i'd Recognize You Anywhere

michael, Michael

hound — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:44:44 +0000

Raised by a palms-inward woman orphaned to the Catholic Church, he smiles, some teeth are missing their neighbors, look like they’re looking for a fight. He never speaks of what he doesn’t know, and you gather from black fingers and stare that he knows it all, lacks the filter that would tell him he doesn’t. He talks about “20 people in a room this small,” points at the living room.

“We went to a coffee shop the 20 of us and they were making coffee with candles– of course we showed up, ordered 20 cups of coffee, the guy had just made it– everyone behind us was screwed. We stopped an Entenmann’s truck in the road, bought food right off the truck, because everything was closed, you couldn’t get it anywhere else.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is New York, there’s no way to divert power. It was a Blackout. Electric trains– was no way to get out. It was summer, it was getting hot, you could hear the looting outside, Beatle Mania, nineteen seventy eight. I saw Van Halen third row center, the band was right there, 12 dollars. Kiss, with lazer eyes, if he was looking at you, you knew he was looking at you, real slow, like a robot.”

waiting For Human Services

hound — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:13:14 +0000

Today is the day to wait, to sit behind baseball-capped Polish gentlemen whispering to each other, too-close woman with her walker saying “Thank you I appreciate it” when allowed to lean on the wall and not lose her place in line, man called Ronald with head up for his medical card Mnmming at the time. Merge, able through traffic, sidestepping window washer’s puddles, by cop who says to a group on the sidewalk: “All you’re doing now is blocking traffic.”

Think, this place could be so beautiful.

joke By Campfire

hound — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:41:03 +0000

“Joe, you drunk again?”

“What? No, I’m tryin’ to lock my door.”

Cop says, “You been tryin’ to lock it for a half hour.”

“Oh?”

“–An’ you can’t lock it with a cigar.”

“Oh, there’s my cigar, I must’ve smoked my keys.”

radio Tuesday

hound — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:42:27 +0000

We sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table and listening to the radio which spoke: “It’s not so out of the ordinary for a mainstream film to win awards, I mean, some cities don’t even show other-than-mainstream movies, so people aren’t exposed,” to which A replied into her paper: “Why don’t they pick up a paper?”

summer By a Different Name

hound — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:07:43 +0000

2004-2005

S, counts on her fingers, counts off the boys she’s slept with, more than her 16 or 17 year age, counts including, or maybe not including those who forced her into that bathroom at 14– three.

The taste and the cigarettes, the cold basement– she sits on unused elliptical machine with dirty fuzzy slippers, hole-eaten sweatpants, and says, “They diagnose me…They find more to diagnose every time I talk–” Post traumatic…impulsive behavior…manipulative…bipolar…too trusting, too full of faith, forgiving, addictive personality. “I act like I’m okay when I get sick of the Institute’s food, I smile in group therapy, and after a few days they let me out.”

2009

Wake confused, in dress, sweaty, makeup rubbed, drunk head and bowels, Ju on the floor with chocolate syrup bottle, puddle on the carpet, licking from sticking her fingers in it, mess on her dress from the night before, light blue with poof and department store ribbons. No toilet paper in the bathroom, in fact not much of anything but a stepped-on towel, week old mess of microwaved dinner in the kitchen sink, red cups over turned on the card table, unfinished drinks scatter coffee table, left over guest fishes for Newports, head all drowsy. S wipes Ju’s face, chases her around in diaper, tries to clothe her.

don’t You Just Feel Brokenhearted

hound — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:45:38 +0000

The night we intervened, A and I stopped at the cafe for dinner. She went to the bathroom for 15 minutes, shot up, came back and said, “I’m really going to miss getting high.” I was prepared for the fight. In the truck she said, “I did something really bad, but I don’t want to tell you.” She did anyway, and that was that when she’d gone to the bathroom she’d washed her hands before getting her hit ready, and had hastily shot the soap suds left in the sink into her arm. “That’s really bad, isn’t it?” she said, and for once there was something genuine all over her face.

We went to the movie theater, left because the tickets were too much, went for her Suboxone and chocolate, went to Chief’s, T, taking a break from driving us, called home and had someone throw away her tinnies, she threatened to walk into the west side with dope-skin disregard and baring teeth, at home she said she was a prisoner, cried, pounded, spewed dope-skin words into us, bargaining with us and separating us by cutting us down. A calm came over her when, having exhausted all manipulations– she sat beside me grabbing onto her pleading and blubbering idiot phrases– she realized how loose the trap on her was, how not writhing and spewing and thrashing her fists would better help her get what she was craving for. She went 3 days into withdrawal beating on her aching legs, us not knowing when in between or at the start or locked up in her room if she was taking hits, slipping. At the end of the tentative and roughly calculated few days, she came home from work with boxes of pastries and dope-washed over face, all okay, lounging around us satisfactorily unaware that anyone was in the room with her, that we didn’t have to look close to know, unaware of our swift heartbroken reaction, of the place we went to and stayed– ripped through, rattled, optimism drained.

springfield

hound — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:27:22 +0000

The strangest moments convene in Springfield.

Red and blue seated room smells like urine, fish fry fast food from a woman talking loudly on her phone in an immature cattle. A fat child talks to her mother about the blood that comes out of girls’ ears when they get the sickness, old people, crying babies, people who ask too many favors, say, There should be someone to carry our bags, My disabled mother needs a lot of time and help getting to the train. One family walks up to information and asks if they can preview the inside of the train cars before they book travel in June. They approach an older couple and ask if they are taking the Zephyr to California, if they know what the scenery is like, if there’s a glare. They walk around the station for a minute, and then holding hands the five of them walk out. A boy with his bags and skateboard goes out to the platform, smokes, spits, a woman asks Can I watch her bags, the room fills up with oddities, all talking, all asking many questions when they would be fine to keep to themselves. A woman in fur says she remembers when they forgot to put the train on the tracks.

On the train:

Lovely woman to my right, doesn’t speak English and smiles big when she wants to get past me, two idiot savants to my left, discussing geography and logistics of passengers and baggage, keep looking at me both at once and quiet while they do and I pretend not to notice, hang their limbs all in the aisles, even when someone is passing and has to squirm to get through.

it Is My Aim As a Writer To Never Write a Love Story

hound — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:02:42 +0000

A few years ago a good friend, E, became engaged in a verbal love affair, an event that was something like sharing eyes with someone, who, across the crowded room is standing beside their beautiful spouse. When the relationship became known, she edited their series of exchanges into a one-sided armistice, a pared-down collection of beautiful dialogues, and published it. It served also as a purgative release, yet these by all means heartfelt exchanges of No one will know us but us, were still– by all means– precious holdings, so that in the annals of she and he, the word love seemed a justifier to how they had wronged the world.

And E, a Missourian redhead, fierce and judiciously tongued, whose reputation afterward left her standing alone in the room, who knew the easy come and go of infatuation more than anyone, became by no means less of a romantic. “I dwell,” she told me. “If I didn’t dwell, I wouldn’t be able to write.”

if I Were To Start Listing-

hound — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:28:35 +0000

If I were to start listing, it would look something like this:

Talk radio all day, scattered PBR cans and their respective fruit flies, the book on the philosophy of time, the sounds in others’ bedrooms that travel down the hall, the bowl of sugared strawberries, the months and months’ disappearance, the prescription crushed to powder, the patched pants, the wide open eyes, the wide open pupils, the quiet boy on the floor with head propped, the marathon runners, the brand new white bike, the bobby pins in the bathroom soap dish, the cops with flash lights up the stairs and in the bushes, Thursday’s Reader crossword, the wall of VHS cassettes, cigarettes rolled too skinny or not cylindrically shaped, the all new music, the mold in the shower, the three-legged commute and the long wait, the vomit staining the toilet bowl, the tall socks, A who says she likes when I list.

china – Hartford

hound — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:57:36 +0000

I fell asleep in the chair at Alice’s funeral, jetlagged and also hiding from my father’s family. I saw Russia on the airplane’s simple television map, and opened the shade on my window to see ice and a sunset. I saw Cathie cry and hugged her. I saw mold deface my passport photo, and the fat customs officer try to decipher it. I saw an Elvis pin go into the ground with Alice, at her headstone-less plot. I hugged Russell, and got into his passenger seat. I smoked a joint with him on the roads between the reception and the house. I ate honey ham in Rose’s kitchen, and nuts and fruits from assorted glass bowls on the table, and later had chocolate mousse from the freezer, and Miller Lite all day. I touched Alice’s hand, and signed her guest book. I saw the sunset in Newark on the drive away from the airport. I stood on Rose’s patio and listened and took in the cigarette smoke and yard fire smoke. I told my sister about Alice, Russell told my sister about Alice, eight years ago, without oxygen tank. I waited for feuding Art to have his private service before the doors were opened to the rest of us.