Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death by J.A. Tyler

J.A. TYLER

Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death

Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death

Also by J.A. Tyler In Love With A Ghost Inconceivable Wilson Someone, Somewhere The Girl in the Black Sweater

Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death J.A. Tyler

Thumbscrews Press

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which portions of this manuscript first appeared: 971 MENU, Clapboard House, Crimson Highway, Eight Octaves, Forge, Ghoti, Grievous Jones, Indite Circle, Inscribed, Pindeldyboz, Robot Melon, Sein und Werden, Skive, Sniplits, SubLit, Underground Voices, and Word Riot.

Copyright Š 2009 by J.A. Tyler. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover art by Sam Pink Book design by Daniel Casebeer Set in Garamond First Thumbscrews edition: October 2009 Originally published as a chapbook by PaperHero Press www.pearnoir.com

Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death

The Moon and the Mud and the Way She Was As a Kid Trembling Through It Guitar Western Poetry The Life of a Death in Far Flung Soil The Horses and the Wind Skipping Through Alongside Sunbeams Pause Pause Pause On and On Meat and Gristle Sometimes He Became a Coaster He Falls to Pieces Choose Your Own Adventure: Auschwitz The Man on the Button Before the Bear Ate Him A Story in Which No One Dies Waiting For It I Didn’t Know Until Today That You Were Beautiful Fainting Thoughts of a Fading Jesus Carwash Murder Sexual Metaphor A Moth Inside-Out Dead Floating Someone Always Dying

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The Moon and the Mud and the Way She Was

She said to him I’m going to die tomorrow.

And he didn’t say anything back because he knew she was right.

Did you know that she asked.

Yes he said.

The moon was crystal and sharp around the edges and bright and full and longing. And it was a balloon. And it was a vase. And it was desire.

And it was a globe of people shining faces at a dull and vacant ground.

And it was light. And it was round and glorious and losing. And it was a moon. And it was a counterpart. And it was vivid. And it was full.

They held hands in the light of the moon and looked up at its brightness.

And they laughed at what people had said. And they cried. And they looked at the moon because they couldn’t look at each other. It wasn’t time. That would break them. That among all the other things would break them. So they looked at the moon instead.

I don’t want to die she said.

I know he said back because he didn’t know what else to say.

They held hands and looked at the moon and lay in mud. And the mud was thick below them and they lay spread eagle in it. Deep. Sinking in. And the mud cooled them because the wind was warm. And the contrast was good. And they lay there holding hands and looking at

the moon instead of each other. And the moon was shining and full and losing.

I’m sorry he said to her And she whimpered back.

And she cried.

And he held her there in the mud and the moon and the way that she was dying.

I’m sorry she said back to him.

And he exhaled the world through teeth white and pearling. And he saw her in the moon. And she was full with shining. And she was crying. And she was a balloon. And she was a vase full of thorns. And she was a vase full of white. And she was water making mud out of dirt. And she was rain. And she was mud. And she was a warm wind.

And she was dying.

I know he said.

And they lay there in the mud. Arms out. Palms up. Waiting for more rain to make more mud. Feeling the warm wind streaking and there.

Sinking in. Deepening. Vacant faces flushed with the glow of a moon full and glorious and losing and longing.

And in the morning she would be gone.

And he would know that she was.

And the moon would be cresting lightly over a blue ridge of mountains.

And the mud would be drying and caked. And there would be an outline of bodies like angels there in the drying and caking mud. And the

moon would disappear. And the sun would come up hot and staring.

And he would cry and cry and cry.

And the mud would disappear.

And when the moon came back it would be dark and slow.

And he’d have to try to see it. It wouldn’t just be there anymore like it had been.

As a Kid

He used to haunt these streets.

As a kid.

Now tv jumbles whisper through a prairie of carpet stains and a half eaten p b and j bleeding ants. He’s trying to get his mind into a bonus episode of cops and he’s hoping there’ll be at least one with some hookers in it because those are the ones he likes best and maybe that would help him shake this headache. In a cold hand he holds a warm beer and laid across his middle-aged knees and his cut-ff denim shorts is a bloodied baseball bat that was signed by Lou Gerhig himself.

But things were different now.

Now Janie was dead from a kind of cancer that choked her in the night. And Charlie was a victim of that Vietnam thing even though most people didn’t ask too many questions about what really happened.

Bobby is married with three kids and though he isn’t dead most don’t want his kind of life with all the yelling and the divorce threats and the hope for late night porn on blurred pay per view. Allie used to be his best friend until she grew breasts and starting looking at him strange when he looked at her strange but he’s heard she got married to some used car salesman somewhere out in Reno and people say the black eyes aren’t from falling down the stairs. The guy they used to call Ramble got trapped under a truck somehow changing a tire and now he wheels himself around mostly going to the liquor store and back and nowhere in between. And Chuckie died in a war and Marv died in a war and Sammy survived two wars but then killed himself with a shotgun over Thanksgiving leave some years back. Suzy is in the

middle of chemo if he’s remembering it right and though she doesn’t want to end up dead like Janie she’s starting to think that wouldn’t be half bad considering she’s bald as a turtle and losing her flesh in big gouging segments.

In thinking back he remembers.

They used the play stickball all of them down the street or up the street or anywhere that wasn’t hung with stale laundry or the smell of kettle cooked rice and beans. And Janie was a hitter and Charlie batted cleanup and Bobby was something at first most days and both Allie and Ramble could truck in the outfield gutters pretty well and Chuckie was a pitcher that nobody liked and Mary played outfield sometimes and sometimes just sat on the sidelines and Sammy was on third and Suzy was on second and he was most often behind home fielding the wild ones that didn’t cross the plate.

And they always headed home before dark.

But just a few hours ago he found Two Dogs Romero in the city park and asked him what happened last night and he said a lot of things man so he showed him the baseball bat and cranked on his skull until Two Dogs’ right eye was swelled shut and his cheek was wrecked and his long black ponytail hung slimy with blood. But what he didn’t know was that after the police showed up and before Two Dogs was carted away on the gurney an officer asked if he’d like to press charges and Two Dogs just shook his head no because he knew he’d fucked around on somebody else’s wife and he was deserving of the schoolyard things you get.

Because those politics translate.

So now he’s trying to watch the tube but really he’s wondering all nerves about when they’ll ring his bell or pound on the door demanding his wrists in handcuffs with come quietly phrasing. He’s already had enough three-two to buck most of the paranoia but it still comes in

jolts when he’s not looking in the right direction or when an officer screams get down on the ground and he can’t tell if it’s on tv or at the front door or in his head. And he didn’t even have the heart to finish his p b and j what with all the blood under his fingernails.

They’re pretty much just ghosts of themselves now.

All bloodied and beaten and left for dead.

But they still play stickball in some way or another.

As a kid.

10

Trembling Through It

Cecilia attracted cancer at forty eighth and nineteenth sucking a one hundred in an arab’s taxi cab while watching the day burn through plate glass sale windows and gloss atop sandwich boards on the backs and fronts of the homeless declaring that the end was indeed near.

Her hand twitched even then flicking the lighter back into its purse and waving through a body sitting still. A tremor shaking the nerves loose in her somewhere as wonders of graying blond hair waved in the subtle air conditioning. Thinking of the precious moon ringing late last night again in her head today begging celebrations and congratulations and setting fire to her snowy heart.

Inside her body a search party declared the beginning and set out with freeze dried procurements and a flag to plant at the base of something grand.

He was twenty five and she was forty three and it was all just a numbers game under those silver streaking skyscrapers so while she avoided the hot dog vendors with their luke warm drinks nestled in dirty ice she couldn’t take her hands off the young man with grease for hair and an apron stained with envy and all the things she wanted wrapped in glorious white wine and canapÊs and scallops lightly dusted and ribboned with proscuitto.

The molecules evil in their roots descended into a pink hued lung and settled there like flakes of burning ash on citizens frozen in lava wiggling no more underneath a scattered sunless life.

The sex had come again and again for weeks on end and eventually she ended up pregnant which was just the thing she wanted and just the 11

thing he wanted and so they could gloat their happiness amidst stacks of golden crepes powdered in sugar and glistening with thin drizzled strawberry. There was no more waiting for streams of existence because he had come to her like a magnet and she had responded like the fronds of a plant and their smiles were both so pearly white even late at night.

It spread from one to another on the blood and breathing wind inside of her. Staggered back and forth drunk with power. Set up a camp that devastated the land and decimated the water supply and somehow did it all quickly and quietly and sulkingly like a kid brother in a world of even newer diseases and plunders and methods of rape.

So a baby boiled next to a cancerous lung and neither knew of the other and he sharpened chef knives thinking of a son or a daughter who would smell to him like basil hugging tomatoes and the woman Cecelia forty three and newly smoke-free was pricing cribs and cradles and changing tables instead of shopping down the next usual pair of manolo blahniks.

And though the tribe was miniscule it grew with wrath and the baby was all the while two cells making four cells making lips and eyes and ears and fingers inside embryonic fluid that was sparkling clean and jiggled playfully when Cecilia coughed in spasms and spit more and more red strands into the porcelain hard toilet of her hip up town apartment.

And needless to say in time the kid was born and shortly thereafter Cecilia died of cancer and the guy cooked his ass off to make ends meet and his greasy hair simply fell out and the cartoons never made him laugh anymore even though the kid thought them hilarious never really having known her mother and was there ever anything as depressing as these lives we can imagine when a woman lights a cigarette in a taxi cab screaming by us as we press the button and wait for the walk light on nineteenth and forty eighth?

12

Guitar Western Poetry

Silver blue licked the body. And dim fluorescent flashes shivered up and down it. The dusty boots lay crossed and still and restless, one over another atop a dirty canvas bag. Fingers picked. A tune, subtle, echoed almost noiselessly.

Rain had trailed the pickup in. Now it was sheets outside, gusting, filling in the rattling dirt road. A quick storm, fast moving clouds against dusty plains.

A man, scratchy graying stubble three days out, tipped an easy spoonful of sugar into a mottled brown coffee mug. Stirred. Stared.

The picking went effortlessly into a song, biblical and haunting. The voice was like empty shotgun barrels, steely and wounding. Nearly whispered to a corner of glass and cheap metal paneling.

The song ended without ending, hung on for settling dust, chimed into echoes while the man sipped the vaguely bitter coffee.

At home, a woman’s lower lip bled a thick, deep red underneath breathless calls.

Help. Help. Help. Help.

A couple eyed the stranger, knew him as nothing more than out of town, watched his fingers work on the strings while his feet sat still, motionless. They heard him eerily sing of The Great Flood that washed plains and all into a shadow of ocean, fish surviving where no family stood, trees underneath muddied water, roots drowning in too much 13

life-blood. He ended without hope, without words of condolence or chance or change or love. Sipped his coffee and returned a throaty stare studded in thorns and dirt. Downcast faces failed to return the stranger’s eyes.

Her back was bruises, browning with time, churning above swells like unforgivable waves. She was Eve, naming the hurt, calling out.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

He started up a new tune as the coffee bobbed past an unshaven Adam’s apple and crept into an empty stomach full only of adrenaline.

A sweeping wind brushed debris past the grimy diner windows as the words came slowly from tobacco lips and purple tongue. A new song, spur of the moment, lined with insults, insinuations, and the cold feel of a revolver.

The waitress leaned on a dingy countertop, pencil stabbed mercilessly behind her left ear, and listened to the man’s song. She couldn’t place all of the words, they came out like air from a busted seam, stringy and tight, whined so low and dull they were almost intangible. What was left was a story of a bound woman, ropes tied, gagged, beaten beyond life. The waitress smelled hash browns and day old baked goods and cradled a pot of burning coffee.

There was simply nothing left. Sores and cuts and bruises and fractures raised swollen calls all over a pale white canvas, oozing someone else’s thoughts of jealousy and hate. She was a mass of gurgling wounds, all atop the worst kind of thievery, no words available to dull the threats now breeding on her skin. Branded with a farmer’s sign. Chattel.

Owned. A mule with braided hair and breasts.

There was no need to finish the song. He felt purged, relaxed, rejuvenated. He slung another drip of coffee down his eager throat, dropped a dollar bill on the bubbled tabletop, and shuffled slowly down the aisle. A canvas bag gripped tightly in a massive, rough hand.

14

A guitar in the other. The cloth dripped blood in sparse blotches down the white linoleum. No one looked but everyone saw it. The man smiled, tipped his hat to a little girl staring from a counter barstool, and headed through the now clearing weather to his rusty pickup.

Voided of a pulsing life, something not his, something from another ruthless man, she felt absolutely empty. He’d put it in his canvas duffle bag and walked out. She wasn’t sure if he’d come back. And she wasn’t sure how she’d live if he returned. She couldn’t take it back, what she’d done, and when the secret was broken, a misplaced word in a nervous sentence, a voice tinged with guilt, a twitch of eyes, there was no stopping him. Revolver handle, fervent knuckles, a fifth of whiskey, and a wire hanger. It’d really taken him no time at all.

15

The Life of a Death in Far Flung Soil

In silence the weeds grew heavy, lifting seedpod heads to reckless winds churning invisible molecules from leaves to spindles of ladybugs. And on a ridge behind the barn three beset trees spoke with neighboring rocks about the resistance of dirt and the wonder of floodplains.

Flowers trembled regular stupors across flagstone paths dropped by a diaspora of unknown children.

When the man was young he had longed to watch circus elephants travel earthenware highways. He’d wished for towels wet from pools of well springs. He’d wanted the imaginative invention of so many cedar-seamed pieces. He’d wanted color boundless in soap bubble suds left dripping down the ruts of well-worn tractor tires.

But the hay bellowed to earthless soil and shone golden instead of green, its nutritional value punched out by ever-waxing moons.

When he questioned what was it to him he couldn’t answer because of pockets in his throat that choked common sense and brought stolid stern looks from his calloused hands. He’d wanted so much and the rows had to be tilled at least twice each season.

Heaviness had weighed upon his shoulders until now, when the picking tight sun steeped his bones with a marrow-rot too vindictive and virile.

The curtain rustled textures along a roughly painted sill and the man’s breath came in stints and whistles like newborn ponies recently tied to the carriage.

16

He heard sticks tap taps between elms brought mail order thirty-seven years ago to foreign appointment.

To begin there was nothing and to end there would be wheezing tones reminiscent of greta garbo and licorice-flavored gum.

The skin of his scalp shimmered ruthless glints even in the dim lights of shaded bedposts, his hair ransacked by blue skies and dry hollow clouds.

The mice had ravaged every cupboard and every morsel and they were the only ones interested in keeping his fingernails trimmed.

Air no longer tasted.

And the rumbling sense of a nearby set of tracks launched red-winged blackbirds into summer breezes but never stirred the man.

When belief in colors had existed the man was young with blood and stupid with grandeur. And his old age was a wrinkle in knotted time growing stubbornly on while flies honey-sucked skin into a trash of bacteria withered and lacking.

Underneath the floorboards there lived a photo album of intense beauty that no one would ever see.

And while elephants no longer shaped his thoughts his teeth remembered remembrances of dances with corn pearly white yellow and pitted with mesh that always sifted and lodged between.

One lone shelf like a starving coyote in a land of giant machines stood biblical and slightly tilted to the figurines a woman had once fondled as if they were the backs of his arms.

Nothing else was told in the time timid warp of fading carpet and stairs that squeaked where white trim meets foot-sized sound.

17

In out went the rhythm of his living in a land that had asked harsh questions and always replied with dead animals and ravages of insects and drinks from only pitch-hot streams.

Roots were still finding stability in the lusting depth of small pebbles inside very tiny rivulets of sustenance.

Wagon wheels carved lines next to treaded earth as the stars popped incessantly from gravely skies voicing smoker’s lungs and socks without mending.

So this was what it felt like to die.

To die and see the animals on the margins of asphalt streets wrapped inside longing and misguided love and the way cars’ headlights tinkled to darkness on stretches of ninety-miles-an-hour.

Without going back over it all he saw swirls of life given way to bulldozers with work orders from high up offices sprouting mimosas in real crystal-fluted glass.

His legs were filled with termites wondering if there wasn’t more to be said for life. Brain cells and grey matter spilt tangos that resulted in flirtatious grins licking like tigers on the remains of his once rippled and taut musculature. Dribble drabble gurgled intestines stuffed with neighing oats riddled with flecks of copper sand and milk of magnesia.

Fountains could never restore the ceaseless bubbles that pummeled the life blood inside his meaty veins.

A boy would come eventually to pack up the next crop and dig a shallow grave for a patriarch of steady vine-weed and cellars of vibrant life underneath breastplates of butterfly wings, firefly guts, and stacks of half eaten road kill. And the path behind the shed would wash out in the next spring run-off while god played slight-of-hand with a man too worthy to simply send off to the next circus.

18

The Horse and the Wind

In the wind they stood manes and tails sagging. And in the wind they were. And in the wind the clouds blew and bellowed and raggedly shaped on. And the horses existed.

There was barbed wire fencing and field grasses. And there was dry cold air and mountains. And there were train tracks paralleling. Traveling.

Fronting.

The wind was east and the mountains were west and the tracks ran north south and the barbed wire ran spindling and drooping and low.

Six horses stood and the wind blew. And it was cold and laughing.

Six horses stood and five of them faced east and one of them faced west. And the wind didn’t care either way.

Aspens grew some distance off and all shared the same root system.

All were in actuality one aspen. One greedy and languishing aspen. A grove. A groove. A root cellar.

The same field where the horses stood wasn’t always horses. In mornings it was a coyote alone and facing the sun and warming itself.

Sitting paws down and chin up and ears back. And in dusk at once or another it was the red fox kicking its furrowed tail through the slinking lines of the barbed wire fence. Into the moon and the eclipsing night.

And before that it was a deer snarled and bloodied. Limp on the side of tire tracks. A hulk of fur. An unmoving rib cage.

And the wind blew empty and draining. Cold. Burly. Begging.

19

And the horses stood five facing away and one facing in. Facing it.

Facing.

And they stood.

And their manes and tails flitting with the wind. Flirted. Flogged.

Flailed.

The horse with its head to the wind and its eyes closed and its long front staunch and careful was the one that would die first. In the field of horses here with the wind blowing and now as it blew that horse would be the one to last the shortest amount of time. And it faced the wind because it knew.

The other horses had tails parted and spread by the gusts through the aspens. Through the mountains. Through the grasses. Through the barbed wire. But the one horse that one horse out of six had its head straight in the wind. And it would be the first to die.

Barbed wire would catch the cowboy’s jeans as he straddled and ducked.

And it would tear his skin. And he would bleed but just for a moment.

And this would be when the sun was shining back again and out again and hard again and fast again.

And the grasses would move from yellow to green to yellow to gray and the snow would fall and the wind then would be white and pummeling.

And the horses would wear blankets and know which one of them was dying.

And the aspens would find leaves and lose leaves and make leaves and shed bark papery and thin and scattered and brittle.

And the ranch hands would remember when they used to be brittle.

Because now they are calloused.

20

And the horse who faced the wind would die. But the wind would be forever. And the other five horses would live on waiting to see who would turn next.

And the barbed wire fence would droop lower and lower until it bit the earth.

And the grove would deepen and spread.

And the wind would blow cold and hot and useless and infinitely.

The horses and the wind.

21

Skipping Through Alongside Sunbeams

The words didn’t make sense. Meaningless. Gibberish. Cut tongue.

Rough-hewn from a fallen log riddled with grub worms inching their way along. Gut rot swishing in an old man’s belly. The chugging rusted car that sometimes started and sometimes didn’t and surprised him either way. There was no sense. None of it came along like it should have. Traveled to his ears deaf and dumb and singing melodies that made him want to weep blood out every pore.

He didn’t trust anyone. Had to watch the shit all the way out the hole just to make sure it’d gone. Had to check his phone even when he didn’t hear the ring. Had to check and re-check his watch and his fly, make sure both were working the way they should. So it made sense that he didn’t believe them at first. Though he came to eventually.

It was a white car and he knew where it was headed and how the thing was to go. He’d practiced it forever in his head. Showering.

Walking. Climbing stairs. Painting walls. Hammering nails. Anything and everything had a tint of this. This way. The way it would go. And so he knew it already. Knew how it would leak and spit and stumble and quake. Dribbling down his shirt.

She had been eight headed on nine. She had been skipping rocks on a river bed. She was swept underneath something or against something or down to something. And maybe they’d find her body limp and pale white burrowing in water downstream. Or they’d see her fleeting vacant eyes staring up through the growing crystalline waters of the dammed somewhere there.

He didn’t panic or lose himself like some say you do. He nodded his head and spit and looked on at the horizon. Confirming what he’d 22

dreaded. What’d he already panicked about a thousand times before.

So here it was and there was nothing left. No sweating palms. No nervous screams. No crying shudders. Nod. Spit. Gaze. Walk away.

He’d lost his wife and her mother years ago. Washed away with liquor and handstands. Gleeful shouts hardening inside a ripping burned liver.

And she always had questions about her mom but asked them sweetly and lovingly because she was too young to know any of it. So she teeter-tottered along and wore patent-leather saddle shoes and pigtails and all the little girl things that a blue collar man could understand.

Pinks and greens. Deliciously crooked teeth falling out one at a time. A mind growing like suds in new dishwater. Plowing on.

So for some reason or another so much time later when they called to say the search was off and there was nothing more they could do and the usual riff-raff of excuses and giving up, he found himself standing bloodied hands apart from the rabbit hutch that she’d loved so much. There’d been ten of them. Muffin and Splits and Moonbeam and Bruce and Honey and Socks and Pinky and Mama and Sweetie Pie and Hayseed. And all lay in pieces now. No struggling for breath. No breathing at all.

He was nodding to the caller and giving ums and yeahs back and forth like some strange sort of mating call between shadows and nothingness and the whole time he was wringing his hands and pacing. And when he’d hung up there’d been the knife and pools of blood and the screams of the rabbits had stopped cold. And here he was. Taking revenge or something. Laying hands on what was his. Throttling life out of something that god had no control over. Could no longer exercise against.

And though he slept for the first time in weeks without fits and starts his breakfast was still gray in the morning. And the house was still ceasingly dusty and quiet. And he still broke at the sound of the wind and the babbling of brooks off in the woods where she was skipping through alongside sunbeams and fall crunching leaves.

23

Pause Pause Pause On and On

At the bottom of Lexington and Stafford there is a broken down barn whose internal beams once witnessed the hanging of eleven runaway slaves. The paint is stubble gray now, inconceivably colored, no longer safe harbor for the unsustainable fire-engine red. The windows are punctured by the lucky shots of boyhood arms. Frame stained white but fading too, brow-beaten, losing a war. Floor a mess of famished rats, scattering underneath straw and dried owl shit. Baby birds sound in the corner of a sharpened angle, board to connecting board. A mother has left for food but will return shortly. The wind is meaningless, nearly still, pushing heat against heat.

And lying open face, like a New York Rueben, was a man.

Outside of 27 Stafford, he’d blacked out almost three hours ago. He’d seen her again, walking aimlessly through Ranch Park. Balancing on kid shoes, cuddling an apple, talking to herself. Last day of school she’d said. Last day of school. Last day of school. She’d giggled. Kicked a white pebble into a nearby sewage drain. And when eventually his eyes had rolled into his brain, he’d fallen forcefully onto the dusty floorboards, unconscious and semi-erect.

They’d let him out a few months back, but forced him to sign-up with a watch program, a friendly list of prior offenders, a place to keep gentle tabs on his practically obsolete movements. CIA to FBI to housewives up to their elbows in Palmolive. So he was on a list. A waiting list. A long and insignificant waiting list. Man on man on man on man who had the same problems. The same tendencies. The same malfunction. It may well have been a tattoo, six or seven numbers, 24

gracing his forearm in static blue-gray ink, willful and aggressive. A skin tag. Defining.

So he’d found a new place. A quite place. Custer’s last stand. Here was a barn. And there was a tiny platform. Up and underneath. Out of sight but perfectly in line. And the glass had been shattered in just the right places. So when bells rung and kids poured from the double-doors, his binoculars fogged between his eyebrows and his tongue panted wantonly. At long last, a dog with a bone.

The past is the past is the past. A rose is a rose is a rose. He’d dug in for change.

Model building became a source of distraction. All of the little pieces.

Sanding and painting and probing and tearing and glossing and gluing and cutting. So many instructions to follow. Place A into B and wait.

Put AB into C and wait. Pause pause pause on and on. The fumes drove him beyond reason. He couldn’t keep at it. All there was to show for it included a half-completed battleship and a perfectly red ’65 mustang with working doors, trunk, and hood.

Painting was a wash. It started abstract and became blood. Began as fruit arranged in a bowl and bled into human veins and body parts.

Canvas after canvas came out butchered, broken, shattered by his subconscious. He’d even stooped to paint by numbers at one point, but somehow blue went gray and yellow went gray and red stayed sharp and it all looked incestuous and wrong.

Then there was reading. Pages turned, but his focus strayed from the black fonts to the open spaces of white margins and fillers, a place for his imagination to wander and decimate simultaneously. Cooking failed. Nothing tasted quite the same. TV. Music. Theater. Porn.

Nothing worked. Nothing could exchange or transform. Hobbies were pointless. Distractions were not. It was unique. It was born in him. A feeling intangible and untouchable and irreplaceable.

25

So he’d found the barn. 27 Stafford. And he’d bought a pair of binoculars on the pretense of bird watching, a little joke. And he’d waited for something to happen. And she did. Her color this year was yellow. Shoes, a coat, even a little slicker made of glossy bright material.

He wondered what it might be next season. Orange. Maybe purple. He couldn’t tell, but it was so surreal to guess. To predict a future that was non-existent.

He’d watched her. What he knew best. Watched her grow and learn.

She spoke well. And she sang beautifully. And she knew how to skip and hop and jump and saunter. Yes, even that. A sexy gait. His favorite.

The cooler last days of spring, she’d taken to pursing her lips and gliding across the growing grass of Ranch Park. She would stop and chat with imaginary couples, presumably offering party gossip and small-talk, waiting for Prince Charming to escort her off to a fairytale paradise. Those were the days. Full of breathless sighs.

But as summer approached and the school days counted down, his inner tension boiled, seethed. Like a teething newborn, the agony was unstoppable. Yet the choices presented themselves nicely. Take it or leave it. There were no other options. Take it or leave it. Take her or leave her. Take her. Or. Leave her.

At the corner store, a mix of gasoline fumes and sugar coated his lungs.

A dollar seventy-five bought him three pieces of rainbow colored gum, a generic chocolate bar, and a miniature plastic rose. That and the binoculars was all he needed. That and patience. Hollow, desperate wanting. Waiting. Patience. Pause pause pause on and on.

When he awoke, his pants were wet, stained and sticky, and a rat was nestled, sniffing, high up on his leg. A rustling, muffled and sporadic and slow, hung in the dirty air. He could still hear the bell echoing, but he knew that was only in his dingy mind. And far up in the corner, out of the way, hidden from normal view, was a nest of baby birds.

The mother had returned and was feeding the wide open mouths, temporarily muting the young. It made him wonder what she would 26

have had for dinner. Or what she would have watched on TV. What she would have done for the summer. He’d made the choice, difficult as it was. And his body had agreed, eventually. Blacked out. It was the only sensible thing. There were no other options. It was inborn. A matter of breeding. Inherent. Inherited. Intrinsic.

27

Meat and Gristle

She said to her goddamn, not like that you stupid little, jesus christ, I can’t believe you’re even included in the goddamn reading, with the way your mouth is crooked sometimes and you’re hair is a fucking mess and now you don’t even know the fucking lines, jesus christ, you must have you’re daddy’s stupid genes, that must be it, huh?

That’s what she said as her foot egged the gas in thunderous spurts and her head bobbed and weaved prizefighter fashion and the little girl with the pink headband just sat there her hands folded in her lap and her lips wet with gloss. And the thing went on like it always did.

She said to her jesus christ, she said it’s how many do you need, the emphasis should be on many, how many do you need, how many do you need, didn’t we work on this goddamn thing all last night, didn’t we, didn’t we, so what the hell happened, huh, what the hell happened?

And the mother’s pock-marked face shook and shuddered with the vowels and jowls and her grease black hair lay in tangles at her shoulders and her teeth snaggled and snarled as the words and spit unbound and flew.

She said you’re sometimes, goddamn, so amazing at forgetting things, did you know that, that you can’t remember shit, that I’m surprised you can remember your name some days, are you surprised by that, huh, are you?

The girl’s name was Sarah and her jeans were new and smart and her top had a little pink bow chest centered and perfectly matched to her earrings and her headband and the plastic digital strapped to her tiny 28

bone-filled wrist. And the girl didn’t say anything because she knew it was a battle lost by inches every syllable and treacherous and horrific and frightening. But her vocabulary was smaller than that so she thought it was sad and scary and unhappy and loud. And scary. And sad. And unhappy. And loud.

She said you’re a piece a work, do you know that, bringing me out today like this, stringing this shit along and you don’t even know you’re goddamn lines, tell me, how are they going to pick you if you can’t even say the shit that they gave you to say, huh, can you tell me that, how that’s going to happen, huh?

And a driver cut them off in their astro minivan and the mother flipped him a finger and yelled fuck you out the window and the girl smiled a little corner of the mouth smile because it wasn’t at her for a split second and that felt like donuts Saturday morning or the day the paychecks came in because that was a day when her mom was nice finally and wanted to buy her new clothes and a small salad at an expensive restaurant and maybe a new pair of earrings or a necklace or a doll like she always said she was going to buy her but never did.

So when the car in front of them swerved to return the finger and the steering wheel slipped from her grime fingers and the left wheel hit the square curb and tipped the van and skidded the side and punched the hood and shattered the windows and sent Sarah flying seatbeltless through the windshield and onto the pavement no one could have been happier than the little girl to be soaring above all the meat and gristle of the world she knew until then.

29

Sometimes He Became a Coaster

He still sweat. A bead that didn’t roll in looping swirls down his plunko forehead. A gown unwrinkled. Ties uncrossed. Eyes closed. She still by his side knitting a burgundy sweater clicking metal hooks one against another.

The first day was a Sunday late in November in an arid place where orange deciduousness spilled sparkling fall through black bar straws.

He was hit by a peterbuilt crossing from side to side and though his bones healed gravely and strong his mind sat lethargic and plump previewing mime shows a dime a dozen in frozen window panes. Now it was July and he still sweat through worthless pores.

The contract was spongy white yellow and was held by a paperclip and smelled of musk and told her to unplug them no matter what. He had wanted it that way. She too. But now here she was three sweaters down and two pairs of striped socks snug and warm against a niece’s fourteen-year-old cream calves and her drink resting on his chest sweating itself to dilution.

The nightstand was pill covered and always stacked with mealy trash.

And the floor was stinking medicine clean and scuffed by bedside wheels. And there was no other place for it.

In November she’d suffered and swore and pushed pent everything at waning moons and wandered grocery stores at midnight feeling the last of the peaches breathing hard and wooly. But she would do it soon. And by December although her mind was calming her heart was not and it helped to look at him there helpless and endearing in silent comatose. And then people wanted to say their goodbyes. And 30

the doctor wanted to run some last tests. And the niece now wearing the striped socks wanted to finish reading him the last of the Harry Potters. So she couldn’t pull the beige socket from the white wall pig spouts just yet.

But now it was July. And the doctor stopped by infrequently anymore just for hellos while swirling black coffee in styrofoam cups. And the nurses just changed things and washed things and made sure she wasn’t taking too many pills herself. No one else had been by in weeks.

Friends all gone from goodbyes. Family resigned to the inevitable.

Harry Potter over. But her drink needed a place to rest and she needed her husband and the contract never stipulated how quickly she had to sever the thing. So it could wait. Indefinitely if need be. Until the next sweater. Or the next. Or the next. He wasn’t going anywhere her little coaster of a man. Let him be. For now anyway he was still sweating sometimes.

31

He Falls to Pieces

He falls to pieces in front of himself like blocks unhooking bra busting from back and finds his bladder or gall on the sidewalk in front of him. The heat bakes. Kidney pie. Brain stew. Liverwurst. All of him in chunks. Organs present. Calling here.

A bird pecks at an eyeball and he watches dejected with his other, wondering what it tastes like. Because it must taste like something. And he’ll bet it does. But he can’t guess what.

And someone steps on his pancreas and it squishes against the gravel feeling gritty and lonely and seeming to look up at him with big pancreas eyes and hopeful pancreas longing and a sad pancreas face. And all he can do is look back at it with his one dangling cornea and whisper it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay like a mama to her lost white miniature poodle it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

The intestines trail now through his fingers like always the last thing to exit and he’s smelling what it’s like to smell the inside of himself and even though he’d wished it to breeze by quickly and without pause it seems caught like it has corners and the scents are pinning him down to himself in enormous new ways.

And he looks like a jigsaw or portioned out like a jigsaw so that all that is left are the wiry rubber outsides of himself holding nothing in anymore and feeling worthless at the feel of nothingness inside his insides. So now he is hollowed out as a row boat and floating away on cement cautioning pigeons with nothing but deliciousness and wondering where you go next when you’ve already fallen to pieces.

32

Choose Your Own Adventure: Auschwitz

1:

Are you Jewish?

2:

If you answer yes, see 2.

If you answer no, see 3.

If yes, see 4.

If no, see 5.

Pack your belongings and get into the street. Take everything with you. Jewelry, money, family heirlooms. Anything of value.

Valuables. Do you understand these instructions?

3: Liar.

See 1.

4:

Get on the train please.

5:

Listen.

If you board, see 6.

If you choose not to, see 7.

See 2.

6:

Thank you. Move in please. Pack tightly. We have many to fit.

To the back. To the walls.

To follow instructions, see 8.

To ignore instructions, see 9.

33

7:

This is not a choice.

See 4.

8:

Thank you. We move out soon. Doors closing. Watch your hands. Please don’t worry. Everything is fine. Everything will be fine.

If you worry, see 10.

If you trust in the assurance, see 11.

9:

You are not listening.

See 6.

10:

Worry will do nothing.

See 8.

11:

Have a safe journey. All is well. Wait patiently.

See. 12.

12:

Darkness. Hunger. Stench. Tension.

See 13.

13:

More darkness. Stronger stench. Heightened tension.

See 14.

14:

Death in the boxcar. Hoses of water. Doors don’t open.

See 15.

34

15:

Further darkness. More dead bodies. Stench unbearable. Agony.

Agony. Agony. Agony.

See 16.

16:

Out please. Quickly please.

To exit, see 17.

To remain inside, see 18.

17:

Step to the lines please.

To step, see 19.

To resist, see 20.

18:

Listen please.

See 16.

19:

20:

To the doctors please. Your belongings are being handled. To the doctors.

Visit doctors, see 21.

To resist, see 22.

Unacceptable.

See 17.

21:

A brief examination. Inexperienced hands. Questions. Name.

Date of birth. Family history. It continues. Are you feeling sick or weak in any way?

Yes, see 23.

No, see 24.

35

22:

Unacceptable.

See 19.

23:

Please file to those lines for showering.

If you listen, see 25.

If you choose not to, see 26.

24:

Do you feel capable of work?

If yes, see 27.

If no, see 28.

25:

Strip your clothes please. This is a disinfecting shower. Clothes and belongings will be returned on the other side. Hurry please.

Many to fit.

To strip, see 29.

To resist, see 30.

26:

Unacceptable.

See 23.

27:

Please file to those lines.

28:

Thank you for your honesty.

To follow instructions, see 31.

To resist, see 32.

See 23.

29:

Inside please. To the back. To the walls. Water will begin shortly.

Please be patient.

See 50.

36

30:

Unacceptable.

See 25.

31:

Hold out your arm please.

32:

See 23.

33:

Numbers. Ink. Blood. Pain. To the bunks please.

34:

See 23.

35:

To a bed please. This is your place. Keep it neat. Work begins outside. Follow me.

36:

To listen, see 33.

To resist, see 34.

To listen, see 35.

To resist, see 36.

To follow, see 37.

To resist, see 38.

I understand. Thank you.

See 23.

37:

Dig here. Quickly please. No time to waste.

38:

See 50.

39:

You. Stop digging. When the doors open you are to pull out the bodies. Understand?

If yes, see 41.

If no, see 42.

To dig, see 39.

To resist, see 40.

37

40:

See 50.

41:

Doors open. Chemical scent drifts. Innumerable faces. Some look frightened. Some look sad. Some are familiar. There are claw marks on the walls and on the bodies. You work.

See 43.

42:

See 50.

43:

Realizations hit. This is the end goal. Death. You will work.

You will die.

See 44.

44:

Days pass. Prisoners come and go. None escape. Resistance is proposed.

If you join in resistance, see 45.

If you continue to work, see 46.

45:

See 50.

46:

More days pass. You grow weak. Sick. Weary. Vomiting.

Diarrhea.

47:

If you continue working, see 47.

If you ask to visit the infirmary, see 48.

The sickness fades. You fade. Estranged. Fading. Days. Days.

Days.

To continue working, see 49.

To give up, see 50.

48:

See 50.

49:

Trains never pass. They always stop. They are always full. Lines upon lines upon lines. Faces mean nothing anymore. Your son.

Your father. Merely eyes and ears and mouths and teeth. Arms.

38

Legs. Piles of hair. Piles of shoes. Piles of bodies. You work.

You work. Your muscles have disappeared. Your mind has disappeared. What remains is tattooed and robotic. Working.

On and On. A child arrives by train. Singled out by sunlight and innocence. You think. Wondering. You stumble. You fall.

You blink. Wandering.

See 50.

50:

You have died.

To try again, see 1.

39

The Man on the Bottom

In a warehouse space backed into a corner and spitting frustration he sat cuddling a little pocket sized box with a centered red button. His thumb was holding the circle down. And he was guaranteed that when the button lifted past its clutching point the world would disintegrate into a confetti of asphalt and ribbons of torn asunder undelicious meat.

Sweat dripped from his forehead to a wrinkle of denim.

And his fingernails were a ransom note collaboration of white and pink as the pressure wavered up and down without his thinking.

And the air was stirred by a lone oscillating circular fan.

And the concrete floor was dust slippery and numbed his bones and muscles in turn.

Right now it was his thumb but before it’d been his fingers each one along the line and both palms and both elbows and the balls of both feet and both knees and eventually his ass and then his chin trying to sleep which had been particularly dangerous considering the difficult transition from one to another to another to another.

And it’d been how many days now he wasn’t sure because there were no windows and his watch had stopped sometime in the past and he only wore it because his wrist looked naked otherwise.

He’d gotten himself into this thing because a man on the street had sidled up to him and whispered in thin strings want to see something 40

amazing and at the time he had wanted to see something amazing because he’d just lost his job and money was going to be tight and he was only drinking decaf now because his gut couldn’t take anymore of the rough stuff that early in the morning.

He closed his eyes and dreamt that instead of holding the key to the world’s impending exploded implosion he was gripping his wife tight around her ribs trying to apply pressure to a geographic blank spot that would minimize her pangs of monthly cramps.

Then he dreamt of rolling hills where green grass was candy licking sweet and something in the air made lungs open and clear and money was unnecessary because everyone was just naturally happy and peaceful and good and full of wishes and hopes and dreams and love.

But then his thumb in tired execution slipped from that modest red button and he felt it tremor as it clicked upward. And nothing seemed to change. No sound. No rumbling. No end. But he was too afraid too look outside. Too afraid of what would or wouldn’t be there. So he slept an undisputed sleep on a concrete pillow and dreamt some more of those rolling hills and that peaceful time and that non-existent wife lying in bed fighting a cramping inside.

41

Before the Bear Ate Him

On July 12 of this year Thomas Shore’s body was found in bits and pieces inside of a Grizzly bear affectionately known by the residents of Sasquatch Alaska as “Tom Teeth”. And while this incident was generally considered by all as a tragedy of mostly normal wilderness proportions, the town felt bad that both Shore and “Tom Teeth” had to lose their lives. But the twist in this event comes today, weeks later, as four letters were sent to our editor from Ms. Marlo Shore, mother of the victim. These letters were each written by Thomas Shore and mailed to Ms. Shore just before the tragedy occurred. As such, they open an odd and perhaps unbelievable dialogue regarding “Tom Teeth” and his final encounter with Thomas Shore. So while the case is closed according to the Sasquatch Wildlife Unit and Sasquatch Police Chief Morris Burndale, a reading of the following letters clearly shows that something more than “Tom Teeth” was wrong with Thomas Shore.

The text of each letter is transcribed here without correction, addition, or editorial changes:

42

Letter 1: Postmark April 23rd: From Thomas Shore to Marlo Shore Ma, I didn’t mean what I said but I can’t take it back. So I’ll stay away for awhile. I know that this worries you but you know how I am. If I don’t get things settled on my own I never will. So please keep doing the right things for me and letting me have some space too. You mean the world to me and I will see you again soon. No worries. Just keep going on.

Love, Thomas

43

Letter 2: Postmark May 15th: From Thomas Shore to Marlo Shore Ma, I know you probably expected me back by now but some strange things have happened camping out here and around all of this wilderness.

According to some legends people go crazy if they stay alone in the woods for too long but I’m not lost (as you can tell by my sending this from the post office) and I don’t feel like I’m going crazy. At least no yet – ha! But I do feel like I’m sorting some things out and it is good for one reason or another. If I stay out any longer than this I’ll keeping popping back to write so that you know I’m okay. Hope your time without me has been good for you too. I like to think that you’re soaking your feet at night and making those sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches. But if I think of that too much I’ll be home tomorrow!

Take care Much love.

Thomas

44

Letter 3: Postmark June 6th: From Thomas Shore to Marlo Shore Ma, I don’t even know where to begin with this one so I’ll just tell you straight I’ve found a friend out here a good friend and even though people find him a bit grotesque or something I think he’s great and we’ve had some good times together already. He goes by Tom which is kind of cool because it’s like Thomas my name but different too.

We’ve been camping around here and there and sometimes we come in to have a beer or twenty! and mail a few letters. Tom can’t write I guess he never learned so I write them for him and mail them off with my stamps he doesn’t have any money right now either. And I know what you’re thinking but don’t worry he’s not a moocher or anything he’s just a big friendly Tom who likes to eat and drink and hang out in the woods. No biggie. And he does I’ve noticed have some strange habits about certain things and acts weird when we’re in town or run into other campers out here but I think he’s mostly harmless and don’t worry I’ll keep an eye out for myself. I feel more like me everyday and I’m hoping you do too so I’m going to go have a beer with Tom again in this little place we know and I’ll be thinking that you’re doing the same having a beer with a friend and keep yourself going good like I know you can.

Love, Thomas

45

Letter 4: Postmark July 11th: From Thomas Shore to Marlo Shore Ma, I know it’s been a really long time now over two or three or maybe four months I think but Tom and I have run into some stuff out here and in a few towns and I don’t think I’ll be able to come back anytime soon because people are crazy and they think Tom is psycho sometimes but only I understand him really well and no matter how much I talk I can’t seem to explain it right and worse yet we got in a thing with some people at a campsite the other night and Tom is worried that he’ll get blamed again for what happened but I told him that I’d keep him safe with me because I know what it’s like to not fit in and he even said that if things get really bad he knows of a great hiding place that I’ll just barely fit in and no one will find me and when I asked if he wouldn’t hide with me he said he couldn’t but that his plan was fool proof and I trust him whole-heartedly now because he understands me and we’ve had beers together and we talk with the trees and we can see the future and I’m more me than I’ve ever been because of him and really I’m pretty thankful that you and I fought that night way back when because without it I wouldn’t have come out here to sulk and whatnot and find Tom and start this great friendship and wind up with a really great hiding place that Tom said is fool proof.

Love to You Mama Bear, Thomas & Tom

46

A Story in Which No One Dies

Someone’s neck cut. Chopped through. Someone’s hair tinted red but not like hair so instead like blood. Or a car accident with a dangling spine. Or a pool where a girl doesn’t re-emerge. Or a cloud that rains African killer bees. Or a fire that eats a man’s legs. Or a soup that is made of miscellaneous leftover parts. There was always an element of it in there somewhere playing catch with the eyes like a father and a son.

And his grandma had said can’t you write a story where no one dies.

So he did or tried to.

She was in the kitchen feeding him her lamp chops and he was sweating beer and clinking his rotten teeth and smelling of a little girl from down the street. So she clunked him on the back of the head with a pan that was garlic and olive oil scented. And nothing happened. He maybe stumbled forward with his head just a bit and maybe clipped his tongue with his rotten teeth just a bit and maybe hiccupped just enough midswallow to make a small sound. But then he went on eating and she had to sit back down with the pan still in her hand and him with a growing headache.

And there was a man laying in the middle of a burning fusel-lodge stained field yawning with opened suitcases and he was hearing other people around him getting up and shuffling their feet and feeling clean in the air mixed with smoke. And some of them were on fire and some of them were bleeding and some of them were clean in half. But they were all still shuffling on as if it hadn’t happened. As if they could.

Like zombies coming forward. And most of them were confused and 47

so they just grabbed for bags they thought were theirs and headed towards a direction that felt closest to home and that was that.

And like always there was a kid too a little girl too who was crying at a bedside of a mother or a father or an uncle or an aunt or a grandma like his was and she was weeping and snotting like a little girl should and the person under the sheets who should have ceased breathing didn’t and instead kept on with a rattling breath until the girl grew tired of crying and went off to watch television. And the breathing went on while commercials blared and the little girl eventually came back to ask if the mother or the father or the uncle or the aunt or the grandma still under the sheet would like to share some popcorn with her.

But he knew he couldn’t.

And his grandma said you’re a piece of shit then all violent like that all the time.

And he was because that man with the rotting teeth and the smells of a next door neighbor’s little girl was a pedophile and cheated on his taxes and never took the time to chew the meals that she had so absolutely prepared. And so he needed a pan upside his head until his heart stopped beating.

And the man in the plane needed that moment of ultimate sadness when the wings were ripped and the thing was beginning to burn up to make him understand it. So that he could text his wife and tell her that he loved her and that she always had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. And to tuck the kids in for him every night from then on.

And the little kid the little girl too needed to be there crying next to a lump of sheets barely rattling breath so that she could weep and hate and wail and rage and then become stronger. And become more solid.

And become the woman who she would be later. Strong enough to handle killing her husband with an olive oil scented pan. And strong 48

enough to read that text message from her second husband as his plane was diving down.

Jesus Christ his grandma said when she read it.

I know he said back ashamed too of himself and the way he was.

49

Waiting For It

It was a place filled with dust and dirt and second-hand smoke residue clinging to curtains. And he was eating his own teeth. Chomping through them like milky strawberry shortcake. Lusting red and white.

Crunching munching groping grinding. Pieces at a time. Because he was now an old man eating his own teeth. Chomping away.

A molar had spliced like einstein’s atom. While he was just passing a stoplight blinking yellow at three-thirty in the morning. And he was mushing gushing a tight packed burger from a macdonald’s riveting his head with attention and generously sparring hunger. So he’d ordered and paid and clutched a bag riddled with grease and unwrapped a hundred years or so of his life and bit down and clamped on an accidental filler of bone or otherwise decay. And the thing had simply and easily spilt out into his mouth. And it became a part of the meal.

And he would shit it out eventually but didn’t think it big enough to root through the john. So it was gone and would stay gone because that was how teeth worked. One set. No more.

And then when that one was gone lost over to gummy candy or chunks of ice or a hard toasted crust of bread another went. And another and another. Until really it was just him against his teeth. A fifth had gone drinking black coffee when frost was biting outside a single pane window. And by the thirteenth he had given up hope and felt completely lost over to the age defying tricks his mouth was forcing on him like unwanted lovers breaking beds with thrusts deep in the nights of chicago or new york or los angeles where the streets are dirty even in the most stunning suns.

50

So now he was chewing them. Chewing rocks actually. Chewing rocks against his teeth and then bits of broken teeth against the remainders.

And eventually it was impossible for him to tell the rocks from the teeth from the bone from the hurt. Because it was all hurt. Every last bit. Biting. Stooping his back. Curving his kidneys. Weakening his heart.

Soon he’d be thick glasses and barreling knuckles and white straying hair blowing in breezes only born in the last decade when he’d been born close to a century further back.

But the bed was still soft. And he felt like the end was coming soon so that would be a nice change of pace. Because once he’d heard a lecture series about euthanasia and thought god what a crock of shit that is killing people when they’re not dead even yet and still hanging in there and he wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that. Yet here he was. Chewing rocks and teeth and hoping to god that he wouldn’t slip and fall in the bathtub and die there naked and slowly wincing. Or stopping in his front lawn picking up miscellaneous shit. Or choking on a soda cracker.

But the bed was still soft. And he was eating the last of himself.

Patiently. Waiting for it.

51

I Didn’t Know Until Today That You Were Beautiful

There was a man with an eye patch and two dangling pig-tails braided beneath a dirt grey beard.

And there was a woman with a warrant and grand dreams of being there for someone.

And there was a youngish girl with a one-year-old daughter who was recently out of st. jude’s and looking forward to a cancer-free christmas.

And she was dancing. Moving her tiny leaden feet with ticklish and dry movements. Dancing.

And there was a man dressed as a woman in a long black dress and tripping earrings. Fancy shoes and the lot. False hair pinned and bunned to the back of his head. Marilyn Monroe stud flicking with his restless tongue. Eyes watery.

And there was a kid he used to know who was fifteen at the time and now looked forty or forty-five with a beer gut busting and a dirty nfl player’s jacket and the slim sleek jabs of a man who changes tires for a living.

And she was there, the mother of the dead, looking mostly ghost herself covered in wrinkles and brushed in powder. Eyes sad and long.

Mouth reminiscing. Heart pushing along for no reason at all except the power of tradition or of carrying on.

And there was the squealing of babies and the crunching of empty beer cans and the raised clinking of half-full bottles and the banging clanging of vfw steel folding chairs put in disheveled rows.

52

And a drunken preacher spoke about godness and holiness and sidecars on motorcycle rigs dragging paraplegics half across the nation wielding american flags and sunglasses and sweaty bandanas. And he yelled at the seated: come on you fuckers say something meaningful for christ sake.

And then they spoke.

One by one.

He was our neighbor. And he was always there for us. Always listening for us. Always there. So we named our son after him. And we’ll miss him.

He was my son. And he was blessed with a way about him. A way of coming together even when things were falling apart. Just like that.

And I’m sure he’s in heaven now with Jesus. With Angels. He was my son. And I’m sure we all loved him very much.

He was my friend since the hospital. We shared a room. And then I saw him basically everyday since then. Everyday. And I miss him very much. I know we all will.

He was a cool uncle to me. We didn’t get to see him that much but he was cool. I liked him a lot.

He was my son. And I know I shouldn’t say it but once we were thrown out of a concert and he was angry with his mom and we got to fighting with each other and he was so mad that he threw my purse out the window. So I pulled over the car and threw his wheelchair out. And we found my purse right away but his chair rolled a long way down the road and we had to chase it. It’s funny now but it wasn’t then. And that’s what I remember.

He was a free spirit. You could see him holding up a peace sign in all these pictures. So here’s to him. I’ll hold it up for him today.

53

He was my brother. And I can remember him under the hood of a car.

And he was blessed. And I’m sure he’s standing now in heaven on two good legs. Smiling at us.

And then the preacher was back after the silence waited out and he scrambled through the chairs with a clear sweating glass in his hand.

That’s all he said. That’s all you’ve got to say he said. Well he said. I’ll just say one more thing then I guess. Think about tomorrow morning when you wake up and take a big breath and think about how you could’ve said something else meaningful. Think about that you motherfuckers.

And then there was a white sheet cake with his birth and death dates high-life frosted red for all to consume. And it was cut in criss-cross grids. Ready.

And people milled to look at the pictures and swill beer and smell of cigarettes.

And people stood with sheer-holed jeans.

And people hugged with braless chests and the sounds of moth wings escaping toothless mouths.

And then they were back out on the icy streets. Slipping sliding in cowboy boots and thinking about all the dead people in the world.

Thinking about the snow and the cold. Thinking about the shape of hearts. Thinking about the way time moves. In its own relentless soldier’s fashion.

54

Fainting Thoughts of a Fading Jesus

A Preface: In the duration of a stoplight. She saw him. Standing. Arms lifted.

He was tatters. She was a Mercedes. He was torn pants and grimy fingernails. She was air-conditioning and leather trim. He was a reddish bird’s nest beard. She was baby tender smooth. He stood. She sat.

His eyes were closed. She kept a stare. He stood in the middle of the intersection looking to god. Broken bottle at his feet. Soaked paper sack amidst worthless shoes. She wore dainty pumps and a pear-shaped diamond ring on her right pinky finger. The silence lay.

From her to him: Eyes. The slightly shiny tip of a tamed nose. Air-conditioned air.

Spotless windshield. Particles of earth. Dust. Exhaust. Heat. And then Him. His eyes. Racked with unthinking need.

In reverse: Eyes. The rusted top of a perfunctory nose. Heat. Exhaust. Dust.

Particles of earth. Growing dirt on an otherwise spotless windshield.

Air-conditioned air. And then Her. Her eyes. Mascara stained and searching. For nothing.

Inside the car: My god. What some people won’t do. What some people won’t.

Become. My god. Really. I mean really. Who does that. Who. Becomes that. And why. Why. God it’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous. Get a job. Get a life. Jesus. People. Always people like that. Everywhere. Jesus.

55

Inside his head: God for a drink. A drink. A drink. A drink. A lovely little cool water drink. A liquor drink. Especially that. Or a yeasty beer drink. Yes. God yes. God. What I wouldn’t do. For a lovely little cool yeasty beer drink.

A liquor drink. A drink of dreams. God yes. God. For a drink. A drink.

A drink. God for a drink.

In hers: Some people. Can’t do anything good with their lives. You don’t hear me. Whining. About these. Things. Dad has cancer still. So what. Mom is a bitch. Sometimes anyway. So what. The kids are broken stupid shameful little brats. Their father is filling them with. Up with. Nothing.

Sickness at least. Maybe worse. Who knows. But do I complain. No. Nope. Not me. We were raised better than that. So much better. And then you get. This. Idiot. Drunk. No doubt. Bum. Absolutely. Raising his hands to god. Good luck pal. Good luck. Jesus good luck. He doesn’t hear you. Get a clue.

It continues: Yes. God yes. God almighty yes. A drink. A wonderful drink filled little drink. A piece of drink shattered into many drinks. A big chunk of drink broken into thousands of wondrous little drinks. God yes. God. Yes. Land on my tongue you stupid little pieces of wonderful drinks.

Land on my little tongue. I’m ready. It’s hot and I’m ready. See my mouth open. Waiting. God yes. Please. A little drink for little me at this little road in this little town. Hear me. A little tiny teeny drink god.

While the radio murmurs: Right. Exactly. Murder. Rape. A kid gets bit by a rattlesnake. And this.

Jesus. And then there’s this. Dear lord Jesus. This man just stands there.

Like an idiot. An ape-faced idiot. Doesn’t he have better things to do.

Doesn’t he care about what people think. Doesn’t he see that we’re all 56

looking at him. That these people are all. Staring. Doesn’t he see that.

Doesn’t he care. Jesus. But he must not. He must not. He just stands there. Jesus. Looking so. Stupid. Raising stupid dirty hands to nobody.

Nobody. Jesus. Get a clue pal. Get a life. Nobody is listening anymore.

While cars clip a fitting ragged coattail: My God for a drink. A glorious little drink. A stupor of a drink. An ass of a drink. A something something of a drink. A vain drink. An attendant drink. A muttered drink. A nutty drink. A drink of salvation.

A drink of damnation. A drink of. Labor. Love. Loss. Life. Meaning.

Nothing. Everything. Pumping full cold delicious meaning. Yes. Yes. Meaning. A drink. That’s the meaning. God yes. The meaning. A drink.

God for a drink. A drink. A drink. A drink. A drink.

With the best of all intents: At least he could make a sign. One of those stupid cardboard things.

That at least. Would show some. Effort. On his part. God help me.

Or I need a job. Will work for food. Will work for a bottle of Jack.

Jesus. Probably loves that box wine shit. God. What has it come to.

This. This. Exactly. I suppose anyway. But at least. Jesus. At least he could have a sign. Really. A simple little sign. That’s all. One of those cardboard ones. Takes what. A piece of cardboard and a magic marker.

And Jesus. Get the fuck out of the road. For Christ’s sake. Car will run him over there.

The same: A drink a drink a drink a drink. A choo-choo train drink. All aboard.

Last stop my mouth. Jesus god. Just one more drink. Just one more. I dropped the last one. I dropped the last one. I’m an idiot. I hate me. I dropped it. God. I don’t know why. I can’t answer that. I just did. Okay.

I’m an idiot. Okay. So please. Have faith in me. I won’t drop another. I won’t. I promise. Okay. That’s it. I promise. Just one more little drink.

God. Please. Just. One. More. Little. Drink. I promise.

57

In the short span of yellow: Fuck him. I mean. Jesus. Here we are. Working. Driving. Running stupid errands. Fuck him. Fuck. Him. He can’t save himself. He can’t drink his way out. Jesus. At least make a sign fucker. That’s the least you could do. Try and save yourself. Jesus. That’s the least you could do.

Shearing yellow into red: A drink. A cozy-wozy little drink. God. You can. I know you can.

A drink a drink a drink a drink. Save me. A little drink would do it.

Nothing else needed. A glorious full of your honor drink and I’ll shut my mouth forever. Cement it shut. Just one more is all I need to get back. Just one more.

Jesus: He doesn’t see him.

Jesus: He doesn’t see me.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Postscript: She closes her eyes. Foot resting slight pressure on a rubber-treaded gas pedal. He closes his. Waiting for the oncoming traffic to shake hands with his hip. Forty miles an hour at least. A Mercedes creeps towards the median. One lane over a red truck blasts through a green light. A drunken man with hands raised to god flips a three and a quarter turn onto blaring hot asphalt. Brains and blood spill in between the waves of raised and worn road. A woman with manicured nails and fully 58

detailed interior pukes on her own lap and her dainty little pumps and her fainting thoughts of a fading Jesus.

59

Carwash Murder Sexual Metaphor

He had a belt and a knife and a set of brass knuckles in a tight sweaty palm.

She put in one shiny quarter after another after another.

He didn’t have a gun because his rhythm was more subtle.

She knew the untamed window wouldn’t entirely close.

He finished two pieces of bony thigh.

She left rings of lipstick on a light pink straw.

He waited for femininity to tremble the right buttons.

She saw the weather still playing aggressive and dirty.

He crouched low into wetness just as the opening swelled shut.

She licked fingertips lightly to turn pages of gloss.

He slipped alongside hoses and hard metal machinery.

She took a quiz on how to please her lover.

He slid his finger easily inside the slight opening.

She didn’t notice the slick nails until they righteously shattered her.

He forced his knife over and over and over again.

She gasped and sighed and choked and stuttered.

He screamed aloud amidst foamy suds.

She collapsed as gentle waves licked the exterior.

He nuzzled her vanilla neck in the residual humidity.

She lay motionless atop a bloody interior.

He rolled away quietly into the belching sun of freedom and infancy.

60

A Moth Inside-Out

It flapped against the normalcy of a window. Into something. Into regulated air. Filtered rays. Outside of nature. And the point was null when so many dogs had lapped up so many moths into mouths of teeth and drizzling saliva. The harsh dry air of a nothing town outside of somewhere big but inside of the same hopes latched to stringing keys on solid hoops.

He was decidedly relegated to the harsh buzz and clink of a powdered bullet in armored tank casing. Bagels with cream cheese and iced chai grizzly with shavings no longer made the women with shaved heads seem any less robotic. Doubts of frazzling tethers bred incessantly underneath cavernous classroom seats and along the trailing dry dust of thumbing text messages. Ceiling tiles dried with spit wads and punctured by extra-sharp pencils.

The moon was brazen in sullied branches and in pipes ran luke-warm streams beneath gently bouncing electrical wires. Uniform houses along gridded streets with small white poodles lacking teeth and collars but with a tendency to piss on newly laid carpet.

To whom he wrote the letter made no difference since it was really just marks on a page representing marks in some books that told everyone where to look and what to do and how he felt and where this whole thing should be headed.

Earlier that day a fly had lain itself atop bird shit on a dirty window and remained smothered there until slipping legs grew tired of such a magnificent proposition.

61

Prolonged hugs couldn’t counter the huge tears gouged in his paper thin skin. That kind of hand holding tripped him into infant murmurs that sounded like the sobs and moans from otherwise normal hippy girls with braids and brown dresses. Smarmy men of straggling beards and caked bare feet. The thrills of bicycle treads and countryside buffalo grass of varying lengths.

The trick was to think past it.

Time to cut the umbilical cord with another pair of bent angle and dull scissors.

But the moth dumped its head headlong into an open light bulb and scattered its thoughts into a white plastic rim alongside the discarded carcasses of gnats. So he cupped his hands and caught the flippant flipping beast into freshly dusted envelopes of curling fingers.

Outside the air was dimming and dipping. And there was the slowly fading lights of as-always summer. Erratic and scattered. Carving a path like ribboning tattoos on a forearm.

And the moth flew into the sunset purple hued and sweating.

And he went back in.

Because touching a small steel circle to the fleshy middle of his youthful chin gave a sense of empowerment. Something that notes resisted and used car hi-jinks couldn’t push past the brains of his mentality.

Boom bang shuffle echo.

A moth inside-out.

62

Dead Floating

His sneakers scrunched little pebbles on the shore. Thousands on thousands. And his bangs drifted. And a sharp pulse of sound rang inside his head with violent tickling precision. A memory of something still happening even then. And the crowd groaned wearily at each flinching movement of the orange vests and the neon slickers. And the bodies popped from the water one at another bobbing dead faces downward, snorkeling without masks or tubes or the chance of smiling casually again at a historical landmark coasting by on the street.

When the boat had gone the tourists were waiting for the shadow of a bridge to pass. The heat was soaking into straw weave hats and black binoculars and purse straps reflective shiny white in noon. And there’d been a small explosion off the back. The engine. And the rest of the clunking over-worked ship had burbled down after it like a shaggy dog chasing its tail. Even those who could swim weren’t fast enough to beat the undertow. And someone had been in the bathroom trying to pluck an errant hair from his nose. And the cooks had been deep down throwing lunchtime grilled cheese at the ceiling. And the captain had been yawning coffee breath. And the cars passing had braked and stopped to pin the quick black smoke to the horizon. But no one could strip a shirt fast enough or dislodge a pair of shoes and enter the blue green swirl to help.

So amid sightseeing of San Francisco bay the boat went down and the people went with it and the sirens called from somewhere and the rescuers came and the spectators lined the water and the dead floated merrily and quietly and for the last time.

63

The boy thought he’d gone to see the corpses because he’d been reading about world war two in history class last week and he’d seen all those pictures of holocaust camps and he wondered if the people smelled bad or if their hair looked dull or if their hands or fingers really did turn purple white in the ringing ears of death. And then the ship had blown and tripped over itself into the water and he had the chance to see a handful of lifeless bodies that were nipping out of the sunken wreckage only as fast as the divers with oxygen tanks could pry them from rooms and holds and crushed slanted metal hand rails.

He’d been there three days in a row now. Skipping school. Walking six miles to the shoreline and standing among others waiting for loved ones or signs of life or that perfect Pulitzer dead picture to flash on the water’s surface. And people cried when the bodies submarined out of the water with splashing nothingness and skin so pale white it looked like dusty picked cotton in a blazing south.

And the constant steady blink of sound that traveled through his own body was something no one else could hear. It was trapped inside him and it remained incessant and cruel. But he didn’t want to see his dad that way. All tubes and wires and beeping machines pumping things in and out. Drowning himself in a wake of iv juice and transfused blood.

So he came here instead to watch other people die. And he blamed it all on a holocaust video he’d seen in class. And he couldn’t help but think about why some people died of disease and some people sunk aboard ships on vacation and some people like him just stayed alive in the middle of it all trying to justify death.

64

Someone Always Dying

And people will capsize like boats on waves in the undulating tears and goons of the swimming September that is forever and now on listing just so to the side. A writer flips in sheets and listens to static radio tones as early morning. September eleventh. The day will be. Flags.

Songs. Rigmarole. All those dead people dying horrible deaths and quiet deaths and flagrant deaths and dying again and again every year on a certain so and so day like this one.

The sun glare through a chipped windshield is horrendous. Scattered.

Sharp. Incessant. He pulls his little car to the side of a dirt road and waits the sunset out for a second or a minute or even fifteen just to be sure. No chancing it. And he eats the finishing remnants of a late peach and sucks the pit craggy with tang and generating heat as it swirls and begs his teeth do it do it do it come on you know you want to bite down just this once I bet you could take it. But he doesn’t. He waits.

He calls a shed an office and cranks cluttered techno tones through humping speakers and re-reads the A B C D F of those last sets that should have been better but weren’t. And the top piece is about a grandma who died whistling through gummy hollow lips and oxygen tank exhaustion and cancer he was sure though the kid never made it clear. And he thought of his own still alive and not fighting crumbly lips yet but beginning to end as were they all anyway. Sad. Complicated.

And then he gets word a text saying that little smith girl you know the one was hit by a car this morning trying to cross this street next to that one and can you believe she made it but just barely thank god she was wearing a helmet. He waits to blink. Pauses breath. He knew her 65

acquaintance like not well but still the image of her flying bumper to broken yellow lines. He felt the impact of it somewhere in his chest above his stomach between his lungs turn up at the liver and in the middle of his ribs where all the shit feelings seem to exist.

Because he’s still thinking about it when class starts his speaking pattern is glossy with pits and threatens to drown itself leaping overboard no life vest wandering to the spot-speckled high A of an ocean. He should be more shocked to log in to an email telling him that this accident this morning involved one of the others in his class and he should keep an eye out because the kid saw everything as it happened live tv like and wouldn’t it be the shits to lose him too unnoticeably. And he shirks the strangeness that this guy who witnessed this girl flying over her own handlebars in the sharp glare of morning rise is the same damn one who turned in the piece about the grandma and the breathing and the disease ridden unflippant death.

Doomed to thoughts as every writer is he slumps in his chair that night unable to squeak any letters out of his dead black and blue screens he can’t but think fuck: he stopped for sun glare that worked snow blind on another driver who hit a girl riding her bike but wearing her helmet thank god who was transferred off to a trauma center but the blonde haired gritty toothed boy who saw it all was sitting right in his class five desks back and about to uncover a D on a piece of strange fiction that couldn’t bring itself to terms with a grandmother’s death and all of it happening on an eleventh of a ninth month a few years down the road.

And he writes: ‘Someone always dying.’

And then he needs to sleep.

And be patient for a tomorrow somewhere down the line.

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Fiction Though the title may just about say it all, there’s a little more to J.A. Tyler’s 2008 chapbook than just the fact that everyone is dying (or will die, or is thinking about it). It’s the way they’re all dying that makes this collection of flash fiction interesting: violently in most cases, angrily in others, and almost always with a splash of helpless existential angst...The big question is how the characters in Tyler’s vignettes got to where they are. The last moments, the reflection on last moments, the foreshadowings of last moments all serve as snapshots of the lives they represent and, as such, underscore the fragile nature of humanity. We are flesh and blood, this collection reminds us—fragile, corruptible, and ultimately searching for something we’re not likely to find.

Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews J.A. Tyler is the author of the novel(la)s Inconceivable Wilson (Scrambler Books, 2009), Someone, Somewhere (Ghost Road Press, 2009) and In Love With A Ghost (Willows Wept Press, 2010). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Caketrain, Hobart, and Sleepingfish. He is the founding editor of ML Press.

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