Category: Fiction

On the floor by my foot
a large black ant crawls without direction,
the same type insect I spent
much time smashing after the fall.
Then they seemed to be everywhere,
a sign for the broken hearted,
or maybe it was arid and they
simply searched for an oasis in the carpeting.
The oasis, alas, did not exist,
and, alas, the black ants stopped coming,
I was left alone for a while,
a scientist without a subject.
Tonight this one arrives
and the experiment begins again.
Should I run him out of town?
Will he take me with him?
Like last night when getting
in bed and from beneath the pillow
crawled a pale orange lady bug,
and i couldn’t remember if
that meant good luck or bad,
was this the nature of the tooth fairy,
I had always assumed Mom,
but perhaps it is this.
My studies don’t always go so well.
I wonder about the other lady bug that
flew in the truck window on Saturday,
and what it scratching my cornea meant.
Was it so I could better understand
the nature of insects?
Or when the black ant bites my foot
late on Monday, and it takes me back
to that time when you once danced
sweaty to hip hop blasting from
speakers on a hardwood floor
creating a scene that I
should be forgetting now if
I know what is good for me.
If I could be strong would I
understand why these things happen
why these things are here
and in my bed and walking
these floors and not leaving
me alone, but reminding me I am

Is enough for any man
to suffer.
You came to me in a dream last night.
I had gone to bed early, way early,
and there you were, a couple
of hours later, with the slide
of the screen door and
the eventual tap on the glass.
I acted in the way in which
I had dreamed in this dream
that I would, I cried
big old man tears, looking
like Natalie Portman when
Timothy Hutton tells her he
is leaving the frozen Canadian
tundra to go to the city and marry my classmate.

(more…)

Shannon and her friend Christa are starting an ad hoc creative writing class and they asked that I join. I said okay and this week’s assignment was to write something about grocery shopping. Here’s mine.
I am standing in the A&P parking lot, trying to drink this six pack of Old Milwaukee tallboys as quickly as I can, so I can get back home before she expects anything. I bought a roll of Certs and a roll of Rolaids to handle the inevitable problems of breath from the booze and heartburn from bad living. I was just sitting at the house, and a half hour or so ago she says to me that she is out of tampons, and that her period will be starting soon, although by my calculations it shouldn�t be here until next week. She also said it would be nice to have some milk for the coffee in the morning and maybe some cereal to go with the coffee and milk. And don�t forget the tampons. OB, the kind without the applicator because she cares so much about the environment.

(more…)

It’s nights like this, the ink black ones, that keep me in too long. Like a heavy black cloth has been dropped over the house and you can’t see out, no moon, or stars or circling satellites. I sit here until the walls start to move toward me, the eyes in the photo on the mantle start to move as I do – jittery, shaking. The TV might as well be blue screen. Some guy trying repeatedly to sell you something you don’t want, that you can never want, that you decided a long time ago you didn’t want. He still keeps on knocking.

(more…)

The word of the night is muthafucka. How did I know I had a totem hero. Chet Baker. My god. Horn and toad and pause and ‘I don’t even want to fucking sing tonight.’ Oh, there’s a marriage. I guess in order to be hitched, I will sing, I will sing, I will sing. Oh, America. Yawp. Yawp. Yawp. I am not even planning a trip across you. Just to Chicago. I will see what I can. I embibe with a lawful bawp. Those tinkling bells. We all want to go apeshit. We all want to be sheltered in your arms. Oh, America! Tonight, I am lonely and shouldn’t be. 9/11. You laugh now don’t you New York. A return to the surly. A return to the non-care.
You are out tonight in middile Carolina. Do you know it’s love? What about love and marriage and all those kinds of things. Apparently I’ve got a lot of changing to do. I chased the albino doe across the woods for farther. Would have killed and brought her head to your door if it would make a difference. I stand in deference. What of it. Piss off and go back home. You voted that way and me this. No resolve.
I am out tonight among the people. Among the late-night barbaric yawpers. I am out and out ready for your love to return. I am drunk… so what of it. I will return. I will return. I will make secret tepees under a western sun. My trousers already roll. My headaches. I hear songs. I want more. I want you. Pleasure. Luxury. Light and breeze.
I am looking for the silver lining. It’s bronze. Sweet valentine. Chet. It’s over. What more can I do?

And they all seem to light up the woods tonight. More than fire or the modern conveniences. Thirty kids, 12 adults, and me and you. I didn’t know then that I was falling in love. There would be a faux Indian chief explaining the myth of nature. It is a myth. And a magician causing things to spark. I am sorry to say I would have to escaspe early. Me and Dan and a foursome of kids to the pond, and across. Kerosene soaked maxi-pads on metal pipe and lighters (before I went crazy) and across to the bottom-dwelling reeds on the other side. I don’t know how we did it. Those kids were ready for smores and Cheetos and Coca-Cola and late night farting. Surely the rain was gonna fall. I would find myself with 15 kids in a dressing room smelling semi-fresh with chlorine and bowel movements. Burger grease still on my vegetarian hands (before I went crazy).
You would find yourself in another group, at that point. Across a cinder-blocked wall. We were innocents. Walking down a city street still amused at the trash vacuum man and machine in full city regalia. That’s a today thing. Across a cinder-block wall I heard you silently calling out to me. No jade, no sarcastic twitch. I am here for the night no matter what.
I thought then that I would marry you, but the moment slipped away. We grew older. I became jaded with a sarcastic twitch. Smoking and drinking too much. I don’t even remember what was said between us. I don’t even remember what you look like. I just rememeber those fireflies and how they lit up the night. ‘I don’t know whether the blessing put a verse on the fireflies or the fireflies put a blessing on the verse.’

Cock as big as a block. Today’s modern parenting. I drive by those neighborhoods. Who’d’ve thought there are so many strollers. So many different kinds. So many ways of getting a baby from here to there. Oh, and Maria. I guess my little dick couldn’t plant a seed far enough in there. BABY CRAZY! Oh, I guess with a pipe like that a man could do a lot of damage. Plant a seed good. Change all of the plumbing in the house in one visit. Oh, I hate that letter. I hate that it still sits there on the window in the kitchen. I wasn’t baby crazy. Maybe that’s the problem. Told her that when dad left I became the man of the house. Had been a man of the house since I was 12. Being a man of the house is for the fucking birds. How did I get like this. Tommy was supposed to be here. It was supposed to be our night out. How did I get like this. I just wanted to have some fun, like fishing, see what turns up. They are always more comfortable when there are two and the second is you. Fine with not being the man of the house. Hell, it’s a rental anyway. What’s a rental for raising a kid. Besides my sperm wouldn’t take anyway. those drunk little fuckers are so confused. Looked at them once when I was 14 under a microscope, jacked off on a glass slide. Christmas present. Wow! Hard to imagine how they could do damage. Just makes you feel nasty. Fuck that job. Fuck this job. Hell, how hard is it to live… just live. It’s like twelve voices yelling at each other in here now. Hard to handle all of this noise. What the fuck happened? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?
“Last call. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
“Fucking original, man!”
The pool table is empty. The couple at the corner booth gets up and walks out. It’s just me and Curtis.
“Where’d Emma go?”
“Well, you nodded, started babbling. Friends finished the pool game, so She left with them,” Curtis said.
I see how this ends.
“You want to do a shot with me?” Curtis asks, “I’m off the clock now.”
I didn’t think I wanted to, but he’s off the clock.
“You might want to check that napkin in your jacket pocket when you get home. She left you a note,” says Curtis, “You want me to call you a cab?”
“I reckon.”
Was playing: Anytime Soon by Rachel’s

“Hey Curtis! What do you think this chick will look like? He says she’s an auditor. Came into the store to take a look at the books… end of the beginning of the year kind of thing.”
“I bet she’s a big-titted thing. You know Tommy. At least when he is drunk his sight seems to only scan from shoulder to waist. Like his neck’s got a hitch or something. He’s an ugly motherfucker. I bet her tits look like a million dollars and her face like a bag of dogshit.”
I order another boilermaker and things are starting to get a bit swirly. I can’t believe he is doing this shit to me. The college girls are starting to arrive and all of the pool tables are filled up. There’s one with red hair that I swear keeps looking my way. She’s okay… a little like Sissy Spacek but with a better figure.
I go lay 50 cents down on the table just to be near her. See what she will do. I know this game. Shit! I know it better than anyone. Since Marla left me a year ago, I play it all the time. College girls, late at night at the bar, me dressed like a desk job. They think of the future. Plan on babies. Imagine fathers, houses, station wagons and swimming pools.

(more…)

Tommy’s out tonight with this big-eyed girl and I can’t feel my left foot. We had agreed to meet here to do the usual. Play a couple of rounds of pool, drink some beers and shots, wait for the college girls to come in late, stare at the crowd. I had even got us our normal catbird seats in the crook of the bar from which the whole of the place could be scanned with just the movement of the eyes. We were set, and then he text messaged me telling me he’s gonna be late, maybe and hour or two.
So I start into it. I start with the the nightly innaugural boilermaker, then a dry martini. Get me there quick. You can’t stand to be in places like this sober. There’s no girls, nobody at all really except the couple of old geezers who always take the booth by the door and spend most of the night just staring at each other. Curtis, the bartender, asks where Tommy is and I tell him that he is out on a date.
“That ugly fucker,” he says.
“I know what you mean, man, but Tommy’s got the mad talking skills, and it doesn’t hurt that he works at the furniture store. You know how women get around home furnishings.”
I order another beer and a shot, then the second text message from Tommy comes.

(more…)

I got Jenny a tit job for Christmas. I can’t say it was completely altruistic. She had always been bitching about how small her tits were and I always said they were perfectly fine. In truth, I had always enjoyed the tits of women a little more well-endowed. But I loved her, so what was I to say. So I got her a tit job… for Christmas.
Her mother had thought about giving her one for her college graduation. She wanted to be a TV reporter back then, and Jenny and her mother both thought larger breasts would be a benefit. I imagine while she’s at home her mother will ooh and ahh at how she now fills out her sweater. Her father will suspect that my intentions in giving such a gift were not truly altruistic. He’s never liked me. So she and her new breasts are gone, and I am left here working out the last few days of the year.
I never figured out why the “man” always plans the biggest projects for this time of the year. The best I can figure is that the “big man” back in January or February said, “this will get done this year,” and everyone that controls me twiddled their thumbs for a good 10 or 11 moths and then said, “oh shit!’ And thus I am stuck here working double time for single pay to get a project done so these people, who have all already left for the holidays, don’t catch any shit. I guess that’s the way it goes. At least, once the scars have healed Jenny’s tits will look good, and that will be something to come home to every night.
So with the boss on vacation, and Jenny out of town, I have taken to drinking the leftover Budweiser in the refrigerator from when the boys were in town a couple of weeks ago. I took to that, and then met Billy at the burger place to eat a late dinner. I still cannot figure out how to cook for just one. I thought abut going to get Jenny a couple of CDs of this band that she heard on the radio recently and fell in love with. But I realized after dinner that I was swerving a little too much for all of that, so I just came back home.
I came through the dark rain and past the little restaurants in my neighborhood where a skeleton crew is holding down the fort for a few patrons. It seems as if the whole town is becoming deserted. As if everyone has gone to places far from here, with their children and loved ones in tow. As if everywhere in the world has decided that they’ve done enough for this year – go ahead and enjoy some time off. A few older people drink cocktails at the bar and wait for their sons and daughters to arrive over the next couple of days.
I am dreaming of a white Christmas. Something to drastically change this landscape. A dream world in which I can live for a few days. Snow banks around my house so thick that the mail man gets lost trying to wade through them. But we just seem to get a cold dark rain that prohibits nothing.
I think I’ll go fire up the fake logs and turn on the Christmas tree. Hell, I may even pick out a round of ‘Rudolph’ on the guitar. I’ll have another couple of the leftover Budweisers and then go to bed. When I awake I will have about 8 hours until I can head out to a little patch of land in North Carolina, that my parents bought years ago, that I am still trying to call home.