Literary Libations

Burn After Reading...

2012-01-23T14:32:00.002-07:00

I’ve come to learn that I’m not the only traveler here. There are others, creating worlds and then abandoning them, like single serving coffee creamers spent and discarded along the synaptic highways of our imagination. They’ve been here the whole time, but it’s only now that I’ve begun to notice them. The white tiger. The masked children. The elevator attendant. I suppose I thought of them as figments rather than players. Non sequiturs of my own creation, like the projections of people from your life in your dreams. But I’m not dreaming. Although these places share something of that landscape, they are independent of one another. How Mein Kampf and the Bible are both books.

The idea of a populace independent of myself nestled into my left hemisphere this morning. I sat on a ridge overlooking the crater and watched a silver being walk across the horizon. They were too far to shout, so I sat there silently, my eyes trained on their route like a sniper’s scope on a soon to be extinguished dictator. Perhaps it was my loneliness that triggered the epiphany. I haven’t seen anyone, anything, in… it’s hard to say how long. Time doesn’t quite exist in a measurable way here. But I haven’t had social contact in a long enough time that my heart began to beat itself ragged with the idea of our meeting. I scrambled down the side of the ridge, the red dust coating my hands and invading the pores of my clothing, darkening their coat of rouge. But as sweat began to break along the line of my scalp, rivuletting the dust into what looked like ancient symbols on my forehead, I realized the futility of it. That I would never achieve the friction necessary to match their pace. That any vocal waves emitted from my throat would be swallowed up by the void around me, sucked from my mouth and replaced with the grit already accumulated in every other crease and cavity.

I crumpled into the earth, letting gravity finally have its way with me. I frowned. Threw fistfuls of the dust, not caring that it blew back at me. And then I cried, washing my dirt streaked face with rivers of mud. I squeezed my eyes tight against the invading stings. Squeezed until I saw stars. And then oblivion.

I imagined the world I wanted. I thought of the happiest places from my childhood, stuffed deep into the recesses of memory, like your favorite t-shirt stuck to the bottom of the hamper. I threw them haphazardly into being, the landscape around me shifting like an insomniac channel surfing at three am. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how bright and full of people the memories were. How many birthday candles illuminated my cheeks in their rosy hue. When their borders snapped into existence, the colors were mute, mere shades off a grayscale. There was no way to transplant their happiness here. When I was finished, dirty and exhausted, I let them fall away like the confetti they were, letting the red of the desert come back. The sun had gone but the dust still held onto its warmth like the lingering hug of saying goodbye. I walked back to my camp by the pit. To huddle by the crimson hole that lead through a man’s chest and finally into hell. Tomorrow I would leave this place. This purgatory. I sat down, dangling my feet off into the abyss and stared at the flames, until they too faded into sleep, like the last dying embers of a cold winter fire.

A Fractured Letter to a Once and Future Self...

2012-01-16T13:40:00.001-07:00

This isn’t the letter I meant to write. I suppose it never is. This place is getting to me. I’ve been here too long. Amongst the pieces and fragments. Memories like glints of light off glass shards. I’ve tried to reconstruct my path here, but it is as blurred as the landscape one passes staring out of a car window. You remember the general outline, a few of the bigger details, but the rest is fuzzed over tarmac and trees. The one question that drives me mad is how it all started. If she pushed me or if I followed after. It’s like the residue of a song one hears on the radio but doesn’t know well enough to sing or remove from one’s head. An infinite loop bouncing against the skull.

The rules of this world aren’t concrete. Here in these liminal spaces the landscape is continually shifting. The edges of each space rubbing against the other and fraying. Sometimes becoming enmeshed. Other times causing so much friction one burns the other. I feel it may only be a matter a time before my escape routes are reduced to a single path.
At one point, I was definitely following her. Learning the rules by her navigation. Running to her like a stream chases gravity. But at some point we’ve switched roles, and I can sense her presence, circling me like prey. She’s getting closer.

This isn’t to say either of us are the same as when this began. We’ve both changed. Shifted. In my case, I’ve become weaker, my past draining from me and feeding into her. Them. She’s compounded as she’s grown stronger. Taking further ghosts into her and becoming multi-faceted. My only saving grace is the knowledge I gleaned from her in the beginning and the tricks I’ve learned on my own along the way.

I can create worlds now and because of this I’ve been able to remain hidden. But the elevator is the only way out. In my journey I’ve come across clues suggesting a map. I must find it. But leaving the safety of my own worlds is dangerous and leaves me exposed. I must remember how all of this started. I must find the map and escape this place. It could be anywhere(s)…

MONDELLO

2011-12-19T23:36:00.002-07:00

Well rested, with the crust of leisure in my eyes,

I watch a plate of olive oil and vinegar

as one might watch the clouds.

A hot sandwich in my stomach and

a steaming coffee next to me,

I watch the traffic in the struggling autumn light,

glad in my small way

to have spent the afternoon thus.

I-90

2011-12-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

a full moon over an illuminated city at dusk

observed through the tired half gaze of

a trench-coated man behind a steering wheel,

tail lights stretched into a blur of exhaust,

shimmering like a dizzy spell,

crafting a mosquito flecked darkness that feels

like spinning or the fright of waking in a

darkened bedroom and not recalling where.

a cracked window filters the scent of combustion,

smoke from chapped lips negotiates a space for

its own defeated smell of momentary

comfort betrayed by tinged fingernails.

Maitri

2011-12-18T12:44:00.003-07:00

“Red and grey? That’s

so modernist. Haven’t

we gotten past all…that?

The sickle and hammer.

Rock and literature.

Auto-tune and irony?”

We sat in silence then.

Together. But apart.

We stared at the red

panel at our feet, which

grew more yellow and orange

the longer we looked.

Its edges began to curve.

To warp.

The room bent until

we were standing

again,

rather than lying

on our backs as we supposed.

“It’s all just false sensory perception,

and we’re nothing but digital flux

persona.”

I wanted to nod my agreement

but had difficulty determining

which way was up.

Hono'

2011-12-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

A city imagined

is like the line where rainfall begins

a beggar with open palms, cupped, drawn to his mouth as if drinking

watching the surf brink on the edge of madness

a man returning from skydiving on his 80^th birthday

the way lust knows no boundaries

the way it dissipates like blood in water

completing dropping facade and innuendo

a phone call from Honolulu so she knows how much he cares

their dramatic differences

and how little they matter in the end

perpetual motion

their biggest issue

like metal fragments magnetized to find one another

as long as the distance is not too great

putt offs and objections

recognized as such and negotiated around

breaking human relations into formulas and lies

held in suspension like moonlight

or how fog can mask a skyscraper in minutes

across a rooftop bar in a light drizzle

wondering if your heart would give out before hitting pavement

squabbles over money

wrong turns and bad directions

whistles from teenage boys

laughing at your tiny swimsuit

the way your hips hurt after

stumbling like a drunk in the sand

quietly retching

the stomach unable to absorb water without mineral content

poor decisions in a moment of boastfulness

longing for the luxuries of childhood

frequently recounting

in order to not forget

(them)

pride in his white t-shirts

washed twice a week in hot water and bleach

boxes of half-stories and unwritten correspondence

favorite memories staring out of car windows

the way the wind lets you feel every strand of hair

resolve but no closure found in over night drunks

screaming excited delusions into the wind

the timidness of birds

a certain way of smiling at a good friend

how the drugs you’re on tell you not to do them

consistently

but you have to keep doing them to remember

like the sound of the first song chosen halfway through a journey

Dusk

2011-08-14T23:36:00.000-06:00

Like the first nervous tremblings of a caffeine rush, the mouth bitter with the dark of coffee, poised in thought but still in body, another American morning.

The freeways streaked with light, long aperture pupils masked behind heavy lids, a dull craving for idealized vagrancy.

The smell of rotting bananas in a summer hot kitchen, a single fly trapped in a room, glazed eyes watching, too tired to move save for the twitch of a tail.

But moisture. How she hated that word. Too evocative of the decomposition of soil and eager hands clawing into musky underthings.

A neglected garden mistaken for a compost pile, the boring story of a happy man made interesting by his ruin. How we love to watch things topple.

He woke with blood in his mouth, a thick discharge mixed with mucus, that upon spitting left him deeply satisfied.

Crushing eggshells and coffee grounds between fingers, one comes to understand the meaning of organic.

They wanted brown paper meaning wrapped with clever. New things made to look old. And they wanted to feign jaded lest they be judged for enjoying it.

Finding radio confusing, they returned to playing horseshoes.

Untitled Haiku

2011-07-13T17:15:00.001-06:00

The pull to gossip
for calamine sympathies
astringent on a sting

Untitled

2011-07-13T17:12:00.002-06:00

An equation of pictures

sliced thin like chemistry

slides past billboards

from blurred train windows

and concrete walls

coated in latrine shades

tweaked

to the illusion of wonder

held in collective longing

once found in the weave of fingers

or lovers’ rearrangements

of hotel furniture

Glow Time

2011-07-09T15:13:00.002-06:00

He was tanned, and he was happy. Maybe, he thought, if he maintained such a pigment, he would be happy forever. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t, his tan fading to the pale of winter before the leaves even turned. He went on about his life, layering his skin and the memories with heavy fabrics, until finally, he found himself again sitting on a beach, a straw hat low on his head, and he smiled for what felt like the first time all year.

Brake Check

2011-07-02T15:27:00.002-06:00

“Excuse me, Sir?”

I’d noticed the girl when I sat down. She was next to another girl talking on her phone.They were the only other people in the auto shop’s waiting room. A daytime talk show was on the TV, and I imagined she wanted to change it or adjust the volume with the remote near me on the table.

“Yes?”

I lowered the dog eared book I’d been reading and got my first good look at her. She was pretty, with dark hair worn loose, and her clothes were simple but fit well.

“Sir, have you heard about the Church of Jesus Christ?”

She was holding something, a kind of instruction manual, spiral bound and thick. She had big green eyes that held a trust there you don’t see often. She was young, barely twenty.

“I have,” I said, lowering his book. I wished she’d leave me alone but knew she wouldn’t. Best to have it all out at once.

“Oh!”

She brightened and smiled.

“My cousin’s a Mormon.” I winked at her, indicating I was in on the secret. She blushed and ran her fingers behind her ear. My cousin wasn’t really a Mormon, but I didn’t feel like going into the details.

“That’s fantastic. So you know a little bit about us then?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

I looked at her and wondered if she was wearing the special Mormon underwear. Something like a chastity belt combined with the look of old time long johns that miners wore. She was too pretty for long johns.

“Well, I’m Sister Katherine and this is Sister Lucy.”

She straightened in the seat, glancing at her friend who was still on the phone.

“I’m Henry.”

“Well…Henry…” she paused before she said my name, as if holding her breathe to cross the threshold of intimacy. I liked the way it sounded coming out of her mouth. “As you probably know, we don’t like to push our faith onto anyone, but if you had some time, I’d love to show you our church. Do you practice any particular religion?”

“I’m Buddhist,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

“Oh,” she said. She absently thumbed the pages of her manual, and I wondered if there was a section in there on how to approach Buddhists. I wasn’t really Buddhist, but I’d always had a great interest in it. Sometimes it’s better to give a concrete answer than vague indications of spirituality.

She pursed her lips and thought for a moment.

“I’ve never met a Buddhist before.”

I smiled at her, letting my gaze drift down to my book.

“What is it you…um…Buddhists believe?

“Well, you know, reincarnation and all that. The Eight-Fold Path. Basic goodness.”

I had a more difficult time explaining it than I thought, but I stumbled through.

“I suppose it could be categorized as both a religion and a philosophy,” I said.

“You look like the philosopher type.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Is that what you do? Are you a philosopher?”

“No,” I said. “Books. I publish books.”

She looked at the paperback in my hands.

“Not this one. Though I wish I had. It’s very good.”

We both smiled.

“So would you like to come see our church. Maybe this weekend?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’m leaving town soon. Tomorrow actually.”

“Oh,” she said.

We both went back to our reading. After a few minutes, a mechanic came out and told me my car was ready. I stood to follow him, glancing back at the girl. She was talking to her friend and didn’t look up.

How to Be a Man: Chapter One

2011-06-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

By the time Alfred saw the man’s body lying in the freeway, it was too late to stop. The front, left tire of his Chevy bore down on the man’s head, and though he could have imagined it, Alfred thought he heard a distinct popping noise, not unlike that of biting into an over-ripe cherry tomato.

Alfred slammed on the brakes and pulled over. He sat there in the growing dusk, both hands clenching the wheel, a film of sweat cementing them in place. His foot was still on the brakes, and a country song mixed with static crackled out of his speakers. He put the truck in park and forced himself to look in the rearview mirror. Both his grandmother and his aunt claimed to have run over people, despite all evidence to the contrary. In this moment, he hoped that he was suffering from this same peculiar family trait. But he wasn’t. A silhouetted body lay in a growing pool of darkness.

Alfred opened the door with the intention of getting out. He willed his legs to sweep out of the truck, to place his boots on the desert-warmed pavement, but he remained motionless. Perhaps in an act of self-soothing, or sheer muscled memory, his fingers fumbled into his shirt pocket, produced, and lit a cigarette. Alfred looked to the mirror again. His green eyes were hazy and he could see the little red veins in stark contrast to the white around them. His gray hair was greasy, and his thin mustache was surrounded by a growing constellation of stubble. The cigarette burned his fingers, and he looked down at the long line of ash on his jeans. He’d forgotten all about it.

A black SUV careened past in the left lane, oblivious to Alfred and the body. This struck Alfred as particularly callous and motivate him to action. He slammed the pale green door shut and walked over to the back of his truck. He rested his left arm on top of the bed, his right producing another cigarette. It would be fair to say that the body was that of a man, though some might dispute it would be better described as a boy’s. Alfred edged closer and bent down. He stretched out a timid hand, taking in a deep breath before actually touching the corpse, as if preparing for a long dive.

There wasn’t much left of the head, not to mention the face, so Alfred left it alone. He reached into the back pocket for a wallet, which he found. There wasn’t much in it. An expired college ID, a library card, and a debit card. No cash or driver’s license. Alfred looked at the picture on the school ID. A pale young man with spiked green hair and a chain necklace around his throat frowned up at him. Next to the picture was the name Zak Hamilton. Alfred looked down at the body. From what he could tell, it was the same man pictured in the ID, though the hair was longer and blonde now. Alfred grimaced as he went through the rest of the pockets. All he found were a guitar pick, a knife, and a zippo lighter. Alfred tenderly collected these things and put them in his own front shirt pocket. He stood up and took a long look at the landscape. It was near enough to night now, and Alfred didn’t think there’d be more than a few more cars for the evening. Even slimmer chances of a state trooper. He dug in his front pockets as if he were searching for the options available t him. He didn’t have a cell phone, but he did have a shovel. Finally, Alfred sighed, grabbed the boy’s legs, and dragged him to the truck.

2011-04-26T00:23:00.000-06:00

They’ve set her photo on the table, and I can’t help but feel the weight of her gaze settle on me. Like she’s accusing me for being unmoved. I think of the last time I saw her. It was summer and the ground had a frantic energy, as if we’d all abandoned our shoes and started rubbing our socks in the carpet all at once. She acted as a lightning rod, gathering other’s static energy and lashing out with it. But she didn’t take mine. I kept my distance, unsure of her and disliking her behavior. When the crash finally came, there were reprimands. False but seemingly necessary hugs. When it was finished, I passed her outside of the bookstore. I was carrying the evidence of my entrepreneurial failure in my tin box, and we made eye contact. I spoke to her and gave her a book. With those eyes staring at me today, I can’t help but wonder if my book was in her apartment when they found her. They say that the she’d been lying there for several days. That some friends, worried, finally came over and demanded that her door be opened. I wonder if it smelled like death or just like her. If they knew immediately.

Friends of mine worshipped her. They held on to her words like dripping ice cream, unable to hold on to their lingering flavor. Empty calories with no substance. But maybe there was. Something under the surface I couldn’t, or refused to, see. I stare back at her eyes and know that there is now. That no matter her stance and words and followers in this life, now she does know something secret. Something mystical. I imagine her on the other side with her tight locks and soft, whispering voice. The sensuous way she said ‘fuck’ and her righteous outrage. But always in that soft voice, even when the words were hard enough to peel asphalt or rip nails from girders. I look at her freckles, trying to break away from her frozen gaze. How I loved her freckles. The comfort they brought when I could no longer stand what was happening around me. There were always the freckles, dark patches spread like the wings of a day moth. How I could disappear into them and find peace. Take her serious words less seriously.

When someone asks me if I’ve heard, I tell them I have, trying to fight the urge of conspiracy in my voice. That snarky tone that knowledge sometimes brings. The secret joy of already accessed new information. I try not to say much else, not wanting to betray my true feelings for her. Not wanting to impose my own reaction upon another. To let them have their own grief. But what I want to say is that I don’t like her any more or less now just because she is dead. I don’t tell them how much I loved her freckles, or how much anger she brought out in me. I don’t share my visions of her sipping coffee down her whisper soft voice and how, now that she is no longer accessible to me, I yearn her secrets.

Lutefisk

2011-03-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

I told him I didn’t know

what lutefisk was,

and he said that was ok,

because people

could just look it up.

Except that they didn’t.

There were too many things to look up,

So we went around talking to each other

but never explaining what

it was we were talking about,

assuming that everyone else

was looking things up,

even though we were

too busy ourselves,

until finally we didn’t even know

how to look things up

anymore,

because no one ever explained themselves,

and I still don’t know what lutefisk is.

Straight On 'Til Morning

2011-02-25T03:16:00.002-07:00

I don’t know what a killing moon is, but I imagine this must be one. I’m in the sheltered safety of my car speeding directly east, and it looms above me. The color is surreal, a shifting louche of orange, and yellow, with darker undercurrents moving around its curves. I wish I could call my father and tell him to look at it, but he is thousands and thousands of miles away, and I start to calculate how many cups of coffee, sugary pastries, and bathroom breaks it would take for me to get to him. But there are too many, so I let my cell phone remain untouched, nestling further into the crevice of my thigh, slowly wearing two distinct abrasions in my jeans, like a skoal can in a back pocket but more benign. The moon keeps shifting even as I drive toward it, two bodies in furious motion, my own trajectory with a greater number of variables and uncertainties, and therefore less safe. I begin to wonder if I turned around and drove back a few miles, if the moon would still look the same as when I was there last. Or if it would have already transitioned between the trees, then behind the city, and back above the clouds. I wonder if it would have already transitioned to the moon above my father.

Patch

2011-02-21T00:34:00.003-07:00

Even his beard was tired, not growing more full but lean, like a tangle of milkweed suckling the last roots of a garden. He’d imagined the hair would grow soft with the passage of time, but it remained wiry, red curls probing out toward the world and introducing themselves to strangers. “People don’t trust men with beards,” his mother had once told him. “It’s as if they have something to hide.” But he didn’t have anything to hide. No malicious little secrets kinetically waiting to destroy his social life. At least he didn’t think so. He weaved his fingers through the tangle, tugged it between two fingers. He angled his chin upwards at the mirror. He thought of a carnivorous plant. A venus fly trap, pink and vaginal, trying to swallow his neck and head whole. To suckle them into its digestive juices. Finally, he took a pair of scissors to it, trimming the hair as close to the skin as possible. He cut too much, and it began to look patchy. Finally, he curled his fingers around a razor and scraped it off. When he lifted his face after, the skin still tingling and dripping with cold water, he thought he looked fatter. Fatter and younger.

IGGY

2011-01-16T12:41:00.001-07:00

We had been living in this way for some time. A series of nightselves we could never reconcile in the morning. We nourished our minds but abused our bodies. We thought we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t. We thought we could live this way forever...

"Hood"

2011-01-13T14:23:00.003-07:00

A room swathed in red, save for a grey path cutting like a cubists paintbrush through its center. “Please stay on the path,” displays a sign. The man steps forward, wary, entertaining the fear that the path

might shimmer, like water, that he might fall in to its stick of color. That he might drown.

The path remains stable.

There are boundaries here, hard and angled. The red tide meets the wall and shoots upward. There are tables here. Also red. Everything here covered as if a mobster’s blood had recently been let. The tables each have a single rose. A basket of bread. Cutlery set on linen napkins.

A single fox

Grey.

The man stops, his hands frozen in the motion of walking forward. A still life. The fox has no eyes, or rather it does but they too remain frozen, unblinking. With definition but no pupils. The man continues forward, keeping the fox in his peripheral vision, unsure of its earthen or otherwise composition. He errs on the side of safety and tip-toes away.

Another fox. And then another. Some hang in mid-air, vicious grins strapped to their jowls like a jesters' mask. Their tongues loll. Their sinews flex in kinetic pose.

The tables have chairs. Never less than two or more than three. Their backs are curved into hearts.

He comes to the end of the path. There is a single door. He cannot tell if it is grey or red, though the distinction should be easy. But he cannot tell. Above it, there is a ledge that leads into darkness. Foxes pour out of it.

To his left, there is a picture frame on the wall. He studies the ornate design of the frame. How it curls at the corners. He can feel the pulse of the carver’s breath in its movement. In. Out. In. The space contained within is empty save for red.

Above the door is a chandelier. He expects it to shimmer, but it doesn’t. It is the first chandelier he has seen that does not reflect light. It is the same matte as the rest of the room. Vacuous. Absorbing color into itself. Perhaps this path, these foxes were once red too, before the room drank their color. How a dragonfly bite might steal the pigment from the back of one’s neck.

Or is it the other way around?

But the door remains problematic. There is an outlet next to it. The man wonders if it still holds a charge. If it is somehow meant for him. Or for the foxes. Have they become unplugged? Is this why they have become frozen, oblivious to the currents of time? Or has time deserted this place? It too swathed in the sterile warmth of crimson?

He reaches for the door handle. When he touches it, there is only blackness. Blackness and the sound of growling. The sound of flesh being torn.

Blackberries

2011-01-03T19:24:00.003-07:00

Standing in my kitchen

popping blackberries into

my mouth like spiders

their structure

like eyes

or poison sacs

unbroken

their crunch

like wispy limbs

made still

Oil and Dust

2011-01-03T13:12:00.003-07:00

It’s dusk when I step off a bus in Swamimalai, India. The day has been spent visiting temples, local craftsmen, and gathering a talcum powder dust on my shoes. The hotel we are staying at is simple. They grow all of their own food and provide their own electricity. It is built with concrete and stone, equipped with soft beds and blue shuttered windows, and at night, you can hear the generators mixing in with the cicadas, invoking sleep and the sound of the universe.

The hotel provides an in-house “doctor” for its guests, but there seem to be varying translations of that word here. When I go to visit, after placing my bag and shoes under my bed, I walk barefoot over still warm stones. A torch burns outside the building’s low doorway, and I bow as I enter. The doctor is sitting at a desk, the top of which is covered with small vials that perfume the room. She invites me to sit and asks me a series of questions about my health. She opens one of the vials and puts drops in my ears, then leads me outside to another building. She opens the door and then leaves.

Inside are a massage table, a lantern, and a boy around my age. He’s sitting on a short stool staring into space. He hands me a short clothe with the consistency of gauze, instructs me to change, and leaves the room. I take off my clothes and wrap the material around me in the manner I was shown. When I am finished, I look like a pale version of a Sumo wrestler. I sit on the table, and after a few minutes, the boy comes back in.

He takes a large, bronze, pitcher of oil and begins to pour it over my head. The oil is dark and thick and stains my skin the color of molasses. I am taken back by my body’s sudden transformation but go along with it. He rubs the oil into my scalp, and it oozes down my back. I’m reminded of lying in a bathtub as it fills with water. How dry skin slowly recedes to submersion.

He directs me to lie down on my stomach and proceeds to massage my back, though it feels more like being sanded down than anything else. He grabs my extremities and pulls them as if separating wheat from chaff, placing a hand on either side and then whisking them down. This action slicks the surrounding table and floor with a translucent sheen, and by the time he is finished, my once white loincloth is the color of the dust.

I stand up, and the boy takes me to a smaller room. There is a low stool, a bucket, and a hose. He turns the hose on and lets the water run until it is warm. He then fills the bucket and dumps it over my head. He does this until I am back to my original color. When he is finished, he gives me a towel the size of a plate, and I wipe myself down.

I dress slowly, my clothes sticking to my damp skin. The boy and I shake hands. I thank him. When he opens the wooden door, humidity floods into the room. When I leave, I still have oil in my ears.

St. Julien of the Balvenie

2010-12-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

At the Julien,

drinking scotch I can’t afford

I inhale dreams of mahogany;

warm, red leather

future evenings.

The low light finds its way

into the crinkles of my smile,

amber liquid trickling

my desires,

of smooth and polished

tomorrows

The Creek

2010-12-29T11:03:00.002-07:00

It is summer and hot, so we go to the river to put our feet in it. The water is cold and quickly numbs them. Our hands are swollen from banging on drums into the coolest hours of the night, so we submerge them as well. A street market is open behind us, and with our eyes closed, our heads cradled in the soft grass, we can hear the patrons talking and laughing, buying kale and fresh honey, their dogs and children straining for freedom. But we are lying in the shade, our stomachs full of brunch and bloody marys, and your fingers weave through the blades of grass and find mine.

Untitled

2010-12-29T10:55:00.002-07:00

She woke up to

yesterday’s coffee

and this morning’s nightmares.

Lightbulbs

2010-12-19T15:03:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, she hung a painted light bulb outside of my door, and this morning I gave her a house key. She made me lunch at her house: mushroom risotto with zucchini and cherry tomatoes fried in oil and garlic, laid over fresh basil; stuffed scallops served in clam shells; a jicama salad with fresh grapefruit. She showed me her movies from years ago, and I smiled at having made it through yet another layer of intimacy. I borrowed her car to go to the office, buying Asiatic lilies and rice whip on my way back. She kissed me when I gave her the flowers, and later we would lick the rice whip off of each other’s bodies. We went to the movies and traced our fingers up and down restless legs. The movie was slow, well shot, and violent in the sudden and unexpected way that violence is. She would sometimes jump or bite her lip. After, in our post-cinematic glow, we went to my place and made love to French music. The light bulb hung from the ceiling above us.

The Backhand of Wonder

2010-12-19T15:02:00.002-07:00

I want all my secrets

back

that I told when

I was still

trusting.

Something Warm

2010-12-19T15:01:00.003-07:00

When she was diagnosed, she told no one. Rather, she took this knowledge and placed it deep inside of her. Sometimes, at night, she would wake to retching, her secret transforming into jagged words that would tear at her esophagus. Calmly, she would wipe her eyes, place one finger delicately on its warmth, and shove it back down. After, she would hum and rub the place where she kept it, until it began to glow. And then she would sleep.

Bluebird

2010-11-29T20:20:00.001-07:00

For Shane Jaoquin Jimenez

The man would get a pastry and coffee every day for lunch and go sit in the park. He liked to get away from the office, to watch the seasons as an active member, rather than observe them from the controlled comfort behind plate glass. He took his coffee black with two sugars.

He always sat on the same bench. He liked its location by the bridge that stretched over the river and its proximity to the jogging path. Liked its sinewy curves as it edged past the woods. But he cherished the birds.

He was a thin man, clean shaven, with black hair and thick glasses. He was on the backside of young, grey hairs sprouting at his temples. He liked the touch of character they added to his appearance. In the mornings, he would smile in the bathroom mirror and twist his neck to examine them before flicking off the light and going about the rest of his morning routine.

He often didn’t finish his pastry and would feed the remnants to the birds. The geese and ducks and pigeons were alright. The sparrows better. He liked the bluebirds best. His springtime lunches outshined the year’s various reasons for celebration. The quiet but pleasant Thanksgivings with his mother at the nursing home. His birthday. He liked how dignified the bluebirds were. The confidence of their colors.

One day, having crumbled and dispersed what was left of his pastry, a single bluebird landed a few feet away from him. The bird eyed him cautiously before approaching to peck at the crumbs. The bird wasn’t particularly beautiful. Its colors were a bit dull, but its eyes were sharp and bright. The man sipped his coffee and watched it. He smiled. He noticed that the bird had a slight limp as it hopped. Perhaps it had got it caught on something.

A commotion in the trees caught his attention. A flock of bluebirds began squawking and took flight. It looked like all of the leaves taking to the sky at once. The birds shot upwards and, turning, became a high pitched fury that descended upon the bird by the man’s feet, pecking and nipping at it. There was a sharp cry and the birds flew off.

The man stood and approached the small clump of blue and red feathers. He knelt down by the bird and saw its neck had been twisted and snapped. Its eyes were still open. He extended a finger and ran it down the back of the bird’s neck, which was still warm. He closed its eyes. Reaching into his coat, the man pulled out a white handkerchief and picked up the bird. Two women jogged by, giving him curious looks. He stared at the bird for another moment, then put it into his pocket. He walked back to his office, the tree branches above him still swaying where the bluebirds had been.

An Ode to Balzac

2010-11-26T12:33:00.001-07:00

A man sitting alone

at a table with two chairs

implies invitation,

a patient waiting.

Remove one of them,

and he is suddenly alone.

II.

What does a shimmy

cost but a smile

and the envious stares

of dull husbands?

III.

Pleasure is but a concept

most stumble in embracing,

beginning with the specifics,

and carrying through to its execution.

The Inevitability of Endings

2010-11-10T20:09:00.004-07:00

At first, the city was a sprawling and unexplored labyrinth of concrete paths and well paved alleys. It was summer, and he often got lost on his way home at night, walking through dewy fields with flowers in his hair, stopping occasionally to soak his swollen feet in the creek. He made friends. Together, they drank wine and made no apologies. The world shined as if still tightly concealed behind shiny plastic wrap. It was the season of vests and white tees.

Winter came slowly. The snow couldn’t fall quick enough, and we stood outside extending our tongues in expectation. We retreated into ourselves. The shells of new friends and lovers. In six months, none of us would be speaking. But this was none of our concern. What concerned us was strong drink and poetry. Making precise incisions into each other’s backs. We wrote plays and performed them, recorded our poetry to music, and photographed our naked bodies. This was the season of scarves and pea coats and ripped painted jeans.

Everything began to melt with the thawing of the ground; ambition and success sparked the last bits of kindling held over from the winter. I remember phone calls from friends who sounded like strangers. Unknown numbers vibrating, unattached to names. Sudden barriers began to dictate location. Hidden gas pockets and a growing pile of canaries. The forays into darkness and lack of sleep now yielded nothing. I wore grey hoodies that reflected back the color of the sky.

The leaves turned and fell. They accumulated in swooshing piles that smelled of warm and hidden things. She would make tea and stare out of the window during the afternoon. The whole world, it seemed, lay just beyond a thin pane of glass. She plotted trajectories in the fog of her breath. There were no more phone calls. No more words to be said. She gathered the poems and added them to the fire. She made coffee, wrapped herself in an afghan, and thought of her mother. When she left the house, she wore leather boots without laces and a shawl. Otherwise, she wore nothing.

9th and Broadway

2010-10-06T20:33:00.002-06:00

They were the exact kind of men you didn’t want driving behind you. Big, somewhere in between muscular and fat, bald, and of an unclear European origin. They were driving an Audi A4, their bodies filling the interior of the sleek cabin. They were thugs, that much was clear, but clearly in the lower echelons. Rather than squeezing their heft into strained tailored suits, they wore loose cut off shirts and sweats. Both had tribal tattoos circling their engorged forearms, proof they were moronic twenty somethings in the 90’s . That placed them in their late thirties, maybe early forties now. That would explain their guts. Their mushy strength. And lucky me, these two jack asses were tailing me.

Derrida Walks Home

2010-10-06T14:29:00.001-06:00

Propelled forward by his post-modern

rock playlist, away from the pretty

girl in the white tee,

we’ve yet to get past irony.

Derrida Passes a Maroon Buick

2010-10-06T14:28:00.001-06:00

Even when they shout “Gringo!” at him

out the car window,

fear still bunches in the white,

spittle flecked corners of their mouths;

like pushing a bully in a crowd

but worrying

about isolated,

back alley futures.

#2,345

2010-10-06T11:44:00.000-06:00

The smell of cedar burns his nose. The heat is dry and enters his lungs like splinters. He steps forward and is shrouded in an immediate sweat that constricts his clothing. The light of the room is glaring, yet evenly diffused. Holding one hand above his eyes, he scans for its source. A bead of sweat plops to the ground with a hiss. He’s reminded of rocky beaches scattered with sun heated stones that burn exposed soles as they propel barely covered bodies forward into the surf. Of pitchers dripping condensation onto porch slats on warm summer nights, anxious, humid bodies having nothing to do but rock back and forth until the sun gets swallowed by the sea. But there’s no moisture here, save for his own, his options narrowed to dehydration or drowning in his own skin.

Castles in the Sand

2010-10-06T11:42:00.001-06:00

He kept a mason jar next to his bed that he filled with dreams. In the morning, he would place them, still sticky and translucent, into its confines, pinching them between forefinger and thumb to avoid smudging. When he filled a jar, he would tightly cap and label it, placing it under the nightstand with the others, where they softly glowed and hummed, rather like a swarm of jellyfish playing kazoos.

RUE THE DAY by Shane Joaquin Jimenez

2010-09-15T17:50:00.002-06:00

Rue the Day from Shane Jimenez on Vimeo.

The new collection of short stories by Shane Joaquin Jimenez now available on Fallout Books!

Not a Parable...

2010-09-07T22:02:00.006-06:00

It went like this:

“Begin with combustion. Take a piece of wood and coat it with sulfur. After it has dried, drag it across a cratered surface. Proper texture is of the essence. Add points for using the zipper of your blue jeans. These points may be redeemed later. Light the candle and melt the wax. Coat her body in it. If the scent of the oil lingers the next day, add another point. Double this if you cut your fingernails beforehand."
Take her lips in yours and find the hidden pearl.

If the candle sputters, blow it out. If you find bruises on your legs, buy a birdcage and hang it above your window for three days. Miracles worth their salt combust after three days, in which case you shall have to begin again.

The Ocean

2010-09-07T22:00:00.001-06:00

Her “I love you’s” fell like rain drops until one day the sky cleared.

~ Anonymous

The doors open on a turbulent sea, spilling in and soaking his shoes. He pushes the door shut button but nothing happens, save for the pale backlights sparking and then going out. He wades forward, stirring the sand with his steps, but remains on an even plane, something akin to plate glass keeping him perilously suspended above the ocean’s depths.

The water laps at his cuffed jeans as he wades out deeper into the waters, the warm , safe glow of the elevator narrowing to a point on the horizon, its wordless rhythms being coaxed from the ceiling speakers and scattered into the wind.

The clouds are bruised with darkness, their edges frosted with lightning that crackles like a strained “Do you love me?” over a long distance telephone call.

Rue The Day now available!!!

2010-08-26T14:22:00.002-06:00

#286

2010-08-17T22:59:00.000-06:00

Another garden. This one lit by a soft sun, hazy and built to frame lemonade in a clear, glass pitcher on a metal tray, beads of condensation giving in to the whims of declination and pooling in sensuous invitation. The hedges wrap around a farmhouse like a mother’s embrace, its peeling paint like so many skinned knees. The heat is palpable, and the time is hard to decipher. Approaching the glow of dusk, but still too early to be called anything but afternoon. There are flowers here, her favorite, palimpsest with translucent memories of her bending to smell them, the flowers themselves straining in closer for a trace of her scent, a vague whisper of her delicate aroma. This was when the paint was fresh, yet to crack and bubble with the onset of season after season, before the tray and pitcher were abandoned to the weeds and the dirt. The splintered glass still glints in the light, but now with the menace of neglect. The tray faded to an embarrassed hue of the earth around it. But the flowers still remain, wild and overgrown, unsure if they are yearning for the sun or one last wisp of her on the wind.

#36

2010-08-10T03:19:00.002-06:00

He’s frightened by the worn pathways in the carpet. Outlines of former structures he inherently knows how to topple. Yet, his feet move forward of their own volition, the voices of doubt heard but cast aside. A proper fall demands velocity. Determination. If he stumbles, he shall have that velocity.

Of course it is her, but as he never imagined. Either because he could not or did not dare. He recognizes the best of her former reincarnations. Traces their outlines with his fingers, weaving small gifts of songs and words. Tender things to be whispered or hung on the secret spaces of her walls.

She is malleable, continually shifting and stretching. Born of similar essence and built to carry his frame and weight. Her grace is natural and contagious, as is her laughter. Her skin grows cool with movement, contrasting with his, which is always warm, always burning. Their grazing hands forming a metabolic equilibrium.

He wants to whisper his feelings to others, but he doesn’t dare. Least of all to her. He wonders if he misinterprets her buoyancy for fragility. Yet, he recognizes the strength within her. The desire for stability she brings about in him. The desire for the words he is afraid of.

But he isn’t afraid. He is, in fact, emboldened by his desire. Would gladly offer his best laid plans at her feet, kiss her toes, and watch her scatter them. But he recognizes the inaccuracy of such an imagined action. She, in her compassion, would lightly dissect each linear direction, holding it to the light to better examine its refraction, hold it tenderly between forefinger and thumb, and lay a new track encompassing both of their trajectories.

#63

2010-08-10T03:18:00.002-06:00

He wanted to think of candelabras dripping with wax, casting flickering light in a room of his own detritus. Warm, red fabrics intricately patterned with fractal geometry, hung from the ceiling and laid across the floor. He wanted to fill the room with dark wood, waxed mahogany, thick with books, the pages of which sprung loose from ancient, leather bindings, not in deteriorization but active reorganization. He wanted Spanish gypsies. Moroccan harems. Dingy, creased tarot cards. The pervasion of dirt was important. A respectable and timeless dust that found its way into everything, its source unknown but limitless. He liked to think that the boundaries of the space were malleable, outside of time and definite shape. A canvas covered wagon being simultaneously drawn forward by snorting mules and covered in moss, decaying in the woods. He wanted it to be filled with clutter, to the extent that it wasn’t merely haphazard but mysterious in its volume. Both rare and mundane objects unfolding from the crevice of their meetings. Strange instruments that whirred and teas that gave visions. Empty picture frames exquisitely carved and gilded with gold. And so he did, finding happiness in the places he sought, the palaces he built around him from the accumulation of images and memories laying dormant and unused in his mind.

Welcome to Reuben's

2010-07-27T15:21:00.001-06:00

“Please, follow me,” the waiter said.

The two friends, both in washed-soft polos, followed him to a table in the back. They sat down, and the waiter handed them menus.

“So, what’s good here?” the one in Yellow asked.

“The prime rib is delicious. Also, our daily special is chicken curry, served over rice pilaf and choice of side. The soup du jour is French onion.

“How’s the Reuben?” the one in Green asked.

“I’m terribly sorry sir, but we don’t have reubens.”

“What do you mean you don’t have reubens? It’s the name of the place ain’t it?

“Again, my apologies sir, but the Rueben’s on the sign, I believe, is referencing to a a person. If you’ll note, it is an apostrophe s.”

“An apostrophe S? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, sir, an apostrophe s, compared to a regular s, indicates possession. Ownership.”

“I know what a fuckin’ apostrophe s is! And I want a reuben.”

“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t have reubens here. I believe the pub across the street might.”

“Alright, alright. We’re leaving. But first, I want to talk to the owner of this joint. Where is he? Where’s Rueben?”

“I’m sorry sir, but the owner of this restaurant is named Frank.”

Untitled

2010-06-03T20:43:00.002-06:00

It’s 6:30 a.m., but I wouldn’t know it because I’ve been up all night snorting vapor until my ego fills the entire room, suffocating those around me in its frenzy. But I can’t let them leave, not yet. I can’t let them go home to their beds and lovers and empty apartments because then mine too will be empty, empty except for the translucent remnants of myself, strewn about the living room furniture. So I invent little games for us to play, and I try to carry on as many conversations as possible at once, but they keep getting mixed up, keep getting in the way of each other, so by the time the sun rises we’re tired, all of us, and our beds and lovers and apartments seem like strange, distant things, so all of us together, we go out in search of cocktails, and find them, but food, we must order food, so we do, and all of the language goes out of us, and the food comes and is the color of pastels, and the waiter is loud and frowns at our cocktails, but he brings them, two in each hand until he tells us we can’t order any more, and we leave. We leave for our beds and lovers and empty apartments that we now need so badly, the sleep we’ve been running from all night now needed so badly. Leaving each other in the streets and laughing and dreaming of our beds and lovers and apartments, laughing at ourselves and each other and the entirety of the world that we now need so badly.

Anywhere(s): A Love Story

2010-04-12T19:42:00.004-06:00

All true imaginists have their own white room. This was his first, and it had been meticulously constructed. The décor is sparse but intentional. A chandelier languid on the floor. A claw tub. A low couch slung diagonally. The table mimicking a palette. A white Victrola in the corner.

He sits on the couch, legs extended and crossed at the ankles. A white turtleneck under a matching blazer. Bleached linen. House slippers. The skylight above him displacing the light. The window shades half open, disguising a light wall. No shadows.

Music emanates from somewhere other than the Victrola, shimmering in the sterility. A touch of sparkle in a shadeless reality. The man’s arms extend along the back of the couch. His eyes are closed. His mind filled with color. Block neons replicating parallelograms. Trapezoids. Variations on the primaries, but never the simplified versions. Complex angles of thought patterning.

He opens his eyes. Projects a crimson rhombus on the wall opposite. Replicates it again and again. Slowly, the patterns merge to form a mandalic sun. The man’s eyes roll back. His lids flit, and his neck forms a perpendicular angle with the couch. The rhombus follows his gaze to the ceiling. The sunlight streams through it. Adds particles that pierce through, green. The remnants of his original design flutter down, dust his shoulders and outstretched arms with red.

He sneezes. Is shaken from his reverie. He conjures a highball brimming with a carbonated tonic. Milky and effervescent. He raises it to his lips with his left hand. Holds it there. Indulges in the tickling sensation. He takes a small sip. Releases the glass to the room and watches it drift away.

A knock at the door. She enters wearing a white dress. Thin bands of color gyroscoping about her being. The temperature rises by three degrees. She brings scent with her, wind and rain distilled, spritzed unabashedly. She plucks the tonic from its circumambulation, swallows it in one gulp. Wipes the residue from her plush lips with the back of her wrist.

He pats the cushion next to him. She pretends not to notice. Prefers to conjure a chair in the shape of an egg. She plops down and rests her feet on a still materializing ottoman. Twirls a long curl and bites her bottom lip. Her bands of color expand to encompass the chair. She closes her eyes. The bands’ curves begin to straighten. She forms them into a set of stairs alternating in color. Red. Blue. Yellow. She reconfigures them into rotating spokes; a pyramid of immaculate precision; a hash-marked cube.

He watches her work out practical problems. So different from his abstract dilemmas. He admires their linearity. The depth of complexity she achieves. He realizes he has yet to comprehend basic components of his own equations. That he has misinterpreted the signs.

He closes his eyes. Goes back into the fade. Returns with a perfect line.

A man dressed in black sits on the floor of a white room. The room’s shape is undefined, its mechanics unsteady. He’s been here for some time, as evidenced by the complex system of dominoes spiraling him. They’ve been arranged with steady hands in accordance with Fibonacci.

The backs of the dominoes are checked and pattern the floor independent of their placement. He began with one square. Added one to the left. Doubled the proportion and placed it below. Three. Five. Eight. The radius found, he extended the form.

His geometry is sacred. Archaic. Beyond his understanding. His eyelids flicker in rapid succession, the whites exposed. His steady hand is guided by a will not his own. But the body is weak; this pace cannot be sustained. His consciousness returned, resettled, renegotiated, he stares in befuddlement. Wonder. Awe and anger. His anger is like the room; reflective and non-absorbent.

He stands. Looks down at the sequences below him. Wonders at their meaning. He wants to topple them, like Samson’s tower, but is unable. Physically, he could. He could bend down, level his eyes with the mystery, tense finger, and release. He imagines the satisfying flick that would echo in this void. The gentle clacking of consequence. He wonders if the sound would carry. Can feel the gentle sting of impact on his nail. But he does nothing. Just stares vacantly, dejected, his frustrations themselves becoming enigmatic.

His vantage point gives him perspective; he begins to see new shapes, new patterns. Notices the dots for the first time. Pips. He wonders why he knows this. He studies their sequence. Attempts to define an algorithm. Superimposes Pascal. Dismisses him. Unicode. Nothing. Double sixes nixes Clark’s law. He follows a train off the rails. He shakes his head. Closes his eyes and rubs them until colors appear. Green specks that clarify nothing; serving only to add more pips to an unbalanced equation.

She enters. He rubs his eyes again to be sure. She approaches him, polka dot dress rippling. She stands before him. He wants to extend his hand, confirm her material existence. She takes a step back. Delicately touches one of the tiles with her big toe. It wobbles. Begins to stagger. Topples. She smiles at the pleasant clacking, the sound indeed carrying itself through the void. Faster than he imagined. He looks at her. Joy, admiration, fury. She crooks her finger at him. Beckons him to follow. He does.

He awakes on his back in a moonlit garden. The grass underneath him is warm and tinged with the scent of summer. He runs his fingers through it. Tugs a handful from the moist earth. The stars above him coalesce into familiar patterns. He finds this comforting.

He rises and begins to take in his surroundings. A once white fountain gurgling. Cupid perched atop it, urinating into the pool. The moonlight streams down on purple roses. The roses have been planted in clusters, squares specifically, and form a checkerboard across the lawn.

The man makes his way forward, weaving through the flowers, not daring to trample his will upon them. He spots a flit of white. Hears her giggle before darting into the hedges. The labyrinth evokes an uneasiness in him. He enters.
The maze is cold, uncomfortably so, and his skin bristles. He walks down a long corridor until he reaches a fork and sees a white porcelain hand protruding from the bushes. A silk cape dangles from its crooked finger. He takes it and puts it on. A second hand emerges, bearing a top hat and a cane. He takes them and watches the hands recede into the thorny bramble of the hedge. He reaches his own hand in after them, pricks his finger. He stares at the speck of blood for a moment. He frowns. Puts it to his mouth.

The man examines his choices. Right or left. Both seem identical.

He goes left, his weight pushing the tip of the cane into the soft ground, leaving a pockmarked trail behind him. An eagle with spread wings adorns the top of the cane, and it fits easily in his hand, the metal growing warm from his touch. He squints into the distance of the maze, begins to doubt the authenticity of the horizon. The moon has become hidden from view, leaving only pale blue light. As he walks, the ground becomes damp, residues of mist flitting about his ankles.

He approaches another intersection, sees a white tiger casually stalk through its middle. The man watches its graceful swagger, the flawless mechanics of its sinews. He approaches the junction cautiously, quickening his pace as he crosses; deems deviation a bad idea. After a series of moments, he emerges from the hedge. Sees her sitting on a bench by a pond, the moon reflecting in the clear waters. A willow tree drapes itself adjacent.

“Why do you follow me?”

She does not turn to look at him but remains seated, hands and ankles folded, her eyes fixed on the reflection of the moon. He approaches but maintains a comfortable distance.

“I am not what you think I am,” she continues. “I am not the one you seek. If you were to possess me, what would you do? Would you bind me to yourself? Press me like a delicate flower? Make me your prize? ”

She turns to look at him them, her eyes glazed with sadness. Recites the following:

Prosthetic visions pinned down under glass

hung on the wall collected /destroyed in mass

we want its beauty but know it can’t survive

so we pluck them like flowers and hang them out to dry

“I am not the answer you seek,” she says, turning again toward the moonlight.

He moves forward, slowly, feels each blade of grass bending beneath his feet. He stands before her, lightly touches her chin, directing her to his gaze. He takes her hands in his, drops to his knees. He begins:

I plunge myself

into your neck’s crevice,

trace breathe across

collarbone.

Inhale your sweetness,

take lobe between teeth

and gently pull.

I kiss your gnarled feet,

plunge my thumbs into

their padding.

Press diligently on

nerve’s response;

a jerking laugh

knocking me away.

Mergers of desire and

chase.

The illusory game

of touch.

You shimmer away,

retreat under skin.

I follow.

She stands, throwing his hands from hers. She pushes him away.

“You chase a false reality. A fiction of your own creation. If you were attain your desire, its reality would impose itself. You would tire and soon create another. Follow me no more. From here, your navigation must be your own.”

He ran then, the boundaries of so many worlds cutting his face like the branches of a wood. He threw his arms up to protect himself, but this served to only blind him further. To deepen his misdirection. The colors, the boundaries, all of the subtle intricacies of space were lost on him, so enveloped was he in his own mind. It was not her he was running from, but himself, and by the time his lungs begged him to stop, his misdirection was complete.

He found himself amid an autumn wood, the once vibrant leaves now in brown, swooshing piles collecting around his ankles. The trees themselves were barren and gnarled, twisted as if they had been abruptly been spat from the earth, more root than tree. They ran in distinct parallels on either side of dirt path, which end was uncertain. Faced with the consequence of his recklessness, he began to walk, unable to think of any direction outside of the linear.

After another series of moments, as many as to have lengthened his hair, he heard a subtle creaking behind him. He turned and saw what appeared to be a man with the face of a bird riding a bicycle. As the rider approached, the bike’s bent front tire wobbling unsteadily, the man could see that it was a mask.

“Excuse me,” the man said. “I do believe I’m lost.”

“Hmmf,” said the man on the bicycle. “You can’t be lost if you don’t know where y’re goin.” And with that he pedaled off.

“Rotten bastard,” the man grumbled, his hands finding solace in the deep recesses of his coat pockets.

As he continued to walk, he encountered more people. Most of them were children, some playing jacks by the side of the road, others sitting in or hiding behind the crooked trees. All of them wearing masks.

Eventually he came to a long line of people, the excess of which barred his continuing further. Naturally, he stood in it. Nearby, a girl in a pink dress and a rabbit mask was hula-hooping.

“Excuse me,” he proffered once again. “Miss? Do you know what this line’s for?”

The girl abruptly stopped the circumambulation of her hips, resulting in the hoop’s swift deceleration to the ground.

“That’s the line for the elevator. Everybody knows that.”

“The elevator?” the man said.

“You sure gotta funny lookin’ face mister.”

“What? Oh,” said the man, touching his nose and cheeks. “Yes, I suppose I do. And where, might I ask, does this elevator go?”

The girl rolled her eyes at him.

“Anywheres, you big doofus. Anywheres but here that is.”

“Oh…thanks, I think,” said the man.

The girl crossed her eyes behind the rabbit mask and stuck her tongue out at him before resuming her hula-hooping while walking away. The man thought it resembled an Egyptian pharaoh dancing.

When he finally reached the front of the line, he was confronted by a person in a horse mask dressed in a pristine, if not a bit old fashioned, doorman’s uniform.

“Button,” the man in the horse mask said, extending a white gloved hand.

“Excuse me?” the man once again said.

“Button! Button!” came the voice behind the horse mask. “we haven’t got all day you know.

“Well then,” said the man tearing off one of his coat buttons. “Do you suppose this will suffice?”

The man in the horse mask took and closely inspected it.

“Yes, yes, four holes. Quite nice. Move along, move along. Next!”

And with that, the man stepped into the elevator.

“Where to bub?” said the elevator operator, who was wearing what appeared to be an entire fish, tail end up, over his head.

The man looked at the elevator panel, which resembled something like this:

Katrina

2010-04-12T19:34:00.002-06:00

My grandfather is dead. I know this because my father just told me.

I was sitting in my bed reading when my father came in. He was holding a bottle of Crown Royal. His eyes were red and puffy. I took the bottle from him along with the two glasses and set them on the nightstand.

“Your grandfather is dead,” he said.

My father picks up the bottle and pours a little into each glass.

“Na zdraví,” he says.

“Na zdraví,” I say.

This is Slovak for “to your health.” My grandfather was Slovak, but now he is dead. I look at my father. He doesn’t look healthy. He pours us each another glass.

“Na zdraví,” I say again. I want my father to look healthy.

“This is how he would want to be remembered,” my father says.

I nod my head and hope this is an appropriate gesture. I’m not good at death. Having never done it, I find it confusing, and sometimes I smile or laugh at things when I shouldn’t.

My father keeps giving me whiskey. This is odd because he says I shouldn’t drink so much. I like whiskey, but only with ice, and my father is pouring it straight. It burns and trickles down the wrong pipe, causing me to cough and then smile inappropriately.

“Sorry,” I say.

My father doesn’t say anything. He makes his lips turn down at the corners and then gives me a hug. He smells like him, but not like my memory of him. My memory of him smells like gasoline, and fresh cut grass, and Budweiser on warm Ohio nights. What he actually smells like is hard to describe. He smells clean, but unscented. I don’t think he wears cologne, just hairspray. I think I can smell it.

“You better pack your things. We’re driving to Cleveland tomorrow.”

He tussles my hair like I’m still a small boy and turns to go. He takes the whiskey bottle with him. I hope it brings him health.

COMB

2009-10-19T02:27:00.000-06:00

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) s a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive bee colony abruptly . While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.

I.
The mercurial domain of our
subjective and personal experience,
devolves into a relational quantum;
makes inconvenient the possibilities of our being.
The mythic fabric of mechanization
is a murder of reality.
A visual texture.
A mutual disintegration of
the body and an ocean of kelp.
These things are true:
you can go to the river and invert yourself
make contact;
baptize your upside down head.
This is an exercise in perseverance.
This conversation is a technology;
An unstable environment.
A fleck on a pre-continuum,
not solely in the reproductive sense,
but as a piece of micah from the sky,
straining across chasms to make itself heard.
The fruit of a long contemplative uncertainty.

Waste not want not.

II.
Together we shall paint a honeycomb fractal
for you to impregnate.
Nourish.
Redesign at the cellular level.
Your combs will be praised for their ingenuity,
perfect balance, and revolutionary structure.
You shall be queen, and I the drone with courage enough
to match the height you soar to
on your first venture into the world.
We will copulate,
mid air,
a flurry of wings and .
You shall take my phallus as trophy,
watch my body spiral to earth
and develop new mathematical theories based
on the trajectory of my descent.
When you return to the hive,
You will replicate me a thousand times over.
Mixing our essence in cells that will give birth
to beings of our violent love.
Servants with equal strength and devotion
to the planet materializing
from your own vaporous will.

It’s pollination season.

III.
The universal hive is a swarm
of conscious particles.
Amazing we all don’t bump into each other
more often.
Implode.
Fractal forms waltz;
the constellations smile
at lovers ice skating
on frozen, orbital rings.
Their silver chains protruding
from belly buttons,
down through celestial skies
to swamp gas H20 planets.
Traffic flows in and out
in perfect order lines
with fresh pollen dust
floating down and
dozing into stars.
Later they will be harvested,
strictly dispersed according to hierarchy,
and finally placed into
clearly labeled, astrological jars,
the contents of which will be spread
on transcendental toast
baked by beings who vibrate
at the frequency of wheat.

“She is wearing black and yellow stockings, has an exotic name that feels nice in my mouth, and is giving away free samples. She dips one end of a wooden stick, shaped like a tongue depressor but thinner, into one of the many jars before her. This one is labeled “Mountain Gamble Oak.” It is gathered from the dew of aphid infestations on gamble oak groves in Northern New Mexico. She tells me it is their rarest honey and gives me a conspiratorial smile. I taste it and turn my mouth into the shape for “yum.” She dips the other end of the stick into eucalyptus, which is pungent and good for colds. More sticks follow. Carrot (grainy with subtle hints of its name); Star Thistle (rich and buttery); others that were surely unique but only memorable as honey on an overwhelmed palette. There are symbols on the tops of the jars that evoke images of pagan rituals in meadows of wildflowers. The jars are ten dollars each. I give her a polite smile, mouth the words for “thank you,” and walk away with my hands in my pockets, the last ten dollars I have to my name still in tact.”

If one slices a piece of comb off and swallows it, the wax will melt and coat the stomach for several days. This is especially desirable if one suffers from a chronic stomach condition such as ulcers.

Hunt #36

2009-10-19T02:23:00.000-06:00

“Hey! How are you?”

“Hey you’re here! I’m good. Great actually. Find the place ok?”

Yeah,” she sighed. “Finally.” She smiled. They walked the short distance to his front door. She exclaimed at the cat. She tried to

pick her up. The cat ran away.

“Some things never change,” she said.

They both laughed and shut the door behind them.

Aloha...

2009-10-19T01:37:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my shelf...

New Freelance Stuff

2009-03-30T00:40:00.000-06:00

I recently started writing for daily-denver.com. Check out my recent articles under dining and travel!

This Old Freight Train...

2008-11-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

A train whistles in the distance, and I hear it as if it were the very first of my life, hear it like my cat would, her ears straight up and twitching, rotating like a satellite dish homing in on a signal. I can almost hear the rush of steam, vapor in the night air, the smell of coal, and grease, and the long road behind the very last car, its tiny red light blinking and fading in the distance. I can picture myself sitting in my car, the heater mixing with sound of the train’s chugging, wanting to be free like the exhaust billowing from the train’s stack into the crisp night air, wanting to be part of something larger than what it is; stale and re-circulated, tainted by itself and the smells of empty burger king bags and my sweaty fingers unconsciously rubbing the steering wheel, wringing it like a dish rag. I imagine my face reflecting neon and surreal, the color of red light districts, in my mirrors, a face I know is my own but I still have trouble recognizing, something about the features looking like someone else, someone I think I know, but can’t quite picture. I feel the sigh swelling in my chest, my hot breath moistening my upper lip as it is expelled, like its something important to be gotten rid of quickly, something to be ashamed of. The daydreamed crossroads ding and flash as the train shuffles into the dark, becoming one with the silhouetted trees, and then silence save for the gentle hum of the car’s engine and the sputtering of its exhaust. I might sit there, the road ahead illuminated in pale yellow headlight, the road behind shrouded in red and then nothingness for miles, roll down the window to try to catch the last clackings of the train’s wheels, to smell the last lingering fumes, only to be greeted with my own smell of exhaust, and as I slowly, mechanically, pull the shifter into gear and begin my journey forward, my tires dully thumping over the tracks, I might just wonder about someone sitting in their apartment, next to an open window, with a tabby cat on their lap, listening to the last whistle of a train disappearing into the night.

Drinking in Kerouac's Footsteps

2008-11-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, in the clear morning of the day after Halloween, my girlfriend and I, in search of bloody marys and sustenance, went to My Brother's Bar, the oldest bar still standing on its original site. Not only is the bar steeped in general history, but literal history as well. My Brother's Bar was a frequent hang our our favorite merry pranksters, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy. In fact, upon entering the door, one can conveniently grab a copy of a letter from Neal to his pal Justin asking him to pay his $4 bar tab. I've posted it for your viewing pleasure below:

We chose to eat inside, preferring the comfort of the smell of frying food wafting in the air and the dank corners of the worn wooden booths, to the glaring sunshine. My Brother's makes their own blood mary mix and it was quite good. Just enough spice to call for water but not have you chugging it down unceremoniously or have you running off to the bathroom. We dined on nachos and some of the best beer battered onion rings I've ever had the pleasure of eating.

The drink of choice here is whiskey, with the bar's entire top shelf dedicated to it and representing the spectrum from scotch to Kentucky bourbon, though they have quite a nice draft selection as well. We couldn't help but begin to wonder, "Which of these stools did Jack sit on?"

How to Get a Job With a Creative Writing Degree

2008-10-22T18:48:00.000-06:00

By Kyle Pivarnik

First of all, you should realize the horrible mistake you’ve made. You should have been more like your friends in college who sacrificed their integrity for a more practical degree. You know, something in business or finance. A degree that lands you a well paying job with a 401k right out of college. But no, you had to go the artistic route. You told yourself, “Hey, I’m a smart guy/gal. I should be able to swing it ok.” Your self deception is sickening.

But it’s too late for all that. Now you’re stuck, and you better make the best of it. You wrote your resume and took it to your school career services center. They told you it looked great. Impeccable grammar they said. You just posted it on Monster and now you’re waiting for someone to find it, to be dazzled with your rhetorical genius, and to relocate you (all expenses paid of course) to somewhere sunny, with a corporate convertible, cell phone, and a gas stipend. Give it a week. You’ll need this fantasy to keep you going. Besides, you can’t get high anymore because of the looming possibility of a drug test, so you should get your kicks however else you can.

Ultimately no one is going to respond. All of the jobs who need people like you have a wide selection to choose from. People just like you, only they’ve been out roaming the market longer, getting the one thing your genius can’t provide; experience. But that’s ok. Now’s their time. Yours will have to wait. Move somewhere. The transition will give you better insight into a new region, dialect, culture. Your college town will only bring you down if you stay. You’ll be the odd man out; not in college but not quite in the real world. Change is good for you.

Get used to seeing these:

You can fill the void of true purpose by serving time in the food industry, hospitality business, and waste management sectors. Besides, you’re broke and your significant other is getting tired of paying the rent while you sit at home drinking and chain-smoking cigarettes, saying that, “you’re writing.” Embrace the filth of your new station in life. Channel it into your work, it will make your working class characters more realistic and give them a depth

previously unattainable when you had daddy’s credit card.

By now you should have a least one finished novel sitting in a shoe box in your closet. Publish it. Publish it yourself that is. You should definitely have learned by now that the only person who’s going to pull you out of this mess is yourself. You certainly shouldn’t rely on those finicky New York assholes to turn you into some Cinderella story. Besides, you’ve been squirreling away money for grad school. Your checks from washing dishes aren’t much, but the job’s complete lack of real responsibility has had you cranking out fifty pages a night. Good for you. Get yourself fifty copies up on Amazon and convince your neighbors, friends, and relatives that they can’t live without your book. At a mere fifteen dollars a pop, it would be ridiculous for them to pass up the opportunity to own a first edition. You break even. Good for you. You’re now a published author.

In the mean time, you’ve been shopping your resume around the past two years and you finally get a real job, something that not only pays the bills, but gets you some of that experience. Stick it out for at least a year. You need the health insurance and you still need to pay for grad school. Did you remember to apply? Yeah, you should do that. No, seriously. Why are you still reading? Go.

OK. You apply? Good. You probably hate your new job by now. You’re a glorified coffee gopher, but your title sounds quite nice. Update your resume. See, it looks much better now.
Now it’s time for grad school. Cherish it. It’s like undergrad all over again, except you’re actually somewhat together this time. Your experience in the real world has made you cherish the leisurely lifestyle of academia. You get better at writing. Crank out another novel, maybe shop this one around for real, but still, don’t rely on those New York bastards.
You finish grad school and leaving the sanctuary of academia is even harder than the first time. You’ve got some money saved from tutoring undergrads, a few of your short stories have won cash prizes, and those bonds your dad gave you in high school have just matured. Fuck it. Go get your PHD.

After another two years, a dissertation on passive verbs in Proust, and one last college loan, you’ve done it. You are now completely over educated. Once more, you turn to the warm embrace of academia and try to get a teaching job at a university. Any university. Remember, you did this to yourself and there is no room for being picky. Eventually you find a decent position teaching poetry to freshmen. Man, these kids are dumb. You wonder if you were ever this ignorant. You did major in creative writing after all. But never mind that. Congratulations, you’ve made it. People call you “Doctor” now.

Complications

2008-10-22T18:46:00.000-06:00

By Kyle Pivarnik

Ed Templeton tucks his skateboard under his arm and walks up the dirty staircase. French fries encrusted with ketchup, old beer cans, and bits and pieces of other things Ed doesn’t want to recognize are strewn all over them, and Ed avoids what he can. The smell of vinegar tickles his nostrils. He reaches the top, carefully stepping over a condom, and knocks on the first door to the left.

I look up from my keyboard as someone knocks on my door. “That’s fucking weird,” I think.

Ed runs his fingers through his hair and knocks once again, this time a bit louder.

Another, louder, knock echoes through my empty apartment.
And once more, this time adding a little kick.

My door shakes again, and I run towards it, spilling my coffee and accidently kicking my cat Pan. I open it and there he is. Ed fucking Templeton. His dark brown hair, his long sloping forehead, and his gangly arms are just as I’d pictured them. His pants are the ones I had him put on this morning, the pair his ex-girlfriend Genene had given him. I just had her break up with him two days ago, and he’s still wearing the bandage on his hand from when I had him get drunk and punch his bathroom mirror.

“Umm….Ed?” I say.

“Yeah. You should really have someone clean up this hallway. It smells like shit” he says.

“Right. I probably should,” I say and scratch the back of my neck. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing here?”

“Shouldn’t you maybe invite me in first?” he says.

I turn red and say, “Yeah, sorry, come on in.”

Ed lopes into my apartment and takes a seat in my tan corduroy chair by the window. As he flops into it, a poof of dust shoots out and lazily floats in the sunlight. Pan stops lapping at the spilled coffee to go and brush up against his legs.

“Well,” I say, as if I were about to continue, but I’m completely at a loss for words.

Ed sets the skateboard across his lap and spins one of the wheels. This nervous habit is really rather irritating in person.

“So, why are you here again?” I say.

“I figured you would know,” Ed says. “I had this dream a few nights ago. You were in it. I woke up and painted it. Everything. This room, the cat, you. It was your voice too. Like you were narrating my dream. Even when I’m awake, I swear I can still hear you inside my head. And yeah, I really don’t want to know what some of that shit out on your stairs is.”

I sit down on the bed. Shocked isn’t even the word to describe how I’m feeling. Maybe horrified. Disquieted. Perturbed. Nauseated. None of them seem to completely capture it. I stare at Ed in a daze, my eyes glossed over and dumb.

“Would you like a drink?” I say, getting up from the bed and heading for the kitchen.

“No thanks,” Ed says.

I take down a bottle of whisky from the top of the fridge and pour it into a rock glass. I toss it back straight, and then light up a smoke as I pace back and forth across my apartment. Ed is curiously looking around, obviously disgusted by the squalor of my living space. Then he spots it. My book. My work in progress, all stacked up neatly next to my computer. Ed gets up and walks over to it. He picks it up and leafs through it, stopping to read about halfway through. Tears well up in his eyes. It must be that bit about Genene.

“Ed,” I say, cautiously approaching him.

“What the fuck,” he says, “is this?” He sets the manuscript down and begins to back away from me like I’m some kind of ghost. “Who the fuck are you? How do you know all that?”

“I don’t really know,” I say. “This has never happened before. It all seems, well rather complicated, and I think if we just take a minute…”

“No,” Ed shouts. “I want fucking answers and I want them now. Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“Ed, listen, just calm down,” I say. “My names Todd Sweeny and I’m a writer. What you see there is a book I’m working on. I had no idea that you really existed. I didn’t know that you could just…come to life.”

“Come to life? What do you mean ‘Come to life?’ Like I didn’t exist before you wrote that shit down about me?”

“Well, to be quite honest with you, I just thought I was writing a book. A harmless little book about people I made up. Then you showed up. Honest. I had no idea you were about to knock on my door.”

But hadn’t I? It was my apartment’s stairs that I had been describing. I had made him come here and knock on that particular door. Didn’t I? I try to remember what the next scene I had been planning was, but I can’t. It certainly wasn’t this.

“Ed,” I say, “do you remember why you came here?”

He sits back down in the corduroy chair.

“No,” he says. “You know, I swear I did a minute ago. I woke up and I was thinking about this place. This place. And I remember walking here, not really knowing where I was going, just kinda by feel, ya’ know?”

“Yeah,” I say, sitting back down on the bed. I want to curl up in a ball and go back to sleep. I start to think about free will and all other sorts of complex shit that doesn’t seem to be making any sense right now. Maybe Ed doesn’t know why he’s here because I haven’t written it yet. Maybe I don’t know ‘cause it takes me a friggin’ long time to come up with something good, and the past few days all I could come up with was absolute shit. Maybe all those paragraphs I wrote and then deleted have something to do with this. Like Ed was subconsciously afraid his story wasn’t going anywhere, or moving in the wrong direction. Maybe that’s why he’s here. I get up off the bed and sigh.

“ Well, what should we do now?” Ed says.

I go over to my desk and pick up the manuscript. I flip the pages and feel the wind it creates on my face. I remember how long it took me to get this far. All of the time and effort it took to write this. All the cigarettes. All the long nights and early mornings. I hand it to Ed.

“I guess this belongs to you. It’s not really my story to write. It’s yours,” I say.

He takes it from me and stands there for a minute. Then he tucks it carefully under his arm, like he might accidently crush himself, and heads towards the door.

“Thanks,” he says.

He opens the door and jogs down the stairs. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I wonder what’ll happen to him now. But most importantly, I wonder what the fuck I’m going to tell my publisher.

Special Delivery

2008-10-22T18:45:00.000-06:00

By Kyle Pivarnik

I’m watching the Red Sox game when the doorbell rings. I stare in its direction in disbelief. Nobody ever rings the doorbell. I didn’t even think it worked. I run through a list of the possibilities: my ex-girlfriend Jenny and her beautifully manicured fingernails, Tommy my fat redneck neighbor, the pizza guy who sometimes drops off a free pie in exchange for a few beers. But they all knock. I stand up and pick my way towards the door, avoiding the abundance of empty cans, dirty clothes, and discarded pizza boxes. I’m in transit, between both a girlfriend and job, and I’m just waiting for something to get me back on track. When I reach the door, I cautiously peek through the peephole. Ever since I saw that movie with that guy that goes around shoving a drill through them into people’s eyes, I’ve become a little timid. But there’s nobody there. Just a box.

It’s a big one, about the size of a refrigerator. I squat down to pick it up, making sure to bend at the knees, and almost topple backwards from the excessive use of force. Like when you pick up a pop can expecting it to be full, only to nearly crush it on your forehead. There’s no packing slip, postage, or other markings to indicate how it got here. Someone must have dropped it off personally. I put it down in the kitchen and think about how Roger, my old dog, would have run up and pawed at it. He always thought that packages arrived just for him. But I’m in between dogs now as well, and I feel a twinge of loneliness at his memory. I grab a knife out of the drawer and cut along the brown packing tape. Cardboard dust tickles my nose. I love the sensation. It reminds me of moving. The possibilities of a new place, with new faces, people who haven’t heard all your stories and are genuinely interested in hearing them. The way your house looks when you first arrive. Organized chaos. The new neighbor that comes over to welcome you and whom you inevitably steal power tools, cooking appliances, and other miscellaneous items from.

Packing peanuts spill out of the box and onto my floor. I pick one up to see if they’re the edible kind. They’re not. Inside is another box, about half the size of the first. The package screams my mother, always over packaging, but we haven’t spoken in over ten years. Something about how I like my stepmother, Joan, more. I pull out the second box and slice it open. More packing peanuts. These are a different color, green. A kind I haven’t seen before. I stick one in my mouth. It’s waxy and bitter, like dandelion milk, and I spit it out. Jenny loved dandelions. I remember stopping on my way over to her house to pick them for her along the side of the road. At least she was a cheap date. When we first moved in together, into the house she still lives in, I would go into the backyard and gather them for her everyday. That is until Rick came along. Apparently Jenny also likes Persian roses, proctologists with novelty license plates, and spending romantic getaways with rich assholes on their yachts in the Mediterranean.

Julio Lugo hits a homerun as I pull out a third box that’s slightly smaller than the shoebox I kept under my desk at work. On my last day, the day I got fired, I opened that box. Inside I had put every mean, nasty, and hurtful thing I had ever wanted to say to someone at work. Fifteen years of pent up spite. I walked around the office like a satanic Santa Clause clapping colleagues on the back and handing them their designated post-it notes. Some only had one, others quite a few. Only Lucy, my boss’s secretary, remained unscathed. My old boss, Brian, was the biggest piece of shit I’d ever smelled. He got over thirty. But not Lucy. She was a real trooper. She put up with it all: his sexual harassment, his constant beratings, the continual lack of a Christmas bonus. Brian had been trying to get into her pants for years and she had somehow always managed to politely put him off. Sometimes I’d hear her cry in her cubicle when she thought everyone had gone home for the night.

I open the third box and see an index card lying at the bottom. Two words are written on it in fancy calligraphy: False Hope

Sunset

2008-10-22T18:43:00.000-06:00

By Kyle Pivarnik

As Michael walked through the streets of Heaven he scanned the crowd for God. The golden paved streets of New Jerusalem were crowded as usual, but as Michael wove in and out of the mass of people and angels, his attention was focused upon the eyes of those he passed. Inevitably, God’s eyes always gave him away. No matter what form he chose to hide in, his eyes revealed his true nature. Such compassion and understanding for all living creatures was not an easy trait to conceal and one glimpse into his bright, swirling eyes revealed this. God loved to be with his people and often transformed himself so that he could freely walk and play among them. He favored children and Michael often found a little boy or girl with dirty palms, scraped knees, and omniscient eyes. Sometimes God would be in the river with the women, laughing and splashing with them in the water, and other times he took on the appearance of an old man telling stories to groups of enraptured listeners. As you can imagine, God was a great storyteller.

Michael quickened his pace when he realized there was only an hour left before sunset. Michael reminded himself that God didn’t mean to run away, but that he just couldn’t help it. God was very lonely, which is why he had created Heaven and the Earth in the first place, and therefore he wanted to enjoy all of the good things he had brought into being. Some of the other angels might have seen these disappearing acts as irresponsible, but in actuality, God didn’t have much to do. Heaven was mostly run by the Seraphim and other angelic choirs, so recently God had begun taking these little excursions, acts which Michael was beginning to understand.

As Michael rounded a corner, he spotted a small boy of six or possibly seven, dressed in overalls and a mop of brown hair, playing jacks with five other children. As Michael approached, God turned and looked at him with a smile. Tears began to swell in Michael’s eyes as he looked into God’s. The sheer beauty of the cosmos contained in an iris would have been enough to trigger anyone’s tear ducts, but his eyes were even more penetrating and awe inspiring because of the absolute love and understanding they held. Most humans who look into them for the first time are simply overwhelmed and fall to the ground in prostration. Although Michael was an angel and did not suffer from human frailties, he too had a hard time remaining upright under such a powerful gaze.

“It’s almost time sir,” Michael said.

God sighed and nodded. He waved goodbye to his playmates and stretched his hand out toward Michael, who grasped the tiny hand in his own.

“Good. Shall we then?” God said.

The two made their way down the street, God skipping occasionally to keep up with Michael’s longer strides. As they walked, God told Michael a story.

. . .

Ed Jenkins and his son Nick were speeding down I-10 in a battered old pickup truck. They had been shopping in Mobile, Alabama for a new one and were now headed back across the state line to Mississippi. Sales tax was three percent less across the border, and Ed knew that “old Bessy” was on her last legs. Nick was sitting in the passenger seat staring out the window thinking about all of the recent changes in his life. His mom had just passed away and Nick was taking it especially hard. He used to be such a good student but lately he’d begun to get into a lot of trouble at school. His dad just didn’t seem to understand why. Nick had always been such a smart kid and was once again telling him how he wasn’t going to let him throw his life away just because of some hard times.

“I don’t mean to nag you, Nick, but these shenanigans at school need to stop. I miss your mom too, but you don’t see me throwing temper tantrums at work. You’re a smart kid and I love you, but Lord help me. If you think this is the only pain you’ll see in this life, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

Nick said nothing and continued to stare out the window.

“What you need to do is get right with the Lord. I know when he took your mom it hurt, it hurt me too, but that was his plan for her and I know he’s got one for you,” said Ed, glancing at his son. Nick closely resembled his mother and sometimes could be just as stubborn.

“It’s not like I try to get in trouble, Dad,” Nick said. “I just get so mad sometimes. You say that God had a plan for Mom, but what about our plans? I mean, why us? Sometimes I just feel like there’s no God at all.”

…

Michael spotted Gabriel standing before the gates of the Malakihm with his wings tightly folded behind him, dropping to one knee as they approached. God turned to Michael and said,

“I suppose the rest shall have to wait. Duty calls after all.” With a flourish and wink he transformed himself into a wizened old man with a long white beard wearing a painter’s smock and glasses.

“I suppose my palette is waiting?” God said to Gabriel.

“Yes, of course, my Lord. The Virtues have just finished a new brush and we are all eager to see you try it out.”

“Excellent. Will you be joining us today, Michael?” God said as he turned back towards him.

“Thy will be done,” Michael said.

The three of them walked down a long corridor that opened onto a miraculously white marble balcony. The Virtues stood in rank, three rows deep, along with a myriad of other angels. Picasso, Da Vinci, Monet, and the other legendary artists of mankind were also there to see the master paint. The balcony looked down upon the heavens of Earth and it was just about time for the sun to set.

As God entered, the Virtues began to sing his praises, while Gabriel presented him with his new brush. God picked it up from Gabriel’s palms and touched him lightly on the head. He peered through his glasses at the new brush and gave it a few quick flicks with his wrist. Appearing to be satisfied with its craftsmanship, he ascended the pedestal at the end of the balcony and stretched out his arms. The Virtues fell silent and the crowd waited in silent wonder as anticipation mounted like the first rising strings of an orchestra.

God began slowly, dipping the tip of the brush into one of the galaxies and dabbing some of its orange on the edges of Earth’s sun. As his brush flitted around the universe, he drew from the most beautiful colors he had created, picking reds from Indian rose petals, blues from the rings of Saturn, and pinks from Australian coral reefs. As his right hand streaked the sky with color, his left gently lowered the sun with the greatest of precision. The magnificence of the sky swelled with great swirls of ever darkening magentas and violets. His arms moved with the grace of a conductor, building up harmonies of climactic force and then releasing them with a crash of color and melody.

Pluto’s miraculous whites softened the sky’s violent reds, like a lonely violin charging into a thunder of percussion. The sun began to sizzle as it brushed the great oceans and God searched for the perfect shade of green to finish off his masterpiece, one so delicate that it might be missed if one weren’t paying close attention. A green so refined that it might appear to be a trick of the eyes. God was delighted when he found the perfect shade from the hills of Scotland, and he applied it just as the last rays fell upon the Western hemisphere. God looked at his creation and said it was good. And so it was.

● ● ●

Nick continued to stare out the window in silence. He was a Northern boy originally, and he was continually amazed at how much bigger the skies looked down South. Skynyrd's “Sweet Home Alabama” was just reaching its peak on the truck’s crackling radio and the sun was beginning to set. It was moments like these that he was thankful for Southern rock. The sky was one of the most beautiful he’d seen in a long time, probably the best since the last one he’d shared with his mom. They had always loved to watch the sunset together. That had been their special thing. He remembered how she sat on the porch swing, a cup of tea in her hands and an afghan across her legs, even in the summer. She called it “glow time” because of how your skin looked in the fading light. When he was little, he always thought it made her look like an angel. The sky continued to blossom into a bouquet of magnificent color. Like all God’s creations, the sunset would only last for a few brief moments, but such brevity only added to its magnificence. Nick’s father wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulders and said, “She would have liked this.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “She would have.”

And God smiled.

Copper Nickel Literary Outing

2008-10-21T12:30:00.000-06:00

Quote of the night: "I've yet to learn how to speak in italics."

I recently attended the release party for the Copper Nickel, a student/faculty literary journal from the University of Colorado Denver, at the Denver Press Club. It was a fun little jaunt in a swanky and exclusive setting, filled with a diverse crowd sipping whiskey and wine. Not knowing anyone, I relied on the Makers to loosen my tongue, which it eventually did, and I met an interesting chap from Seattle who was trying to get into a Ph.D. program anywhere that was willing to take him. After drinks and hors devours, a reading was held in the upstairs portion of the club.

Yet, my adventure into the press club kept returning to one thing: Am I drinking whiskey at the same bar as Hunter S. Thompson? Having lived in Colorado for many a year, I could only imagine that he at one point came galavanting in to the Denver Press Club, clamoring for strong drink and food.

A brief google search not only answered my question, but provided me with a photo of the man himself in the main lobby:

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that our beloved Gonzo often visited the nations oldest press club. The Ralph Steadman hung in the billiards room had lead me to think as much.

Either way, the outing took on a magical and surreal twinge due to the unexpected surprise, or perhaps a bit of Hunter still lingered in the air, seeking out the dark corners of the walls and peering out at the crowd from underneath a lacquered wood chair, waiting to make an appearance, just as soon as the scene got weird enough.