Spring 2011 -- The Louisiana State University Delta Journal by Erin Chambers

delta

DELTA volume 53 spring 2011

Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, La

Delta is a closed publication and all copyrights revert to author upon publication. Delta is a part of the Department of English at Louisiana State University and is funded by the LSU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations should be sent to Delta Journal c/o Dept. of English, 260 Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge, La 70803. Thanks to: the LSU Department of English for their promotion and support; to Randolph Thomas, our patient and dedicated adviser; to Clarke Cadzow and all the Highland Coffees staff; to John Palmer and the UPS Store Downtown; to the Shaw Center for the Arts; to Baton Rouge Gallery; to Redstar Bar; to California Pizza Kitchen at Perkins Rowe; to professor Rick Moreland; and to all our staff, supporters, and contributors for making this issue and this community possible. A special thanks to our designer Erin Chambers, for all her time, talent, and patience. All body text is in Times. All work titles, folios, and artist names are in Century Gothic. Volume 53 of Delta was created using Adobe InDesign CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3.

EDITORS IN CHIEF Tommy Jacobi Blake Lee Stephens POETRY Michael Glaviano FICTION Chris Prudhomme Julia Terese DESIGN Erin Chambers READERS Annie Delatte Robert Frank Lindsey Hopton Robert Hudson Elena Jambusarwalla Lucie Monk Samuel Oliver Taylor Jacob Pate Callie Romero MATT CLARK AWARD JUDGES Frank Giampietro Cara Blue Adams

POETRY

Anna Hurst

when the weather turned (MATT CLARK AWARD FOR POETRY) kingfisher this is not a body on a page man on a hunt

Braden Foreman

she is unwrap. Brightside Bar and Grill

Chris Prudhomme

Asymptote Lizard Visitation #1, Light Mediation Asymptote Lizard Visitation #7

Lindsey Hopton

Twenty-Fourth Floor Royalty The Thing About Close Quarters

Daniel Grammar

Zha Vasha Z’Darovia

Paolo Roy

Bread

Courney DiVincenti

I have a bad habit of not shaving my legs and then wearing short skirts.

Robert Hudson

September—Cleburne, Texas

Nichole Anderson

dine & dash in illinois Situation #18—As Sanctioned

Callie Romero

this isn’t something easy

Robert Frank

To Savage and Civilize (Atom) (Optic)

FICTION

Julia Terese

a fragment of ritual

Peter Twal

sissyboy bullshit and all of the above

Jonathan Livingston

fishes king oneironaut i sold the world to myself red rain

4 5 32 62 78 79

Katherine Virag

Detroit

(MATT CLARK AWARD FOR FICTION)

ART

Anna Hurst

WHEN THE WEATHER TURNED We were touching for heat. It was too much without a body in the bed next to the window where the cold fit through the cracked spaces. There was a price for warm and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been time to be lonely, but it was December and where there were trees there was dead and so many still animals.

KINGFISHER Matt Clark Award for Poetry Then, he said, this is when I’m a man and you know you’re a woman, just a woman in a lace dress, curled hair like daisy and moonshine. Told him, I wish I could’ve shown you my body, red striped and Indian skin—water, no bruises. Told him, burn me with a cigarette, save your lighter for a yellow day, roll up your pant leg and let your skin show all muscle and ash and I’ll tear through my ribcage so I can feel you dance inside me. Told him, I name your eyes like photographs, today I’ll call you beehive, tear the water from my hemline, turn my eyes to shiny and glass so you can see your reflection inside them. Told him darling, I was born ugly, nobody made me this way. I’m not a bird. I can’t fly south for anything.

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THIS IS NOT A BODY ON A PAGE Nothing was meant to be broken. It was only bath water and a mirror. I was trying to look like silk but my skin was too much like rib eye.

Anna Hurst 13

MAN ON A HUNT All dirt trail and fish boot, straw in the lips, denim and oxcart, wrangler fish strung on a hook line, takes me by the waist, says sometimes everyone needs to be touched, says it’s only a joke, I’m not really saying the things I mean about light and its reflection on the water and how the moon hides in its smooth expanse, I’m not saying what I really think about the sound no one hears when we fish under the willow, says during the day I want the night, the sky missing and hushed. Inside, I’m unsettled like fish swarming the surface for food but we keep fishing for everything we want to drown, cut throat and vermillion, the godawful end, says I’d hate to do this to anyone.

14 Anna Hurst

Braden Foreman

SHE IS UNWRAP. sure is there a sweet babe there mother they are pulling the casing on her sliced fingers away they are mauling her fresh with sand blasted spears and pin cut vinyl mother she is inflate. she will be knew, knew to them mother beds laid with stone and brick and metal flowers pricked they will take her to an underground and dirt her face they will stand between and scathe her mother they will attach pigskin sleeved links to her mother in burdened shackles dissected with razors scratched on board they will have her fish hooked eye glass framed drum she is burn, mother.

BRIGHTSIDE BAR AND GRILL It’s like a ripped sail on a boat with no oars A stewed roast halfway eaten and left to rot The sound of a stranger on the other side of the wall Like static on the radio Ants Freddie Prinze Jr. The Swiss Walking backwards on a one way street A rubix cube stolen from space An Alzheimered Elephant A pen full of ink that writes invisible A blow up doll with a strict daddy Martha Stewart It’s like hiding in the bucket of a crane hoping you can dig it Yelling through a bum’s ear to make sure it comes out trashy Wishing animals liked Hunter S. Thompson as much as you did Shopping coffins in case you find a steal Carrying a looks-real shotgun to an animal rights throw down Having a play dead match with an opossum Unthreading a tennis ball Screaming at the mailman then pissing on his shoes because his choice of apparel is hideous It’s like embracing a woman on the street humping her leg as fast as you can

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looking into her husband’s eyes and telling him it’s just a phase he is going through and she should think turquoise swans for that yard Licking someone’s ear and yelling I’M THE WORM! It’s like covering yourself in saran wrap with a tin foil hat showing your guns and asking all the lovely ladies for precise directions to the gym Looking in the mirror and accusing him of unfriending you on facebook A red clown suit that won’t put out It’s like being fantastic all the time.

Braden Foreman 17

Chris Prudhomme

ASYMPTOTE LIZARD VISITATION #1, LIGHT MEDIATION “

you are the living fulcrum for a see saw void

the oak: a cross-section of Light showing how Light breathes itself solid through the branches and exhales squirrels and also your resting place with the squirrels

your body: a cylindrical mirror (see also the Chapel of Laughing) the outside sprinkled with lumens for my mucous membranes either/or i will resound i will resound your name until you leak honey into my antiprism on better days smiles are flowering machine-teeth made of blue quartz with helical gears revolving and you are sakyamuni i’ll know and i will puppeteer you along the beach as a lens to catch my narcotic sun

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”

ASYMPTOTE LIZARD VISITATION #7 “

Trust is just like me, except a bank. People have huge houses. People have gates in front. Meanwhile an oak outside unfolds like a paper fortune-teller, denying the soft words in their throats with its sunlight origami. I have no vaults. I’ve crushed a totem to put in my snuff bullet. I’ll breathe deeply on the street corner and watch the intersection become the Giant Mirror, and then I’ll laugh as the rays run their hands around my body. “

Chris Prudhomme 19

Lindsey Hopton

TWENTY-FOURTH FLOOR ROYALTY Is it me or are we raining? This is every sweat I ever wanted. You say you went to The Moose Lounge Contrary to the Elk’s Lounge, No pool. No closet. Just cardboard and the canal Dripping into you. You say I made you rich, being below this. If a man lays his children on The street, is it apocalypse? Or is it just that everyone here Is dilated? Everyone expands. We sit in the smoker’s room for days. I like the sound of you silent. The whole city’s face is on fire.

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THE THING ABOUT CLOSE QUARTERS The air feels small. There’s a tremble in you I want to place my teeth around. Tonight, we are the only things Creaking—gorgeous. The problem with infants, you say, is We are all infants At the same time And the thing about breathing, I say, is We can only ever breathe what’s already been The room, though, The room is in thousands.

Lindsey Hopton 21

Julia Terese

A FRAGMENT OF RITUAL Matt Clark Award for Fiction

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IS INTEGRATED FIRST MOLT The patio squirms. La Blanca tenses as flies, fat with eggs, search her for cuts. Everything is integrated. The cuts are hers. “First the flies then the mites. Beetles third, the body entering the late stages of decay.” The forensic entomologist licks dry lips, scaled with skin flakes, while he looks for signs of Abuelita’s rot. He points to a beetle wading through dust. “That one’s a carrion, a burying beetle. Sharp tarsis so they can crawl miles corpse to corpse.” But La Blanca knows it will not be miles with Abuelita pressing her ear to the other side of the wall. Feet away, listening. Hiding. Once the forensic entomologist leaves, Abuelita runs purple fingers through her granddaughter’s hair. FRESH DECAY. Abuelita scratches a wet blister on her cheek. Pallor Mortis: white flakes of her skin chalk La Blanca’s mats. “The mites, the beetles. The detective knows.” She runs a softening hand across La Blanca’s face. The smell of gasses breaking down lingers, putrid. But La Blanca knows how to keep the man quiet, can ignore his cracked lips. He moves slowly, is careful talking about her grandmother, the results inconclusive, the possibility Abuelita was still alive. He knocks gently on the door. He will be gentle. THE SKIN DETACH The forensic entomologist scoops beetles off of Abuelita’s bed, labeling canisters with a black marker. “Clown beetles only thrive under a corpse. Never in the open. Never on the surface.” He writes things on carbon paper, folds the yellow sheet to fit his breast pocket. “Still, the level of infestation. You can’t stay here.” La Blanca knows how to keep him quiet, rubbing the crease of his pants. “Please.” Skin flaking off does not bother La Blanca now. Already skin flakes, two inches thick, cover the floor of Abuelita’s house. Still, La Blanca does not like the dry lips scraping her tongue while she collapses under the forensic entomologist who is grabbing her in fistfuls. At first it moves La Blanca, how loud the man’s voice is, how many times he scratches her skin, how sweaty he makes her body. How dirty her body becomes. Bruises, purple and brown, are sore on her breasts, her stomach, up between her thighs. Everything is integrated. Until La Blanca’s body, lying under the forensic entomologist on Abuelita’s floor, detaches her skin. Julia Terese 23

It does not move La Blanca, feeling the skin detach, her bones rejecting it, her blood pushing it away. After that, the forensic entomologist only grabs fistfuls of things completely outside the girl, only evidence on the floor, not worth wiping dust off of just to be recovered again in minutes. He is not gentle, leaving thin back scratches behind. But the bruises, the stinging is not La Blanca’s to feel anymore. Finished, the forensic entomologist shakes skin dust off his pants. “A friend of mine works in funeral services. Analysis of the blood spatter is conclusive. Expect more investigators, questions. You should plan a memorial while there is time.” He packs his kit. “I’ll call him.” The front door closing behind him muffles his words. In the kitchen, Abuelita sucks air between throaty sobs while she splits a mite between brittle fingernails. RIGOR MORTIS. The impossibility of tears. Abuelita cries all over her stiff body, save the bone dry tear ducts. Her sobs grind like rust with the thought of her granddaughter becoming a whore just like her mother. “Sucia, Blanca. Outside. On the patio.” On the patio, Abuelita rubs the girl with an old rag, Its hard fibers scratch skin that is not La Blanca’s while Abuelita says over and over, “What husband now? Not one of those men,” pointing to a cluster of men in the yard. Already, three have come to watch the women on Abuelita’s patio. APART FROM Now men crowd around La Blanca standing on the patio in a cream dress that soaks her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, her hips. The dress hangs low below her knees because it is not her dress. Silk, soaked transparent, only films her naked body. But she keeps her hands by her sides, lets the men sweat for her skin hues, her breast outlines, all things that exist completely apart from her now.

BLOAT. Abuelita’s finger skin cannot stick to its bones. It sags while she rips La Blanca’s dress from top to bottom. A maggot crawls into the woman’s hair La Blanca dyed black days ago, stooping over her grandmother with nostrils clothespinned shut. Abuelita rips the silk from bottom to top. While her two rips meet, she stomps a larva with her bloated sole. Its molted body sifts through the floorboards, existing completely apart from its larval body. It does not move La Blanca, seeing the thing die. She has seen too many dead things now. She tastes a man’s sweat in her mouth corners but cannot find him in the crowd. She does not remember his loose socks slouching around his calves, loafers scuffed at the toes. Even if she could remember the carbon paper folded to fit his breast pocket, he would look like every other man crowding around Abuelita’s

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house. Abuelita rubs the sweat off of her granddaughter, plunging the rag into a bucket of soapy water. CARRION. A beetle crawls over a waxed burn on Abuelita’s chest, while the woman hisses into La Blanca’s ear. “Did he feel good touching you? Tus tetas? Tu estómago? La Blanca does not feel the beetle, its pointed tarsis moving over skin that is not hers, while she watches each prick it makes draw its own drop of blood. WITH SOME BODY “Small details, time frames.” La Blanca’s accounts are inconsistent. Abuelita’s blood under the girls nails, streaking her neck. The forensic psychologist writes her responses on carbon paper until he grabs the girl in fistfuls. Dust flicks from the rug each time they fall over it.

ACTIVE DECAY. Longer strips of skin peel off of Abuelita. They clump around the forensic psychologist’s sweat, dry onto the back of La Blanca’s knees, chip off. It becomes ritual. A man, his sweat, his grabbing fistfuls of skin that exists completely apart from La Blanca. It interests the girl no more than watching them dust for fingerprints, map bloodstains, collect fibers, trace the progression of insect colonization. Each one calls Abuelita’s skin flakes dust, sweeping them from floors, counters, coffee cups. At first, La Blanca cried seeing the film of skin over her coffee. It moved her, dust clumps rimming Abuelita’s little cups. Now it all comforts the girl, uniform, two inches thick, recovering surfaces minutes after La Blanca wipes them clean. She expects grit between her molars, consistent. Finally, Abuelita washes La Blanca like a whore on the patio, squeezing the rag with split fingertips. “A whore for what? They won’t be quiet.” La Blanca does not notice the water, too cold, while it covers her arm. Scraps of another ripped dress pile around her feet. “They will.” The crowd of men sweats around La Blanca. Humidity mixes with their sweat, keeps the mass warm, wet, incubated, while La Blanca bribes them from the patio with some body that is not hers. La Blanca is not moved seeing them hatch, molt, multiply. Abuelita knows the men, knows they will always come. Better they sweat for her granddaughter, the whore, than take the murderer away. Sacrificing one thing for another. “Oyeme, niña. You’re clean now. Inside before they see you. Una puta, just like your mother.” Julia Terese 25

PUTREFACTION. A mite crawls through the crack under the door, sniffing out Abuelita’s bloat. The old woman’s dress is stretched tight across her bloated stomach, pulling wide the gaps between the buttons. “Que más da? What else can you do to your Abuelita now?” The impossibility of tears. The kitchen wall is cracked behind dozens of red match strokes. FIRST, SEEING ABUELITA DEAD At first seeing Abuelita dead on the kitchen floor, La Blanca had screamed, “Dios mio, dios mio,” from corners, moved by the introduction of decay. SELF DIGESTION. The breakdown of keratin. Abuelita limped through the house, uneasy on her feet at first. La Blanca sobbed with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her fingers stained her calves and kneecaps red. At first, but she has seen too many dead things now. LIKE HER BODY SKIN, THE COTTON A rusty hinge creaks. Abuelita trembles with her hands raised toward the ceiling. La Blanca finds a dress in the closet, buttons the halter behind her neck. Like her body skin, the cotton only hangs, clings itself in place. ACTIVE DECAY: Abuelita losing her bloat. Black putrefaction: soft muscle inks flaps of ruptured skin. Third molt: hungry maggots detach, one by one. The front door is cracked, wedging the public defender’s head against the doorframe. His voice cracks. “As you know, analysis of the blood spatter. This house is an active site in the investigation. You can’t stay. When did you last speak to your mother?” La Blanca remembers sitting on the patio, five years old with a bucket between her thighs, plunging a ripped dress into soapy water. Abuelita washes the girl’s mother, La Puta, on the patio with an old rag. The three women exist together, integrated. Until Abuelita’s voice. “Your mother, a whore. Men crowding around the house.” La Blanca does not remember the men, but in the end, she is unsure. Easier for the girl to reject her memory, push it away. “I haven’t seen my mother since I was six years old.” La Blanca traces the public defender’s arms with her fingertips and he folds the girl over, grabs fistfuls, a sweat man. Finished, he blows skin dust out of his loafers, scuffed at the toes. “We cannot meet like this again.“ A

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fleshfly lands on his knuckle while he unsnaps his briefcase straps. He swats, misses. “It has come to the attention of the state—” He straightens a stack of carbon copies, yellow sheets with identical creases from folding to fit a breast pocket. “A hidden body, bribery. It won’t be long now that it has surfaced. Some will come forward. All of them eventually.” Two patio steps creak under his feet. “You have a week. Have you considered a memorial?” La Blanca does not follow him down the stairs. “A man is coming, works in funeral services.” Unmoved, she watches his back while he walks away. ACTIVE DECAY. Inside, La Blanca found her grandmother in the kitchen tilting her hand back and forth. The old woman’s eyes followed a brittle fingernail rolling from one edge of her palm to the other. She did not feel her bones detach the nail. Late decomposition: her body rejects more things now than the old woman can notice. Abuelita smells La Blanca like some dirty thing. “Dios mio. On the patio.” The crowd men close in on the two, while Abuelita washes her granddaughter like a dog, sighing, “What husband now? Not one of those men. BY THE MENTION OF HER MOTHER At the closet, Abuelita rubs flat palms over linen dresses, satin dresses. She motions for La Blanca to step into navy cotton. “Ay niña, I wore this to your mother’s christening. Ay, La Puta.” FERMENTATION. Seams scrape Abuelita’s skin off. The dry bones of her wrists catch the teeth of zippers. A skin beetle, clinging to a black sore in the woman’s throat, purrs into La Blanca’s ear while Abuelita zips the dress, supporting her weight with an elbow on the girl’s shoulder. La Blanca is not moved by the mention of her mother. She has heard it already, Abuelita spitting, “Ay, La Puta. Not a nice girl,” while La Blanca folded her mother’s dresses into boxes. “Men asking to be my husband everyday. Todos los dias, niña. I was younger than her.” La Blanca, six years old, said nothing, listening about La Puta, selling her body. “Until they crowded around the house.” Abuelita lifted the boxes La Puta’s clothes into the closet. “For what? Not one asking to be her husband.” She stretched her arms. “Salieron. They left when she left.” Now, with men crowding again around Abuelita’s house, La Blanca forgives her mother. She sees them sweating, through the window, broken, its sill crawling with clown beetles sniffing out their nests in Abuelita’s bed. Julia Terese 27

INVADING THINGS OUTSIDE The patio stairs creak under feet. A man sets his briefcase on the floorboards , stooping to look through open blinds. He covers his eyes with a hand, seeing La Blanca’s naked body stretched across the missing pane above Abuelita’s bed. Then not a sweat man. What kind of man? What ways for La Blanca to keep him quiet? ADVANCED DECAY. Abuelita cannot lift herself from the bed, hiding from the man behind her granddaughter’s stretched arms. Liquefaction: the woman’s arms are doughy and flat. Once La Blanca meets him on the patio, the old woman presses her face to the wall to hear. Her creamy earlobe leaves a wet smudge on the wallpaper. La Blanca zips a slate gray dress up her back. The front door grinds ceiling tile into the carpet as she closes it behind her to talk to the man. He offers her a sweaty hand. “We have an appointment. A friend of mine, a forensic entomologist.” He wipes his forehead with a crumpled napkin that soaks through his pants leg when he shoves it back into its pocket. “Says you’re interested in a memorial.” He tracks a beetle across the floorboards, stomps it out with a rubber loafer heel. Shards peel off the patio floor while he scrapes his sole on the ledge. La Blanca is not moved as the beetle streaks the wood black. “To stay here, you must have loved her.” He licks his lips. “So a service. Help you accept, move on.” But nothing could help La Blanca move on with Abuelita’s ear pressed against the other side of the wall, listening. “Not yet.” She rubs his sweaty face with her hand. “Her presence is tangible here. This house. Almost like she is still—“ The funeral man traces the collar bone to the breast bone with too much pressure. He is no threat to La Blanca, invading things outside of her. “But of course, it’s impossible.” A sweat man, then, easy for La Blanca to keep quiet, knowing already all La Blanca will do to keep her secret. Just like the serologist knew. The trace analyst. The forensic psychologist. He thumbs the zipper of La Blanca’s dress. His sweat rises and falls over the slopes of La Blanca’s stomach while she counts the men around Abuelita’s house with her head tilted back. Inside, Abuelita is crumpled on the bedroom floor, groaning, “Ay niña. A memorial? For what?” The impossibility of Abuelita’s tears. “Dios mio.” DRY DECAY. Abuelita’s bone dry tear ducts, her bones split up the grain. Across the room, chipped ceramic rings a fallen shelf. Walls split diagonally.

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A carcass beetle stumbles inches, its body segmented by shattered light fixture. It does not move La Blanca, the thing so close to death. She has seen so many dying things. “Dios mio? What God, Abuelita? What God here?” Abuelita touches the girl’s arm. “Oyeme, niña. I know. Pero que quieres? What else can we do?” Weeks since La Blanca found Abuelita striking matches against the kitchen wall. MEMORIES OF LA PUTA “Ay, Abuelita. What now?” La Blanca remembers her grandmother striking matches against the wall, lowering the flame to the damp lid of a cardboard box. Two more boxes waited, shoved against the wall behind her. “Coño, what is this?” “Oyeme, niña. Seventeen and still you don’t have a husband. These men, we are dirt to them.” Drops welled Abuelita’s tear ducts. Back then, still the possibility of tears. “Mi nieta, you are a nice girl, but they remember your mother, ay puta, a whore.” Humidity snuffed out the match’s flame. Abuelita struck another against the wall. “Dios mio, no husband, a mother already.” La Blanca grabbed her grandmother’s wrist. “Dios mio, Abuelita, no one remembers.” Abuelita stared at the ceiling. “Ay niña, you don’t remember. You were a baby. Una nena linda. But you were covered in your mother’s dirt. Sucia, La Puta. I washed her on the patio like a dog.” A way for Abuelita to detach things, push them away. “No importa. She was dirty all the time. I won’t let her make you dirty anymore, mi nieta, mi blanquita.” She pulled away from La Blanca, struck a match, held it to the box. La Blanca cried as torn linen burned up the sleeve. She sucked sighs in through a wet mouth. Easy to move the girl, then. She kicked the box of La Puta’s dresses, stomped the flame crawling up her only memories of La Puta. Abuelita pulled La Blanca into her chest. “I made her leave, for you, niña, a nice girl. Not a whore like your mother.” Abuelita, sacrificing one thing for another. “How could I let her take you? What hope for you? What else could I do?” Abuelita threw another lit match at the box. “Ay dios mio, niña.” Moved, La Blanca lunged at her grandmother, scooping skin out of her chest, wrapping fingers around her neck. “Dios mio? What God? What God here?” She threw Abuelita onto the box, on fire, the dresses lighting one by one. The body, coiled on the floor. The smell of Abuelita’s burning skin. The flames died out, the house too damp to catch fire, but it took days for La Blanca to forgive Abuelita, uneasy on her feet at first. Julia Terese 29

IS PART OF It does not move La Blanca, Abuelita coiled again on the floor. Her new flatness. The progression of decay. DISINTEGRATION. Abuelita is draining. Her bald head. Her purple face. Her eyelids swollen shut. Puffed lips slow her words. “Ay niña. A memorial? Dios mio.” Beetles, their larva, crawl away from the woman’s body through puddles of fluid. A carcass beetle squirms, black as the inside of the woman’s neck, then falls to the floor. Abuelita’s cries, “Ay Blanca. Lo siento, niña. I’m sorry,” scrape like metal. She cannot move at all anymore. “I didn’t know. Ojalá, niña. I wish I had.” But she falls to her knees hearing ojalá, I wish. It could have been different. La Blanca, more than a relic, existing with her mother and Abuelita, integrated. More than an extension, a ghost of La Puta. Her feet, full of splinters, broken glass ache, but it is more than a trace of splinters pricking, a fingerprint left behind. It is part of La Blanca. DRY ROT. Two walls of Abuelita’s bedroom are segmented. Behind the drywall, pink insulation full of parasitic wasps, fat with eggs. Skeletonization: the skin is gone from Abuelita’s worn cheekbone. The floor is brittle, exposing foundation under its cracks. La Blanca feels the scrape of zippers against her skin, tearing Abuelita’s dresses from their hangers. She carries them to the patio. Her palm skin reddens with blood, purples while she plunges the dresses into the bucket of cold water. The crowd of men watch her hang each by its neckline on the awning to dry. The same men who have always been around Abuelita’s house, asking to be her husband todos los dias. Covering La Puta in dirt. Even now they blur together, fading, thinning, multiplying so that La Blanca is unsure they are even there. It is only that their presence is tangible here, invasive, threatening. LA BLANCA, MOVED BY La Blanca pulls a box of La Puta’s clothes away from the kitchen wall, carries them to the patio. She washes the dresses one by one, hanging them with the others on the awning. Then the second box. ADVANCED DECAY. Abuelita’s swollen eyes are plastered with grave

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wax. She can only hear La Blanca kicking shut the closet door, running through the kitchen, washing on the patio. “Dios mio, blanquita. What are you doing? The old woman’s mouth is barely audible over the little house buckling, the hiss of carrions swarming their nests. The constant emergence of fresh decay. La Blanca, moved by the sight of so many dead things, carries Abuelita onto the patio. Doughy skin smears her arms while she washes her grandmother, then herself, with the rag, methodical, ritual now. The women hide behind the curtain of damp dresses. Behind them, the crack of floorboards segmenting, the house falling in on itself, forsaken. La Blanca holds a wet hem to Abuelita’s hand. “Mira Abuelita, clean, all of them.” The two women dry on the patio. Dust rolls across the shifting floorboards. Wind blows the hems of dresses while the crowd of men tear them down to see.

Julia Terese 31

Daniel Grammer

ZHA VASHA Z’DAROVIA Виж децата ни колко са пораснали Look at our kids, they’ve grown up so much. Is this like grammar school? We’re taking a picture lined up by size. Listen to the past years, the wisdom you both inherited from your grandfather. Inherited, like a name that can change I know my maiden name is Savoie. Стари мой приятелю, чуй годините My dear old friend, listen to the past years. I think the comedy in it will help. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha Grandfather, I’m going to look at the silent auction items. Anything you want to waste your money on, Anastasya? I want to bid on that chandelier. It’s not for sale. Anything you want to waste your money on, Mariya? Oh, you have to have money? I have like two dollars. She needs money. I know. Моля те не ме поглеждай тъй изгарящо и нежно както преди Please don’t look at me so passionately, so beautifully, as before. Hey, Anya. Hey Mary. Crayfish are coming —Crayfish are coming soon.

I know. I’m probably going to get a water bottle once the— I’m probably going to get one too. Savoie told me she would go out and buy me one. Silent Auction. The way I remember it, there was a contingent of our party that was ready to go out, too. Like on planes? Like those planes? Something like that anyway. Damn, those planes are low. Coming, and growing. We’ve grown up so much. We’re taking a picture lined up by size and I think the comedy in it will help. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha

34 Daniel Grammar

Paolo Roy

BREAD The streetlights are a warm pack of cigarettes, hovering above an ashtray of evaporating earth. Two shadows sleep in the soil. Their legs lick the field, tasting its darkness and trying to swallow it whole. Their ankles skim through pages of scribbled weeds. It’s difficult to read in the dark. Maps and maps of teenage wilderness are stitched into the midnight soil. The book of regret is a grass atlas, moist with wounds. When they are ready to read it, the lazy hands of lovers hold still enough to light a match. The air sits and watches. Candy wrappers and paper towels sweep across like empty planes.

Katherine Virag

DETROIT

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Peter Twal

SISSYBOY BULLSHIT AND ALL OF THE ABOVE

42 delta

he’s an architect and that’s plenty noble samih loses the words to say he’s scared of heights somewhere in the backstreets and alleys of the tiny towns in his chest so instead he starts taking too many pictures. i’m drawing self-portraits on my palm, thinking about alyson and how there’s a letter saying i’m so sorry folded up really small in between the little gap of her front teeth. samih asks if anything is the matter. i shrug, but leaning in close to a little ear belonging to a little boy in a stroller in front of me, i whisper to him a bit about how i’ll come back because i want someone to know but really, i just need someone to keep a secret. halfway up the mountain, samih confesses his fear of tsunamis. he counts houses and buildings on the mountainside and asks me how many i think would go down if the ocean started feeling territorial. i don’t know how to answer so i let the sound of traffic do the talking. samih keeps on telling me he’ll build some of those houses someday with all of their bricks and windows and faces inside but he’ll never cross their doors because they wouldn’t be his. they’d be the ocean’s, he swears to me. the doorknobs, the family photos, the light bulbs, the paper walls. they‘d all be hers. and the way his lips sort of shake more than normal, i believe him. our cart rumbles the rest of the way up, and i don’t say much, but it’s hard to notice because if you let it, traffic will talk for a long long time.

Peter Twal 43

the sad thing is it’s almost like alyson is dancing in the background of every painting in the museum this evening. i turn and talk to the sculptures when samih isn’t looking to keep my eyes off of her. i promise them things. i whisper, i’ll bring you a newspaper in the morning. i’ll bring you coffee.

44 delta

right away it feels like drowning but not in a dramatic way no it’s the quiet to yourself sort of drowning like you never wanted arms in the first place it’s like standing in front of a pool and waiting for the ants to push you in she’s nothing but little ants brown like her eyes you repeat this to help forget you have arms or fingers your fingers are the same as her fingers but yours are always too quick to apologize don’t listen to them they are radios nothing but radios with broken knobs and dials playing the same song over and over again don’t listen to them you swear to yourself you don’t have arms she’s turning into ants everyone is trying to talk to you now but as long as it’s not about wanting you to use your arms it’s fine they’re all ants too no they’re more like caterpillars you wish you could be a butterfly a very dramatic butterfly for a moment you say it out loud i am a very dramatic butterfly with no arms and the water rushing into your mouth never tasted so good

Peter Twal 45

there is no such thing as too much wine in a bar the size of a cluttered bedroom, samih tells me, maybe you should just have sex with someone. he tells me, it’s like doing the waltz. i say, i’m still learning that one. samih looks over my shoulder and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose just a little when he says to me, it’s all in the hips. he says, trust me.

46 delta

i want to eat ice cream but i shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t because iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m lactose intolerant iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m in a little food market staring at a freezer. the frost on the glass door is light and reminds me of the time when alyson and i played in the snow and a few flakes fell on her glasses and how i breathed on them to make the flakes melt and how they slid down onto her cheeks a lot like tears.

Peter Twal 47

until it’s a lot like falling off a building at night, i press my face against the window pane so long i hope to slide through the glass. outside is a clock, a street with enough faces to make my hands sweat, and another clock. samih watches me from the kitchen and stirs his coffee. he asks me for the time, but i feel afraid to pick a clock, and then i feel afraid of trusting either clock so i close my eyes. twelve fourty-eight, i guess out loud. samih leaves his coffee and walks out of the room. the sound of his footsteps reminds me too much of alyson’s freckles. on the coffee table behind me is my favorite book, and all of a sudden, i feel like i need it. i reach for the book, but i don’t take my face off of the glass door. i am just reaching and samih must be coming back about now, but i just let my arm keep reaching and reaching for the book on the table, thick like a photo album, the quotes inside like faces of people i wish i knew really well. the door opens and samih comes back in, says i just need my coffee. and i can’t help but confess do you remember what i told you about being a butterfly? and he says, yeah, you mean, about the ants and the drowning? and i say back yeah i’m sorry, it’s not like drowning. i promise, it’s really not like drowning at all. for about a minute we don’t look at each other which is easy for me because i’m still trying to find the words to politely tell the clocks to stop staring. i know samih is still behind me. i know samih well enough to be sure he has no idea what to say so i ask what kind of coffee and he says a jordanian blend and i say huh, that’s interesting and he asks if i am going to keep my face on the glass all night and i say most likely, yes and then he takes his coffee and walks off, his last words something like the way alyson used to ask me to pass the salt.

48 delta

there isn’t an orange out there not looking for a nice guy outside the café, samih sits down in the chair beside me. a petite waitress a few steps from our table makes a face like she doesn’t feel beautiful enough and fiddles with her necklace. samih sees her and pushes his thick framed glasses up his nose, smiles at her. when she finally notices, her little legs hurry her over. she stops in front of me, and she is beautiful. i make a face like i want to tell her, but i look away. samih reaches for the sketchbook in his bag, opens to a page with a drawing of a boat sinking in the seine, and orders coffee. the waitress nods quickly and looks over at me. my gaze sort of bumps into the hers, and for a moment, we are both trying desperately to hide something. i promise, l’eau, s’il vous plait. she nods a little slower this time then walks away. samih is looking at me hard. i make a face like i’m not homesick. samih opens to a new page in his sketchbook and says, what should i sketch? i say, my shoelaces. samih digs around his bag for a charcoal piece and looks over at me. he already knows the answer when he asks me, so why didn’t you tell her she was pretty? i’m sad when i lie, i mean, i don’t know how to say that in french. i avoid eye contact by pulling out an orange from my bag. i almost start to peel it, hoping if it all comes off in one piece, it will be a good day. samih stops me right before i sink a finger in and takes the fruit. he draws a mustache first then some eyes across its body and hands it back to me. he says, his name is carson, and he is your psychiatrist until we get back home. he says, you must have a lot to say by now. i hesitate a moment with carson in my hand then put him back in the bag and try to make a face like i’m only kidding when i say sure later. i don’t tell samih, but when i slip carson back in my bag, i already know it will be weeks before i work up the courage to throw him away.

Peter Twal 49

slow, slow, quick quick in my head, i’m dancing the foxtrot. i’m counting footsteps and thinking of trees falling with every forward slide. samih is halfway through his second cup of coffee and third sketch of my untied shoelaces when he says to me, what about alyson? i’m hearing birds flying away and trying to remember whether it was a quarter turn left or right when i say back, i don’t want to talk about her. samih closes his sketchbook. there are couples saying words i’m relieved i don’t know. samih notices and writes across a napkin how he wants a change so i tell him to grow a beard. he asks me what i’ve done to change anything since february, and i want to tell him that i started carrying a match in my back pocket in case it ever felt like the perfect moment to strike one across the side of my shoe. i want to say that’s debonair, you know, but i don’t. instead, i rehearse the promenade, the grapevine inside my head. the foxtrot, a light lavender smell. i yell. samih doesn’t know it was just an accident but i don’t take the time to say i’m sorry.

50 delta

samih probably should have learned french before trying to convince the girl at the train stop he was french and only carried the train schedule to attract a mademoiselle like herself samih is drinking. he is ironing his clothes at four in the morning and drinking. i joke with him, say you should never drink and iron at the same time. i say youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll either miss spots or make them. samih lets the iron sit on his shirt for a while. the steam floats up like the way fires start in movies, and then he looks up and says to me, maybe i should learn to dance the tango like you. he says, would you just teach me the tango? the only sound in the room other than the iron is my blinking eyes. samih looks away because i think he is coming really close to crying and runs the iron over his shirt again, and i tell him the bus to the train stop is in eleven minutes. the burn mark on his shirt is as big as my head. i walk out of the room and he yells behind me, please tell me there are cute girls there whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll marry me.

Peter Twal 51

carson samih is asleep. carson is sitting a little funny in the train seat right next to me this morning. heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smiling. heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always smiling.

52 delta

catching the 6:54 to our next stop in the train station, there are people with faces everywhere. carson is in my bag. i want to take him out, but i don’t because samih might see. a train goes by, and a million people trade places. samih starts tapping his foot awful fast. i try to count out a foxtrot but just can’t. i look at samih’s fingers, the tips black and dusty from the charcoal he’s fiddling with, and it makes me nervous so i start to twirl my tie between my fingers like a rope. i say, please stop, samih. i reach into my bag and squeeze carson and my hands start to sweat a lot like how polyester makes my hands sweat. samih’s feet haven’t stopped. i try to look for a waltz in the clatter but it’s not there. i turn my tie over and read the tag on the back. the black of samih’s fingers is worse and worse. a million people in a million trains are dancing the jitterbug right now. samih’s feet run faster and faster. i can’t help it. i say, samih there’s polyester in my tie. i beg, please stop. he does. he stares right ahead and holds the charcoal still, and over the offbeat music of the passing train, samih yells, i’m almost out of paper. he yells, my sketchbook is almost done. just then in my stomach i feel it so i say i’m sorry. the people sort of go away with the trains and my hands aren’t sweating much now but they shake a little when i say i’m so sorry. i take off my tie, put it in my bag next to carson. i turn and say draw on my shirt. samih is quiet, and i know he feels far away so i say it’s okay, i mean draw on my shirt. after a minute, the slow and soft pressure of the charcoal falls on my back, but i don’t mind.

Peter Twal 53

quality time together itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretending to be light out. the streets are waking up and rubbing their eyes all little kid like. samih is at the park so iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m carrying carson in my hands. i roll him between my fingers and smile at all the streetlamps. i walk so long, i hope the smell makes a home in the lines of my palms.

54 delta

people watching

outside feels like the sort of cold i like to be in. i decide to go for a walk because i want to watch people be alive. from the other room, i hear samih looking for something. my hand on the doorknob, i stop and say, samih, iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m heading out for food. i ask, you want anything? i mostly hear ruffling then he says, had something small earlier, thanks though. and with that, i walk out the door.

Peter Twal 55

it was never about the quiet on a park bench, everything sounds far away. it’s cold outside and i should have brought a sweater. i take a sip from my thermos of coffee. samih pulls out his sketchbook, turns to one of the last pages. behind us, we sort of hear a girl on the phone. she is finishing a conversation with someone. samih says, i bet i can draw her without looking. i say, just from her voice? he says, yeah. he says, i bet i can. samih’s ears look like they shrink a little. he listens for the sound of the girl’s voice and starts sketching. i look over at him and he is squinting and listening really hard. the sound of charcoal on paper is almost louder than the girl’s voice. i start worrying i am being too loud so i breathe a little slower. her voice sounds farther and farther away now. i can’t understand how samih still hears it enough. i hold my breath for a second then whisper samih can you still hear her? really quick he says without looking, yeah, can’t you hear her brown hair? the charcoal draws out a few more lines, and samih asks me with a smile, can’t you hear her little nose? in my head, i only see alyson when he says these things so i reach into my bag to pull out carson. he’s not there. i can’t help but think out loud where’s carson? samih asks, the orange? and a little nervous i say carson yeah. samih waits a second and i want there to be noise but there isn’t, then not too bothered, he says, i ate it this morning. my eyes stare into my empty bag and samih is still sketching like normal. i reach into my bag blindly and my hand comes out with a letter from alyson. i quietly unfold it, imagine alyson’s voice reading it to me. samih says just listen to all of those freckles. he says, just listen. i hear alyson say things softly. she says, i hope you’re doing well. her nose wrinkles and she looks something a lot like genuine when she

56 delta

says, i wish i didn’t scare you so much. my breathing is getting too loud again. so i hold it and close my eyes while alyson says i’m sorry, you know that. i turn to samih and he looks awful busy but i still ask, can we go? i promise, we should go. samih says, wait, i just need to hear how big her eyes are. they sound brown, don’t they? i still haven’t opened my own eyes. carson’s were black. i say, please samih. he says, look, just wait. carson’s eyes were black. i say god damn it samih please. he doesn’t say anything for a bit then with a grin says, just one more thing, her cheeks. i bet they’re round. he laughs, i know it. and i’m breathing i’m not breathing i’m breathing. my hands are shaking so much, the words of the letter are dancing the jive. and i say softly into the letter just draw a fucking orange. i mean, we’re all just fucking oranges. you know? none of us can talk to people on a train or remember stories later or ride a bicycle because we’re all just fucking oranges, okay? samih stops sketching. he’s really quiet. somewhere a few seconds ago, i began crying. the girl is gone now. i don’t try to hide anything for a little and samih without looking at me says, i’m sorry, you know that. i wipe the tears and say, don’t say it like that. i bring the letter really close to my nose, push it really close to my lips. in my head, alyson is there. she’s sitting on a bench really far away but i still hear her. she asks, has the hair grown on that spot on your knee yet? the one from when you fell off your bicycle? i whisper into the paper away from samih, no. i swallow and whisper against her words, the hair still doesn’t grow there. just then i feel samih’s arm on my back, and i confess into the cold air, but i’m trying so hard to make it grow. i mean, i’m trying so god damn hard, alyson.

Peter Twal 57

because iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m mostly looking at the ground when i walk i start to notice the way everyone stands.

58 delta

forgetting how to ride a bicycle i’m so afraid to look, i keep my face buried in the pillow. it doesn’t smell like alyson’s hair used to. i’m nervous. it must be the morning by now because from the bathroom, i hear her asking me morning things like is it windy enough to wear a scarf and look like someone from a black and white movie? i think that maybe if i don’t say anything too loud, she’ll assume i said yes, but instead, i don’t say anything at all. i hear a towel fall to the ground, the sound of lace sliding up legs. there’s absolutely no reason to scream so i don’t. i hear footsteps. i mumble into the pillow, alyson, please not now. she asks you want to go on a tandem bicycle ride? i hesitate then say, i needed twelve years to learn to ride a bicycle. she says i didn’t know that about you and i say don’t say that and she says don’t say what and i say don’t say that but this time i lift my face from the pillow and the light doesn’t hurt my eyes as much as her olive skin and ginger hair falling over to shade her face, making her look like someone from a black and white movie. she’s smiling. alyson was always smiling. she lies down on top of me and kisses my ear. just then i notice her eyes are the sort of tree trunk brown that doesn’t want you to know where anything is. she whispers to me, what else don’t i know about you? her hair is falling all over my lips and her breasts are warm like breasts are supposed to be. i’m twelve again, falling off my bicycle onto the pavement, rolling over to the grass and my voice shakes honestly when i say out loud, i never liked wearing a helmet. her hair slides off of my face. she says, you’ve never done this before, no? and i say i’m sorry. she asks if i still want to go for that bicycle ride, and i say i never learned to ride a bicycle. she asks me if i want to leave and i say, okay.

i tell samih the truth about carson he says youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re lying and i say back no iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not.

60 Peter Twal

Courney DiVincenti

I HAVE A BAD HABIT OF NOT SHAVING MY LEGS AND THEN WEARING SHORT SKIRTS you pick me up in your dad’s car and drive us to the parking lot of rouse’s where we make out you almost touch me under my skirt but i get embarrassed and stop kissing you to change CDs i tell you to listen to this song i downloaded and you tell me that i listen to shitty music i say yes i listen to shitty music and you lecture me on the saving power of nonspecific bands from the 1960s instead of paying attention i imagine what it would be like if you had no eyebrows just a huge blank forehead you ask me why i’m laughing and i tell you i listen to shitty music because it reminds me of when it was okay to be irresponsible and you say that’s stupid then i think that maybe you should not be dating my best friend because you are kind of a dick and it is not funny

Robert Hudson

SEPTEMBER—CLEBURNE, TEXAS Granny squints yonder on her sun flower field cause it’s the closest thing she’s got to roses. She named the Sycamore tree - the one that grips the river together Gibraltar, because she read about the way the sun sets like a grease flash off the coast of Andalusia. She says to find her in the secret pasture - the one we keep the cows off - where she lies on tepid August mornings between the rows of impossibly gold filaments, corn hairs, a dream catcher for her days among the Bluebonnets, Blackfoot Daisies, and I’m split, black and white, a parade route in New Orleans, caught between the barbed wire and the tree line when she tells me that love is what you make of it and that you shouldn’t dream of London if you’ve never been to Marfa, that I’m the golden one, but I wanted more Kennedy, Kennebunkport, carry me away, and one time we were weightless, 99 miles per hour in that red Pontiac Trans-Am, her fibromyalgia fingers pulsing on my leg when she said that everything

64 delta

was mine, because only I could see her roses in the field fat with savage brilliance, grease flashes against the Andalusian leaves of Gibraltar.

Robert Hudson 65

Nichole Anderson

DINE & DASH IN ILLINOIS you lost your jaw somewhere around chicago parked at a stop sign for three hours – another 73 cars before i noticed you were kissing all tongue and no teeth. saw a kid get hit by a truck that time we ate greek food in 2.16 minutes – waited for the check for 28.16 minutes, left a 53 cent tip and a mandible – side of baba ganoush. i wonder what the french think about “jack-ass” because you said you’d ride your bike here for mardi gras – called it requin but we all know that’s shark shit. hold tight with your knees because really i’d just like to talk and it’s kinda hard without skeletal support prosthetic pending, assembly acquired. chicago, around somewhere your jaw lost you.

66 delta

SITUATION #18—AS SANCTIONED my mother held my head under water when I was a child a desperate taste of vinegar breathing in and out a flood I know why they mix the wine the water down makes me more palatable a cup to my lips can’t be held stale like skin between teeth and (kid, when’d you find the Lord?) because I know what the body is but when I was young I was cannibalistic.

Nichole Anderson 67

Callie Romero

THIS ISNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T SOMETHING EASY you say calculate lines on paper machines you say lets dance numbers with no pockets I say words with pockets have no fences I say feelings you say winter lying flat backs on benches drinking salt my eyes tell your brain to sleep hard you scratch the math out of your ribcage tell my ears listen darling, wool on my fingers for january.

68 delta

Robert Frank

TO SAVAGE AND CIVILIZE O Fuck thirsty water hungry Hunt we Look we here follow Food Look out Danger Help Follow come here you i look Us fuck I me follow me follow us Follow me swallow seed Food feed forest tree roots me lips Leaf blood leaves where I bleed Follow me now into flat plains where stars canopy sky not trees but celestial leaves I teach you to weave them into meanings directions smoke beacons they are first words I tasted stars like pearls sloping them against canvas tongue arrowhead filled mouth stitching their sounds into first sentence Do you follow your memory mothers all way up mountain peak where your River rapids into first ripples of life now lost in piles of Shed skin hair Shielded scales bonefish skeletons slithering through silt suffering first breaths of aether Do not ask me why you are River as I only ripple into you swallow water Ask The River your mother was a fish

Look how pages peel like books from the tree spring rings stitched in circle paper barks Follow me now to learn writing upon dried leaves desert sent on sirocco Imagine the discovery of your writes what do they looklearn from you they who are Light and maybe future human but even wise bird or ant insect enchanted upon your landscape One day wheel journey to the SacRed Cave where our kind sketches our art and etches the stone what we know Go now you will inhale a hale wind hailing to your heart like an arrowhead and you will sigh like a furnace alloying a woeful bronze ballad statue of your lover lying. THOU shalt find thyfelf af though barefaced drunk vpon the majestic radiance of mead, the sootheft licour doth take armf againft a Sea of troublef, whence thy River preffef printf betwixt the punctuated forbidden fruit and that baftardly rogue ocean expanfe. Dear Love— I hope this letter finds you well; by the time this post arrives to you by steamboat, I will be many months older, pressing further into the panoramic frontier—I found a tumbleweed with gibberish scribbled on its leaves, leaving an ink signal map to follow that seems to pave through this desert to an ancient River. Urgent News ~(STOP)~ I deciphered the map and discovered the River ~(STOP)~ River has dried up ~(STOP)~ Lonesome hopeful few stay to sift the bedrock fueled by rumors of gold ~(STOP)~ Take next train to Midland TX middle of nowhere ~(STOP)~ I will build a roof to block out our ignorance of the stars. [We pause to acknowledge this program’s sponsor, Frozen Salmon Stick Fish Dinners,

70 delta

One Mother of a Meal for One]. Operator, stitch me through to Houston, please, New Orleans, New York City, Anywhere, anyone, Operator, just connect me to anyone, the water is gone but are there still others out there, Operator, I cannot begin—I need to hear the ring—I need to make sure there are still others, you see, Operator— there’s a gray patch in our lawn (like a disgrace to the family name [the lushness of one’s grass is a reflection of status, Operator, {the price of your car} don’t you understand] Operator), branches break in through the back door, shattering the glass window pane, the roots have rooted out the spare key under the rock and rummage for food in the fridge at night, shedding their leaves as they leave. OMG this house is TTLY a prizn, lk Im SRSLY afrd, the tree kps us effin lckd Nside, mmk, TMB. To: Lover Cc: Internet insects, cosmos birds Subject: out here in the desert I write to you with my blood, uploaded inkjet bruises, the last leaves of the google tree that have fallen. Our mortal mail is dominated, I’m taking my last human inhales. >>1101 Int main(script ::: SingularOrganismalEntity; [archaic nomenclature= John Robert Frank, III;; SSN=936-10-7846;] :::loading thoughtCode::: {if( body>thirsty),then input>>water; {input>>stars error(artifact cannot be located, memory corrupted); InsertBinary synapse sentiment[0,1, bridge burned]; Overide(revert to script)!*%[Infracted(Malfxn)Myocardial]Infarction%*¡ Robert Frank 71

!@&!*@*&#)$)÷#|{]}{|[]|]{}^&33%^&(7%$%|}{‘}]\:”/>,><.?<.`@#!@##^%&*`)*(7%*@#& @($39{}\”;/,.?()*&)^#~^@#*@#()_|[\:,>^%&>}#:’(^%!@)(*^+’:.</>,$^05%^&{|’;>?}{\]&*) (*&}22%[];’/.<*&^[]”;%^~^

72 delta

return(0).

(ATOM) (OPTIC) We will both Explode In our own ways of course Before anything exists How did the universe reduce Into this cube? Where the AC pumps desert Where we snuggle into our dimensions, Our flatlandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;our mattress Unknowingly we slept years Bed on Indian burial mounds

Arachnoid mater dreamcatchers Reeling cobwebs back from

At the apocalyptic threshold Of morning. Unnaturally, we return from bunkers Sleepy dirt buried in our eyes

Trees with vines probably grew here once That could converse with the sun during day That could constellate the stars at night You brush sidewalk earthworms Robert Frank 73

from your hair and yawn atomics You blink and stare as if the sun is not 8 light minutes away As if scientists had defined the bond that bridges our eyes like vines from a long time ago.

74 delta

They say our sense of smell will go first in those aliens sapiens of the future they say these walls feel nothing like skin, this hand speaks nothing like words, this body feels nothing like everything I’ve got. Somewhere I’m dividing / marrow bones and antibodies / articles the the the / articles of clothing / sluffed skin, sluff skin, sluff. / Somewhere we’re wise and really old / musty noses and prose / finally the aliens impossible to imagine in our youth.

sunup bananas sunset. smell banana sunrise leaves of banana bed sheets, The catalogue gutturals of waters walked on sirocco, ripples of chords on the coma surface of conscious, the canopy and canvas of cannabis, the hempy chimp hippies, a jamboree of chimpanzees and Dumbos mumbo jumbo ungulates and fungal gumbos Shit’s all Bananas, monkey! a man kid, monk me.

Robert Frank 75

Don’t let them get you. God’s a momma mammal and extinct, tetris animal of four feet, fur heat and sweet milk of mammaries, most importantly memories, recipes for remembering, embering in wait across Bering strait, the erring straight, just love or hate, the eaten and ate, all the feeders to sate, and a cranium careening through screens.

Then the tiktaalik reptilian, the dominance that’ll kill you if a dinosaur rules you. I’m sorry, there’s no following fossils, no way to retrace our steps, just a long wait at the tips of the twigs, the swaying to break, shed leaves and book, shed scales to teeth, coelacanth to breathe, lung—inverted tree whose roots eternally steep in the babeling brook.

76 delta

unIcellular eukaryote universe a chemical democracy signal and receive, a pheromone nose drawn in nonsense, and drawn away dreams of senses, corneal shores where in gulf an alphabet sails. You’re not the universe yet, you’re an infant with a light switch…

on and off and on and off and on and day and night and day and night and up and down and up and down and up and none and one and none and one and on and off and on and off and on day and night and day and night and up and down and up and down and up and none and one and none and one and

Robert Frank 77