The South House
I. I just wanted to ride the bus into the night, balancing myself against the curving rail, mute commentary of companionably sleepy strangers. My friend's face had been too ashen for me to ignore the signs of illness. Konrad stirs occasionally and asks me if I want anything from the sandwich shop. I do not. I miss you among the blue bottles, without you it is just glass and you will not be the last to leave us among uneaten apple scones, amiss. I miss you telling me I am trite and heathen, and bumming my cigarettes because you have stopped smoking again. I keep expecting to see you shuffle by, your shoes padded by 100 dollar bills to fend off winter cold. I suppose we all miss you in different ways. I miss the old you though, not the faded gentleman who took your place, while you went off and robbed banks in the South. The birds build nests out of blue glass, careful creations, glittering lamps in southern trees, florescent eggs, nuclear reactive blue monkeys with wings, bats at night. Streets are hieroglyphic paved, no one can read them except the rain, The high rise top window is lit neon blue, pink, a torso in the corner window, trees black with howling doves, southern morning lights on white sheets, sleep impossible without twelve pillows the sound of waves, the bare branch scraping my window pane, waking to flashes of lightening, torrential rain, sirens, Marvin Gaye from corner bar, sleepless, sleeping, awake. Deep in the cunt of the South, every angelic concrete block is demonized, suspended in a hot wet reality, space blurred by evil eyed children old before their time, rancid women ripe with the smell of death. Sleep becomes evasive, dreams disturbing and air conditioned, with the whir of biting white winged albino ants falling on my funeral suit. The fish are swimming in the devils eyes. He is hot in his suit and uncomfortable with so cold a woman. I. What it feels like to be a Southern girl, with your hair over your eye, can you tell me? It aches like a broken bone in winter, at the worst times, painful, poignant, wish for snow,
reflection in glass, slow motion watching, too far, headlights, radiant heat, photographs, bearded man, orange float in a basket, what death will find my breast, umbrella will not shelter from much, garage door will pull up too early, hat won’t sit right, paper in breeze, metal fence, snow on mountains, drowning, casual how you stand there with your legs crossed and dance under the street light like a deranged flamingo on the wrong continent, throw your head back and smile at nothing, back of your head, in any language difficult to describe except the way you wear your watch and when you take it off and throw it carelessly on the bed. You hold me too tight. You are watching me through the window and I see you, you can stare at me but I see you with the eye in my forehead which is never off and you know so you turn around and walk away. And my elbows are sticky with honey, elbow stuck to table, what will you do if I lean down and lick it? Drunk step , wet sidewalk, neon in puddle, your fashion is doubtful but endearing, car alarm, orange juice slop. Waiting taxi, early morning, you gotta be a doctor when you get up which might be hard to explain when you are seeing double, since you’re only supposed to remove one of those. Don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right. Brown paper bag, just bread. That’s a lot of buttons for one jacket, I’d find it overwhelming, is that why you wear it? How about that early morning? How about we all be Italian? How about when we wake up we crawl out of bed and sit without sound in the window and watch the passerby’s and drop bread crumbs on them so they can find their way back when evening comes and work has erased the map they keep on the back of their eyeballs. Yah, sure. I was thinking we could probably go down to that place on 20th where you can still smoke and goddamn your hair must require a lot of upkeep. Give me a piece of your mind, please, something refreshing that will force forgetting how incredibly dull my teeth are from lack of sharpening. I laugh too much, it’s refracting my image into a martini shaken not stirred and I’ve spilled on the snow again. Being a girl, It’s a freezer full of cuts of morning waking with new angles, sharper than the night before, like that Sandman guy took the night off and some little woodsman sharpener dude came in his place and chiseled you a new hip. You be Adam, K? And I’ll be Eve. Bone of my bone flesh of my flesh and all that and I can’t tell you anymore now.
III. All this talk of a perfect wedding. I have gone mad, in the heat; I drink water all night, laying face down on the cold basement floor to escape the tomorrow of the blazing sun, next to the chipped window that lets in the winter air while the furnace hums.
Penelope, you are a pernicious column to this church that I am leaning against. But still, I find you undeniable, in this lost city of the Mayans. The tango is lying under the bed, covered in dusty bisque. I will have more champagne, please. Would you mind getting my shoes? They’ve fallen under the table. I wasn’t planning on standing up so soon but my paint is drying. I was flying under that crumbling building and the unedited station is jammed the violins are screeching and you have on a blue shirt and you scrape your chair across the floor and it’s all very distracting. Perhaps it is too early for wine, but it is so dull here without the sun gods, under the umbrellas and the rain is ceaseless outside the porch. The cat? The cat has gone missing, in search of muslin. I suppose the neighbors have taken her in. I am learning to dance in a tighter circle. Do you think you could keep your elbows to yourself or perhaps play the accordion? Do you think you could take that bow from your hair or maybe be not so tall? Wipe the rim of your glass with my finger and hit the dance floor alone. It’s hard to dance the alone because there’s that giant crucifix on the wall and it feels wrong and the Persian music doesn’t quite fit. I feel this is all quite predictable until you come by with a book you think I should read. Penelope, please don’t be horrified. I love your voice, you sing like an angel. But still, the confusion lies in what to wear and where to go and what it looks like next year and what next year’s stigmata will be and I’m just quite simply in the mood for romance with a British accent. Please be kind. You forget how easily I am lost without a map and I’m left tracing fingers on the wall. Coruscate your fingers and put them in my jacaranda hair. You are full of persimmons and I long for sand. You are in the wrong lane, dear, and you’re going the wrong speed. It’s faster than that here.
Leave those crates there and come with me. My hairs a mess and we’ll need to stop for arugula for tonight’s warm salad and more candles. We will tango tomorrow. Last Our Lady of Southern Orange, We have paid what we owe, the smell of citrus flowers, all our seashells, sweet little lies, unflinching truth, some bargaining, pounds of walrus flesh. (Speaking of cabbages and kings) Turned in our whistles, closed the whistle factory, killed America with a shredder, cursed Hemingway, scorned Einstein, paid under the table for confession which we were told would be free… When we saw the Holy Mother appear on our toast, we kept her reverently on the windowsill, in full view of the sun, to cancel the work of the devil who was rotting in a cell Downtown, somewhat glum but hardly done with his daily routine of masked funeral parlor living, unchaining DNA and wreaking havoc at the DMV. The Pope has abandoned his post, fleeing town for an apprenticeship with a ferrier in New Jersey. It was what he had originally hoped to do and could only ignore the call for so long, of simplicity. He wrote before he left town, and told us to give the toast to the birds, because after all they were hungry, the price of snow, in the South.