tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57892428711724568702024-03-05T01:09:24.603-08:00perish the thought!tiny fictions and undisclosed non-fictions, kinda daily maybe.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-21392730542801364562008-12-01T15:31:00.000-08:002008-12-01T15:51:01.522-08:00Harpoon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMRCFeY2-33Lq12U1wiwrZjDqLIwR4B3-YqPoys4rg-ldmJRgGNJt58qkCVMHzl0FmrQo93SAmxVy4e844sSgR7R2Z9MgDGnzLrQY9-VFKTVoYKJx7IHqszg5ojp8-q-7cj9odYELiGzC4/s1600-h/Brian+Skerry.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMRCFeY2-33Lq12U1wiwrZjDqLIwR4B3-YqPoys4rg-ldmJRgGNJt58qkCVMHzl0FmrQo93SAmxVy4e844sSgR7R2Z9MgDGnzLrQY9-VFKTVoYKJx7IHqszg5ojp8-q-7cj9odYELiGzC4/s320/Brian+Skerry.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274969541662623538" border="0" /></a><br />This probably isn't the way I should be thinking about my patients. But I haven't been able to sleep lately, and Animal Planet is the only channel that isn't trying to sell me a food processor at 3 in the morning. I've been watching humpbacks swallow Inuit canoes whole, the Alpine crest of a sperm whale crucified on a mariner's spear. I've seen Algonquin grandsons behead an orca twelve miles off on an Oregon beach, and I have gone to sleep stunned, the blue glow of the cathode sea still watermarked on my skin.<br /><br />Stitching side wounds or stirring urine samples, I think back on it. Who the hell could blame me: who doesn't look out, now and then, on the solid knot of the field beyond his window and grit his teeth at the nothing that stirs beneath its surface? Feeling for the seed of a tumor, I'm yearning for some Nantucket harpoon head snared beneath the flesh, any evidence of the universe in any of us.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-43866982385192287422008-11-05T18:11:00.000-08:002008-11-05T18:45:17.385-08:00Husk<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFAghdX4pZ3QZLcPoKtLZfrQubxOUoqaH0J67IFpCzsQyeEnMdsq7PWhJKp4peVJbcCEYIl7xz8t_TZ5_rQryHpws3JT-mT0gfrLQZ54SYlMAxWYG9QD8AmAk5oD4KMxIUBYGuJnv5McbO/s1600-h/James+Jean.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFAghdX4pZ3QZLcPoKtLZfrQubxOUoqaH0J67IFpCzsQyeEnMdsq7PWhJKp4peVJbcCEYIl7xz8t_TZ5_rQryHpws3JT-mT0gfrLQZ54SYlMAxWYG9QD8AmAk5oD4KMxIUBYGuJnv5McbO/s320/James+Jean.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265369882164618322" border="0" /></a>You're dead now, Mary, so I probably don't even have to apologize. But I feel like I should say that I'm sorry for that week before your kids got around to cleaning out your house, that week where, you know, I lived in it. I'm sorry that I had to break in your bedroom window, and I'm sorry that your asshole oldest, Tad, thought that someone had cat burgled his precious inheritance. You really didn't have much to cat burgle, Mary, but I wouldn't have anyway. There wasn't any point.<br /><br />I tried it all on before I left, anyways: put a new arm into every empty linen sleeve, placed a new and beating heart beneath every piece of pendant costume jewelry you left to tangle in one nigh-on Gordian knot. There was a whole, self-multiplying universe of shoelaces you forgot in a corner of your closet; your kids won't notice that I've laced them through each abandoned eyelet, won't wonder if you didn't swell out of each pair years ago and why they might be warm.<br /><br />I spent a whole day in your pool. It was February, sure, but I was convinced that every grain of water had once had a home in one of your pores, and I wanted them in mine, too. I don't want you to think that I loved you; I spent entire nights awake in your bed, but not to lure your ghost in with me. It's just that I can feel you in this house that was your envelope, your sarcophagus, your lonely pocket of air under the avalanche. You died, and you left it behind like the husk of an exhausted boa. You would not mind that I took it up--and I am so comfortable in it, your skin.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Art by James Jean.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-85533385834882107342008-09-13T08:53:00.001-07:002008-09-13T09:38:24.473-07:00Me's.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5XcDtQ8_v9iUtepvyul_SPonYIE5NvY4yRgwukbneKGLNU4NsZDUYVCQovYFb7bQpqHRxKU5-znH-fXRXBo3QbU9UnKYbFNAZ104fkdAL8tiqXtQi31fEBJ7HdmLSlJeNf8tidxmZF4Go/s1600-h/insect.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5XcDtQ8_v9iUtepvyul_SPonYIE5NvY4yRgwukbneKGLNU4NsZDUYVCQovYFb7bQpqHRxKU5-znH-fXRXBo3QbU9UnKYbFNAZ104fkdAL8tiqXtQi31fEBJ7HdmLSlJeNf8tidxmZF4Go/s320/insect.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245546035016019810" /></a><div>When I said I wanted a clone army, I really thought they'd all look just like me, except maybe a little thinner and outfitted in hundreds of matching Carmen Sandiego trench coats and heels. Looking back on it, I shouldn't have chosen the one geneticist that seemed a little sentimental, and I should have been suspicious when he asked for baby pictures and locks of hair and exhaustive lists of my hopes and dreams. I assumed that there was some kind of voodoo to genetics. I should have known. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I mean, my clone army, they're all right. The six year old clone-me wakes me up in the morning and I'm getting fucking awesome at mickey mouse pancakes by now. Fourteen year old clone-me is a little bitch, but if I buy her cigarettes or listen to her talk about the Cure for a while, she usually settles. My eighty year old clone is this docile, fragile bird-person who only wants to sit by the window and mumble about Hegel, so she kind of takes care of herself. We have a big house, and I get a tax break for all the dependents. The 30-40 year olds all have mid-level management jobs, so that's a nice kick-back, and I'm pretty sure the 40-50 year olds will get over their mid-life crises and come back with my hybrid any day now. We have great game nights. I'm not unhappy.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I can't say it's not a let down. They will never help me storm Serbia or tackle my childhood enemies at the sound of a dog whistle. We are all goddamn altos, so we will never be able to sing Beach Boys covers and travel the world. To be honest, most of them don't even like me much. On our 22nd birthday, my only legit clone traded all our presents for cash and got reconstructive surgery, a new wardrobe and a $500 dye job. We call her Ingrid now. We argue about who forgot to take the trash out, but otherwise, we have nothing to say to each other. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Painting by Paul Insect.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-36352796951944634192008-09-07T14:33:00.000-07:002008-09-07T15:00:19.804-07:00Merit.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPn81k5_YR_R2ajEOst1OOpmvmcS73Sr6U5efE_MwnCNIgMJHZUX6RQFdWoLstkhi7DPhaNzJwOwuq3YuhO7CGJ958qsXJlNWOocgeGGwZwNXedIyZ4emONgmfkRbGZ53E-4imy1GiIZ8M/s1600-h/alstrup_arika_artworkimage.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPn81k5_YR_R2ajEOst1OOpmvmcS73Sr6U5efE_MwnCNIgMJHZUX6RQFdWoLstkhi7DPhaNzJwOwuq3YuhO7CGJ958qsXJlNWOocgeGGwZwNXedIyZ4emONgmfkRbGZ53E-4imy1GiIZ8M/s320/alstrup_arika_artworkimage.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243402515752496498" /></a><br />The only merit badge I earned before I got kicked out of the girl scouts was the "senses" badge. As if we deserved a prize for being cuter than those little scouts without functioning noses or ears or eyes, for being able to tell which part of our tongues tasted the bitter in balsamic vinaigrette or which quarter had been stuck in the freezer or under the hot tap before we touched it. I could not tie my bunny ears or invert a teddy bear's skin to push in the stuffing, but I was, without a doubt, a card-carrying sentient being. <div><br /></div><div>So I took it seriously. I put my ear to the floorboards of the science room to hear the rattle of electrons inside their respective atoms, and I squinted, hard, into the off-blue center of the sun to feel that instant of fire before I glanced away, overcome by that moment when sight and touch fuse. And I remembered everything, years after I turned in my cookie sale sheets empty (sub-atomic sensation takes up your time). When I die, I will taste the blood in my mouth and thrill at the widening light over my retinas; when we kiss, I will hear your wisdom teeth descending into the velvet dark of your mouth; and I will smell it, that after-rain tinge that stains every molecule of air, after you've gone, or I've forgotten you.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photo by Dorthe Alstrup.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-44922524966546065822008-08-31T16:59:00.000-07:002008-08-31T17:43:16.310-07:00Inches.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivAnCkizifX-QZgYq1ny0fFh6HBl91AEgJA6V5T4HefEX9g8_5qq8i673ID-VQi1esjvmjqKD3z4FQ63RNTmJCbkyq3R-YA7KvtbnQ0Q1woWPKDum3dk7gL-EOKJ1rnDcxHDtLXjVzaFVA/s1600-h/trouble-in-mind.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivAnCkizifX-QZgYq1ny0fFh6HBl91AEgJA6V5T4HefEX9g8_5qq8i673ID-VQi1esjvmjqKD3z4FQ63RNTmJCbkyq3R-YA7KvtbnQ0Q1woWPKDum3dk7gL-EOKJ1rnDcxHDtLXjVzaFVA/s320/trouble-in-mind.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240846356886334738" /></a><br />I've always stayed a certain distance away from death. Literally, it's been measurable; a scar three centimeters above my retina where the corner of a coffee table would have blinded or likely lobotomized me, six inches of asphalt and broken glass between my bicycle and the hood of a BMW hell-bent on the highway on ramp. I have been millimeters from ugliness and countless hypothetical paralyses, from exploding pyrex on a reddening stove coil and dodgeballs directly to the skull. <div><br /></div><div>So when I say I know how far away you are, I'm not just measuring those obvious, map-green miles now. I'm thinking handspans across my bed in a pathetic, year-old memory, of steps across a room whose air you took with you when you left. I'm plotting the minefield that might just be everything you say or touch or send me, and I'm waiting for the shrapnel flash, or else an explosion of woefully avoided light. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">drawing by Mercedes Heinwein</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">[ps. sorry I have been so absent! working on longer things and helping little kids write their own things sorta took up all my energy for baby fictions. But I am back! Please forgive me!]</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-37138333938307970152008-07-24T18:37:00.000-07:002008-07-24T19:20:52.933-07:00Exquisite Corpse<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6dbyegR5U7p1lMi4O501uSi9Mdww5ALTk5gDZEmtJ4He0KIzljpDdBUzyx9770vzGPDKUzsYxw8N2SxdhqHnw3p_1TJQcu0Z8wB17L_D_raAgS6Wfkba4FGT-MWYwxpzgmCG2tNbjbO-A/s1600-h/phpThumb_generated_thumbnail.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6dbyegR5U7p1lMi4O501uSi9Mdww5ALTk5gDZEmtJ4He0KIzljpDdBUzyx9770vzGPDKUzsYxw8N2SxdhqHnw3p_1TJQcu0Z8wB17L_D_raAgS6Wfkba4FGT-MWYwxpzgmCG2tNbjbO-A/s320/phpThumb_generated_thumbnail.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226769867395387186" /></a><br />You don't know that you're in love with me until after the operation. Even then, it takes a while: coming around from the anesthesia, you alternate between calling me a gorilla-woman and a whore, but I know you don't mean it. It isn't until after that scallop-pink skin starts to stretch back over the wound and my kidney starts to settle into your guts that you start to realize it. <div><br /></div><div>So I ask you to do me a favor. You don't know that I'm holding the knife, but when I hear you say A<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">nything<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, </span></span>when I see the way you look at that severed finger, then at me, than back at that finger, I can tell you understand. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's your idea to bribe the doctor. It's your idea to trade all of our fingerprints next, then entire hands, until people double-take when they see the mismatched stalks of us growing from our shirt sleeves. By the end of the year, we're brushing each other's teeth in the bathroom mirror, glancing one another's eyelashes over our still-respective cheeks, touching one another in the dark and in the day and always, always. By the time we switch tongues, we don't care that we'll never taste again, that our mouths will probably never root these foreign muscles down and we'll never get to say each other's names. That first kiss is too exquisite to pronounce anyways. We'll carry notebooks or get Stephen Hawking machines, learn how Mimes say <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I love you.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photo by Roman Singer.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-62846387405247239612008-07-20T21:39:00.000-07:002008-07-20T21:56:38.002-07:00Rabbit Holes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhszwh5RoYsXXCwh-28FuqJGWBZixa_EyywbsYlWWbQgWieE_V9zNY8FEv2Kvs91rQ3It6qAEPSSxuJkuMqCpUZMdtPgSwCtcVvJMmtYT-VORqJjtOY9KBnW-VPxH6sa5m_sfcNmJqUgWYU/s1600-h/koons03a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhszwh5RoYsXXCwh-28FuqJGWBZixa_EyywbsYlWWbQgWieE_V9zNY8FEv2Kvs91rQ3It6qAEPSSxuJkuMqCpUZMdtPgSwCtcVvJMmtYT-VORqJjtOY9KBnW-VPxH6sa5m_sfcNmJqUgWYU/s320/koons03a.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225325278839740546" /></a><br /><div>The thing is, when I miss you, the walls bend. I'd say it's an acid flashback, and I'd probably be right--at least, you're stirring the same soupy, primordial part of me, dislodging the same sentences from billboards and broadcasting the same shadow behind everything. It's not constant, and it's not even really all that bad. I've had some good times that way, willing the stucco on the ceiling to grow a hundred humming faces, hallucinating your dumb accent over the subway announcer's neutral vowels. But there is a time and a place for this shit. There are three particular songs, and the cold side of the bed, but otherwise, I'm sealing up the rabbit holes, giving up this seventh-grade style recreational longing: drinking, yes, and probably a lot. <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Jeff Koons made a giant puppy out of flowers and I think that is okay.</span><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-90141087152561663352008-07-18T20:52:00.000-07:002008-07-20T21:55:41.010-07:00The Church of<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRnKhf_wLVT21xsHz84FTklIm0dyXpBoi1rZ9ili9s3YwmuljjalL_z5hh214JhEa06FvLjFk8uKL86kN30Lc9ofzgTi23kDVlgWyULx-mtPYF8bIwjYT1Xw40mnddCvVeGMjNUDT91kw/s1600-h/photo09.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRnKhf_wLVT21xsHz84FTklIm0dyXpBoi1rZ9ili9s3YwmuljjalL_z5hh214JhEa06FvLjFk8uKL86kN30Lc9ofzgTi23kDVlgWyULx-mtPYF8bIwjYT1Xw40mnddCvVeGMjNUDT91kw/s320/photo09.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224576769892671858" /></a><br /><div>I've never been much on religion. But there's this tribe in Africa whose ritual masks I saw in an art museum once, and I guess once a day they sacrifice a jaguar just so they can absorb its psychic death energies--that is really what the museum plaque said, by the way, "psychic death energies." Isn't that great? </div><div><br /></div><div>But where was I going with this. Jaguar sacrifice. I mean, I think there's something to that--not the animal cruelty part, really, or even the sacrifice part, but that reverence for death. The last time I watched a starving man play saxophone for change on the street, I kind of coughed in his general direction and hoped he would translate it into what I meant: I am sorry, I would tell you I had no money if you had asked, but really I do and I'm saving it to take this girl out. I saw my dog die once, too, and I'm still guilty about how little inner turmoil I felt over it. He just sort of yawned, but with his whole body, and eventually his soul just crawled out with the breath and that was that. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm starting my worship tomorrow, in this church of Anonymous-African-Tribe. When I wake up, I'll go straight to the mirror and try to see it: the absent stab wounds and eventual IV scars, nostrils, mouths. I want to think on where my soul will escape, to plot out the places where I will pour out of myself. I want to be teeming with something, and if I'm not, I want to damn well know it. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photo is Denis Darzacq again, surprise!</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-69087106525698035692008-07-13T18:07:00.000-07:002008-09-11T12:58:46.881-07:00#4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoiDt85X63EFnhqANts-9mMGmiaDto6hrB0y9ljbaJCGnbTHMr_hY_RtYpwoRyLMKXZTFgJVBHzNln2YVT2Y1-RYVOOOh1qTsh218dPDD11RRHRfcRi2R9zrWxk7o05qw0Ap7Ys9tm2VKk/s1600-h/298-947.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoiDt85X63EFnhqANts-9mMGmiaDto6hrB0y9ljbaJCGnbTHMr_hY_RtYpwoRyLMKXZTFgJVBHzNln2YVT2Y1-RYVOOOh1qTsh218dPDD11RRHRfcRi2R9zrWxk7o05qw0Ap7Ys9tm2VKk/s320/298-947.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222681491977508882" /></a><br />I saw my apartment in an action movie the other day, right behind a half-naked anorexic assassin and her unwitting protege. And I kind of liked that--the unwitting protege used my ATM, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">he stooped to tie his shoe on my stoop</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">!</span>--so I started crashing movie sets and impersonating a set dresser. So far, Angelina Jolie has simulated intercourse with Antonio Banderas on my 500-thread-count sheets, at least one of the Olsen Twins has blown-dry their hair with my blow dryer and when Haley Joel Osment found the water-logged photo album that revealed his true paternity in that stump in that one movie, the photo on the second to last page was--wait for it--my sister's fuckin' third birthday party. BAM.<div><br /></div><div>I mean, I've never really had any designs on fame, and I'm about 90% sure that the ozone layer will implode sooner rather that later and fuck whatever half-sentence I've got in the annals of human history. But Mary Kate and Haley Joel and all of them, they're gonna go too, and who do you think the Martians that harvest our half-incinerated celluloid will give a shit about? The squawky little blond getting her throat torn out by a zombie front and center? Or the subliminal message in the dust cloud, the suicidal flying monkey's corpse hanging off the light rig in the background, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">my </span>toaster oven, bathrobe, and if I get ballsy, my naked blur, a flash so small that there must, there just <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">must </span>be a reason why universe remembered it?</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photo is Denis Darzacq, again</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-46107390522996988902008-06-29T19:01:00.000-07:002008-06-29T20:03:27.816-07:00Well, You Probably Saw This Coming.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcTEhAWzALju47GT62ZFl6UjBh1PJG10OBunaxiKMFDOcIn3cqamDnZbhVtCGpKyV3uyQh1YT9rVbnzSUixA8S0ZZzPx3ZDbNWznPT4nvQ5WwSfVoCFf3eSMmzH1xAIVN8ETKKs9xh-CIO/s1600-h/photo10.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcTEhAWzALju47GT62ZFl6UjBh1PJG10OBunaxiKMFDOcIn3cqamDnZbhVtCGpKyV3uyQh1YT9rVbnzSUixA8S0ZZzPx3ZDbNWznPT4nvQ5WwSfVoCFf3eSMmzH1xAIVN8ETKKs9xh-CIO/s320/photo10.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5217504622029223170" /></a><div><br /></div>Because it is this way anyway, I'm getting the name of everyone I've ever slept with tattooed on my person. If I get the money or get emotional, maybe I'll do full-color momento mori portraits of the ones that were at all important to me, smeared initials in discreet places of the ones that weren't. If things don't get too crowded (at least one person deserves the full length of my back, in neon or some kind of fantastic hologram tattoo technology that hasn't been invented yet), I'll throw in Patrick Whitlow from second grade, maybe that neighbor chick who let me basically molest her in that teepee one time and the cartoon lounge singer from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Who Framed Roger Rabbit </span>that confused me so utterly. I have a special section of myself designated for long, milk-carton descriptions of the people I've thought really hard about fucking but didn't: that-guy-who-played-the-bike-messenger-in-that-one-Italian-movie, man-on-the-bus-carrying-a-paper-bag-full-of-amazing-fruit.<div><br /></div><div>I know it's probably enough that I remember them as hard as I do. And yes, jerks, I'm aware that I am incapable of writing about anything but them, that they are the ensemble cast of those subconscious-scraping nightmares I wake up choking on so often and the riot of voices screaming into the loudening pipes that my bones become whenever I'm touched. I know that it's a weak metaphor, and that it's pretty twisted to begin with: my body as the altar that praises right back everyone who's stopped to worship at it. I mean, it's disgusting, really, but what am I supposed to do? My skin is the only part that no one expects to forget, to pull them all into some slow and perpetual undertow of shed and re-grown cells, to lose them forever.</div><div><br /></div><div>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photo is from Denis Darzacq's series </span>Hyper<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">, which is, like, stupidly cool and I will probably post most of if it here).</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-47931921894215629182008-06-25T19:32:00.000-07:002008-06-29T20:04:05.792-07:00Sherry Whose-Last-Name-At-Least-Used-To-Be-Wilson<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhA1Rz6jtcyHeMBgFFWg023Gfh_jtQ2VqqBQaoXGa20J0H6m3nGsAG3_JICAUmTJhOagTgGhvzDOEm_7ns6ZimUVcE-AYL0pMfFTMe3mPJaNETobH0N0O_OM38TXAZXcvCymOYRL7VRQx/s1600-h/181635308-L.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhA1Rz6jtcyHeMBgFFWg023Gfh_jtQ2VqqBQaoXGa20J0H6m3nGsAG3_JICAUmTJhOagTgGhvzDOEm_7ns6ZimUVcE-AYL0pMfFTMe3mPJaNETobH0N0O_OM38TXAZXcvCymOYRL7VRQx/s320/181635308-L.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216021818874673362" /></a><div><br /></div>I know this probably isn't the best use for a time machine. But I've read that one Bradbury story about a dude who steps on a butterfly in the Mesozoic era and fucks up the rest of the universe one too many times, so I'm just gonna do it. I'm going to Battle Creek, to 1983, and visit my sister's mother. <div><br /></div><div>I should note that she isn't <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">my </span>mother--and really, my sister isn't my sister, and our father is barely her father, so it's all kind of a shit storm. She's Sherry Whose-Last-Name-At-Least-Used-To-Be-Wilson, and she is the background of a christmas card or two and a gigantic head of Farah Fawcett hair and I don't know what else. When my atoms re-materialize on the steps of the Kellogg factory, she is a neon blue double wide, and the steel doorjamb that burns my fingerprints off when I grab on, the silhouette through the seafoam blinds that grows into an open door.</div><div><br /></div><div>And you know, I wasn't all that far off. Her teddy is as pink and as polyester as I'd pictured it, the hair as tremendous, and the Virgina Slim, is, indeed, one solid bar of burnt carbon. When she (somehow? miraculously?) manages to ash it into a Folgers can using only her mouth, I've decided to just fuck it; when she invites me in for pie, I will not tell her that her daughter will grow up to be a lesbian Chili's waitress, or that there will be a very regrettable picture of her in pleather on her ex-husband's mantle in Ohio for the rest of her life, or anything else she might want to be warned of. I know that if you breathe on a cockroach wrong in the past you're supposed to be responsible for Hitler winning the world war or whatever, but really, nothing changes. The trick is to be forgotten just as much as you were never remembered, to come and go and love nothing in between.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(Photo is by Gregory Colbert, again).</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-43673042889141071492008-06-23T21:16:00.000-07:002008-06-23T21:51:18.686-07:00So I Know We've Only Been Trapped In This Elevator For Ten Minutes Now.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-r9-v5NxWFROCbC8FQdEsE6KxLdCSNfYOqR90uOtqPqbk6qZCbUaqNazz7eyjBPujs5IwdkZ8LCaOcM-ZwBxfyncUigdG1EL-bIxmhdV6B1cOknR9AVud6b6YVbzDfsKdchfLW572ox9/s1600-h/24_stinaperssonwater02.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-r9-v5NxWFROCbC8FQdEsE6KxLdCSNfYOqR90uOtqPqbk6qZCbUaqNazz7eyjBPujs5IwdkZ8LCaOcM-ZwBxfyncUigdG1EL-bIxmhdV6B1cOknR9AVud6b6YVbzDfsKdchfLW572ox9/s320/24_stinaperssonwater02.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215304474375505842" /></a><div>But I really feel like it's been longer, long enough to really know you, you know? Long enough, at least, that I feel like I have things to tell you, that it's all right that we're standing close like this because we've done this all the time, for years.</div><div><br /></div><div>So did you know that there's an organism that can survive for ten years without water, and inside of a black hole, and in the blue part of a flame? Oh, and the other day I heard about this place in Niger called the vanishing coast--and when I say vanished, I mean vanished, as in the fog gets so deep that ocean liners run up on the shore at full speed and thousands of barefoot men with blow torches have to cut them up like watermelon.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, that was the wrong choice of words. How about this--in the thirties, this guy Tesla invented a peace ray that shot atomic clusters of tungsten so fast it could incinerate the Blue Angels in the middle of a dirty loop. Hey, hey, don't cry, I just--I just wanted to tell you things, things I thought you'd like to know.</div><div><br /></div>What else did you expect me to say, anyways? I know this isn't the best of circumstances, but there's no sense ruining your nails like that. Besides, the alarm is going to stop any minute now, and I knew as soon as we stopped moving that it would eventually, and that I only had 264 words, at most, to make you fall in love with me.<div><br /></div><div>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">painting is by stina perrson</span>)</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-29655503614247749302008-06-15T16:47:00.000-07:002008-06-15T21:00:13.866-07:00The City Inside<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZRBOXJqH7PrChqLOl49-PFkghIS_KWoDzoYZxqaYVE0y0zXb-puRp-6uJdrO7gCc3lB-Lq9zc6gZPlzfJKto2EDB6fHycuKopfiYdfGCOlG6kzVmDZekQykQ6hAJ0QaZzEwncGYCbnmk9/s1600-h/bloody-mary.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZRBOXJqH7PrChqLOl49-PFkghIS_KWoDzoYZxqaYVE0y0zXb-puRp-6uJdrO7gCc3lB-Lq9zc6gZPlzfJKto2EDB6fHycuKopfiYdfGCOlG6kzVmDZekQykQ6hAJ0QaZzEwncGYCbnmk9/s320/bloody-mary.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212266738690424610" /></a><div>I've been looking for a cure for my solipsism, mostly in Lincoln Park and early shows in the east loop. There really should be a therapist for this shit, at least someone to pummel me with a blunt object until I'm damn sure that they and that object are real. Instead, there is Chicago. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Its easier than I thought it would be. On the way back from the el stop, the carton of dropped eggs that spangled this morning's sidewalk has miraculously vanished; the bright asterix of fireworks over Wrigley Field appears despite me, the city an enormous footnote beneath it. Back home, I could will anything into being, provided I willed the wrong things. 15 below ice storms that freeze the electricity in the power lines. The airless silence in the basement, the braille the carpet leaves along my cheekbone as I lie there, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>And now, 600 miles later, there is this sudden world outside of me. There are buildings of insane proportions and mopeds and whole parks full of children whose faces and freckles I could not dream with twenty brains. There are fantastic chemical sunsets, and for all of it, I can't help but miss my mind control, or whatever organ in me can shape a reason for how ludicrous and delusional and lonely I am, the blueprint of this stupid city inside me. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-50331907472826370552008-06-11T05:21:00.000-07:002008-06-12T17:51:25.265-07:00Tact<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixgi030qEPR5xBl3IFUuvwav_vY_H-AmSrCY6VXxq58E2PPIdKCC7RvOxy2lfn01ZoiO2twjy-eDgVxIr0X7YZUQuf-xa287svjapTQ1prF9fWk-Ljk-oLJuVIBsw8JpCUgal2o14B5fHG/s1600-h/trentaineboz.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixgi030qEPR5xBl3IFUuvwav_vY_H-AmSrCY6VXxq58E2PPIdKCC7RvOxy2lfn01ZoiO2twjy-eDgVxIr0X7YZUQuf-xa287svjapTQ1prF9fWk-Ljk-oLJuVIBsw8JpCUgal2o14B5fHG/s320/trentaineboz.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211162189349124946" /></a><br />I usually give my change to the amputee at the Division L stop, but lately, I've been thinking about switching allegiances. It's not as easy as swapping presidential candidates or taking a new lover; there are things to be considered, options to be weighed. My amputee is north of 75, 80 years old, and has exactly one tooth, gold-plated, which earns me empathic glances from women in skirts. This other amputee, that's a whole other ball of wax.<div><br /></div><div>First: you wouldn't know she even was one if your sightline got bisected by a low fountain or a stooped newspaper vendor. From the waist up, she's Audrey Hepburn back from the dead, twenty years older but still as bird-boned and wide-eyed as ever. Really, it's other wordly. I can't imagine her in the homeless shelter, layering makeup along her jawline and neck while sixty men in salvation army pants bang down the bathroom door. Can't picture it, because she never really moves-- she just stares out with this perfect coil of smile painted on, a cup and a bouquet full of swiftly waning roses pointed out at us in specific, motionless angles. </div><div><br /></div><div>No one ever drops her change. So really, we need each other, more than the Division guy needs me, more than I have ever needed a woman in my life. Here is something I can picture: my hands on the ribbed leather of her wheelchair handles, pushing her out to crowded vein of that street, she watching no one, no one watching me.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(Painting is Stephane Tartaline.)</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-54190751407278982782008-06-05T20:08:00.000-07:002008-06-05T20:35:18.417-07:00#2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1i7vlav6vOY570THOyLnUH1ZYcoAfY_xHiUNVF-RzXWSEBCXAY_SnWqwe9ObkMM9ipymjEbGNqUmVnAimARuzZ1KAg79xs_72FyC_UKnyco2-POzRrtj3R43O_7NtPh6S-yJlZRud9iBm/s1600-h/26.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1i7vlav6vOY570THOyLnUH1ZYcoAfY_xHiUNVF-RzXWSEBCXAY_SnWqwe9ObkMM9ipymjEbGNqUmVnAimARuzZ1KAg79xs_72FyC_UKnyco2-POzRrtj3R43O_7NtPh6S-yJlZRud9iBm/s320/26.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208606421928701410" /></a><br />I've been thinking on bones, on the moving landforms of my teeth drifting in my mouth, the hole in the pillow exact as a fingerprint where I've bit. I'm thinking on each of my counted and recounted scars and the slow haul of cells that planted the six of them kiss-red on the pale of me. I am thinking because this is not what an animal would do: would not worry the loosed eyelashes and wish them away, willing the fabric of time to unfurl in three unknowable satin directions. This body will say one thing only--now, now--until I make it otherwise, until I scream into the inside of my own mouth that I am, and will, and have been screaming.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(drawing is by Sidney Pink)</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-70208541706864600712008-05-27T19:19:00.000-07:002008-05-27T19:45:03.018-07:00Dear Cleveland, Or Whom It May Concern.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiunG-qLFrO-R80Apqyzpo6bzVUDEFHC1L4oY_Aqxj6DLg8IrcqsITOxWRlSr42faOBAzgQgPBL4WmTJSAdHkxSqfQV2KL7jyHsd8Y2IJITEnbXiPSYp0ZmTDFMazySXfhcH4pdCPlahw1o/s1600-h/005fa8ac64f7243419d663b814553a205c746d1d_m.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiunG-qLFrO-R80Apqyzpo6bzVUDEFHC1L4oY_Aqxj6DLg8IrcqsITOxWRlSr42faOBAzgQgPBL4WmTJSAdHkxSqfQV2KL7jyHsd8Y2IJITEnbXiPSYp0ZmTDFMazySXfhcH4pdCPlahw1o/s320/005fa8ac64f7243419d663b814553a205c746d1d_m.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5205254138622715682" /></a><br />I'm furious with Ohio, furious the way you are with a child who's left the freezer open all night or with a politician who's turned some incalculably magical and vital and bunny-populated forest into a Giant Eagle or a Ross. I'm livid that every stranger in the grocery store has been transformed into a Diane Arbus photograph subject, everyone just an arrangement of congenital birth defects hauling shopping carts of store-brand mariana; I'm angry, too, at the ghosts of beautiful men on bicycles, these perfect husbands that dog my periphery until their mermaid-tattooed counterparts rear up and replace them. I want to burn down the Church, and That One Bar in Westlake Where I Saw Red Krayola Once, and every other basement where I nodded and heel-stomped my way through my gorgeous, gorgeous youth. It is her fault that I have no syntax diversity, her fault that I romanticize the dismantled roller coasters on 43 and certain unfortunate brands of beer and, you know, that guy and that guy and that other, even more unfortunate guy. And I will keep doing this, keep writing these verby, accusatory sentences and dreading the space between nightmare and waking when I think of her, forever awkward and broke and disappearing her, until I am sure that she was just a trick of the sub-cortex, that she was never that great or never there to start.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">painting by alex cherry.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-30940245515713969132008-05-20T18:39:00.000-07:002008-05-20T20:35:00.447-07:00What I Did With My Summer Vacation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjCs20qst-TEHYZOv4t93Zz0HnjofFDRIjAPhXS_UaceH-KOGsCZCrF5xYAvQpknouDckq0q4d7-xKqPPO_RQMo6OImtJN1poVdupC1l2ZWlzxiOR8OWeDfAHVErKJf6cd6rKryJ1xqeMS/s1600-h/fullTheHillsAreAlive.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjCs20qst-TEHYZOv4t93Zz0HnjofFDRIjAPhXS_UaceH-KOGsCZCrF5xYAvQpknouDckq0q4d7-xKqPPO_RQMo6OImtJN1poVdupC1l2ZWlzxiOR8OWeDfAHVErKJf6cd6rKryJ1xqeMS/s320/fullTheHillsAreAlive.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202649980798626434" /></a><div>So I've been practicing being dead. Mostly, I do it during my shifts at McDonalds, when the people in the drive-through have started to blend into one continuous smear of salmon-colored midwesterner. I scrape grease off the underside of the fry vat, and I turn off all my thoughts like I'm initiating the landing sequence for a goddamned 747, one brain-zone at a time. I do it, too, when my mother's commandeered the TV to watch that show with the ballroom dancers--you know, the one where the women are pretty much naked besides a couple sequins and those weird Lolita wigs with all the perfectly cylindrical curls. That One Chilean Fighter Pilot's mystic-tanned abs are my gleaming, undulating tunnel of light; I am in a huge, scrumptious oblivion as the clock hand whirls through their time slot, in my own, separate 0-4 time as their drum machine sends them foxtrotting into hell. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm pretty much over spiritual revelations, which I've had about once a week since I turned fourteen. I'm done with LSD, and movies with less than six explosions per hour, and opera and ashrams and all that shit. I need to rehearse for nothingness, for my soul's eventual implosion. I've gotten too good at being myself. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">painting is by lawrence yang.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-57336909973373552252008-05-20T18:25:00.001-07:002008-05-20T18:38:04.503-07:00Whoa news! Not a story! Sorry!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaeOj-wzAb4Tij6eeRA7MZ2TS4cm0cjogO2rGlLefAScZ8O1rdm80_jZwjW1tkDic-37v6FBScWhbezQzKRVDxwMUG53T4NbbAJ8Dru9dzCy7jwofL5RVdEaaE1oJXqBSqWGARaIKQioi/s1600-h/yay.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaeOj-wzAb4Tij6eeRA7MZ2TS4cm0cjogO2rGlLefAScZ8O1rdm80_jZwjW1tkDic-37v6FBScWhbezQzKRVDxwMUG53T4NbbAJ8Dru9dzCy7jwofL5RVdEaaE1oJXqBSqWGARaIKQioi/s320/yay.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202638878308166258" /></a><div><br /></div><br /><div>So a bunch of these shorts that I vaguely assimilated into a short story thing got picked as a finalist in Diagram Magazine's Innovative Fiction Contest, judged by Kelly Link (who has a killer website with a dinosaur, and who I know very little else about), which might get me, like, you know, money and stuff. And I am definitely gonna be published in their next issue (e-issue?) and will get some shorts with the following monogrammed (deliciously) on the ass:</div><div><br /></div><div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtUv5fMobCzT6oMBVPehg1y_nSA40J2i87wudYqWDGtXY4aquGU4LX0c0jcOetnx_4ztooqDEbGCkCN_XtCkLTDZjRV-VwXTi9e1Gbte255Zv7kdUHW31f4JP290NKWzSfaohIg_tDPTVL/s320/poetryshorts-logo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202636997112490594" /></div><div><br /></div><div>I submit to literally one contest a year if I feel like it, and this was my contest this year, so I'm pretty much totally amped on myself right now and my amazing writing contest batting record. Also, "How I'll Meet My Wife" is going to be on sixsentences.blogspot.com on may 30th, which gets me no money or shorts, but will hopefully garner me some measure of eternal fame. Also, it's a swell blog that I read often, and I thought I'd share. </div><div><br /></div><div>Onwards to non-self promoting/self congratulatory story time!</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-1774274291323885822008-05-19T12:20:00.000-07:002008-05-19T15:15:26.407-07:00Reggie.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh49k0K96yGOGJZcjXdgivqFzVGVI-uGrbZ4YiI7-J5yxKA1tIW_ZaqeEykOstC9ezzA5Sbej1EcwbwhKWFmaiqYcfz1Bw7BZCioTTzA12nznzljZp53KPnN7VJD8IaL0Y67P9FlO8uGCzD/s1600-h/sun_5_4_08-thumb-400x533.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh49k0K96yGOGJZcjXdgivqFzVGVI-uGrbZ4YiI7-J5yxKA1tIW_ZaqeEykOstC9ezzA5Sbej1EcwbwhKWFmaiqYcfz1Bw7BZCioTTzA12nznzljZp53KPnN7VJD8IaL0Y67P9FlO8uGCzD/s320/sun_5_4_08-thumb-400x533.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202179986822392402" /></a><br />Since I've seen him last, they have removed all of his teeth. It was stomach cancer, so you'd think this kind of thing wouldn't happen--couldn't they just aim the cancer ray gun a little lower?--but it did, the radiation rippled through the reflecting pool of his body and turned him jackolantern. <div><br /></div><div>I am young, and colossally dumb, and I have done things like sat in church and prayed for a terminal disease: something to brighten the colors, coax out some gleaming eternal truth. I had wanted something to place a foot in front of the model train of my tiny, coursing life; I had not seen his breathless saxophone, or the cup that holds his new teeth, swimming carbon and bone. I do not know pain, know only slightly the feel of my tongue shifting in a mouth that is not my own, this jaw a bowl full of nothing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">drawing by Emily Jo Cureton.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-9517405465003900152008-05-11T18:39:00.000-07:002008-05-11T19:10:03.042-07:00A Humble Suggestion.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicixgzOM2ObBV0vK6g-G0e73llgFO4aqVQN3OjG4-npRKr-py3NV9PN2VVx_tmMHFgyiRh33dlv8Ab4OArunm98qhylaFHZV4bKmYfpyTpZ0xynpH6MRl-7BXWAJKIpxtTOly4v04gVqw3/s1600-h/2007_1203Porto0095.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicixgzOM2ObBV0vK6g-G0e73llgFO4aqVQN3OjG4-npRKr-py3NV9PN2VVx_tmMHFgyiRh33dlv8Ab4OArunm98qhylaFHZV4bKmYfpyTpZ0xynpH6MRl-7BXWAJKIpxtTOly4v04gVqw3/s320/2007_1203Porto0095.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199307561626314130" /></a><br />Let's play that game where we pretend it's the end of the universe. First, we'll be astronauts--I mean, this is the prototype apocalypse, no one's going for the Pulitzer here--and we have to slam our impossibly clean, white, American rocket into the heart of some amazingly badass ice comet that's hurtling directly towards the President's face. When the science of that seems shaky, we'll just go whole hog and invent an evil genius or two, place said evil genius(es) in an evil mountaintop lair and grab our nuclear harpoon guns for our race across the nation to stop him (her, them). We'll be super-computer-wielding underdogs who manage to quash the second (first?) coming of Y2k through the goddamned internet--don't worry, there will a completely inexplicable 3-D hologram fight scene in the middle, and it will be totally epic. We'll gas zombies, and stop missiles with telepathy alone, and unzip the double helix of a race of murderous super-evolved man-monsters (it will involve lasers). We'll save the world from an airborne AIDS strand, and be fed grapes and fantastic drugs by acres (I mean ACRES) of naked French women for our trouble. Or else, we will sit on my living room floor and hold hands; or in reality, I will sit here on this floor alone and dream all this, because what else is there to do when you are not in love? <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">photo is by Dennis Darzacq</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-8055686516586598352008-05-04T01:51:00.000-07:002008-05-04T02:10:18.907-07:00Sleep.The thing is, we only slept. We didn't fuck or talk or prophesy any future fucking or talking: we turned the music off and yanked the lamp cord down and lay, our bodies two commas curled next to eachother against my sheets.<br /><br />A typographical error, and I knew it: I could hear the whispers outside my room, all the air exiting the hall in one long swallow when I closed the door. And you know, I'm not that anxious to correct them. I will let the world think we are in love, that there is something alive and moving and happening in here. I won't let them see it: the accident of my body, next to and under and spilled around his body, like something shot us dead here in our tracks and we fell into these shapes, shapes wheere we might belong exactly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-82770853610748898492008-04-28T19:29:00.000-07:002008-04-28T20:24:34.158-07:00On Starving<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpuyFBkoCmIgKzQ7apHvSUnpHII_0vZpZmqxxBZPkW83ls-rEOYHUuL2rEtBEcO6lvIA0x6F9wvWZjs-uVjEXQdgyy29BerX_bZVCJWf7CnIDWEJNODvw3qc-cwKTnKhd9qdrwpwnbo7d/s1600-h/jellyfish2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpuyFBkoCmIgKzQ7apHvSUnpHII_0vZpZmqxxBZPkW83ls-rEOYHUuL2rEtBEcO6lvIA0x6F9wvWZjs-uVjEXQdgyy29BerX_bZVCJWf7CnIDWEJNODvw3qc-cwKTnKhd9qdrwpwnbo7d/s320/jellyfish2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194502840221734546" border="0" /></a><br />Like I've hung a stuck halo around everything: the edges of me shimmering into the bedspread, the shard of lawn under the window blind turned to one fantastic green smile. It isn't just that. It's what the sea's become, the smell so sharp in my lungs I'd swear it had a body, and hands, and all the air in me clutched in them. It's the house burning down the street and the alarms searing the air, a sound that is in me now, or a scar of it.<br /><br />I wish there were a way to say it that isn't in terms of God, but there isn't. Each day is a resurrection now: waking, I drift this thought of you across my empty room, a seeking quartz summoning the world back. I wake up hungry, but I am sure that there's a gill in me somewhere that will feed me on all this, if I let it only stream in like water.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-9118107055528121452008-04-25T04:16:00.001-07:002008-04-25T04:56:08.500-07:00Minotaur.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgx6liqwD53dN3zkvV7hKXB91LNeGeH2a5YytErVn32KOc6SZUUQGo3SRn-P0BVhS0dxVW3oyCweuZuIXjMkF_XETQTFnwVdvNBokL_48NJkAe5Bb8Kbg7SX4TGeoAfAMJgI-L9p4ieSYE/s1600-h/minotaur2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgx6liqwD53dN3zkvV7hKXB91LNeGeH2a5YytErVn32KOc6SZUUQGo3SRn-P0BVhS0dxVW3oyCweuZuIXjMkF_XETQTFnwVdvNBokL_48NJkAe5Bb8Kbg7SX4TGeoAfAMJgI-L9p4ieSYE/s320/minotaur2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193148856076637826" border="0" /></a><br />Last year for Halloween, you went as the minotaur. You pulled your Bulls cap low over your eyes and went to drink blood and sands alone in the basement, the ceiling pipes a web of loud heat above you. I stood at the top of the stairs in my Catherine the Great costume; I'd gotten lazy, and glued a stuffed horse to the crotch of my prom dress, thrown a sack of flour over my hair.<br /><br />Needless to say, it didn't seem that funny anymore; not the pocket full of My-Little-Ponies with Barbie heads wedged on that I'd shoved into my purse, not this smear of you which somehow had a voice which somehow yelled up that you weren't coming to the party. I could have thrown the thread of my own voice down to find you, but I knew I'd be mixing metaphors, or at the very least giving you too much. I have given you everything I am already: a silhouette framed in hall light, a gap of shadow that loves you completely. And you have everything you need down there: those stairs, that bull's heart, everything you need to climb up here and fill me in.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Drawing is Gustave Dore's from the Inferno plates.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-41690384487630630172008-04-23T20:36:00.000-07:002008-04-23T21:11:56.453-07:00Intervention.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFR2jmYaDxSPCnTkY7-uKwFfo8FRY-NZ2dMWinRMaeAwulE-_9RJVX3ZI_waylOGfvAB7MQllaNeyPsHjva0Iyf6okTQCKYM4sWsKTESJvCGSkhYKz-dLRSRz5J5ATSoT2baszWojL7niW/s1600-h/SamTaylorWood425.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFR2jmYaDxSPCnTkY7-uKwFfo8FRY-NZ2dMWinRMaeAwulE-_9RJVX3ZI_waylOGfvAB7MQllaNeyPsHjva0Iyf6okTQCKYM4sWsKTESJvCGSkhYKz-dLRSRz5J5ATSoT2baszWojL7niW/s320/SamTaylorWood425.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192659375833781874" border="0" /></a><br />When you are twenty two everyone you know will finally stop shitting you: they will admit that they are all mind readers, and your whole life has been planned out in secret meetings, a record of your innermost thoughts tacked to the wall of their lair like an illuminated map of bombing targets. It sounds sinister at first, but they remind you that they all went through it too--the awkward intervention ceremony with the floury store-bought cake, all the shame when they found out that their parents knew what they did during all those hours alone in the basement.<br /><br />They went through it, and now, that doctor administering the anesthesia, he'll help you be like them. You know that girl, Amy? Listen to her tomorrow night, while you lean against the drum of her stomach and pretend you're dreaming. The first time's tough, so listen hard. The words she whispers into your hair, her fingertips' soft calligraphy: they are not a language you can speak anymore. If you pay attention, her thoughts will be a split fortune cookie in the palm of your mind. She will give you permission to do it, to break her heart.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo is by Sam Taylor Wood.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789242871172456870.post-27539676305956160182008-04-20T05:22:00.000-07:002008-04-20T05:48:55.234-07:00Effigy.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-u7HZq0q9hylrYcun-cPUpvKEbkSf3yt1Dab_55dTazSTuc2xARdSMyZWxS_8f3h3N8_wkEhReHRqc3g1-jvtmEHdAfq6jf7Jg9oj-BOivluHAiWLUps3AOKw8c_e6RcAuxnoxNpZD-wf/s1600-h/colbert04_lrg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-u7HZq0q9hylrYcun-cPUpvKEbkSf3yt1Dab_55dTazSTuc2xARdSMyZWxS_8f3h3N8_wkEhReHRqc3g1-jvtmEHdAfq6jf7Jg9oj-BOivluHAiWLUps3AOKw8c_e6RcAuxnoxNpZD-wf/s320/colbert04_lrg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191308305802583938" border="0" /></a> There is a picture I keep of you over the door and in my head too, where your hand is the shadow of an overhead bird falling over your eyes, your eyes tense with a pain that made your nerves fray and spark like wires, a pain I watched you in, that you called out of to say <span style="font-style: italic;">Don't touch me, touching hurts</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">right now</span>. There is also an empty shirt over the door knob and a book which contains the sentence <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.<br /> </span><br />--but mostly, there is this picture, and the gloss over it which attracts the sun, and the sun which comes through the window at dawn and erases you daily. At least, it erases this picture, this unburned effigy of you, which is you to me, at least.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">photo is gregory colbert</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0