Grocery Store Blues

Plastic Surgery Before and After

          For $2.50 you can buy a real cut of meat.  The hardest part is staying awake for the whole show.  A mosquito landed backwards on my brother’s shoulder, ladies waited in turquoise—wanted to show me something: a spider spidering up a butcher’s window.  The beef was getting lightheaded and said to the butcher, “Hey, take a break on me. I’m seeing spots.”
          “So go on,”the butcher said and pointed toward the door.

          The beef threw his white arm around the butcher's neck, legs dangling like a puppet “I can’t," he said. So the butcher lowered him back onto the rack. "Finish it,”he said, leaning back with a sigh.
          Then the butcher watched the butcher. I saw a knife swing through a mirror. 

S uperC uts

Jesús cleared his throat and stood up on a box.  he was theatrical, (some thought gay) “without further ado… and with the power endowed me by this fine cosmetic establishment, let me call to the front...” As chuckle-chuckled a childless uncle, smiling and shaking his head. (Jesus, I’m uncomfortable!) 

his finger trembled above a magazine. “Let’s see here.…ok….. Roger…” nobody responded.  He repeated louder, “ROGER” 

who rose, hung his cap on the rack and tottered his way to the cashier, as (doomed as driftwood,) the heads lowered in the waiting room like night at night. an old man, they thought. let him go. sure he signed in at the top of the list, but he doesn’t know these things−hardly any hair anyways, five minutes. in and out.

 A middle aged man with an oedipal inclination quickly panicked−(YOU FUCKED MY MOM) because you look like my dad.  Jesús 
washed Roger’s hair a long time, eventually forgetting he was thinking about gardening and not hair. (I’ll watch your hair go down the drain) he thought to himself while the nervous-uncle opted for the door: too on-edge to read Ebony (I’ll be a bald uncle tom- 
orrow.)  Meanwhile Harry the boy-looking teenager on the left side of the room flipped his hair (which smelled of sage thistles in milk, he thought) and stood up when the cosmetician Paul said, “Mary”. 

Then Roger spoke to Jesús. “gargle gargle gargle” as a dog barked from the park outside he rolled out of the chair and hit the floor with a thump. Mary blushed.  Jesús said fuck (I’ve drowned Roger) and gunned it for the door.  “Christ!” yelled Harry.  “Mary?” called Paul who overlooked Roger floating clean shaven out the door.

Driving Across Indiana on One Tank of Gas

I am inhaling the first cigarette of my new pack

smelling the striking copper handle of the gas

pump still on my hand as

the brittle air pours through the wide-open window of my mother’s car.

Indiana looks like a moon,

wholly other-worldly just out of rifle-range.

Hoosiers: big up and down

ball if you’re not familiar. Skinny draws, gorges

fall off to the right side of the road.

A man with an Asian wife pulls up in a white mini-van.

She gets out to pee, accidently leaving

the door open.

The man lets the door stand ajar.

He is focused, rubbing a pale-ringed knuckle

and staring at the decapitated field.

He reaches into her heart-

shaped purse

in the driver’s seat.

And finds a candy bar in there.

She’s coming back now,

hustling over

the frozen-black-muck, smiling at him

in her little-pink-jacket.

He opens his door

and eats the entire thing down

in bewilderment.

I.D.'s

In the fall everyone from the DMV is beset with definite ideas. Like Colombina who hides chicken feet between stacks of paper around her desk. And Rick the cashier who refuses to give out one dollar bills. Jones, balding and losing his lower lip, was fired for wearing a Hawaiian shirt every day and lying about it.

“This isn’t a Hawaiian shirt,” he would say.

Jones worked next to Todd for three years and usually confided in him that the office was hot. When they moved Todd away from Jones, Jones would walk up to Todd’s desk sweating and say, “Pal, it’s hot in here.”

The boss, Bob, had that skin disease that makes people white and black and splotchy at the same time. During the fall he looked yellow. Jones mimicked him and everyone else. Eventually Bob brought him into his office. “Jones, I think you’re dangerous,” Bob said. Jones leaned back in his seat and was quiet a long time. He put an open palm on the desk and made a little turkey out of sweat.

      “Bob, I honestly think you’re dangerous,” he replied

Bob looked through the blinds. “You’re fired.”

“It’s Friday.”

      “Sorry pal.” It was Tuesday.

The next day Jones showed up in a grey dress and sunglasses and sat in the waiting area until the police came. He tried whispering something to Todd on the way out, but he was being handcuffed and Todd couldn’t hear him. As Jones' wigged-head was being lowered into the police cruiser, a gust of wind blew the front door open. Todd’s bowl-cut flew to the ceiling and a bird landed on the entryway. Todd screamed, "Fall has a welcome sensation!" Bob watched the winged little wretch and wished it would join the long line of impatient customers, but the door was slowly being pulled shut by the opposite end of the same force that blew it open and the bird was careening away on a 45-degree angle. Bob felt like a dinosaur for watching birds in such a way, and Todd lowered his head darkly for a moment, feeling like he'd just lost something preciously vital, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Then the moment snapped shut. Columbina reshuffled some papers over her chicken's feet. It was winter again.

In the spring Todd was replaced by Wayne. Wayne started an office pool; he pooled all the money.  He was always thinking up ideas for the pool. He gambled a lot and started talking about gambling all the time—even on first dates. “You can even smoke inside the Indian casinos,” he would say.

He looked at me once and noticed my glasses had changed. His face fogged over and his eyes dribbled out the window. “I’m hungry,” he said. 

In the summer Deborah walked in on Wayne bathing in the women’s bathroom. He suggested that Grand Cahokia was better than Pottawatomie and put a handful of soap in his pubic hair. Bob didn't fire him, but by September he was invisible; in December pencils on his desk sat like trees in snow.

Positive

That was a nice thing

a rill a piccolo sing

a gaff a fall a laugh

Coming out of my phone

There's no struggle in this

Thing

And it was

Today tomorrow brings unspeakable

Happiness if you let it.

A shoe drops

From a toe if you

let it.

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.