This City

The sky always looks nicest above the condos.

“You were right, you know.”

“Hrm?”

“That the sky always looks nicest above the condos.”

Jack laughs. “Only here.”

“Only here.” She smiles. He looks away.

The two sit in silence for a while, and then they get up, and then they leave. They go to their bedroom and they go to sleep and the next morning they eat breakfast together. They watch TV together. They go shopping together. But something is not right.

He goes to the condos again, this time without her, and he gets out of his car and he sits on the grass and he looks up into the cosmos. He thinks about her and he thinks about them and he thinks about himself. The sky, which was the color of their relationship when he arrived, becomes a sort of cotton candy pink.

He goes home and breaks the news.

“We’ll be together again someday, I’m sure,” she gloats. “You think this is the end, but it isn’t.”

For the second time in as many days, though, he proves her wrong.

Marrow, Extracted

1.
    The limbs are on fire with the heat of a hundred million imploding suns. The muscles feel as though they are gripped tightly by vices, or perhaps by the hands of a giant, fingers meaty and thick, his primitive brain not comprehending how tremendously powerful he really is. The head is being ripped open with a hacksaw, blood and brain matter oozing out all over the cannibal committing the act. We are all pain, manifest.

2.
    The hellspawn are chasing me. I lead the pack, the alpha male, a massive wooden target strapped to my back, slowing me down. Ostensibly, someone is in control here. Ostensibly, there is order and peace. Ostensibly. There is nothing in this world or any other that could control us now.

    The hellspawn are right behind me, and they decide that they won’t wait any longer. Their ashen tendrils lift off the ground and eviscerate the target. Their claws dig into my back. I shake them off and start to run. What else is there in this world if not competition?

3.
    My mother once told me:

    “There is one safe place in every hostile land. Bury yourself in the swamps of Cambodia and breathe softly through a reed. Hide in a kind man’s basement as the Germans murder your people. Death itself is just an oasis in the ocean of life. If you must, cut the skin of another man and wear it as your own. Become him as flesh becomes earth.”

4.
    This place is run like a slaughterhouse. We are nothing more than cuts of meat to them; a few dollars here, a few dollars there. The butcher will be here soon. He wears a crimson apron, but once it was white. The alcoholics are the prime rib. Women are tenderloin. The teenagers are nothing more than cube steak.

    A doe could walk on water, and even then, these people would not care.

Elm St. (II)

1 – In Winter -

- you’ll walk,
first one way
and then the other
and then you’ll do it again
and then you’ll go home,
comforted with the knowledge
that you really did come out
you said you would
and you did
for once.
   
2 – Springtime.

Greener than
any of
the corporations
who produce
clean air
and less
pollution. Greener
than all
of the
thumbs of
all of
the gardeners.
A green
so vivid
you’ll fall
to your
knees and
cry, or
at least
you’ll
wish you could.

3 – Our Creations Falter In The Sun.

Urban decay.
A place of
failed ambition and false starts,
a place where, long ago,
the Vines
gripped Man by the hand
and twisted up and around
what he had built
and said,
“No. No more.”

4 – The Fall.

The leaves, now brown and red, will fall soon.
Many already have.
The pavement crackles as you walk.

Triptych for a Drunk Couple

1

A walk through
the neighborhood
last night. We
climbed the trees
and danced in the streets.
What a wonderful, confusing,
conflicting time.

2

Vomit.

Vomit everywhere.
What a miserable
tramp. A new
era for our relationship:
over.

3

these two
bickering
drunks
are the
last thing
I
need
tonight
of all
nights
they have
to do this
jesus
what is
wrong
with them
don’t they
realize
I
have to
be up
in the
morning.

Nothing But A Terrible Silence As I Confess My Love

QRPX-6000, my flower,
so devoted to your work,
swinging back
and forth
all day
every day
forever.
Be mine.

Forgive me, QRPX-6000, I
can’t help but stare. Your muscled,
awe-inspiring limb tightly caresses a car door,
much as it caressed my heart once,
long ago, when I first came to this factory.

This factory, birthplace of my love
for you, and of countless Honda Four Door
All Terrain Sports Utility Vehicles.

This factory, a bundle of fibers,
a nerve linking the cars to the consumers,
a blood vessel carrying the cash to
the businessmen.

Be mine, QRPX-6000, darling,
please dear, please oh God answer me,
will you be mine, baby, honey, sweetie,
be mine, let’s get out of here forever, be mine,
why are you so quiet.

This factory is nothing but an atom
in a cell in an organ belonging to God,
and we are nothing but the electrons
that make up that atom,
miniscule but vital,
swirling around each other for eternity
but never colliding.

P.

Your thoughts are like
poetry;
fast and lyrical, yes, but
also methodical and uncontrollable.
Robotic. Mechanical, almost.

The walls drip with garish
purple
and distracting lime
green. This signifies nothing, logically,
but emotionally it’s telling.

A small room of broken
people,
that’s all there was, and all I should
have expected. Three empty shells and
you.

Essentially, it all comes down to a
pact
that was once made, the two of us
knowing the whole time how futile it was,
but we did it anyway.

Nothing Remains

A Story Told With Photographs

A sign in the distance beckons me.

Read more »

Quicksand

Before I left for college, I went to go see my grandparents one last time. My grandfather wanted to talk to me, and I had a feeling it was important. Dad brought me over, and we all chatted for a few minutes, but then he and my grandmother retreated to the other room so my grandfather and I could talk.

He said, “Jim, my sister never got a chance to meet you, but I think you really would’ve liked her. When I was around your age, she moved to San Francisco. One day before she left, she took me aside, where our parents couldn’t hear, and she said, ‘Bob, I’m so proud of the person you’ve become, and I just wanted you to know that. You’re gonna do great things someday, and I really believe that, but Bob, you gotta leave. You gotta get out of this town and never come back.’

“My sister and I were really close, so that meant a lot to me. I knew that after high school I would move out west and start over, because that’s what she wanted for me, and that’s what I dreamed about. When I graduated, I decided to stay for a few years, build up a savings, acquire some skills that I could use in San Francisco. At some point I got married. Then I had a kid, and then another kid, and then three more, and then my kids had kids, and now, here we are, and it’s far too late for me to go out west.

“Jim, Boston isn’t that far away, I know, but I think you’ll be happy there. If you’re ever tempted to come back home, I want you to remember: This place is quicksand. Never come back.”

I looked at my grandfather and said “There’s nothing for me here,” and he looked at me and said “Good.”

Revere Beach

Yesterday the sun set in the east.

It was not unprecedented. It’s happened twice before, at least. My mother saw it happen in 1979, and my cousin’s girlfriend’s best friend’s grandfather says he saw it in 1944, when he was just a child.

Everything seemed normal that morning, of course. The trouble started around eleven thirty. The sun stopped in the sky and just hung there. It was hard to notice unless you stood in the same spot for a while, but it did happen.

By noon, everyone had realized, and we all knew what was going to happen. The people who saw it in `79 or `44 talked about it. Some of them were excited. Some of them were apathetic. None of them were scared, though, and because they weren’t scared, none of us – their children – were scared either.

At twelve thirty, the sun started moving again, in the opposite direction.

I don’t know why the sun reversed directly above us, and not over Kansas or L.A. or the ocean or China, but it ended up stopping right over the east coast, and I can’t say I mind too much, honestly, because it was a sight to behold.

I took the train to the beach. I wanted to see the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. I waited there all day, watching as it crawled across the sky. I occupied myself by walking the beach back and forth. It was the middle of November, but it felt like late September. I waited.

On most days, when you caught the sunset at Revere Beach, the sand looked pink, the waves seemed green, and of course the sky was always just amazing. I would usually watch the planes coming out of Logan. Sometimes they would be really low in the sky, lower than I’d ever seen a plane before, but they would slowly rise and rise and rise until they were out of sight. The sun would set behind me, but I’d always watch the ocean instead – the darkness would creep into the sky from the horizon, slowly, like a plague.

Yesterday, though, the sun set in the east. I had never seen anything like it. “I bet this is what it looks like on the west coast,” I said to no one in particular, and then smiled, because no one on the west coast had ever gotten to see the sun rise and set over the same beach.

It started to grow dark behind me. The high rise apartments looked sinister.

At some point – though I couldn’t tell exactly when - the sun stopped again.

I waited. Nothing happened. The sun was divided in half across the horizon line. The plague of darkness had stopped in its tracks. I waited. Was the sun going to reverse directions again? There was no way of knowing. I waited some more. I waited for what felt like forever. Eventually I realized that I couldn’t stay, that it was getting late and I had to catch the train home. “I’m sure it’ll be fine in the morning.” I stared at the horizon until the train went underground, and when I came back up the sun still hadn’t moved.

Today, the sun didn’t rise at all. It’s still frozen in that exact spot, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve heard reports that it’s directly above some parts of Greenland and Africa, but that doesn’t matter much to me. It’s dark here.

Life still has to go on, at least for now. I still have to go to class tomorrow. People still have to go to work. There’s no national emergency, at least not yet, even though no one knows when the sun will start moving again. They hope that it’s very soon, or else we’re going to have to do something. The darkness could kill all of the plants. We could all freeze to death. There’s no way of knowing what will happen, really.

As far as I’m concerned, though, whatever comes next was worth it.