Category Archives: shards

February 21, 2017 · 7:12 pm

i try to imagine

I Try to Imagine

I try to imagine the King of Siam sitting on a toilet bowl, and presto, there he is, straining with constipation. I try to imagine what I’ll say when he flushes and steps into my living room, and there he is, wiping his hands dry on his pantaloons.

I offer him a croissant and some coffee but he says he’s already had breakfast. I ask him if he ever thinks about windows, and he says strange you should ask.

“I dreamed of windows every night as a child in the open-air castle,” he says. “Nightmares, really. Why block the passageway between you and the outside world with glass barriers? Later on in life I grew claustrophobic just thinking about it, and twenty wives were not enough to wipe out the dread.”

He doesn’t see where I’m coming from. He doesn’t see that I’m offering him work as a window cleaner. But why would that even occur to him? He is, after all, the King of Siam.

Things begin to grow delicate. He takes note of my windows and sees I’m not one of his subjects. He becomes startled to realize that he’s speaking in English.

“It’s alright,” I say, but his alarm escalates.

I try to imagine that I never imagined him, but it’s too late. He whips out his scimitar.

I’m surprised at how well I handle him, and then I see that Indiana Jones has take my place. I’m safe and out of the action, pulling puppet strings and giving cues from the wings. I send the two of them off in the work van singing love songs in Chinese.

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February 19, 2017 · 5:12 pm

connecting

Connecting

Me and Mert, putting an end to our formal education, walking out of the high-school assembly and ripping up the soccer field on our Harleys, while inside the auditorium 500 students rose to their feet to sing No Man Is an Island.

Mert and I never talked much. We worked the factories by day and at night set pins in the local bowling alley, working two lanes each. After setting pins we went out into the night and rode our bikes on the Connecticut backroads, sometimes until sunrise.

“See ya round,” Mert said when I sold my Harley and moved to the Philippines.

“Right,” I said. “See ya round.”

Easily let go of, the best kind of connection. That other business, where people glue their faces together and hop around on one foot drooling all over each other, that’s an assault on the splendor of solitude.

I never saw Mert again.

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February 17, 2017 · 7:51 am

his favorite color

His Favorite Color

Some people are snow blind, some color blind. Some are blinded by love, some get blind-sided. Some go racing down blind alleys with great conviction. Some are so blind they can’t see the forest for the trees. Some have blind spots in their rearview mirror but travel so fast it doesn’t much matter. Some play blind man’s bluff, others just sit at home watching television, someone else’s idea of what things look like.

I have a blind friend who knows what you’re about to say by the way you breathe. Who goes dancing without bumping into anyone. Who lies awake at night having visions. Who drinks a quart of vodka a day. Who remembers the last thing he saw going the wrong way on the freeway, the glaring white truck lights and the explosion of red.

Red’s my favorite color he tells them in rehab, and they say, what’s that got to do with recovery?

Twenty-eight days and he’ll be back on the street.

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February 16, 2017 · 8:10 pm

first person singular

First Person Singular

They wanted to know about his pros and cons. His happiness and his nose-dives. Why his shoelaces were never tied and why didn’t he wear slip-ons. They–no, I’m not talking about myself in the 3rd person. That’s for people who can’t bend down and tie their laces. People who crash picnics.

I’m not talking in the 3rd person, I’m talking about the 3rd person. Cross-dressers and chameleons, slipping through the shadows of their own reality.

***

This is what I do because I can’t remember what to say next.

When one faculty falters, another kicks in. Blind people who can smell a lima bean trapped in the kitchen sink “J” joint.

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER WHAT TO SAY NEXT WHEN IT HASN’T HAPPENED YET?

The real question is: Why are they concerned about the 3rd person’s happiness and shoelaces, these third persons plural? And how can we get poor Fred the hell out of there?

Now I’ve gone and dropped his name. It didn’t shatter like I thought it would. It bounced like a rubber ball, and there’s a glimmer of hope in Fred’s eye now, watching his name bounce. All he has to do is reach out and snatch it up before it settles into stillness again. Hold it up like a Eucharist and cry out: “This is my body!”

Then the tables will be turned. Then they’ll run for cover, these plural persons with the effrontery to demand things from Fred.

Do it, Fred.

Snatch up your name and hold it on high.

We’re counting on you.

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February 15, 2017 · 8:40 am

frail flower

Frail Flower

He was as fragile as a buttercup, although you couldn’t tell by the way he held his hand over a candle flame until the flesh blistered, by the way he drove nails into wood flush to the head with one hammer blow, by the way he disciplined his son so that he stood at attention even when alone in his room, by the way he chastised his wife if she looked away when he questioned her, by the way his Doberman followed two paces behind.

You couldn’t tell from outward appearances, but when off on business in Caracas he’d slip into a part of town he had no business being in and visit a prostitute who worked out of a hovel, barefoot and dressed in tight shorts and a magenta blouse that floated over her breasts. He’d hand her a hundred-dollar bill, undress and lay naked on the packed dirt floor. Then she’d take the whip from its hook by the door and commence whipping him across the legs and back. “Bad Boy!” she’d hiss in heavily-accented English. “Bad Boy!” until he curled into the fetal position and wept.

Then she’d lean against the stucco wall of her room smoking a cigarette until he pulled himself together and left, which took no time at all once she’d stopped whipping him.

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February 12, 2017 · 6:18 pm

crossing over

Crossing Over

He wanted to tell people what he didn’t want to tell people. He tried explaining that to his son long distance, except nothing was long distance anymore, everything was in reach but unreachable. He tried explaining that too, even tho he was filling with dread and terrified of getting confined in a small space. A flash of alarm – who was trying to get thru to who?

“To whom,” said his son. “You know better.”

He saw where that was leading, saw who was trying to put one over on whom. But wait! He hadn’t said that, only thought it, so what was going on? Wasn’t anything sacred anymore? The cow? The moon? The blue lagoon cram-packed with monsters?

“The cow jumped over the moon!” said his son, as if he could read his mind, his voice breaking up. His voice breaking up, not the connection.

His son was reading his mind and laughing like a hyena, loud and clear now, as if he was across the room in the shadow of the malfunctioning stand-up lamp. He needed to get the hell out of there.

“Are you on drugs?” he asked, and his son said, “Say what you called for, I don’t have all night.”

“To say hi,” he said. “To see how you’re doing.”

“Thirty years too late for that,” said his son.

“Listen, I want to tell people what I don’t want to tell them.” he said, no longer sure if he’d already said that or just thought it.

“How did you get my number?” said his son.

He dug deep, looking for that part of him that used to terrify people, and just like that he realized he was old and no one cared anymore what he said.

He looked down at the thing in his hand. It was tiny and black and he didn’t know where it came from. He stuck it in his jacket pocket and went out the door.

He began walking fast, his son’s muffled voice coming from his pocket. He thought that if he walked faster, maybe it would disappear.

Then he broke into a run.

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