“Do you have a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth?”

“Go back to bed. You’ll feel better after you’ve had your usual 12 hours of sleep.”

“No. I want to make this work.”

“It can’t. We’ve tried three times.” Silence. What was there to say?

“Please?”

“No. Goodbye.”

She hung up. I dialed Clyde.

“We broke up again,” I said.

“What did you expect?”

“So this is what I think: The Titanic sank due to poor construction, right?”

“This is your theory.”

“The builders were in too much of a hurry. So I had this huge love for Rose and I became over-confident. In my haste to find something terrific and successful, I paid too little attention to the structure and foundation of the relationship.”

“Okay …”

“Like the Titanic my relationship with Rose was doomed from the start. In a way, then, she did have a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth - but all along it was me who was sticking the needle into it!”

“I’ve heard what you said and thought hard about it and there’s only one solution.” Dramatic pause. “IHOP.”

Puzzling. Bemused, garbled prescription: the unease that comes with satisfaction and happiness. Perhaps it’s a course in realization. The thoughts of hither thither and yon and craving ice cream repeatedly. The thought of candy in a store and CD’s on crack. Or racks. And racks of fish just lined up for attention and wanting to be squeezed and loved and thought of as just the right thing at just the oh so right time. It was a war zone at first then clearing like a jungle making way to desert unnoticeable and graceful in its own cosmic way. Like night and day in grand view but more than that. Ice cream … the thought keeps returning. A persistent nag and whine in the recesses of mental libraries of cross-references and subplots. The littlest nags multiply, re-referenced in my neurotic caverns by over-worked librarians working without pay and longing for the acceptance of their peers. A place to fit in and do the job better. Not fit but resize. Redefine and start again. It's a curious spur to wait for the phone day in and day in again. The same thing repeated every day but never the same twice. A micro-chaos living in the supreme mediocrity. Normality redefined for the middle man of American super-culture. That was my relationship with Rose.

When the drum is no longer a voice but an accompaniment, art no longer exists but as an ancient relic hardly deserving of the time it takes to spell the word. When maturity is bad and betrays old age - 40 never looked so big. And when the day is over does it make more sense? Living in such a hyper-enlightened state for another day. Did it take its toll or did it pay us? Bigger? Better? Faster? More? Four brunettes are somewhere smiling thinking maybe something on which they spent time has withstood the test of modern time and proven its historicity. When did history become shorter than the life expectancy? The loneliest time smells of plastic and heat. The humidity of sorrow has saturated the air and required hourly showers. The culture accepts the change and calls it growth. The dominant culture which is impervious to destruction. Decadence rears its head only to be acknowledged, assimilated, and marginalized. The true history of man reflects its power but is forgotten in the shortest generation. Speed is the answer now. The million dollar (final) answer. The one that brings everything to you before you know what it is and whether the fourth mortgage will cover the new paneling. Is Chinese food good for you? Can saturated fat prolong your life? It will if you haven't eaten in ten days. When people across the globe starve not for attention like us but for nutrition. Something to make their blood flow clean. Something to make their blood flow. Something to make their blood. That is my relationship with Rose.

It ran its course and it died. It was forgotten in the shortest generation because the next fact had arrived. The facts became less and less reliable. Assumption had been covertly - unwittingly - exchanged. The worst enemy is the absence of one. Idle hands and so forth. We become what we hate most though we have no idea. We complain in the face of affluence. Health becomes illness and joy becomes boredom in the light of continual entertainment. The opposites disappear leaving us without choice. The lights all blink and tell us where to go and where to get off and where to get on. The joy is sucked out by the rushing wind of a passing investment consultant and we stand hands on our hearts gazing at the stripes of a tired old flag and wonder what the string of letters coming from our tongues actually spells. Life? Liberty, etc? Is this some sort of crossword? The phone has still not rung, by the way, and the day is getting longer. I reflect (I confess - I really do reflect) on those isolated moments of complete bliss when the whole world was in order and nothing bad had ever happened ... ever? what like yesterday? And I wonder about the philosophy of sugar and the physics of peanut butter and why the happy times flee. The sky is still there - it's just another color. It would be as bright in Asia. But they remember last week and the pain we caused for them. We forget and happily dismiss. They remember and patiently plan. The end will come swiftly and unexpectedly like a plane crash on the evening news. One day we bring home bacon for tomorrow's breakfast and the next morning we can't eat it because the east coast as suddenly melted away. Iowa will understand what they've been missing in oceanic tides and water sports. Hang ten ... hang twenty - it makes no difference - the trials were a mockery anyhow. The justice of fools sentences us all regardless of standing. We speak and get shouted over or we rest silently collecting information to spread at un-downloadable speeds across the world. Selling email to the enemy and trading mp3's illegally because the billionaires at the multimedia conglomerate can't buy the cocaine they need. The happiness fades. I misunderstood my relationship with Rose.

Optimism lives on but only behind the curtain that seems to get pulled back each evening around 8:00 on your favorite network. Of course now it's all about streaming, direcTV, and satellite privacy invasions. Sex sells and prime time networks creep up on bankruptcy. If I had a new toy to sell I wouldn't advertise on Dora The Explorer I'd put it out on True Blood and The Family Guy. Now if I was selling cigarettes I'd put it out on Dora. It's audience analysis ... even the seminaries teach audience analysis because its not what you want to say its what others want to hear. And others want to know that they can do whatever they please. Hence satellite TV. Hence America. In the wake of Big Brother and Survivor why not just install 8 billion TV cameras across the country? We could call it LiberTV. We could watch the death of a culture and the chaos of controlled freedom. The happiness fades. There never was a relationship with Rose.

The Dodge

My father always said that if any of his children got a tattoo they were out of the will. I have five. And for five years he never saw a single one. This could be attributed to his failing eyesight at 75 years old, but mostly it was because my wardrobe was fashioned around concealing them. Even during the summer months when the glass and steel of Manhattan became an incubator, I wouldn't put on a tank top. Even asphyxiating on subway platforms from the heat released urine fumes I wouldn't tie my hair back. When the backs of my knees got sweat rash from riding my Raleigh in jeans, I wouldn't dare wear shorts. And especially on the rare occasions we went to the beach for a bit of respite, I'd feign that Coney Island was too dirty for swimming and, why didn't we ride the Cyclone if we wanted to feel a breeze.

I forgot about the August heat. It was already cooling off in Seattle. I wasn't prepared for that immense block of air, so dense with degrees. It was barely porous enough to walk through from the doors of JFK to my dad's un-air conditioned Dodge Neon. I saw him approaching, swerving around the other vehicles and going too fast, as usual. He was waving to me and I hurried over, my rolling suitcase bouncing off my heels. But he just drove right past me so I called him.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I'm dealing with a lot at once right now, I'll be right back, just get ready to jump in.”

The second time he came around he had the passenger door open and I darted between two cars parked in the load and unload area. I threw the suitcase in, my dad steering and pushing it into the back seat at the same time as I held onto the door, hopping in at a trot once we had already gone past three different exit gates. People were staring. The car had no brakes.

As my dad pumped the petal and yanked on the emergency brake in stop and go traffic on the Van Wyck, the stinging sweat of fear and the mildew sweat of a boiling highway mingled. On that black strip of interstate my Levi's constricted the very flow of my blood as I sat, white knuckled and definitely not yelling obscenities at my father. Spots of age betrayed the muscles defining themselves in his arms as he gripped the steering wheel. Pools had gathered in my sneakers by the time I finally convinced my dad to get off the Grand Central Parkway. We pulled over on a side street in Queens near the L.I.E. I changed into shorts in the back seat as my father propped open the hood with a crow bar. Stepping onto the street the summer heat wave felt like radiation, rippling layers of the thick and oppressive fahrenheit seemed to move through my skin, baking me from within.

My father poured in the brake fluid and I crouched down, looking under the car for a possible leak and trying not to sear my palms on the scalding pavement.

“What's that!?” My father tends to yell when we have car trouble, so he tends to yell a lot.

“I don't see anything!” I yelled back because he is hard of hearing. I didn't see a stream of liquid, not even a drop, coming from the engine of the Dodge.

“On your ankle.” He wasn't yelling anymore. I paused on all fours by the red car. Suddenly the heat of the all the bodies and the energy pumping out of all the stores and the rays of all the sun reflecting all over the city was coming from my father's glare, staring down on me. Bent there, under a ton of molten anger in the middle of Queens, I looked up at him.

“That's my tattoo.” I couldn't tell if I was getting sunburn or if I was blushing with fear at having just said those words.

“You know what I've always said--”

“Well if we live to make it over the Triboro bridge then go ahead and change your will.” He yanked the crow bar out and the hood slammed. We got back in the car without another word. His exhale as he manhandled the car to crawl through a stop sign on the corner, was the first brush of a breeze I'd felt since the whoosh of the airport exit doors closing behind me.

“I was thinking of taking the Midtown Tunnel.” He said. “I don't want to risk your life on the bridge.”

That night a storm moved East across the island. Seventy mile an hour winds felled over one hundred trees in Central Park, large limbs scattered the Cross Island Parkway in Queens and the Pelham Bay Parkway in the Bronx. Some of the trees ripped from the ground dated back to the turn of last century, now they had become part of a passing wind's devastation. Yet, in all of New York City not a single person was injured.

Rain-through, See-through

to think

the leaves are as many numbered as the thoughts in my head

every one

a singular idea come to fruition

the rain

exaggeration,

the extravagant abundance

the multitude in every common drop & drip

the banality of water

rising in voice

in thunder

purring in silence

pouring through the leaves like a

rush of applause for everyone & everything

into puddles

a congregate to huddle the masses

blank into sameness a million drops

falling through the sky

& though my leaves

my mind

adding to the chatter