Data Loading...
Untitled document (1) Flipbook PDF
Untitled document (1)
101 Views
49 Downloads
FLIP PDF 218.01KB
Boys On the bus, the boys pile in Ruddy skin and hairless calves, Drawstring bags slung across their backs They chew gum and talk about girls, sports call each other stupid, and laugh Not yet aware of what they look like, Not yet expected to look like anything in particular They are beautiful and annoying They sweat too much, leave the seats wet The weakest one in the group knows he’s the weakest one Holds close his bony elbows easily bruised The boys get jealous, dare each other to slap another Hard enough to leave a raised red handprint On the skin of his back, they laugh The one who got slapped calls it the best day of his life They clench their fists, white knuckled, cry alone, Kiss the backs of their hands Their minds crafting the hazy image of a girl in their class or a boy in their class that they try to forget Rub dirt into flesh, pick at scabs, Bite their cuticles raw, worry about being liked Snort and spit on the sidewalk, and think of their older brothers, Act like they know about getting laid They are unaware of their skinny legs They have bad handwriting, sometimes they stink Lick their fingers and stick them in another’s ear Take forbidden sips from a stolen can of beer Simple, yet un-understandable One yells penis in a public place They laugh An older woman gives them a look Laugh harder, say it again louder, Fists beating against their beating hearts like apes The boys walk home alone
from where the bus drops them Catching rain on hands Wiping it on pants Toeing shoes off at doors Dashing upstairs to a bedroom Just for fun on all fours Looking at pictures of beautiful cars Moms call them for dinner And they sit at tables with feet on the seats, Chins resting against knees When the time comes They’ll eat quickly, some will only eat chicken fingers and ketchup, Some will eat anything, And get fat or somehow never get fat But as the boys reach for the food Across the table moms glare, Their fingers intertwined in prayer So the boys who believe in God, Or the boys who no longer believe in god Move to hold their own hands Never breaking the posture Of knuckles bridged in line to pray Manly anger not yet taking shape
Incel Nightmare Righteous Anger Every night I am plagued by the same nightmare. I meet a beautiful woman that I can never remember the face of. She offers herself to me eagerly, but as I tear her clothes from her body, I am unable to stop. Past her blouse and brassiere is her soft flesh, open and accepting of my hands which dig into her skin, pulling it away with a gory rip. There, her insides open to me, vulnerable and red. Blood pours from her mouth and her eyes roll back in her head, her body goes limp. I wedge my hands between her two rib cages and pull them apart like the grand entrance of double doors. Her heart lays bare, pumping despite the intrusion. Its chambers seize and jerk in the rhythm of life, as if an invisible hand was squeezing it and releasing it like a water balloon. And just as I’m about to reach for it, to yank it from her open chest, I wake up.
In 1982, I sent a bomb, wrapped in an unassuming yellow paper wrapped package to the home of the head of the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, & Firearms. When he opened it, the explosion blew his right hand clean off. I have never told anyone this. I don’t hear voices, I have no god, no one told me to do this. In a recurring dream, I see him stagger toward me and for a moment I’m scared. But as he reaches out to grip my neck, the stubby stump of his arm pokes me in the throat, and I laugh. Then he reaches with his good, left hand into the waistband of his back and draws out a pistol. Just as he looks me in the eyes and pulls the trigger to pump one into my chest, I wake up.
Last weekend, I asked a woman from work on a date. She told me she had a boyfriend, but when I found her on Facebook later that night, her status said single. I messaged her telling her she should change it to “In A Relationship” so people wouldn’t get confused. She blocked me, so I can’t see her profile anymore. I was only trying to help.
In the white hot, blinding rage of my life in general, I break. First goes my shirt, then my belt, my shoes, socks, pants and underwear come next. I run through the streets screaming, naked, and yelling at God. The police tackle me, slam my head into the curb, my split lips bleed thick red drops on the pavement. The cops drag me up by the inner elbows, wrap a towel around my waist, and shove me in the back of their squad car. I scream and bang my head against the glass. When they point their guns at me and tell me to shut up, I feel nothing. I have gone somewhere far away inside. Inside me is me sitting under a tree in the countryside. He is long gone. I know something you don’t.
Join our cause. We are going to destroy the internet. In our van, we ride around America, cutting the electric lines. In wreaking havoc we achieve peace. Join our cause to commit electronic suicide. Look us in the eyes. Nothing’s been the same since Y2K. We’re going to cut all the electric lines in the country that feed information through the veins of this nation like heroin, making us euphoric until we’re sick and shitting ourselves.
I punched a hole through the wall. I punched a hole through the wall. I punched a hole through the wall. I punched myself in the head. I punched myself in the head. I punched myself in the head. I punched a hole through my head. I punched myself in the wall.
In this life of pushing rocks up hills, I take mine and smash it with my fists into one million pieces. Taking a sharp shard of debris in my hand, I stalk up the hill, feet bloodied. At the top of the hill, I face God, push my fractured stone through his heart. I’m God now. I make it rain.
American Painter In the year of our Lord, 1999, Jake works a kiosk selling cell phone plans At Circuit City’s Jantzen Beach location Polo tucked into khakis, 5 dollar commission In the summer of the backseat cooler Jake’s band plays another gig in Ojai Valley, California Dollar bills split into gas and cheap beer On the weekend of the Eagles’ Greatest Hits Jake gets another shitty job delivering Papa John’s pizza to highway strip clubs, to the Patron Saint of tribal tattoos and her apostles In the dog days of the Modelo Especial Jake paints desert landscapes and strip mall Parking lots, their black tar pavements hot And bleeding oil on canvas
I Wish You Were Here On the ridge of the boulevard I watch a dog nose-nudge the carcass of an opossum and I wish you were here. The white wine is good in winter--- or is it summer?--- I can't remember. I remember an ice cube and tennis practice, the surrealist paintings of Dalí. The extraterrestrial planet you now live on is a redundant statement. Goldfish in the planetarium. I wish you were here. Moonbeams dancing ballet; angels dream of outer space. Angels permeate the interstate. On the tail of a pickup truck at the end of the boulevard is a rusting steel cutout of a fish wiring around itself. It’s religious. Memory and fantasy merge into one scene. Dust picks up fingernails’ ancient tick-tack-a-rat-a-pat against desks at a library. We eat fried onions, a waiter throws bread at us in a fit of rage. I count cards for you in Las Vegas, Reno. I forget your name on Saturdays. Goldfish in the planetarium. No, no, the aquarium. Saturn’s moon orbits its own sun, does its own thing. The 77 bus screeches to a halt past the boulevard’s edge. The earth makes noise, but it’s not what you think. It’s harsh metal banging like a clock smashing against another clock and the glass faces breaking and the wire meshing and the steel hands violently holding. Wherever you are, I imagine that place. You carve my likeness into the side of a mountain, our own Mount Rushmore. The trampoline springs give way. The snare drum kicks off a new life at the mouth of a river. We gain and lose IQ points every day. Things get slow for a second, the world waits for me to catch up to you. On the border between Canada and Alaska, I call your name. Trailer parks pop up all over the place--- do you remember this?--in the United States circa 2008. The mom and dad are fighting in the kitchen, this sandbox is sinking, you’re off doing something I'm not old enough to know about yet, I’m sure of it then: things don’t make sense. You shouldn’t be able to understand most of this. In a lot of ways it’s about me, all this love for you has always been about me. I give you a look I practiced for mirrors in the hour, I mean hours in the mirror the day before. I apostatize and you atrophy.
Across from the boulevard and a little down the way, a woman sings at the bus stop, a long, guttural, melodic cry. No words, just noise. All this noise. I imagine us between each other, beside each other, and the woman a priest. I’m not loving you, but I’m thinking about loving you. The two opposite ends of the Great Wall of China meet somewhere in the middle, overlapping to become one another before breaking away again. When I was little I used to wish there was a fence in the ocean that hit the floor and kept all the sharks from getting close to the beach. Back in the days of the icebergs melting, we swam in hotel pools. Your legs get itchy, my lips turn blue. Every man I’ve ever loved has been some version of you. This country stretches forever, then loops back around. We rode through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, bluebonnet hills of Texas, blue Pacific Ocean of California where we ate seaweed off the shore. Oh mussels, oysters, seagulls eating dead things. Us eating dead things. It all comes pouring out, like sand spilling from the serrated sandbag makes the beach full again. I remember being nervous about your future, about an impending cocaine dependency that never amounted to anything. On the lake this summer, when the dog jumped in, we sat screaming and laughing, stashed Bacardi and lime wedges in half empty Coke cans. You were there then. I don’t even know who I’m talking to, I don’t even know where I’m going with this, only that it is coming to some kind of end and I have to say: the point of it all is brotherhood. Framed photographs snap in half. Sawdust enters and exits our bodies. I am begging for just a little bit more of a life that I've never had. In this life we ride horses, draw horses, play baseball in an abandoned field, you teach me how to swing, we crush bugs beneath our feet. In this life I am jealous of you instead of the other way around and the other way around and the other way around. In this life I am 22 and you are 22 too. We are God’s children, riding the carousel and learning to drink black coffee. I am praying for the frontier to return unoccupied. In this life I give everything back, decolonize, ship myself into the ground through the United States Postal Service. In this life the Superbowl doesn’t exist, the Superbowl commercials don’t exist, the Superbowl halftime show doesn’t exist, and for one day in February, once a year, there is only white noise
on the radio and black and white crackling static on the television and we all sit around a table, crying and avoiding eye contact. My earth has not been the same since you left it, and I’ve been thinking, like, sat up all night thinking, that we ought to turn things around. We’re going to love each other like yesterday is tomorrow, but today is weird— don’t you ever have those weird days?--- I could have listed everything wrong with my mother or your mother, or the apartment she used to live in, or the audiobooks she used to play. I could have done it, but right now on the boulevard is between the us that lives in my head. I try to imagine it being just you or just me and I can’t--- what is the water without the water bed?--- oh God, hang on, I’ve lost my train of thought, but I’ve got it back again. I wish you were here.
I want the fall to be fridge I want the fall to be fridge I want the world to be bread Nouns like anvils dropped on adjectives’ heads Some things just don’t make sense I want the fall to be beautiful My eyes roll back in my head I want the fall full of colorful leaves Soon the leaves will be dead I want the fall to be fridge Like the shock in a prayer when the F-word is said Dear God, you holy bastard Things just don’t make sense No, I want the fall to be fridge I don’t want things to make sense I want the world to be bread Consumed and made over again
Velvet When summer ends, the whitetail deer shed their velveted antlers in a gory mess. Licking the blood from their chops and gnawing on the unnerved flesh, they trot about trailing red. The end of summer means whitetail bucks tangling in the thrash of tree branches to rub the vascular tissues of their newly hardened antlers. Dead-eyed, they eat themselves, the blood saved back into their system. Soft to the touch, the velvet is torn apart against trees, not for the dressing but for the undressing. Blood drips between whitetail eyeballs like tears and the raw antlers, white and plain glisten in the damp of having just been unsealed. In spring the antlers grow their velvet again. Veined and heavy it clings to the antlers, soft and weighted, until the bucks feel it harden in their heads. The end of summer is near again, and the deer scratch the velvet clean off the antlers, the blood running in droplets on the ground beside the trees. The deer sip their blood and chew the velvet through and through; bite into newness. The blood drips red and winter is coming.
HORNS Parker Bell
You should also include a cover letter addressed to me that discusses the following: your process as a writer this semester: generating ideas, using the notebook, drafting, revision, workshopping your texts, responding to others, the reading of poetry and fiction and hearing professional writers. What was useful to you? How did it shape what you did on the page? How would you describe your understanding of yourself as a writer now? Will you continue to write creatively? What surprised you in your writing? What still feels out of reach and how do you propose to arrive at your writing goals in future? Also discuss your response to the readings—poetry and fiction. What did you learn about style, topic, voice, image, organization, from these writers?