Some Q. and Some A.

Though not necessarily surprised at finding the toilet full of debris--copies of my books, the jewelry I had given her, and some of her feces--I was shocked at the vulgarity of the note that had been scotch-taped to its handle.

I am giving you everything you ever gave me back to you. I wish there was more. Enjoy it, it’s all you have left because I am gone forever and am never, ever, ever coming back. I wish there was more.

Love always Denise

XOXOXOXOXO

you stupid fucker

“XOXOXOXOXO” means “hugs & kisses” and I still don’t know what “Love always Denise” means. Was she trying to tell me that, despite the anger and the bitterness that prompted her to leave my books, her jewelry, and (presumably) her shit in such a sodden arrangement, she would still love me in absentia? Or, was I being instructed to continue (or, perhaps, to really start) to “love always Denise” (Love Denise Always)? And did “stupid fucker” mean that she didn’t like me or that I had sex like an idiot? Boy, that girl sure could be confusing. I had already started to look for her to ask for a clarification, an explanation, of those confusing portions of her note before I remembered that it all meant that she wasn’t around to answer my questions anymore.

When I heard the back door open and then close, I remembered, guiltily, that I had forgotten about Ariel, Denise’s 11-year-old daughter. I was then surprised that A) Denise had not taken Ariel with her when she left and B) that since Denise had not taken Ariel, that she had not somehow arranged for her daughter to be in the bathroom, if not actually in the toilet, with the rest of her message.

“Hello?” I heard Ariel’s thin, 11-year-old voice from the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open and the corresponding rattle, of the jars of condiments stored in the racks. “Hel-lo-oh?”

“I’m in the bathroom,” I called back to her.

*

Several hours later, Ariel and I sat side by side on a couch in the living room (there were three, three couches; one living room) looking together at the place where a television had once been. Three couches, one living room, and zero televisions seemed somewhat imbalanced to me but we usually sat thusly on more normal evenings watching a television that was no longer there and I did not wish to upset Ariel any more than I thought she should be normally.

“We’ll have to go shopping,” Ariel said eventually.

‘Good,’ I thought.

“And get some new stuff,” she continued.

‘Excellent,’ I continued thinking. ‘She’s adjusting.’

“Like a TV,” Ariel attempted.

“We’ll see,” I replied, not wanting to step too far out of my normal character, not wanting to upset her anymore than I thought she should be.

“She does this all the time,” Ariel said.

“Who?” I answered. “Does what? When?"

I returned to the house with plastic grocery bags full of things that I had been certain Ariel would love. Though I knew that food could never replace her mother, I felt that the child should somehow be comforted, should know that someone cared enough for her to bring her delicious snacks.

As I began to unload boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinners, Cherry Cokes, Count Chocula breakfast cereal, Hostess Sno-Balls, beef jerky, Butterfinger candy bars, and Strawberry Quik, Ariel came into the kitchen.

“What is all this?” she asked me.

“It’s all for you!” I crowed. “It’s all your favorite things!”

She looked at me for a moment before she again spoke.

“How long have you known me?”

I did a quick count in my head. “Almost eleven months.”

“Have you ever seen any of this kind of stuff in this house before?”

“No, sweetie. That’s why I got it for you.”

She looked at me for a moment before she left the kitchen.

I was positive that it was not possible to return groceries for a refund and I didn’t want to try to explain how these had been accidental purchases anyway. I set the brightly colored boxes and packages in a long row outside the house along the edge of the sidewalk. By morning, every single item was gone.

*

On the way home from work that next evening, I realized that I was cashless and, quite rightly, assumed that Denise had taken the checkbook and its corresponding money when she left. I pulled into a convenience store, removed the water pistol from the glove box where I kept it, and went inside. I walked to the register and pointed the pistol at the clerk. Without a word, she opened her drawer and handed me 63 dollars. I refused the change she offered and she returned it to the drawer. She smiled as I left through the door marked with feet and inches. The water pistol is made of lime green plastic and has the words BIG SQUIRT embossed in gold along the barrel. I have “robbed” stores like this many times and have never had any trouble, have never seen these “robberies” mentioned in any newspaper, have never seen my description or height in feet and inches on the television show “Crimestoppers,” have never been approached by any member of any law enforcement agency, and stopped feeling regretful over 10 months ago.

*

When I arrived home, Ariel was sitting on the porch reading an old textbook. I had no idea what textbook it was and did not remember keeping any textbooks but there she was reading one. I gave her twenty dollars.

“Oh. Great,” she said. “Now my friends will love me.”

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I told her on my way into the house.

I dialed a number I got from the business personals section of the classified ads of the newspaper in our town.

“Deja vu hotline,” a voice said but, before I could begin talking, it also said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve had this conversation before.”

*

Ariel came in the door with a new hairstyle.

“Isn’t that a new hairstyle?” I asked her.

She looked at me a moment before she answered.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she said and she looked at me for a moment before she left me sitting on the couch. I could hear her pick up the telephone in the other room and dial a number. It seemed like something like this had happened before. At least once before. Before.

*

Something had hit me and I had tried to become conscious but it was difficult because I had been asleep. It was Ariel hitting me and saying, “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

When I was awake enough, I said, “What is it, honey?”

“Earthquakes,” she said. “There’s earthquakes on the TV. You come and watch them.”

“Honey,” I told her, “we don’t have a TV anymore. Remember?”

“Oh,” she said and let me go back to sleep. Again.

*

The next time I remember I was asleep and Ariel woke me up was when I was sleeping on one of the couches in the living room and she slammed the door walking in. I woke up and she threw my BIG SQUIRT water pistol into my lap.

“Here,” she said, holding a twenty dollar bill at me. “Now your friends will love you.”

“Thank you, honey,” I told her when I took it.

She just looked at me for a moment before she went back outside.

“You’re welcome,” I called after her.

When I answered the ringing telephone I discovered it was Denise calling us. After I said “hello” I listened to her voice for what seemed like the longest time.

“Yeah, yeah,” I was finally able to say. “I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before.” And hung up.

“Who was that on the phone?” Ariel asked from the other room.

“When?” I answered.

*

I began to disobey traffic laws. At first, I would merely slow down at the stop signs, look both ways, and proceed. I began to do the same at stoplights. I began not to yield, began not to look both ways. Soon, I drove without obeying a single symbolic directive, as if I was the only driver on the roads, as if the rules did not apply to me, as if all the obvious signs weren’t there at all.

Not one single bad thing happened.

*

I began to wonder why Ariel was apparently not going to school and approached her about it.

“Why are you apparently not going to school?” I asked her.

“I go to school,” she answered. “I go to school every single day. Except Saturday and Sunday. I go to Horace Mann Elementary School and am in Mrs. Whalen’s sixth grade class. I bring home notebooks and textbooks and can often be found at the kitchen table doing homework in the early evenings. Jeez.”

“And why, then,” I asked her, “have I not noticed this?”

“Because,” she answered, “you leave before I do in the morning and return after I am already home.”

I had to admire her because it was really that simple and easy to understand the way she explained it.

*

One night I was awakened by someone hitting me and it was Ariel. Again.

“Wake up,” she said. “Wake up. Wake up.”

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” I asked her.

“There’s mudslides and tornadoes on TV,” she said. “Get up and watch them with me.”

“Honey,” I tried to tell her again, “we don’t have a TV anymore.”

“We do now,” she answered. “Get up.”

I was glad to hear we had a TV and, after I watched it, glad she’d gotten me awake. Those were some good disasters we watched that night.

*

One day, I approached Ariel with the intent to confront her.

“Okay,” I said. “If you go to school, what did you learn today?”

She just looked at me for a moment over the top of what I had only at that instant recognized as a textbook.

“In school. Today,” she answered. “We learned how telephones work.”

*

I was in the bedroom listening to the call-in program on the clock radio. It was 3:47 pm. The call-in program was coming from a (clock) radio station that played tapes that had been made in Los Angeles, California. They said it was a beautiful day “in the city” and that the topic was “protectionism.” All in all, I found that great. I heard the front door open and, a second later, I heard the front door close.

“How was school? Today,” I called out. “What did you learn? Today.”

“What?” I heard Denise, not my little Ariel, reply.

“Jeez,” I answered. “Where did you come from?”

(Originally published in Triage, Boulder, Colorado, 1990)

Portrait of the X

Epicanthic eyes and brows that peak,

that point to a grey-streaked tangle.

Cat anger, quick spitting, sharp

drives her car blindfolded, singing.

Small hands, inkstained, and nails cut down, cut back, cut short.

Rolling lust and the clenched gasp of desire

pulls the weeds in a garden of peas and lilac.

Walking, toes pointed out and hips rolling like roadside warnings,

fatigued pleasure and indolent joy

washes her pots and pans, singing.

Shades

She removed all the shades
and placed all the lamps on the floor
and it changed the room.

Shadows rose instead of fell
and our faces looked startled and alert
even though we weren't.

When she took off her shirt
the outline of her nipples spread across her collar bones,
became lines to follow to her mouth,
opened then and illuminated in a new and interesting way.



(Originally published in Basura, Boulder, CO, 11 October 93)

Tabula Rasa

After the accident, she had almost total amnesia. The doctors were conciliatory and vague, sending her home with a calendar full of therapy appointments and best wishes on reconstructing her life.

She stood in front of her open closet door looking at the clothes she'd been told were hers. Some still had tags. All were revealing, sexy, even sluttish. Her drawers were filled with strange underwears. She tried to imagine a self of hers, a self she might have been, that would feel comfortable with all these clothes' complicated straps, suggestions, contours, and strange pressures. Her husband assured her these were what she'd always worn and urged her to use them again, to try and get her memory started up again. She would, instead, wear the plainest robe she’d been able to find in that closet; she’d wear it all day before she could manage to costume herself in hose and heels, push-up bra and low-cut mini-dress.

If she balked or stiffened when in bed, if his sexual behavior seemed assaultive, her husband assured her that it was what she'd always loved, had craved, had begged for before the accident. Their sex life then had, apparently, been filled with postures and accessories she had difficulty now imagining or imagining as pleasure.

She felt a need for essentials, for elemental experience, rather than for variations upon themes in which she still felt unschooled. She felt virginal and, despite the various proddings and manipulations performed in her marital bed, she still felt that virginal aspect untouched, unassailed as yet, by anything he’d yet down to her.

She began to suspect her husband's veracity and his motives, began to question his version of her past and her past behavior and her personality.

To LaLa on the 15th Floor

(click to enlarge the image)

Free Shoes

Depending upon the weather and the selected activity, I had two choices of footwear for Physical Education: bare and “street.” Indoors, I could usually go barefoot for tumbling and any particular school's version of the universal, red utility ball game known officially as “dodge ball” but locally and variously as “blood ball,” “kill ball,” “death ball,” “smear the queer,” and “that game we play when it rains.” Basketball, unfortunately, and square dancing (who cared?) required some form of foot wear and my “street shoes” were accepted and served rough duty. Outdoors, all sports required shoes and I presented no incongruity on the field; children wore their “street” clothes for Physical Education. This was true for all the elementary (or grammar) schools I attended.

Gymnasiums in those schools were as likely as not also the cafeterias and auditoriums, as well as linoleum covered. Physical Education classes were generally co-ed, though games were often assigned by gender. Boys whooped and flapped around in disordered fashion with little observance of rules and little expectation of skill, whatever the designated sport might have been. Girls tended to form small discussion groups. Fundamentals were stressed with obsessive frequency and little outward effect. “Street” shoes fit in just fine. We had relay races and “tumbling.”

This was well and good for elementary school, grades K through 6 (or 5, depending on how any particular district was organized, whether they used “junior high schools” or “mid-schools” as the transition to “high school.”). Junior high school or mid-school, gym requirements changed drastically. Physical Education classes were segregated and, while the boys were required to wear jock straps, the girls could stop going altogether due to “cramping.” We were asked to play real games, football and basketball and baseball forming a holy trinity. The level of competition during these games increased, a reflection, I suppose, of generally increased competition throughout the student population. We were no longer little kids. First girls and then boys began to feel the effects of hormonal tides. We no longer “played” and the games in which we engaged ourselves were the outlines of cliques and social stratification that would follow us, in some form or another, for the rest of our lives. Special footwear became an imperative.

*

Nan usually falls asleep early, a combination I think of the many drugs within her system and sheer boredom. Her eyes lose their focus, her rhythmic shaking slows and slows and slows, she stops heaving to retain her drool. She relaxes into the bedclothes, the flannels and quilts her mother and I have insisted on using to make her bed, have laundered ourselves in place of the wretched linen the hospital provides. The room is dark, the door is ajar and the hospital insinuates itself blah blah blah.

I think we are comfortable, I think we are growing accustomed to these circumstances. Nan is no longer attached to the various machines that monitored or assisted her vital functions. Her wounds have healed, her condition is stable. She is still tested by shifting teams of physicians, she is still losing weight and she is still having trouble accepting nourishment.

It has been almost fourteen months, it has become a routine and I don't have to look at my watch to know when it is about 8:30 PM. Nursely chatter and gossip-tones are my wife's nightly lullaby; I can distinguish the voices, provide the faces from which they issue, but I still don't know all their names. Nan's mom has developed relationships with the nurses, but her motives are mercenary and expeditious. She's a smart woman, Nan's mom, and uses idle conversation and cranberry bread to bribe these dim nightingales toward some semblance of humanity. They, in turn, find themselves forming a “relationship” with Nan and, according to plan, treat her with the respect and compassion often withheld from more objectified patients. In private, Nan's mom expresses a vague distaste for nurses, their personal limitations, their lack of broad education. Same thing with doctors. Same thing with sons-in-law.

We have formed a kind of truce, the three of us. Nan stays in the hospital for rehabilitation, therapy, treatment and around-the-clock-care. Nan's mom helps baby-sit her granddaughter, Ariel, spends a lot of time at the hospital, keeps Ariel's father posted and informed, and just sort of arranges things. I work, I keep house, I cook, I stay up late at night sitting on the porch in the dark and recently occasionally I see this girl I met.

*

I was taking marinated chicken breasts out of the refrigerator, I was chopping up carrots and onions, and Ariel was telling me about her day at school, about an assembly for the whole school during the afternoon. All the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders of her mid-school assembled in the cafeteria/auditorium for an anti-drug rally. There were motivational speakers, a video, a testimonial speaker and a “rock” band whose members were also police officers.

“They were called 'Hogs Wild,'" Ariel said. “Because they were all policemen, they called the band 'Hogs Wild.'"

“I get it, sweet pea,” I told her.

“It's like a joke on the people who don't like the police, who maybe think that police are bad or even call them 'pigs' or something bad like that,” she continued.

“This is great. This is really interesting. Did they wear their uniforms?”

“Oh, yeah, it was cool so people will see them when they play music and then they'll know the police can be cool and rock out like normal people.” Ariel was really into this. Those cops had really made an impact on her perception of law enforcement. “They played all these cool songs and even some eighth-graders got up and danced.”

“Did you dance?”

“No way,” and Ariel said this with emphasis. “They played that song from that TV show—‘bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?’—and some old songs we didn't know and the drummer did this really cool solo part to a song all by himself....”

As she rattled on, I suddenly realized that Ariel had been to her first concert, her first “rock” concert, at school that day. It was true, she'd been rocked by Hogs Wild as part of some D.A.R.E. community outreach program, but she'd also really heard electric music in person for the first time. She'd enjoyed it tremendously.

“...and people cheered and clapped so much they came back out and did two 'freebirds.' Even the teachers were clapping and....”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “The band played two whats?”

“They played two 'freebirds',” she answered.

“What's a 'freebird’?"

“You know, like when the band is finished and they leave but everybody keeps clapping and yelling and people yell 'freebird' but you're supposed to have a lighter to do it for real like at a concert...”

I was both surprised and a little shaken. “You guys call an 'encore' a 'freebird'? You guys called the band back on-stage by yelling, 'Freebird!'?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged and might as well have said, “Duh.”

“Have you ever heard of Lynyrd Skynyrd?” I asked her. “Have you ever heard the song 'Free Bird'?”

She had no idea what I was asking her. She didn't know what those words meant.

“Never mind,” I backtracked. She was twelve. “So, what did Hogs Wild play when they came back on-stage?”

She visibly groped to pick up the threads of her thoughts. “Um, I'm not sure but there was a cool part where they all like moved at the same time, like a kick, like this....” and she started to demonstrate a little stage-craft, a little shuffle step to which I could just imagine uniformed police officers really grooving.

“Which one was the cutest?” I asked her and that was a completely different kind of mistake.

*

“No street shoes in my gym,” Coach bellows.

It has rained that day, it is raining all day, and period 3 Boy's PE will not be playing flag football on the all-purpose athletic field. Instead, we will stay inside and play a few rounds of “blood ball.” Already, red utility balls are in evidence. Coach tosses them to the milling class from the Dutch-doors of the equipment room. They are retrieved, they are bounced, they are thrown and caught, they are thrown and not caught.

“There will be no hard soles on my shiny, hard wood floor,” he again announces and he is talking to me.

“Blood ball” (“dodge ball”) is played in a few variations along the same general theme. Kids in a circle, kids against the wall, or kids on two teams are the usual permutations. At Jefferson Junior High, two teams play on a basketball court, the centerline designated the “death line” across which no one could pass unless on a suicide run to the “hole” to rescue captured teammates. I will spend that hour darting across waxed, ash wood floors in my bare feet and I will blister.

I begin to notice the other boy's shoes, the sneakers and tennis shoes they wear and that make it possible for them to run, stop, turn, and leap without pain. I notice Coach watching me and I know if he's wondering if this day will be my last day of PE, if I'll start ditching and not dressing out because of my pain, my humiliation because I don't have “gym” shoes. He imagines me one of those poor kids whose family can't or won't afford proper athletic footwear for their child. He imagines me smoking cigarettes, of glimpsing me after school with hair hanging down in my eyes and an adult-sized cigarette awkwardly held in child-sized fingers, defiantly self-conscious and painfully self-aware. He wants to know if he will have to cast me out, to scorn and mock me for the rest of my junior high school “career.”

*

“When I lost Nan's grandfather,” Nan's grandmother told me, “I thought the world was over. I thought there would never be another person in my life like that.”

I was listening.

“And I think to myself, I think I understand, how 'gone' Nan is for you...the way she is, she's not really here anymore. She may come back someday, but for now, she is 'gone' to you. It's like you've lost her but she's still here and she still needs you and there you are.

“I know I was surprised when I realized the world wasn't over, that there were other people in the world, that there were other people in my life.”

I knew that one of the people she was talking about was her live-in boyfriend, Roger. And I had recently found Carrie who seems receptive to forming a relationship, an emotional relationship beyond the sexual, despite my present situation. Despite Nan's situation. And that's the difference.

When Nan's grandfather died, he did just that. He died. They said cancer, they tried treatments, the treatments worked for a while, and then he died. Dead. Nan's grandmother was able to mourn, to grieve, to “heal,” and to move on. She can take her boyfriend to the cemetery and point to a particular spot and say, “This is where my dead husband is buried.”

Nan and I are in quite different circumstances. I fear that Nan is very much alive, that her character and her personality and her memories and her intellect and her emotions are very much intact. The thought of this is terrifying, partly because I cannot believe she will get any better. The damage has been too great, has gone on too long for me to hold out any hope that she will live out her life as anything other than what she's become.

*

I was “it” then and they, my friends and my enemies both, threw those red utility balls at me fearsomely and I dodged them as best I could in my bleeding bare feet until I learned how not to play at all.

In Memoria Nostri Monumentum Invicem*

Snow, streaks and dirty lumps mostly,

across the brown grasses,

fescue and Kentucky blue mostly,

and piles of flowers red and white,

mostly carnations,

and a breeze, cold at this time of year,

and from the southwest mostly,

making stiff vibrato from frozen blades

among the flat bronze plaques,

marble tablets,

mostly names and dates with

small sentiments mingled:

beloved this,

sleeping eternally that,

angels guiding those,

Jesus welcoming these.

Mostly words and pictures

cut into metal or stone,

and all the way across this decorated field

I can see you

wrapped in camel’s hair and knitted wool,

black leather boots and a plume of steam

that means you are whispering.

And when you look at me,

shivering in cloth and canvas

with a plume of steam, I know

you can mostly hear me muttering

my own frosty prayer.

*In Memory of Our Memories of Each Other

Stephanie Inside the House, in Chains

The apartment looked deceptively small from the street. It had been a store of some kind and then converted into a "living space" by hippie artists years before we ever moved in. It was narrow but very long. Sometimes, it seemed to stretch forever, back and away.

In the morning, sunshine streamed through the plate glass windows that had once been for display. It could become quite warm then and we often left the door open and fresh air would circulate. On the roof, I had built a platform and we would sunbathe there or, at night, listen to the scattered small arms fire from the Valley. One summer night, we made love there while a thief broke in through the back door and stole our television. Stephanie's thighs, coated with her own secretions and my semen, had glistened in the night sky's frantic light.

I built a partition and a sleeping loft under which I placed my desk. I would work into the early morning while Stephanie slept above me and, when I was finished, I would climb up. Sometimes she would almost awaken and murmur strange things in a kind of half-sleep, and I would stroke her cheek or forearm until she turned back to dreams.

We lived there for five years and Stephanie wore her bruises like secret medals. I would sit outside on a kitchen chair with my shirt unbuttoned in the afternoon sun and I would imagine my envelopment within her, imagine my consumption of her, imagine her trembling with anticipation. She would writhe. She would whisper, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

He Was Sorry.

He was sorry that he had even come over

in the first place.

In the first place, why was he still bothering her?

Next, she had left

her shades up in the window

by the window he had to look through

when he was just ringing her doorbell.

Her breasts were flattened against the table.

Her spine made a convex and then a concave line as it

pushed against the man who pushed inside her.

She didn't even see him at first

and then she did

and then she made a stupid little smile on his face

and waved a little wave with his hand.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see him

and the long muscles in her shoulders stood out

when she arched her back


(Originally published in Tyounyi, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1989)

She Would Wake from Her Nightmares and

angry, she would carry her emotion
against him, against whom she had dreamed,
against whom she'd dreamed badly.

Sleep soft palms slapping him,
his shape there next to hers in a black iron bed,
with barely formed
groans of strange words,
words like "blue"
and "steam ship"
and "corridor"
and, until she woke,
their meaning was clear and
when she wakes all that is left her is the sadness of the dream
and there is no comfort in embrace.

The dry sound of them panting confusion
is a metronome for the movement again
and back toward another kind of sleep.

A Bunch of Pictures Back from the Film Lab

The Four Good Ones

1. New Moistness

Bobbi was as surprised as she could be by the shards of glass that appeared in her lap–-so surprised, in fact, that she did not connect the noise of the window's shattering to the wicked looking splinters with which she was covered. She just aimlessly wondered what they were and where they had come from. Bobbi was so surprised, in fact, that she really didn't hear Eddie as he screamed at her from the other side of newly glassless window nor did she really see the blood sliding out of the inside of his arms and onto her flowers. Then she was afraid to stand or to brush herself, afraid she might get cut.

2. Field Work

Little teeny green cubes of auto safety glass
are scattered at this particular spot along the interstate.
There was an accident here once; someone probably died here once.
If he can lay down flat on the shoulder in the pebbles and dirt,
those little squares of windshield
can catch the light
and that light can then catch his eyes
and he can no longer see the cars at all.
He can only see the light sheeting off their windshields.

3. Broadcast TV No Longer Holds My Interest The Way It Used To

I'm making my own shows now:

She is naked and asleep
which is just about as vulnerable as she ever gets.
She is rolling through the bedclothes and
I know she is dreaming about her hair and her teeth,
about losing them.
Her nightmare causes her to grip her pillow very hard, very tightly.
One artificial fingernail falls away
like a kind of shell caught in a powerful tide.

4. A Point of Convergence / A Point of Departure

I watched her limp out of the surf and at first I thought she'd been bitten by something in the water. She was wincing. She sat down in the dry part of the sand and I came over to see what was wrong. What it was was that there was a long splinter of bluegreen glass angled into her instep. A thrilling, painful sympathy shuddered through me when I knelt beside her. We were both terrified that something was so obviously wrong, that she could be so obviously damaged. She drew her breath in sharply, much more sharply than usual. There was no blood on her foot at all until I worked the sliver from beneath her skin.


(Originally published in Carp, Volume One, Issue 3, 1996)

Saying a Name One Thousand Times,

it has become an empty noise.

Right here
she is rolling in bed
sheets tangled in her legs
sweat traces
a line from wristbone to hip
her hands hold the bedpost to whiteness
in her dream it is raining
in her dream they are rained upon

She sees him led to adventure;
he is buying Plum Blossom a drink and he is
wasting that madness to carve her name in the soft tar of a street.

She is suddenly then open
and turned from dreaming rain
her hand slipped down into absence
a knot relaxed and then harder still.

He will bring her
a foreign bloom
for her catalog of flowers
and she will fold it into her album,
the one she keeps under her bed,
the one place he'd never find a greenhouse.

BAMBAM

He shouted rhetorically.
She spun her back to him
and caught the stupid echo,
the one that came from
the glass wall and the wooden floor.
"Woof!" she said then wanted to hear it again.
She thought it like a lovely picture to herself,
something to look at over and over and over.
It could fit in her pocket like a good little hammer.

Choosing the Right Dog

He heard her voice coming from the porch but he couldn’t hear what she said.

"What?" He said it loudly with little inflection, just a pointed monotone for clarity. But still, exasperated as if she were interrupting him.

She repeated what she had said. He could tell she had not raised her voice or turned her head, or done anything to make it easier for him to understand her.

It sounded like she said, "Let's get a dog," something unusual enough to make him forget his irritation. He made a humming noise to let her know, if she could hear him, that he had heard her.

A dog was a funny thing to want. He wondered if she had a specific breed in mind, some kind of dog she'd seen on TV or out shopping. He got up and went to the kitchen, thought about going to the porch to talk about this dog thing. An unusual dog wouldn't be so bad as long as it was not a lap dog.

Softly, trying the phrase in case he could use it later, "That's all we need--a yapping dust mop running around the house."

He decided to like Dalmatians and Collies, maybe even Boxers. "Medium dogs," he said aloud, again to himself, "But not a Labrador."

"DAN-iel!"

He jumped when she yelled at him from the porch door.

She was the one who sounded exasperated. “Where's that extension cord?"

Daniel replied, "I thought you said, ‘Let's get a dog.’”

Lesbian Picnic

"Hey, these are fish sticks!"
she nearly screamed.
"I only agreed [to picnic with you]
to come on this little excursion
because you promised me treats.
Cold [Mrs. Paul's] fish sticks disgust me.
You must take me home."
I had no more chances.
My heart had been devoured
but for the last time
and I would think no more
of the ring hidden in her lunch,
her calm pleasure had she found it,
or how I could have licked the breadcrumbs
and grease from her fingers
and how that jewel might have cut my lip.

July Something, Maybe August

We, she and I, sat together across from one another at a wooden table set in the back yard under the big elm. Summer nights had begun and as the gloaming atmosphere blued itself toward another hazy darkness, I took an apricot from the bowl and carefully began to pull its flesh from the hard, dark stone with my mouth. Each bite dissolved into sweet juice as the fruit meat collapsed around my lips, against my tongue.

Moths flew methodical loopings against the lamp over the backdoor; the neighbors' windows trembled a soft television blue through window glass and curtain; I'm sure there was music playing inside our house. Careful, precise, I stripped the apricot seed to reveal it convoluted, shining and carefully I placed it on the table. And just as carefully, she lifted the wet seed of that fruit to her own mouth and carefully placed it within.

I stretched myself out on that table, my cheek cool against the polished wood and her fingers cool again and light against the skin that covers my throat. I could feel each click that apricot pit made as it brushed against her teeth and how each click echoed inside the bones of her skull and through her spine to her rib cage and down the long bones of her arm and through the maze of small bones knit together as her wrist and hand and that echo lingered there at the tips of her fingers, at the point of the lacquered plane of her fingernails, and lost itself in the tangled ropes of my pulse.

Senryu #14

I can tell her mood
from which door she knocks upon;
front or back tells me.

She would wake from her nightmares and

angry, she would carry her emotion
against him, against whom she had dreamed,
against whom she'd dreamed badly.

Sleep soft palms slapping him,
his shape there next to hers in a black iron bed,
with barely formed
groans of strange words,
words like "blue"
and "steam ship"
and "corridor"
and, until she woke,
their meaning was clear and
when she wakes all that is left her is the sadness of the dream
and there is no comfort in embrace.

The dry sound of them panting confusion
is a metronome for the movement again
and back toward another kind of sleep.

Center Stage

[I've already told this story about a dozen times and I think I've gotten a grip on what it should be--that is, how it should be written down. Sometimes I have to wait a while, sift through things, see what stands out in memory, before I can really understand the point of some of these stories, before I can reconcile the differences between what really actually happened and what would best convey what really actually happened. Events may contract or expand to encompass their overall importance in the big picture; minor characters are compressed into composites; subplots are developed or abandoned. It's just a process. Everybody does it all the time and calls it "memory." I try to call it "research."]

Sitting facing south means sitting facing center stage but sitting back against the wall means sitting in shadow, protected from the center stage lights and reflections of lights. It's a popular part of the room, especially for the fellows into table-dancing. Center stage attracts a different kind of guy, a guy who doesn't mind everybody else watching as he slips bills into the dancers' g-strings. That kind of guy likes it when the dancer slips her arms across his shoulders or flips her hair against his face and everybody who wants to watch can see. The guys who like the table-dancing, though, they like a little privacy, the chance to spend a little one-on-one with a good looking girl with hardly any clothes on and it's really not a good idea to look at a table-dancer when she's dancing on someone else's dollars. She's not supposed to pay attention to anyone except the guy who paid her to table-dance but, if she gets the chance, she might throw a wicked, eye-rolling smile at some other table-dancer in another part of the room. It happens a lot.

Sitting next to center stage means sitting in bright lights and having a good time and not being like the sullen, quiet guys back in the dark part of the bar buying table-dances. Not that sitting close to center means table-dancing is out, but the whole focus shifts that much more to a public mode of behavior, the performance aspects of drinking a lot and having a really good time. There is laughter out loud, there are larger groups of guys sitting together and having fun together, there are bachelor parties and stag parties the closer to center it gets. The DJ's booth rises up stage left and the DJ looks down on center and down on the floor full of tables around center and he supplies the music that supplies the dancing for the entire club. The wall behind the center stage is mirrored two stories tall and it reflects the entire club back in upon itself with the hot locus of center stage like the stage in an amphitheater, the reflected rising catwalks surround the white platform of center stage on all sides, two DJ booths and the same tables back and forth in the mirrors and twice as many lights and twice as many girls dancing with hardly any clothes on (or at least twice as many views of the exact same number of girls dancing with hardly any clothes on). Center stage is cool.

The center stage lights go down a little bit and the CO2 fog starts up and the music finds a dirty groove and there in that whirlpool there is suddenly a girl and she has some clothes on but they will be coming off. She's a professional dancer and she's been working since the first lunch show at noon and this is her last show at midnight and that's a twelve-hour day in anybody's book, with or without much clothing. It's her job and she's doing it extremely well, the shine on her dark skin is real sweat and the dollars on the stage floor, the dollars in her underwear are real ones. She's been learning names and, as she struts and kicks around the edge of the stage, she's leaning out into the audience around center stage and she is calling them up by name. She opens her arms, she smiles, she's glad to see everybody, she's been missing everybody and is happy when they come up to visit for a while. It's a delicate line she dances: a minute here with Jeff before she moves over to Tom but Jeff knows she likes him, too, and will be back if he can just wait, just be patient for a little while until she finishes with the others. She holds her breast in her hand and leans her entire self, nipple firstmost, into Dennis' face, really close to Dennis' mouth. Her hair falls around George's face and, for a tiny instant, it's like they're under a tent together, just the two of them, and there is nobody else around and nobody else is watching and her lips move as she says something to him and he just nods, up and down like an amusing novelty toy for the rear deck of an automobile, he just nods like that and doesn't say anything back but when she dances off he stays at the rail, another dollar creased to a point in his fingers and he waits there because he knows she will be dancing back to him soon. And she does.

At the edge of the stage, she is crouching on the balls of her feet, on the toes of her high-heeled shoes, and her knees travel apart, her hands on her thighs are pushing her knees apart and she is smiling and somebody out there at the center stage tables (Richard? Mark? Larry?) seems to have forgotten something important, something crucial, and he rises out of his chair a little wobbly and walks the two steps to the center stage rail and he reaches out for her breasts, he reaches out to put his hands on her, which is just not done and she's there at the edge of the stage with her legs open and her g-string covered vagina a few inches from his face and her shining breasts a few inches from his face and his hands are extended and the fingers are flexed open and he's trying to grab her. She makes her face just beam and, hitting the groove with which the music has draped the entire club, she clasps his hands together and using all the tai-chi wisdom she's learned, she throws that negative energy to the ceiling and he tries to grab her again and she clasps his hands together and she's smiling and moving to the beat and she just throws that aggression to the sides of the room and he tries to grab her again and she's getting a little pissed that the bouncer's don't even notice she's struggling there on the edge of the rail at center stage and she brings his hands together in front of her face and she's smiling and she throws all that frustrated longing away and out of sight and finally a bouncer sees what's happening in the middle of the room where everybody can see and he comes lurching over to put a five-pound paw on Richard?Mark?Larry's? shoulder and pull him back from the rail and throw his dumb, don't-you-get-it-asshole? self out into the parking lot. But everything is clear at center stage, all dark energies have been harmlessly deflected and there are no hard feelings and there she is at the rail again only this time she's on his side and she's pleading his case to the bouncers; she's saying don't make him leave and let him sit back down and he'll be good and he knows how to behave and she's smiling really big and on her knees with her hands clasped between them and she pleading for the bouncers to just leave them both alone, that they don't understand, that things will be different now and Richard?Mark?Larry's? wallet just tumbles open and all the cash comes tumbling out in a pile around his feet near the rail at center stage.


(La Ventana, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993)

Tied Up In Knots, I Am; She's Got Me Tied Up

I can see the runway from the balcony, I can watch the airplanes when they go up and down, and that’s pretty much all I do these days. I have declared an independent territory and it is inside my head where it belongs. People are allowed to fly in to visit me on the balcony; I will stand and greet them, will wave to them serenely. I often do.

And I think about the tangle of myself, the way my guts and organs and veins and nerves are all balled up and twisted upon themselves and each other. I read that if all the threads from which we are knit were unraveled and stretched out as one cord, that it would be really long. It certainly feels like that.

I don’t have to turn around to know that she is moving around inside the apartment. Her actions insinuate the air and I can hear the rustle of tendon and bone when she stoops or and when she stretches. The sensation of her is strange comfort.

At one point several years ago, I was moved to gift her with a bracelet, thin strands of gold looping around each other and around her wrist. It looks so good there; it reminds me of itself.

And driving with her is like dreaming, the ways she slides us through the lanes and the intersections and the other automobiles. I can recline in the passenger seat and feel the ebb and the flow as she accelerates, as she slows down, the gentle pressure in my abdomen when she glides us down the off-ramps and toward our home.

Smoke rises from our cigarettes, our fragile pipes, and shreds to nothing in the winds that blow around us. Smoke rises from our cigarettes, incense from a bowl of black sand, and twists into a uniform haze under the ceiling. Mist rises from the ground and is woven into foliage and into blossom by the early morning sun. Steam rolls from underneath the bathroom door and these showers are the longest showers and the hottest showers I have ever taken.

I imagine the kind of rope that could be braided from her hair and from which what would hang slowly turning in a breeze from the water, a breeze heavy with the odor of salt and iodine and barbed wire and the other islands in this archipelago. I imagine the kind of rope that could be braided from her hair and, coiled with potential and with desire, how it would hang from a hook inside my closet door. I wish I had one hundred feet of that kind of rope.

I remember the cat that twined within our legs tangled in the sheets and pressed itself against us and she, still warmed and liquid from sex and from having sex, could only arch her back in mimicry of its caress.

I watch the way the airliners seem to surge against the sun that is going down in the water and their windows are lit like a string of stones flung rising and higher into a sky not yet dark enough for stars.