September 2008
22 posts
beached whale
Garry lies on the beach. The seagulls are white winking eyes drifting up, up, and away. The tide is a warm pillow under his head, the sand a hot crinkled bath. He hears shouts and cries and sees the camera flashes burst like stars. Oh it’s good to be back.
law college
He stood on his chair, the desk, the world! His headphones played bold music—the soundtrack, perhaps, to the sunlight shimmering across the blackboard and the brunette watching him with secret rapture.
We don’t do this in law college, said the muted professor. We don’t do this in law college.
tears
The water from her eyes was unremarkable: salty, clear, slightly sticky. They drew white lines of skin into the makeup there, they faded into streamlets at the corners of her mouth, they made her eyes shine. I hate to say she was most beautiful when she cried but she was.
picnic
There was the obligatory red-and-white-checkered blanket, the wood-thatched basket brimming with fruit and sandwiches, the tiny silverware, the jars of jams, the stream of dark ants. She lay back and watched the passing clouds, looking for shapes and not finding any, waiting for a man to join her—somebody, anybody.
for a second there I thought you'd disappeared
Henry hadn’t seen her in years. How strange it was to look upon her now, leaning into a shopping cart, comparing jars of peanut butter. She’d colored her hair for him once; she’d worn such sandals for him once. He disappeared before he saw who she was living for now.
94¢ letter
“I love you,” it said, and many other things besides. Between folded yellow lines of light it flew and floated across four countries and landed, hopefully, in your transatlantic heart. The naysayers said it wouldn’t get past the alligators and snakes and robbers, but I am among the last hopeful.
fingerworks
She gave me Oreos, milk, and a listening ear. I gave her stories from my dark past. When the time came for me to run my fingers through her hair, I didn’t let the Oreo soot bother me, and I don’t think it bothered her. At least she’s brunette, anyway.
fame
Fame was his now. The television held his face, beaming to a cruel world of superficial smiles.The airwaves carried his voice, the earnest warblings of his heart, into static. He begged them to turn out the lights and leave him without himself, but his thoughts thundered on in the dark.
cocoa
Henry was stirring too-hot cocoa. He wished it cooler, and so he blew, the air from his lungs rushing into a stream of air from his mouth, rippling the thick brown surface. The wavelets increased the surface area and convection displaced the heat. Soon he would sip at cooler temperatures.
stripes
You, with your no-nonsense stripes, your hair pulled back, your little jewelry, your green eyes, your jelly-wearing French-tipped feet, your icy glances, your 7 jeans, yes you.
Me, Star Wars Forever t-shirt, buddy-holly-glasses-before-everyone-started-wearing-them, black chucks, Beetlejuice socks, Ryan Atwood wrist cuff, Nintendo Champion 1984 windbreaker, yes me.
You me?
the runner
We watched him outside our window in every kind of weather, at every time of day. At night his footfalls were walking shadows across my bedroom ceiling. At dawn, he was the morning haze, fading in and out of the fog on his early route. Always running, from and to.
barry's box
When it was finally over, Barry heard from a friend of hers that she had boxed up every trinket, photo, and love letter. He’d felt guilty for awhile about just burning everything, but Sylvia demurred. You let her free, she said.
But he knew that meant he was captive still.
spain
I didn’t forget about you. No you I did forget about. We don’t talk about you.
But you I did not forget. And when I saw the black and white pictures of you in Spain, I remembered you in that little blue jacket and my heart really started to hurt.
buildings
We put them on the sill in cups and watched them grow tall in the sun. Instead of green stems curling up from the dirt, it was gray pillars and fluorescent lights rising from the pavement. Even from afar, we saw delicate dew drops of people glistening on the leaves.
the new suit
Barry Singleton turned this way and that in the long mirror. From the shine on his shoes, buffed by the brushes of the poor for pennies, to the knot of his tie, tied by the attendants of Tremmel’s and Fifth’s, he was a new man. He ran to show Mother.
cheshire
She reached out to pet his fuchsia fur but he disappeared again.
Oh! she said.
Did I frighten you?
Oh no, she said. But where did you go?
I didn’t go, he said. You did.
And on the tree branch above her floated those long knives of ever-smiling teeth.
Oh!
the piñata
One unblinking eye peered out from the dumpster. He was broken in two, his sweet insides long picked clean by laughing children. From under the lid, his tail of bright streamers waved at no one in particular. He longed to hang in the sun again, under the old peach tree.
mary beth
When I went under her knife, the blades trimming away with professional ease, I wasn’t myself. But when her fingertips massaged my head in soft circular motions, and the towel came off, and I looked in the mirror, I saw who I really am.
Hairstylists can do that to you.
a new heart
Due to the wanderingly unstable nature of his heart, it had to be terminated. Somewhere across this great wide country of ours was a traveling Igloo cooler with a new heart quietly entombed. This red and purple lump of flesh would beat again, guaranteed, in 5 to 7 business days.
saturdays
Barry was jumping on the bed and trying to get his head between turns of the fan.
That’s crazy, said Mark, who was watching a Nickelodeon movie.
You’re crazy, said Barry, but he stopped jumping because he was embarrassed, probably. Are we watching SpongeBob SquarePants?
Yes we are! said Mark.
the bullet
I need you, he said. It was the emptiness of space.
It was coming to fill that need, to make a hole and fill it up again. They’d be friends forever. He would lie back in eternity, his mind clutching the cylinder of truth. He wouldn’t even leave a note.
redhead
My fortune said: there is a redhead in your future.
I immediately swept to the windows and watched for her there. She would have skinny legs and dusty freckles and a certain way. We’d break up just in time for the holidays, after her trip to the orphans of mexico.