Civil War

I killed where you wanted: Culp’s Ridge, a grove of peaches at Gettysburg, the Spotsylvania courthouse—such an undeserved plot for tens of thousands to cross over and over their last gullies down with one leg and shrapnel wounds. Country means something else, from inside a leaky courthouse, when America is warring with itself. Pittsburgh balls zip over heads in an embankment. When a brave one goes over he drops first—a steel town—miles and miles away. Then another: a mill in Ohio falling with a wife and her mud bricks. In Tennessee a mother sways and counts the men running through the fog while the possums under the porch play raccoon.

But now they say, We're sorry...But we won, and anyways: you’re welcome. Don't you see

How comfortable you are? Didn't you hear me fight? That was for you. And plus we made a special bridge for you, and it's made of lights.

Fuck that, I'd say. Get a rifle, sit on a hill and wait. They'll be waiting too, and when they turn the lights off, start firing. You won't hit them all, but remember: the bullets that miss will fly around the world and land in your back—

You'll fall and they’ll dress you in a bright blue uniform, place you in a display case with a skinny white soldier who's dressed the same, and put on a parade. They'll take your rifle and tuck it in his arms. place your hand on his chest—rest your head on his shoulder. The caption below both your feet will read: 

This is how the war was won.

Sleeping

There’s a storm, an imaginary farmer 

Saying there’s rain tomorrow “Look at the moon,”

He says, and walks away Montana.

See,

Together is all over the face 

Because there’s two of them.

See my ears too listen to your hands sleeping with shivers gently

Rubbing your warring fingers like

I know everything

That will happen between them.

Get it right, this is no war.

The weather report is outside;

Happening is what’s here

And has nothing to contend with. 

If we might sleep all night

And never move our hands

For correspondence we’ll talk with words,

Or scribble in the margins of old notebook paper

That I will later jam

Into my typewriter

And send to you long distances

Over a pillow. 

Plan B

I, God—and moreover you—made him. Ironically, in his would-be days I’d punish him if he slept too long. Silly boy! Wasting his life away. I hear his snotty breath bending around a room into an empty hallway, frantically playing videos games with his friends.

I sit and imagine his impeccable dream-snout, like his mother’s, turning blindly around some moth corner in his twenties. Never to turn that Roman nose up at some shithole motel and smile, totally in love, with no earth to rush through, without one hammering breath to purse, one wrenched hammering mistake to make. Poor girl, to think he never met one anthill!

And if we’d allowed him one conversation I’d say, “Don’t pretend to be careless, life is too short to be careless” (while I stood in front of a mirror and you behind me with shaving cream and I realized that every moment without you is wasted.) So bend me a favor, doll. Come enough near me and let me apologize with your lips for something you’ve already forgotten, for Him and me that made you unmake him.

They Work in the Work They Love in the Love You in Love You are in Love He Loves You

Practice said she act like a child years the mirror used for thirty three teeth exposed she put down the zucchini supposing smiling with a zucchini in your mouth was impossible outside more than ten miles of road between them seven sharp date in eight hours the bathroom door closed mom's off to work get dinner going she said through the door radio said storms crops need it men at gas station say so bye to momma off down route six dusty little brothers watch her slow in a dust cloud and turn at the stop sign both running in the sprinkler all day waiting until she brings them inside for rain

Thirty minutes late he thought damn won’t matter driving over the rain’s holding things up train passed lumbering at a snail’s pace no chance to go around she’ll just take me this time spent more than ten last time more than ten dollars last time on pop a movie and ice cream just waiting didn’t even watch it melting so ready but this time her body blonde her back and forth in dad’s backseat Christ special glass tires decals on the side insurance license etcetera

Then in the middle

Swinging freely but suddenly her hands round herself a bit sadly the storm already I want to keep silent he says greater than sixteen cold storms moved to suspend her bones in breathing I have seen the car moving and fog moving I want to keep the sound of crickets in corn silent for a moment keep her on the edge look through her in this room of glass special glass windows designed industry wise to shatter a bit exposed

Reaching to fill in points of origin shirt over heel she verbs I stab-a-clean-one-eyed  with tongue wide wet then suddenly snakes spinning red wire straps wrap around and sixteen large breasts she hangs he reaches again period, she says mildly.  She can take weeks more than a bit of thunder in the Midwest to keep silent running her hands still she coaxes nudging bones exposing chances for a bit of rumble from tomorrow she clears her throat at the sun poking a mile through you are in love he loves you

Departing

A lot of string music, for those who walk on wires.  I said I’d found my drug.  Good, she said, everyone needs to find their drug to make art.  I thought about it.  I’d just picked her up from the airport—where the planes fly right over the gated road and distract drivers, conflating and threatening to prove the disproportionate danger between air and ground travel (ironically, a plane is most likely to die while landing)—and I got lost, I was so excited.

I believe it too.  But then again, do they do this death-list per-capita?  Lots of dead people in African, Mexican, Asian, Indian and even American graves may never have entered a plane.  But who does not get to enter a car these days.  It’s especially important to enter a car these days.  

Back on the road to the airport, the car shot like a bee (they're going extinct now, the air traffic’s all messed up).

There’s always less to talk about before a departure.  It’s silly, but it’s time and it’s backwards.  Someone is leaving and we know, for once, how many minutes our mouths have to move, how far our conversations can go while still being completed and what subjects are too big to tackle.  So it’s quiet.  The clock is more important, rushing to an airport, than watching the road.

 

Setting the Table

The table was more in the living room than in the kitchen.  When they’d bought it, Ned stood erect at the Home Depot and promised Marjorie it would fit in the kitchen.  It didn’t.  So Ned placed the table in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room such that a corner poked into the kitchen.  And that’s where he sat.  The rest was angled into the living room, leaving only a small hole to pass through.  Marjorie could fit through, but when Ned gained weight he started avoiding the doorway altogether, transiting between the two adjacent rooms via the hallway that passed their bedroom, bathroom and front door.  Marjorie thought it was ridiculous. 

Every night and every morning Ned sat at the corner of the table in the kitchen and Marjorie sat in the living room—on an angle, parallel to the couch, facing the television.  Ned had nowhere to rest his elbows, but made up for this by repeatedly refilling his milk from the refrigerator, which was only a few feet away, and returning with a look that said: “See?”  So Marjorie started bringing everything she could conceive of to the table.  She enjoyed watching Ned reach across it and wince in pain as the corner dug into his chest.  Then she started watching TV while they ate.  It didn’t bother him.  It reinforced his feeling that he was really in the kitchen.  And he made sure Marjorie never saw him watching TV from the kitchen. 

The kitchen was dark.  The table behind them was unset.  Ned was looking out the kitchen window at the hawthorn and noting how the berries it produced lived in little clusters surrounded by long thorns.  Without the aid of light, one would see the berries and not the thorns.  Marjorie was standing in front of him, wearing a black dress with rose heads: no stems or leaves, just petals, stigmas, styles, ovaries, ovules, receptacles, anthers and filaments. They were cutting cucumbers on a small wooden cutting board in front of the sink.   

            It was difficult for Ned to help in the cutting of the cucumbers—to get to the point where he could.  The dishwasher was below the sink and the door was open.  Both their legs were straddling the door.  There was a small block of black marble about three inches long between the edge of the sink and the end of the counter.  The cutting board slanted toward Marjorie's empty stomach.  They were piling the cut cucumbers, like healthy, fresh green logs, into a round, clear bowl.  Ned’s crotch was pressing against Marjorie’s behind and his arms were wrapped around her to hold the cucumber in place while she chopped.  They got into a nice rhythm.  His legs began to ache.  There were about five more cucumbers in the bowl.  He bent down to give his knees a rest and his face neared Marjorie’s butt.  Ned looked at a flower between her thighs—where his wife’s two legs became one, and turned into something else entirely.  

He looked into the darkness and the floating red blobs and asked her “See the hawthorn budding?” His tone wasn’t right though: it came out as a statement.  She shifted the weight on her feet.  Marjorie’s breathing increased and she pushed her flowers into Ned’s face.  He looked down.  They’d had spaghetti last night, he remembered.  A stringy piece of the angel hair pasta sat translucently against the inside of the dishwasher drawer.  It was shaped like a question mark at the top.  The bottom looked like the tail of a prehistoric sea-creature.  The tip on the squiggly end was red.  Ned loosened his grip on the cucumber. He reached down to touch the creature, expecting it to move.  But it was hard, dead.   "My fuckin' legs hurt," he said and stood up, a drop of sweat falling from Ned’s bangs onto Marjorie's neck, trickling down her spine and disappearing into the empty space between the roses.

 “I can do it by myself," Marjorie replied.

But her knees were buckling.  Her back and neck burned terribly.  The smell from the previous night’s dinner was creeping up her legs.

Ned reached quietly into the bowl and stood over his wife. He breathed down her neck, watched how the fruit divided beneath them.  “We’re done.”  Marjorie said.  He pressed his weight into her.  “We’re done.”

“Keep going.” He said. “I can help.” 

Ned’s hands shook in front of her as if holding a large bowl of water.  She sliced into the unburdened air, the tension in her neck and back diminishing as the knife approached Ned’s fingers. 

Carousel

The carnival was over and they hired a negro to clean up.  The boss stuck around for a day, but he never told the negro what to do.  The tents were gone, the rides were gone.  Besides a group of magicians, everyone was gone.  There was a carousel that spun slowly and a cornfield that surrounded some matted down grass.  A big cloud of dust floated over the road. 

The negro nudged leaves off the road, piled corn husks next to the carousel and waited.  The magicians sat around a plastic card table in a vein of shade from a pine tree.  They called him over.  There were seven of them.  They wore spotless white tuxedos.  One was short.  One was fat.  One was tall and pale and had a bow tie that spun in the wind.  The negro held his broom tight, not sure what to do.  The pale man’s bow tie wobbled like a bent bicycle wheel and stopped.  Looking awkwardly at his broom, the negro asked: “How do I know when I’m finished?”  The short one handed him half a deck of playing cards.  

“We can make your hands disappear,” he said. The backs of the cards were yellow and blue.  Before the negro could turn the cards over, the little one took the cards and shuffled them back into the deck.  

The next morning, the magicians sat on the horses, slowly rising and falling between the brightly painted bars of the carousel.  The fat one spoke rapidly into the open air.  The short one did cartwheels.  Mist was lining the edge of the cornfield.

They called the negro over again.  The pale faced magician with the spinning bow tie looked up from an upside down newspaper and nodded.  He was sitting on the black horse that flailed impossibly, standing on one leg.  The negro stood a moment next to the rumbling structure, watching the beasts and men blur together.  Then the bow tie slowed and stopped.  “When do you all leave?” the negro asked.  The little one wobbled over to him and pulled out a pack of cards.  

“Is this your card?" he asked. 

“You took the cards back.” 
"Is this your card?" 
"No sir."
Stuffing the cards back into his breast pocket, the little one held out an empty hand and squinted at the negro.  

“Pick a card, any card,” he demanded.   
The pale man passed by as the negro set his broom down. “Go on,” the pale man said, "choose." The negro reached and watched his hand pass through the solid air. 

That night he made a bed for himself by the cornfield. Later, he woke to a blue silence coming off the grass. The carousel was stopped. A green door sat in the middle with a single light above it.  The negro picked up his broom and approached the structure.  The lights came on and the carousel started spinning again.  He stood for a moment as the terrible black horse whined into the air.  "What do I have to do to get out of here?” he asked no one in particular.

Someone said: “Just walk through that green door.”  He stood a moment just outside the circle of light.  And with a pass, they went and painted the green door brown.

Weight

I’m going to call DCFS on myself for being a bad future-parent—just get it out of the way.  “Here kids, have some Bonanza! potato chips and orange soda.  I’ll be leaving soon!”  Wink wink.  Can’t do it.  No, I’m going solo.  I’ll watch a few movies in my thirties, pilot a Mississippi fog boat in my forties.  Fifties: gas station hobo—piss pants.  Sixties: big blue lip, army fatigues.  At seventy, Kentucky butterflies will land on my head. 

I had plans to climb Maine's 5,500 foot tall Mount Katahdin January 1st, 2000 .  

Before the sun comes up I'd take my son up there and say, “We’re going to be the first people in North America to see the sun rise.  That’s the Atlantic ocean out there.  That's where your great-grandpa came from."  Smartly up on my shoulders, his hands digging into my beard he’d say, “That’s the Stacyville Reservoir, dad.  We passed it last night.”  I didn't have my glasses on.  I’d throw him over the edge.   

Grandpa

Grandpa worked in a Cleveland airport for thirty eight years as a vender selling hot dogs.  He said people at the airport dressed like they were going to a wedding and that maybe they were.  He called work “people watching”.  He said these things to his grandkids and his dogs.  Sometimes his dogs died, so he would leave a steak out by the back door, wait for a stray and catch it, yanking a rope tied to the gate.  Sometimes he’d catch the mailman or milkman as a joke.

I sat on the front porch once, on a dirt grained board that creaked.  He spoke up suddenly and said, “I don’t like people to watch me shit.”  I looked around, the pines and the pond suddenly looking out of place.  “In the war I shit in a hole for three years until I got hit.  Then I shit in a bowl.”  He creaked back in his seat, eyes slits to the sun.  I saw the Philippines, how he might have looked at the water.

My mom walked out with a small box full of things:  a welcome mat with pine trees, little bears, wolves and deer, his old coffee tin.  Then we took him to the home.

Just Chat

On the internet I could find a man in seconds bending down to lick a woman’s vagina at a party while he masturbates.  Never try to subtract words, or anything fancy the time for that is over.  And God, if mothers were sexual what could we rely on!  Even if it’s light out or chemicals are on your hands take someone else’s food right out of the saucepan and put it in your mouth. 

I was on the porch a few minutes ago and could see the moon move because I had the reference point of a power line. 

It is right to talk about time going backwards because we just did.  And not playing with time is the wrong thing to do.  This is Georgia font.  A new one.  Invented in 1993 specifically for the internet.  There's really some awful stuff on the internet.  

Georgia is tall.  Look how high that IT goes.  Love, oh be with me, you know your name, say it, type anything, because they're just letters TO SHOW THE VARIATIONS, but you're saying something without saying something because where this is black are noises and people you've never met.  

This A is in Times New Roman and has 4 serifs.  See the little knobs jutting out from each leg?  Those are serifs. Serif letters create the illusion of a pen-stroke.  A sans-serif “a” looks like this: A. This is Verdana.  Notice how the bottoms are flat?  I find these letters are more honest, true to their formation.  For there was never a pen here.  

Verdana was designed to be easily read on computer screens (so this is the time for looking at pictures of Goldie Hawn on the internet). Verdana is a portmanteau, a word made of two preexisting words.  Verdant means “something green” and Ana is the eldest daughter of the inventor of Verdana.  

Smog is a portmanteau in practice and theory. 

Chatroulette.com is a website that pairs strangers from around the world for webcam-based conversations. A visitor is chosen at random and begins an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor.

Recently we’ve been talking about the noises in our house: the little clicks and nudges that accompany the clock when you're alone and nobody else can say exactly what anything means.
 

At any point either user may leave the current conversation by initiating another random connection.

It’s four A.M. and there’s a man squinting outside in Tunisia.  A little farm-boy looks wistfully away from the screen.  The moon has moved—entering my living room window.  A man dances in a wheelchair.  A shirtless boy sits all the way across a room.   In Idaho, a man masturbates furiously.  In Costa Rica, a shadowy room sits empty.  And with a flash, I can’t see.  A Chinese boy holding a Polaroid picture in front of the screen sits below a single light. 

Sea-gray, yellowing.  He’s smiling, holding the picture steadily.  The shadows arrive like a bruise.  A face, looking to the left, with a slight smile.  It was only moments ago.  I turn to where I was looking and remember nothing.  I was dimly happy, it seems.  He’s backing toward the door. My lips turn.  Eyes at his leg, eyes at his chest.  The ceiling a daytime floor never closing.  I glance out my window and behind him a door-less doorway floods with light.