thread Volume 3

thread an unde rgraduate jou rnal for literary inquiry 2010 vol. 3

11 Ways of Looking at String Theory by Michael Roe —with homage to Wallace Stevens I. The chip from a grain of sand upon which our Elegant Universe rests.

II. Brian Greene’s “Impossible Dream” “To dream the impossible dream To find physics’ Holy Grail To settle the watery chaos Of science on the quantum scale This is my quest To follow that string To find a unified theory Of everything” III. The symphony of the stars A chorus of quarks An opus we try to transcribe But only God fully hears.

IV. The olive-kissed wind following the end of a feud between houses Heisenberg and Einstein.

V. Whereas creation was pulled from the divine breath of God, Schools of science spring from string.

VI. A quintet of mirrors Each with a reflection of a refraction of perfection.

VII.

“I dislike myself,” an electron says.

“I desire to be different.”

“Change your tune I bark,” I bark.

The electron walked away a quark.

VIII.

A science fiction from which we pull science fact.

IX. An apple as a chord falling from a tree hits Sir Isaac in the head “Ah-ha, gravity!”

“Gravity?” asks Albert.

“I see how, but why?

It feels a lot like motion, but there is more than meets the eye.”

“Look here,” says Werner, “Into my scope and see the true nature of the universe: filled with uncertainty.”

Brilliant on their own, but together incomplete.

Between each school of though chasms ran deep Until dancing in the wind along came a string.

X.

In Babylon The seers of science gather, in an abandoned tower reaching for the stars In days before, when men attempted such feats, language was divided and bodies spread afar.

From the Tower, with lasso made of string, they pull sky to the ground.

Upon seeing the unity, God blows the tower down.

XI. Eleven, eleven, the eleventh dimension Here, we all are one.

My strings tickle and tangle up with yours like lovers’ limbs.

Three, three, in tri-dimensional space Here, we separate with hate Although eight levels above, I lay with you uncontested, In eleven, we find love.

The Routine by Michael Roe Week One I. Mon-Thurs a. Wake up at 7 am and use the morning numbness to go to the gym. If you wake up too early or too late, scratch the venture all together; it might be too busy and someone may have taken the treadmill by the back door. b. Pack everything you need to camp: laptop, mp3 player, noise cancelling headphones, extra batteries, lunch, a cup of coffee for the drive, a jug of tea for the day, and a science fiction novel. i. You are a foot soldier marching into enemy territory.

Pick up that mp3 player and repeat after me, “This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is MINE….” ii. If anyone of these items is unavailable, you have permission to crawl back into bed and leave the world at your doorstep like a persistent solicitor or a Jehovah’s Witness who doesn’t know when to quit. c. When you arrive at school, find a suitable camping ground, preferably a corner with an outlet, or if that nice girl who was your lab partner last semester is working in the library, ask her for one of the group work cubby holes upstairs that has a lock on the door, and only one window. Solitary confinement is preferable to a yard with gang like cliques and frat recruiters. i. When camping, always appear to be doing something with fanatical attention. Go Helen Keller on everyone by occupying your eyes with laptop or book, and your ears with the headphones. Face the wall, and don’t make eye contact. Imagine that you are in a prison shower, and everyone’s has a shank on them, itching for the blood of whoever looks up first. d. When you walk to class, walk fast, but don’t run—think of that accelerated feeling you have when you hop off the treadmill.

Keep those headphones in, or else be bombarded with: “Do you have time to sign a petition?” “Is Jesus Christ your personal savior?” “Are you registered to vote?” etc. e. Keep your hands full at all times when traveling. Every sidewalk is a gauntlet of flyers and shitty newspapers hanging

like limp banners from flagpole arms. A full load makes you invulnerable to their spam. i. Pretend they are handing out hard copies of those emails that promise to increase your penis size by three inches, or that if you help this renegade Saudi Prince launder his money with your bank account information, you can keep half. f. Get to class fifteen minutes early, so you can snag the seat next to the door and keep your tea jug under the table, or people will start asking questions. There is an apparent terrorist plot to corrupt the education of Americans by distracting them with Arizona tea. i. Speaking of terrorism—treat this place like the airport: shut up, stand in line, don’t say bomb, and don’t leave your things unattended. Only answer questions with yes and no. g. Avoid busy times in the parking lot. When getting a textbook from your car, be sneaky/ wear headphones/ pretend to be deaf.

Do anything to avoid the random stranger asking if you are leaving, as if they have a divine right to your parking space.

Try to say “sorry, I’m not leaving,” instead of LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE, or pointing to your trendy shirt that says GTFO. h. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

II. Fri a. Go to the shrink, and think about how claustrophobically tomblike the waiting room is, but don’t tell him that. i. Tell him you are a perfectly happy individual, and that you have a zest for life that makes the Easter Bunny want to hang itself in shame. ii. Do anything you can to make his responses devoid of the words clinic or pills.

1. Clinic is when they take a bunch of people who don’t like unfamiliar places or large groups of people and consolidate them into a large group that takes periodic field trips into large populated areas. Strategery in practice.

2. Pills are the equivalent of becoming a cyborg.

The little rainbow array of capsules replaces

your innards with metal cogs that tic like clockwork. While this unflinching triumph over crying in bathroom stalls and doing breathing exercises when no one is looking may be preferable, you trade your ability to retain happiness in solitude. You are as constant as pi. iii. Try to ignore his tainted advice and think back to when you were a kid—to when you used to lock yourself in your room. Your mother freaked and insisted that that time when your father dropped you as a child knocked something loose, and that you needed psychiatric help, but your Father retorted with that infallible wisdom that can only come from a patriarch, “If he says he wants us to leave him alone, then leave him the hell alone.” But your mother was never a good listener, and soon came Shrink #1, and that big long ‘A’ word that you were never able to pronounce until a few years later. Not to mention Clinic.

III. Sat a. Go to the movies, but pick one that has been out for six weeks.

Go to the AM showing and relish the empty theater. (Be sure to tell the shrink you spent Sat at the movies next week so he can praise you for venturing into public) i. Change seats every so often just because you can. ii. Laugh and cry as hard as you want to. Feel free to laugh at the gruesome parts, and cry whenever you damn well feel like it. Bring a roll of toilet paper, because it is what you are used to using.

IV. Sun a. Don’t think about tomorrow. Don’t think about tomorrow.

Don’t think about tomorrow. b. Go ahead and finish that SciFi book, and replace it with one from the Amazon box that came in on Friday. c. Ruefully self-medicate with whiskey for that rebellious insomnia that terrorizes you into the night, trying to fight off the sunrise.

i. Drink until your eyes are so bleary you can’t read anymore and give up that adolescent dream for the eternal weekend.

Week Two V. Mon a. The last time you had a hangover was in high school. Already this gauntlet begins afoul. Pull those covers up over your head.

Remember when you were a kid and played G.I. Joes? This is your tent. i. But you don’t make a tent. You tumble into the bathroom and gag yourself like an anorexic girl who just found out she is going to be on MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen.” No tent could shelter you from the torrential shit storm that would ensue if you miss Communications class again. You tell yourself that you might actually learn something, but who are you kidding? ii. Throwing up can be a religious purging, like a fast or a pilgrimage to Mecca. Baptize yourself in the scalding holy water of the shower. b. The trendy shirt of the day is a black t-shirt that has a lime being forcibly inserted into a coconut with an uncertain question mark. Remember to put a sweater on over it though; this one gets too much attention. c. It’s 8:15. 25 minutes off schedule. Class isn’t until noon, but you learned early on that the $130 parking pass you bought doesn’t actually reserve a parking space for you. It is actually more like a bribe to the traffic cop mafia—you pay them up front so that they don’t ticket your car later. d. The female formally known as lab partner is working the desk at the library today. You ask for the usual. i. Another hitch. “I got caught hooking you up with the group work areas last week. If you want to use them, you’ll have to have an actual group,” Lab Partner says.

“Oh?” you say. “Oh,” she nods. ii. You turn to the main lobby of the library. Everyone has on school colors, black and yellow. It must be

homecoming week. Hive-minded like bees, they scurry about, the constant droning buzz echoing like a toy sized Nascar race being held in a bowling alley. iii. “You really like those rooms, huh?” “Yea,” you say.

“I… get distracted easily and they are quiet.” She tells you what a cute shirt that is you have on today. iv. Way to forget your coat. Smile and say thanks. v. “Tell you what,” she says. “I get off work in fifteen minutes. Wait here until then, and I’ll tell the librarian that I am your partner and we are working on a project together.” vi. She darts off before you can refuse. e. She reads while you surf the net. Order is growing back into the day. i. Her eyes dart up. She asks if she can use your laptop to check her email. Don’t hesitate to let her do so—it will just make it awkward. ii. She finishes quickly, returning to her book, and the budding harmony returns to the room. She reads and so do you until it’s time to go to class. You manage a quick “Thanks,” before sneaking off. f. You don’t learn anything in Communications. g. You check your email once you get home to see if your Amazon.com order shipped. She is tricky and sneaky. She lifted your email address off of your laptop while she was “checking her email.” She says you seemed skittishly shy and didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but wants to know if you would like to have lunch on Friday. The email is signed April, and her phone number is on the last line. i. This is very easy to get out of. Just hit reply; type N then O and hit send. Better yet, don’t reply at all.

VI. Tues-Thrus a. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. i. Note: Don’t use the library.

VII. Fri a. The shrink says that this is a huge step. He is surprised. Good for you! he says. Just nod, don’t disagree. Let him scribble his notes. Imagine that he is drawing sick figures pornography and that he is screwed worse in the head than you are.

b. Someone’s fingers have minds of their own, and spell the word No with y-e-s. You call April. You want to plead with her to have lunch at your place—that you will make her the best damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich (damn that empty kitchen) she has ever had—you’ll even cut the crust off. But then she will think you are poor and try to offer to pay and then you’ll have to try to explain to her that restraints are counterproductive because they make you nauseas, yet are somehow entrusted with providing you food, but then she’ll think you are crazy and then not only that, but you will be forever deprived of your library cubby holes. i. You hang up before she answers. c. Elvis Costello accompanies you to the immensely popular offcampus bar and sandwich shop Eli’s. April is waiting at a table and waves when you walk in the door. You sit down across from her. i. Smile, damn you; don’t just stare at all of the people like they are giant termites festering out of the woodwork of the bar. ii. Your table is right in the middle of the room, and the walls are breathing, expanding and contracting, slowly encircling and being pulled in towards you the same way the planets will dive into the sun when it burns out and collapses into a black hole. iii. “Are you okay? You are humming.” Lie to her. “Oh, I… uhh… had a song stuck in my head.” iv. You tell the waitress you want a glass of liquid courage, but she hears Long Island Iced Tea. Keep them coming you telepathically transmit to her. v. All of the people are a swirling whirl pool, spinning around the bar and dragging you beneath the surface.

You are drowning—your lungs are flooding with the static ambience of their conversations. The waitress, apparently blessed with telepathy, keeps them coming. vi. You are staring at April, luckily she is talking, so it looks like you are trying to pay attention more so than tune out everyone around you. She talks, and talks, and talks, so you nod, and nod, and nod. Her parents own a pet store called Happy Paws and Tails, she

works there on the weekends, she’s a sophomore majoring in marine biology. Interesting, you say.

You major in trial by error. She laughs, then talks some more. You expunge all of your willpower trying to keep her voice from slipping in the inaudible yet excruciatingly loud backdrop. You fail at trying to think of another joke, maybe something about her name, since it is in fact April this month. vii. You eat your club sandwich in drunken stupor. She is anxious to leave after the meal, but assures you she has to get to the pet shop. She likes you, she says, really.

She hugs you in the parking lot and you manage to slip your arm around the small of her back after a moment of hesitation so she didn’t feel like she was hugging a redwood. “You okay to drive?” she asks. You point to the bookstore across the street and say you’ll stay there and drink some coffee for a while. She’ll call you later to make sure you are alright, she says, but never does.

VIII.

Sat a. No need for the movies today. You have enough conquering your fears material to fill the shrink’s sessions for a month. Do something productive. Organize your bookshelf; watch the Star Wars movies back to back because you can, etc.

IX. Sun a. That all too familiar swelling emptiness is filling your stomach like a balloon inflated with the nothingness of space. b. You think about tomorrow—you think about tomorrow a little too much—about sharing group work rooms and how much you despise your Communications professor for not permanently excusing you from sitting there and staring at the wall three times a week. c. The sun sets, and in its slow death, it casts the shadow of the bottle against the wall. The shadow is larger than life and you want to swim in it. No one pays attention to shadows, and no one would ever find you. You could walk amongst everyone unnoticed, draped in the black inexistence. d. The phone is next to the bottle, and its suddenly ringing, the interruption a scalpel slicing through the vulnerable flesh of your silence. The easy way out is to just let it ring until it stops

or until you unplug it. It is as easy as replying to an email by simply typing N-O and pressing send.

26th Avenue by Diana Hurlburt There’s a crackhouse down the street.

I didn’t think believe it when Tony first told me that, I try not to think badly of people and places right off the bat, but it’s true. There’s a crackhouse down the street—or at least a house where people do drugs, I guess not exclusively crack. I’ve never personally seen anyone smoking crack there, but I have seen people shooting heroin.

That sounds pretty drama-queen, but really, I have.

One evening toward the end of November when the weather had just turned cold, I decided to take a walk. Wearing the big olive-green Navy-issue coat of my father’s with the collar popped up against the chill, I headed down the street and saw three men sitting on the front step. I could see, even from the sidewalk, even in the falling dusk, the dull gleam of needles. The buzzing porchlight flashed on long hypodermic needles, moving in and out of the mens’ arms. I wasn’t close enough at the time to watch their eyes glaze and their heads begin to nod, but I have a good imagination and in any case, I’d get my chance.

I walked more quickly. You never know what’s going to happen, right?

I didn’t tell my sister about that house, she has enough to worry about as it is, and I definitely didn’t tell my mother; some things—most things—you just don’t tell your mother.

I guess I’m making it sound like my sister and I live in Needle Park or something, but really it’s not that bad. There are much worse areas of our city, and our neighbors are mostly very nice. The kid who lives next door cuts our grass sometimes, when we’re home to pay him. The people across the street yell a lot, but only at each other, and anyway they yell in Spanish, so it’s easy to ignore them. Occasionally, if you’re driving at the right hour of the night, you see a few hookers out on Nebraska, but really there’s not much to worry about, if you mind your own business.

My sister says I shouldn’t take walks at night, but that’s usually the only time I have to walk. College gives a lot more homework than high school, and we have bills to pay, so I work a lot too. I work at this place called The Pita Pit, which makes good pitas but is always very hot inside. In any case, when I’m not in class I’m usually at work whipping up extreme veggie pitas or whatever for students and yuppies, so if I want to take a walk, it’s going to have to be at night.

Besides, it’s undeniably more interesting to walk at night than in the daytime. You see things at night that you just don’t see in daylight—men

shooting smack on the steps of an old, faded brick house, and prostitutes, and groups of kids holding freestyle jamfests in the middle of the road, and gangs having quiet talks on one of the neighborhood’s back streets.

My sister says taking walks in our neighborhood at night is just asking for it, especially since I’m skinny and white and I don’t own a gun or know kung fu, but I like to walk and I like walking at night, and it’s not my fault that we live where we do, I was still in high school when my mother and grandmother and sister went house-shopping here, looking for a real home instead of a dorm or an apartment.

“Kid.” I looked up from the pavement. One of the men on the steps of the brick house was addressing me. Automatically I jammed my hands deeper into my pockets and burrowed, turtle-like, into the collar of my father’s coat.

“Kid.” The man squinted at me. His voice was molasses-slow and deep; a cigar stuck out of the corner of his mouth, and a needle jutted from his hand.

“You live around here, kid?”

I stuttered out, “Yeah.”

For some reason one of the other men sitting there began to laugh, a hoarse continuous giggle. I shivered.

“You wanna buy me a bottle of soda, kid?”

I stared at the man. He stared back. In the flicker of the porchlight I could see the pupils, heavy and dilated by the drug. His head wavered oddly, dipping forward and jerking back, as though he was trying to keep from falling asleep. Even in the cold night air his left sleeve was rolled all the way up to his shoulder, a belt still knotted around his stringy bicep as a tourniquet. I could see open sores on the underside of his arm, veins like worms beneath his skin.

“Kid. You hear me?” The man’s rambling voice was becoming slower, but he appeared completely awake and lucid. “You wanna buy me a bottle of Coke? You wanna go down to the 7-11 and buy me a Coke?”

“Uh,” I said. “Coke?”

He smiled around the unlit cigar. He had a very nice smile. “I need somethin’ sweet. I’d get it myself, but you know, I can’t walk just now, you know, I’m pretty sleepy just now. And I can’t see so well in the dark.” He winked conspiratorially. “Besides, you know, there’s always cops at the 7-11.”

I stood there like an idiot. How the heck do you respond to that? Maybe my sister was right; maybe I just shouldn’t take walks. Ever.

“Look.” The man rummaged in his pocket and came up with a handful of change. “You don’t even gotta pay for it yourself, kid, here, take the change and buy me a soda, huh?”

Suddenly my hand was heavy with quarters. I don’t know how that happened. Slowly, feeling drugged myself, I said, “A Coke, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right, kid. Coke. I like some Coca-Cola, you know, after I get off.” The other two men nodded in agreement. They all smiled at me like some kind of warped barbershop trio, avuncular addicts indulging the young naïve boy instead of the other way around.

I continued down the street. There’s a convenience store at the mouth of our street, maybe three blocks up. I could see the lights of the sign already.

Once I looked back, and the three men were still sitting there. I don’t know if I expected them to disappear, like I’d imagined them, some strange apparition to teach me a deep spiritual lesson about life and how doing drugs is a no-no, but they were still there, three hunched figures like skinny trees rooted in the concrete step. I thought I could see the eyes of the man who had given me the change gleaming in the streetlight.

The convenience store was thronged with kids in Scarface t-shirts and Phat Farm gear, and, sure enough, a cop car in the corner of the parking lot. The kids eyed me as I walked to the door and yanked it open. A blare of hiphop music spilled out with the neon lights inside. I went in, back rigid, expecting the worst. Somehow I was more afraid of the kids, my own age or a little older, than the proven junkies with whom I had just exchanged improbable conversation.

I went to the back of the store, passed the rows of beer and wine, and pulled a bottle of Coke out of the cooler. The girl at the counter took the quarters the old man had given me and handed me a receipt; all this managed without taking her eyes off the TV attached to the ceiling. It was tuned to BET—106 & Park—and I could hear Janet Jackson playing guest VJ. I couldn’t help but feel twitchy. It seemed strange to me that I could buy this bottle of soda like anyone else, and who would dream I was buying it for a sixty-year-old drug addict.

Back outside the kids watched me walk back down 26th Avenue. As I went away I could hear them start up freestyling again; one of them was very good, his voice popping like melodious gunfire in the night.

I enjoyed my walk back up the street. The night was beautiful, chilly and still, and I could see the stars through the network of trees overshadowing the street. The houses were quiet, windows glowing with the light of television sets.

The three men were waiting when I came back to the brick house. The man with the cigar beckoned.

“You got it, kid, that’s great. Great. Thanks.” His bony hands reached for the soda. I handed it to him, along with the rest of the change.

“Thanks, kid. Thank you a lot.” He swigged from the Coke. I stood there awkwardly, watching him savor the soda. A car swept by on the street, headlights blinding us for a minute. Finally I shifted on the pavement and said, “Well, good night.”

As I went back onto the sidewalk the old man called, “’Night, kid. See you around. Thanks for the soda, kid. You’re a good kid.” His voice faded into the wind as I walked away.

When I reached our house my girlfriend’s car was sitting in the backyard, and the chain-link gate was closed. I’d forgotten she was going to come over; we were going to a concert in Ybor that night. I came up the front walk and saw her sitting on the porch.

“Where’ve you been?” she called. I smiled at her, kissed her quickly, digging my keys out of my pocket.

“Have you been here long?” I asked, barely realizing I was avoiding her question.

“Nah, not even five minutes.” She flipped her long ponytail over one shoulder and looked around. “Do you think it’s safe to walk around here at night?”

I laughed, opening the front door for her. “You sound like my sister.”

We went inside. She persisted, “I’m not trying to be racist, but seriously—when I drove up here I saw this bunch of people sitting at that big brick house down the street, you know the one, right? The one Tony says is a crackhouse?”

“Well, Tony ought to know,” I muttered. I went to the coffee table and hunted for the concert tickets among the jumble of bills and magazines.

She slipped her arms around my waist and kissed the back of my neck.

“Just want you to be safe.”

I turned in her arms. “I’m safe. Really, I’m careful.” I winked at her.

“You know I carry my Mace with me at all times.”

She laughed, her beautiful, fabulous big laugh. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

To get to Ybor City from my neighborhood, it’s shorter to go west and take Republica de Cuba instead of Nebraska, so we didn’t drive past the old brick crackhouse and its elderly junkie denizens. But I could see them in the rearview mirror; one of them flicked a lighter and the flame lit the worldfamous Coca-Cola label of the soda bottle.

Chinaski by Christopher Smith i remember the 1st time we met browsing for highs i happened among your cut i snorted your words all night long all morning long and all the next night long your lines ran through my mental stability like a knife thru chicken plateaus with weirded muses drinking gin were happened upon and my shovel was kickstarted and i dug the next morning and the next night and the next morning again thanks to your one page amphetamines

When I First Started Writing Poetry by Christopher Smith i began with the ineffable grace and beauty of a child who is vomiting for the very first time the words hit the page in a sudden rush and i did not know what had happened: though, i felt better for it i did not know what to do or who to tell so i let it sit there and soil the page with its smell i was embarrassed that i did not swallow it back down; that i could spot some of last night’s meal in it now, a few years later i puke a couple times a month, nothing has really changed though i like to think i’ve gotten better at cleaning up after myself

and at least i now have the balls to point to this and say “look, i threw up�

We Manufacture By Bryar Faulk Here’s this great building of concrete and heaven-tall windows So impersonal if it wasn’t filled with Little rooms, little places Little lives they decorate for us “It will look fabulous like this” It’s so frankly lit here Industrial and open Some music is drizzled in Showcasing more expensive things Surround sound, big-screen TV’s “You might as well, you’re buying this already” They’re all in it together Wheedling you to purchase their shit And his shit And this shit to show it off A stark cabinet with doors of glass, for the backlights What we expected the future to look like Fifty years ago But by now, old is new And it still won’t look good in your living room Looks like somebody vomited spaghetti and meatballs On this canvas Modern art is so brilliant it doesn’t need a frame There is a chair that looks like the sun Seen through squinted, water filled eyes Man-sized vases and floor mirrors That my dog would piss on Because he’s allowed to give his opinion like that I can only cut the legs off the coffee tables And entertain on the floor Fake plastic trees that will never know what it’s like

To be thirsty Antiques? No, designed, aged, manufactured Big steamer trunks with rivets like from a shipyard And large glass candleholders that look like lighthouses Artifacts from my century “This is what was used to eat on,” Modern, Contemporary, Colonial, Victorian, Ostentatious Pictures of gods and columns and washed white and marble Not as Greek was, but what we think Greek is Pots, jugs, vases, selling for hundreds When the same shit, albeit better made Sells for a few bucks in the countries That are idolized and envied In art on these walls Do they have pictures of Wall-Street-clad men Crammed in subways And shellac covered calculators Lit up on their shelves For all their friends to see An off-white and light blue striped couch sits lonely And it reminds me too much of the rags they wore in the camps To have in my house, much less look at another second Some designer thought this was art: “Quaint, interesting” Kids eyes glazed over from imagining all the new stains To ruin their parents hard earned newness “If they’re smart, they’ll buy leather” This from a man whose voice says he chain-smokes During breaks of making the sags deeper in the chairs he tries to sell I used to hate my mother’s passion for antiques Especially those tight smelly shops But at least they were original They could sit with pride on those shelves Like little seniors on a park bench

Big wood piece that reminds me of my grandpa Or is it the man looking at it, inspecting it All tattooed and spent and tired Hair long and keys clanging From a hook on his waist His female companion speaks about the price And the man has his hands on his hips now Trying to appear knowledgeable to the clerk Men should not know words like bistro set and micro fiber and baker’s rack Because I have an aversion to anyone who uses the phrase “we just got this in” I wander until I find one fascinating piece A vase like pencil on butcher paper All smeared like lead does when your hand gets sweaty and careless Diagrams and doodles all scribbled out And I buy it because this designer sold his mistake

Heartless Sympathy by Bryar Faulk Good Morning It’s Sunday I have sat in the bath a good while The water turned cool and I pulled the rubber plug out My knees drawn tight up to my chest Staring at the pink mold developing around the drain You come back from fetching the paper And sit in your brown armchair, with the soft squeak in the springs I rub my face and avoid the mirror on my way out to make coffee Steaming on the counter The grounds strained through a paper towel folded in two Because we always forget the filters Soon we’ll drink from old mugs, but now I’m tickling your ear with my tongue Falsely confident that I can let today drag on forever Good Afternoon It’s Monday I lie on a table, separated from the cold vinyl by only a thin sheet of paper Soaked in blood and sweat It crunches beneath me as I sit up and look around the room On the wall nearest me, there is a painting of a small girl playing with a dog I can barely recall the last time I felt human, just over an hour ago The doctor comes back in and hands me a sheet of paper with emergency numbers on it In case I start bleeding heavily I can’t take my eyes off his tie, which has baseballs printed on dark blue He’s been through this so many times; I don’t want to think about it There is no pain yet, but I leave clutching my stomach instinctively And an aide wearing a bright orange vest walks me to my car There is some hope, diluted almost to not existing It says, “We can move on from here,” Good Evening It’s Tuesday A husky voiced policeman knocked an hour ago I’m staring at your cold plate of food and stay busy Swatting flies away

It was cool when I got home from work so I opened the windows Our puppy, Stoner, you let your brother name him Is whining at the door to be let out He doesn’t know how bad it was raining earlier And that you won’t be home I’m upset with him because as long as I sit quiet and still Reality can stay a dream I push back from the table and the chair scrapes the floor The only noise Besides Stoner and the flies I open the door and stand in the chilly night air So many lights on up and down the street I think of the football jersey you bought last week Labeled 0-6 months And there’s nothing left to do But go to bed

Matt’s Five Indecisive Introverted Minutes until the Next Bell, and Slightly Thereafter

By Dustin R. Pinkerton William: “Was that a tough test or what? Where are you going, Matt?

Isn’t your locker this way? Are you feeling alright? Why do I waste my time?”

J: “What’s up, Matt?”

Marcus: “You gon be at the game tonight?”

J: “Are you still on the team after this weekend?”

Marcus: “What happin’ dis weekend? Why you walkin’ away?”

Random Ghetto Girl: “What you looking at?”

Janie: “What was that all about this weekend? Why’d you break up with Rachel?”

Sasha: “What did she do to you?”

Moniqua: “Playa, cheated on her din’t ya?”

Janie: “What? Did you cheat on her? You afraid to answer my question?”

Steve-O: “What’s going on, big Matty? Big game tonight, right? You gonna score twenty for me? Break a few ankles with that cross?”

Miranda: “Did you really break up with Rachel?”

Random Nerd: “Would you watch where you’re going?”

J: “Hey, you got a dollar I can borrow for a Mountain Dew?” Marcus: “Ain’t coach say you not spose ta drink soda before a game?”

J: “What does coach know? Besides, don’t we still have eight hours ‘til gametime? Hey, what about that dollar?”

Random Nerd: “How many times you gonna bump into me?”

Miranda: “So, sexy, you got any plans next weekend?”

Danny: “Hey, how’d you do on that chem test, Matt? Do you think I’ll pass? We sure crammed our asses off last night, didn’t we?”

Pothead: “How are yeeww, man? Was that an awwwesome fucking party or wwwhat, man? What was your girrrl bitchin’ about? Where the hell did you disa…peer to? Weren’t you on pace for a new record, man?”

Chase: “You dating anyone else yet? Never stick with one long do you?”

Mr. Moore: “Where are you going, Mr. Preston? Isn’t your next class in the Language Arts wing?”

Janitor: “Now, why the hell would someone do that? They expect me to clean that? What’s so hard about pissing in a toilet?”

Jake: “Did you really break up with that hottie? What’s wrong with you?”

David: “Wasn’t she a prude though, dude?

Jake: “You want some more of that shit you had on Friday? What size?”

J: “You again? Isn’t your class down the other hall? Are you skipping?”

Marcus: “Don’t coach say you cain’t play if you ain’t in class on gameday?”

J: “Why you skipping anyways?”

Rachel: “What’s wrong with you, Matt? Buzz finally wearing off? Cat got your tongue, or are you still moping about Friday? You’re going to piss it all away aren’t you? Why’d I put up with you for as long as I did?”

Miranda: “Skipping too? Mind if I join? Got any pot on you?”