sPARKLE & bLINK 4 :: Neighborhood Heroes, v.1

Q uiet L ightning
sPARKLE
& bLINK
4
Q uiet L ightning
sPARKLE
& bLINK
as performed on
Jun 4 10
@
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© 2010 by Evan Karp + Rajshree Chauhan
ISBN 978-0-557-48790-5
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Q uiet Lightning
is
a monthly submission-based reading series
with 2 stipulations
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you only get 3-8 min
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« s’napse »
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Quiet Lightning
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« contents »
jon longhi
the winner 6
no respect 7
dad! 8
paul corman-roberts
the longest 20 seconds 11

the serv-well 12
sarah fran wisby
two men, the face 15

how to spin 17
the myth of the buried tether 18
jennifer joseph
3 untitled pieces 19
m.g. martin
dear local boi #1 23
stephen elliott
excerpt from ch. 5 of The Adderall Diaries 26

beth lisick
ladies, one day 32
andrew paul nelson
drop out of college 38
daphne gottlieb
the bearded lady 45

i do not want to fuck you like a poem 48
elegy for dave 50
like I stole it 52
sexy balaclava 54
joshua mohr
derek catches us up on what really happened

an excerpt from Termite Parade 56
nic alea
my mother is a fish 61
michelle tea
from “the summer of lost jobs” 66

Quiet Lightning » sPARKLE & bLINK
The Winner
All the denizens of the New York squats gathered for a huge party at Smelly
Dave’s house. The occasion was his annual contest for the title of “World’s
Crustiest Punk.” It had become quite an honored tradition in the local punk
rock scene. This year a particularly unbathed punk named Specimen won
hands down. Specimen hadn’t taken his shoes off for eighteen months. His
socks had rotted to the point where they looked like some kind of skin
disease around his ankles. When the judges asked Specimen to prove his
claim that he had not seen his toes in over a year and a half they found
themselves with a dilemma: they couldn’t get his shoes off. The laces had
disintegrated to a mere residue and in general the shoes appeared to be fused
with his feet. They finally ended up cutting the shoes off and when they did
they found that his toenails had grown down into the decayed leather soles.
«7»
june 2010 » jon longhi
No Respect » from The Rise and Fall of Third Leg (Manic D

Press)
Ever have one of those gigs that starts out sounding great but once you
actually get involved things go downhill fast? Something like that happened
to me recently. I'm a poet and this concert promoter booked me to read my
verse at some big outdoor rock festival. Besides bands, the show also had a
concourse where booths, vendors, and side stages were set up. Freak shows,
jugglers, and mimes were spread across the lawn. There were even a few
carnival rides. At first I was supposed to read one of my poems on the main
stage during a set break between two of the bands. But when I showed up
the day of the show I found out my gig had been downgraded.
"Well, that's OK," I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my
voice. "I can handle performing on a side stage."
"Well, you're not exactly appearing on a side stage," the promoter
said.
"Actually you'll be appearing in the bar. More specifically in the
men's room of the bar. There's a hole in the wall next to the urinals. I want
you to stick your head through it and read your poems to the crowd in front
of you. Some of these people will be throwing rubber balls at your face but
don't let it distract your delivery. Hey, a gig's a gig. Now just hold still while
I paint this smile on your mouth."
«8»
Dad! » from Wake Up and Smell the Beer

(Manic D Press)
I met Dada Trash aptly enough, on Halloween. We were both in our

sophomore year of college. Dada had gone out as “Surrealism” and his face
was painted with interweaving images of leaves and fish. Styrofoam cups
were crazy glued all over his body and he carried a giant wooden fork and
spoon as dual scepters. I don’t know why, but I liked him immediately.
The two of us soon began to collaborate on a series of super 8 movies.
They were art flicks. We would have done porno loops but me and Dada
Trash couldn’t find any girls who would take their clothes off for us. So we
had to pick topics that were closer at hand. Like our film “Meadow Muffins”
which was a documentary about piles of cow shit in various fields around
Delaware. Another documentary called “Hygiene” consisted of one ten
minute shot of Dada Trash popping the numerous zits on his face into the
camera until you could barely see through the lens. By the time we finished
screening that one, not a single person was left in the film class and five
students and the professor were in the bathroom driving the porcelain bus.
Our ultimate Super 8 epic was called Dad! True to the spirit of Sergel
Eisenstein, it was a silent film. Dad! opens with a shot of the red evening
sky. Slowly the camera pans down till the screen is filled by a gaudy neon lit
porno shop. A nervous looking young man about twenty years old walks
into the place. Inside, he glances at the magazines for a few moments, but
quickly makes his way towards the peep show booths in the back. There is a
dim shot of the boy walking down the hallway of doors. Scuzzy looking men
in dirty raincoats shuffle past him. Illuminated signs on the doors advertise
«9»
the movies showing in the booths. Swamp Pussy. Hot Buns For The Baker.
Pumping Granny. Enema Antics. The young man picks a booth and walks
in. The camera zooms in on the sign on the door. It’s a gay porno flick called
Journey To The Center Of My Bunghole.
Inside the booth there is a shot of the young man from the chest up.
The light from the film flickers on his face which is contorted in ecstasy. His
arms move in a way that suggests the boy jerking off. Then the camera pans
over to a glory hole drilled in the wall. A hand pokes through the hole and
starts beckoning to the boy. The young man’s bliss is suddenly interrupted
as he stops and stares at the hand. It begins making obscene pantomimes of
jerking him off. There is a shot of the boy’s face in deep, perplexed thought.
Cut to black screen with white words that say: “Even though I’d never
actually done it with a guy I’d always been tempted... Ah, what the hell!”
The young man gets up and sticks his dick into the glory hole. There
is a long shot of him from the shoulders up, his face going through ever-
higher levels of bliss as the invisible man on the other side of the wall sucks
him off.
Cut to a shot of the two adjoining peep show booths filmed from the
outside. Both doors open simultaneously and the occupants emerge at the
same time. Suddenly the anonymous lovers see each other. One of them is
an old man about sixty who is wiping something (presumably sperm) from
his lips. The young man looks at him in overwhelming shock and horror.
There is a shot of the boy’s face as he screams something. Then cut to a
black screen with the single word: DAD! in big white letters.
The End
» Needless to say, that one didn’t go over too well with the film department.
june 2010 » paul corman-roberts
The Longest 20 Seconds
Missy was the 38 express-driver whose ugly orange ramshackle bus I

boarded most often before six every morning. Missy never showed much
interest in the process of breaking her long rolling dragon of transit. I was
never late for work, though frequently experienced neck pain.
One morning at a stop in the deep ‘Loin on O’Farrell Street, the
commuter who had been packed next to me for most of the journey, a petite,
elderly Asian woman was unlucky enough to have the last turn at the exit
when the hydraulics governing the opening and closing of the bus’ back
door snapped around her ankle.
I could see the old woman’s purse leaving behind pens, applicators,
cigarettes and change behind her on the asphalt as the departing bus dragged
her screeching, flailing form.
I joined a group of passengers screaming “STOP!” and pounding up
the length of the shifting bus only to be met by Missy’s “I don’t stop for no
goddamn late fare skippers!” To this day I don’t actually remember her
braking to a stop. And yet our commute ended shortly thereafter with an
ambulance ride for a moaning Chinese woman and a transfer or walk for
everyone else.
The newspaper said Missy had been on her second suspension from
DMV for the last nine months. The paper further reported the victim was
pulled one hundred and fifty feet but was in stable condition and released
from the hospital two days later.
Thanks to the archaic municipal bus union’s archaic appeals process, I
got to take one more ride with Missy later that week. She wasn’t interested
« 12 »
in the process of braking on that occasion either. I never saw her again after
that, but the following week, I was late to work and slept great for the first
time in years. But you know; I still miss Missy.
The Serv-Well
It all starts with me coming home from my telemarketing gig, off the
Bart Station at 11 every night per always, and on up the Hyde Street wind
tunnel on to the corner liquor store (i.e. the Serv-Well) for a quart of milk
when at Ellis Street a brother in front of me the size of a brick shithouse
strolls five, maybe six paces out into Hyde, then whirls on around at the
sound of some shit talk and the shattered bark of a forty-ouncer smacking off
sidewalk; another brother further on down Ellis throwing down the corner
liquor store gauntlet; two young men about to get it on in the heart of the
Tenderloin and adrenaline ripples out from the intersection, flowing
downhill, flowing uphill, crawling toward the back of every alleyway and
it’s all going down in front of the Serv-Well Market and I gotta go, yesiree I
gotta get myself right the fuck across this here traffic, right across this here
street and never in my life have I been so happy to see the gorgeous
desolation of O’Farrell Street while pistol shots don’t sound like they do in
the movies (PA-CHEW! PA-CHEW!) but are a pop-pop-pop percussion that
leaks around street corners and boxes in my ears while I hole in against a
wall, where a dark, older sister with canyon deep wisdom etched in her
handsome jawbone says “awshit, fools is gonna be dealin out they dyin” just
before she takes a gi-normous rip from a tiny glass pipe and grips my
shoulders while throwing her left leg around my waist and thrusting her
tongue deep into my tonsils and her coke washed, E & J flavored crack-hale
fills my sinuses leaving me heated, swollen and eager; leaving me wanting
nothing more than to pull this smooth slab of loving electric carbo-plasm,
smooth at least to my touch, deep inside myself till I have somehow
consumed her, but my ears pulse with the bastard cosmic hum of the ether
and the distant gun pop-pop-popping, which caresses me warm, safe and
sexy in the piss baked concrete smell of O’Farrell Street where I dream the
creamy dreams of the possible for a period of time I cannot measure, but
which only ever ends with me prone and alone in front of the stark, steely
gray judgment that is the entrance gate to my apartment building …
miraculously with keys, wallet and change somehow still in place …
miraculously with my cock still dry and comfortably secured inside dry
boxers comfortably secured inside zipped up Levis … miraculously with the
sickly orange streetlight pall of O’Farrell completely abandoned, and every
storefront bolted down till daylight including, I am quite certain, the Serv-
Well market.
june 2010 » sarah fran wisby
Two Men, the Face
When it comes time to call two men to haul away the couch your dog died
on, which still bears, like a silvery arrowhead stamped into its green velvet
armrest, the shiny imprint of her snout where it pressed while her body
cooled and stiffened so that her legs stuck out unfoldably, necessitating that
the grave would later need to be dug twice as wide; her snout where it
pressed against the armrest curled back as if in a snarl, creating those
furrows in her face that, when she was alive, used to compel you to say stop
it, stop making that ugly face, sometimes even striking her on the snout to
divert her attention from her ferocious and mysterious need to attack another
dog who had perhaps, to be fair, subtly insulted her in dog language,
snubbing her or otherwise challenging her authority; your first experience of
rigor mortis the terrible panic as you realized you were not strong enough to
bend the snout back into the calmly dignified expression she more often
wore, and that your final memory of her face would be this ugly misshapen
expression and you could no more change that fact than you could bend her
now petrified flesh—
Make sure the men are tall, bearded, and strong, one of them a stranger with
all the promise a handsome stranger imprints on your sense of possibility,
and the other a man you made out with once in front of a bar, his tongue too
pointy and tasting of hoppy beer and your own stale disappointment in what
had at first seemed promising, so that you have something to think about
besides your dog and this final relic of her last breath departing on their
strong shoulders.
« 15 »
june 2010 » sarah fran wisby
How to Spin
In last night’s dream I was trying to be clever, to follow through on some

joke logic, but I couldn’t remember the words for “spinning wheel.” Even
now, I am not certain that those words describe the object I was trying to
convey in my dream by making the motions of spinning wool into yarn,
moving my arms in cartoonish and rudimentary circles since I, of course, do
not know how to spin yarn, any more than I know how to be particularly
clever, in dreams or elsewhere.
Oh, but the night before last! On an uncomfortable couch in the Marin
Headlands I dreamed about sex with a succession of men I know in real life.
Each dalliance lasted only a moment, but the feeling of sex suffused
everything around it, like onions or garlic. One man with thick fair hair
posed as a janitor pushing a broom in a women’s locker room, a dark-haired
man suffered from narcolepsy in the back seat of a mail truck.
A certain man who regularly torments me in dreams was there too, naturally,
in the video store, but only to kick things off, and was kind enough to
embrace me from behind so I didn’t have to look at him, only feel him press
into me and grow hard, his mouth at my ear whispering cock and snatch,
while my eyes crept like blind grubs among the empty cases.
« 16 »
The Myth of the Buried Tether
This is the last time I’ll close my eyes to kiss you. Under each fraught skirt,
another skirt furls into existence. Under each moment, a buried tether. After
several attempts to cut the tether with words or burn through it with sex, I
grasp it in both hands and pull. If metaphor ever fulfills its cool promise,
someday I’ll yank its roots into light. Or else get a sharper language.
Between knowing and not knowing I take long breaks, ride escalators and
trains, anything moving. Failing again, I plug into motion, try to ride this
bucking world, still dangerous in spite of new safety standards, and I don’t
mind the wind.
« 17 »
june 2010 » jennifer joseph
three untitled » i.
We could not believe our luck. The dog was not dead, the flowers were
alive, the sun was shining, food was on the table. We did not question the
quality of the food. We were hungry. There was water to drink. It quenched
our thirst and we were grateful. No one was thinking too much. We looked
at each other and smiled. No one asked, “Is this all there is?” because we
already knew the answer.
ii.
Imagine the unimaginable. When was the last time you saw a flock of birds?
Seriously. Not a couple of sparrows or starlings hopping on a sidewalk. Not
a pigeon pecking at the remainders of a half-eaten burrito carelessly dropped
on Mission Street. Not three pelicans attempting to fly in formation out at
Ocean Beach or along the Bay. And I don’t mean squawking seagulls
intimidating tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf.
There are eyewitness accounts from 120 years ago that birds existed in such
great numbers that the sun was sometimes blotted out by massive clouds of
birds migrating from Canada to Mexico and back again. Imagine the
unimaginable. In the late 1800s, hats featuring fantastic feathers became
fashionable. All the birds were killed in the name of commerce.
Have you seen that photo of the oil-covered wild bird? To have survived
everything, just to have it end this way. Dawn dishwashing liquid advertises
« 18 »
that it’s used by animal rescue groups to clean oil off of half-dead sea birds.
Talk about turning misery into a marketing opportunity. Imagine the
unimaginable. To have survived everything, just to have it end this way.
iii.
Food problems. What did we do before Trader Joe's was invented? Did we
really just shop at Safeway and Rainbow Grocery? Hard to remember,
harder to believe.
So I read the Michael Pollan book about his four meals and where
they came from, and Fast Food Nation, and heard all about the Slow Food
movement and the organic thing and the local angle about food grown
within a 100-mile radius or something and frankly I'm worried about the
pears and apples that grow in my Bernal Heights backyard, worried that they
might contain lead from old paint scraped over the years from this 99-year-
old house, or the neighbor's house, or the other neighbor's house, or from
weird lead particles floating over from the 101 and 280 freeways. So much
to worry about and I suppose I could send a backyard pear to some lab in
Davis or somewhere and find out if it's okay but even tracking down a lead-
in-the-food lab is kind of time consuming, y'know?
So instead I buy organic fruits and vegetables at the Farmers Market
nearby every Saturday morning getting elbowed by cranky Russian
grandmothers reaching for a bunch of beets for borscht and wondering what
the hell I would make with sugar cane grown in Fresno anyway.
So I picked up a package of dried organic pineapple from Trader
Joe's, you know, to snack on at the office, something sweet, healthy and all,
I mean where can you go wrong with organic dried fruit? Better than
chocolate even though chocolate's good for your arteries now but just a little,
not much, so dried fruit's better if you need something sweet around 3 in the
afternoon except now I'm reading the organic pineapple from Trader Joe's
package and it's from Sri Lanka which means that it was most likely driven
from the fields to a place where it was dried and packaged in some kind of
truck without any kind of pollution controls like we have here in California
and then it was put on an ocean-going freighter burning massive amounts of
non-renewable fossil fuel oil as it crossed the Pacific where it was put on
another truck and driven to the distribution center where it was put on
another truck which brought it to my nearest Trader Joe's where I bought
and drove it somewhere again. Home.
That's a helluva lot of fuel consumption in the name of snacking on
organic dried pineapple but it's from Sri Lanka where maybe it was grown
by some sort of organic farming local industry, maybe even some kind of
cooperative or something, and by buying their products maybe I'm
supporting their quest for a better life and if Americans don't consume
organic pineapple grown by the good folks of Sri Lanka who are probably
still recovering from the tsunami and all that, well then, who is going to buy
their products? I mean, are people in China all about eating organic at this
point? Surely the Europeans are, but do they like dried pineapple? Somehow
Europe seems more like dried figs and apricots, y'know? Europeans just
don't seem like they're snacking on pineapple but I could be wrong…
And the same goes for that Trader Joe's organic quinoa from Bolivia -
I mean it's the mother grain from the Incas, full of complete amino acids or
something but hell, Bolivia is very far away and quinoa doesn't grow in
Bernal Heights, at least not as far as I know, and even then it might have
lead in it, right? I don't know if the Europeans have discovered organic
quinoa yet either but I wouldn't count on it. Amaranth, maybe, but quinoa? I
dunno. I just don't know.
june 2010 » m.g. martin
Dear Local Boi [#1]
Dear Local Boi,
Let me first just say that I am a huge fan.

I’ve read your column for years & dream about
the day I leave this small Nevada town &
travel to your, like, way exotic Hawaiʻi.
That being said, my bf & I just took
a weekend vacay to Viva Las Vegas.
We ate lunch at one of those CPK joints.

[I’m not sure if you have them in Hawaiʻi, I
mean, you have Hawaiʻi, why would you need Cali ;)]
Anywho, all of the wait staff wears name tags
explaining where they all came to Vegas from.
We noticed our waitress, Noelani, was from
Kauaʻi. We looked around & were shocked to see
how many CPK employees were from
Hawaiʻi.
Noelani told us a lot of Hawaiians

have relocated to Viva Las Vegas.
Local Boi, why would your people leave Hawaiʻi?
» Bored Of Desert Life
« 22 »
Sistah B.O.D.L,
Lemme furst jus say mahalo nui loa
fo’ readeen da Local Boi’s column for long time.
I been Vegas couple times & was like “Ho, Brah!
dis place get anykine action fo’ anykine
folks who like do anykine stuffs, ai kudiyam¹.”
Anywho, aunteh, fo’ address da question you
went ask: here is my theory about Hawaiians
in Vegas.
So, cuz all mainland people are real akamai²,

da answah should be cleeah as one diamond insai
yor head alreadeh. C’mon folks: Elvis Presley!
Us local people been obsessing ova Da King
since he played Chad Gates in Blue Hawaii & said:
“you know what I need? a good old-fashioned spanking.”
Ha, only joke!
Nah, nah, sistah B.O.D.L, da real reason is dat

agriculture was da local people’s main source
of kālā³ but aftah sugah an’ pineapple
went big business da tourism industry took
ova. An’ only so much jobs in Waikīkī.
So, Vegas, with da weather, became one perfect
alturnahtive fo’ da local folks who worked in
da hotels.
Hope I gave you at least some small kine help, sistah.

» Live Aloha,
Da Local Boi
1. Fo’ all my non-pidgin speakahs out dea, ai kudiyam, was adopted from da
Portuguese (now, all—guaranteed—referred to in da islands as Portagees)
plantation workahs. Da phrase is accepted by local folks to mean “Oh, my
God!”
2. Akamai is da Hawaiian word fo’ people who get more brains den you.
smart, eh.
3. If you like know what kālā is den reach into yor pocket an’ pull out da
green papahs.
from The Adderall Diaries (Graywolf Press)
When I left Chicago in late 1997 I wasn't thinking about San Francisco; I
wasn't thinking about anywhere. I wondered where I would end up but it was
just a vague, rootless anxiety because I had no idea.
I spent a season in a ski resort high in the Rocky Mountains near the
Loveland Pass where you can glide through the trees lit by moonlight, a
giant thirty-minute ski run in soft, untouched powder. A dozen of us hit the
pass on those winter nights. We pushed back from the ridge, hurtling toward
the valley, the sky blurry with stars. I would lean back on my board, waving
the tip above the surface, snow buzzing my ankles like fairies. It felt like
riding a cloud. We sailed through clusters of trees, jumping small creek
beds. In the mountains nobody ever asked what you did for a living or where
you were from. At the base, flushed and cold, we'd strap our gear over our
shoulders and hitchhike back to the top.
When winter was over and the snow was melting I came down from
the mountain. I drove into Southern Utah where they film the Nike
commercials. I lay on a bench for twelve hours outside the Moab post office
trying to decide where to go. I had left my fiancé and the weight of that was
finally on me. I was in a part of Utah famed for its sandstone arches and
deep gorges, kayakers paddling the rapids sweeping up along the pink and
brown canyon walls. I kept all my possessions inside my hatchback:
snowboard, bicycle, photographs, and several boxes of papers. I considered
staying in the Lazy Turtle hostel with a hippie who made her living beading
necklaces. Instead I continued on the Nevada 50, the "loneliest road in
America," a barren two-lane street across the longest stretch of the state, gas
« 25 »
june 2010 » stephen elliott
stations and a brothel every fifty miles, listening to Radiohead's OK

Computer until Reno rose ahead of me in a neon rage.
In San Francisco I slept above the Castro, the seat reclined as far as it
would go. I went to the bars and asked men to buy me drinks. I would listen
to their problems, acting like a young hustler, the real JT Leroy, except I'd
been plucked off the streets years ago. I was better looking than when I was
a homeless fourteen-year-old. My skin was clearer, and I was more prepared
to strike a deal. But I didn't have much to sell.
One man took me home. He lived on a small street in Twin Peaks. "I
shouldn't be doing this," he said. I slept in his spare bedroom where he kept
a wooden cross with eyebolts and leather shackles drilled into the wall.
"If you come home drunk I'm going to chain you to that and fuck
you," he said.
"I'd prefer it if you didn't," I replied.
I was twenty-six and I hadn't committed to any city. I had been
crisscrossing the country like a dog chasing his tail and I was in California
again. I hadn't spent a year in the same house or apartment since I was
thirteen. I thought I was just passing through.
It was a time when people were coming to San Francisco for a reason.
Innovators and Ivy Leaguers clogging the entry ramps to the digital age,
pulling the levers of the roaring stock market housed in cool server banks
throughout the Bay Area. A gold rush was underway. The 101, the primary
artery between the city and Silicon Valley, was littered with billboards
flashing by like a flipbook advertising websites to nowhere. There were
private parties every night in the small dark bars in North Beach and South
of Market. They were easy to get into and inside everything was free. People
talked about "vaporware" and "loss leaders" and "CRM" and the importance
of losing money. They carried the next big thing on a disc at the bottom of
their backpack. It was more random than a dartboard thrown at a map, but
it's where I ended up. Kids my age were billionaires overnight.
I got a job summarizing free catalogs for a database called
Catalogs2Go. There was another temp whose only job was to find more free
catalogs to order that I could describe. They came every day, hundreds of
them: gardening catalogs, lawn furniture, fabric distributors, hand-made
popsicle-stick houses. They sat above and beneath my feet, filling the
shelves and window ledge. I tried to paraphrase five an hour, but that
became four, and then three. Then I stopped altogether and sat watching the
city through the window, all the people sifting between buildings downtown.
After a month I walked into the Vice President's office and told him I
hadn't done anything in weeks and he didn't know that because he had no
system of accountability. I told him I could finish his website in ten days.
They'd been working on it for almost a year.
"We don't want to hire you," he said.
"I'm not asking you to hire me," I said.
He gave me an office and a phone. I asked people I met at poetry
readings to write summaries at five dollars a description. The catalogs
disappeared and the office became clean and the Vice President asked if I
would join the company and offered me $50,000 and I let out a low whistle
and that was that.
Catalogs2Go was the perfect symbol of the time, a website dedicated
to giving away something that was already free, but it was just a whim of the
Vice President, it had nothing to do with the company, and the technical
support cost $20,000 a month. There was talk of shutting the website down.
I thought when they shut it down I would lose my job, and I didn't want to
lose my job. It was the first real job I had ever had. In fact, I wasn't going to
lose my job. Nobody lost their job then. We were still a year away from the
point where everybody lost their jobs all at once as billion dollar companies
became penny stocks and office buildings became empty glass houses next
to a highway with nothing of value left except the copper wiring.
I met someone who optimized websites for search engines and asked
him to help me. He registered Catalogs2Go so it came up first whenever
someone went looking for "free stuff". Soon the site was getting 2,000
unique users a day and in 1999 you didn't shut down a website with that
much traffic. The company had a second round of funding and was hiring
everyone available, but the ecommerce platform the company was based on
didn't work, or didn't work well enough, and we were losing money on every
client. I suggested we sell "search engine optimization." I decided we should
charge $3,000 a month.
It's the period of my life that makes the least sense. I had my own
apartment. I was making more money than I could possibly spend. I was
engaged with my work though I recognized its basic absurdity. I was happy,
probably as happy as I have ever been. When I tell people my story I talk
about group homes, writing, sexual awakening. I talk about rooftops and
drugs and relationships. I mention getting clean and graduating high school
in two years and going to college only to finish University and fall right
back in. I talk about the semester I took off to work as a barker for a live sex
show in Amsterdam, and the affair I had with Miriam, the Surinamese
cabaret dancer, whose husband was in jail for some violent crime. But I
rarely talk about the fourteen months I spent working for a living in the
place where I made most of the friends I'm closest with today, the people I
hired. I rarely talk about it even though it's the moment when modern events
finally intersected directly with my life and I became part of the world.
Ladies, One Day

i.
Look at that old lady across the way. It’s so awesome that senior
citizens can just sit on a four foot by three foot balcony in their pajamas and
slippers in the middle of the afternoon, connected to their wheelie oxygen
tank, and stare out at the passing traffic down below. For like 45 minutes. I
can’t wait to do that. Goodbye mobility and hygiene, hello to going places in
my mind. Oh weird. She’s sitting on an elevated stool, a barstool, and she’s
resting her feet up on the railing of the balcony, which is hiking her knees up
towards her ears, but from my angle you can’t see the railing, the color of it
disappears into the background, and the thing really is that her caftan is so
voluminous that you can’t see the legs of the stool, so it looks like she’s
suspended mid-air, hovering like a big brown frog genie perched on, I don’t
know, an invisible floating toilet or something? Waiting for the inevitable.
When she goes back through the sliding glass door, I imagine, possibly, her
program is coming on tv. I’m going to watch my stories now.
« 30 »
june 2010 » beth lisick
ii.
I wonder if the steam room at the YMCA has a code of honor that I
am now violating. That seems more like a man thing, the silent code of
honor and the acknowledgment of such. Like when I went to the Hell’s
Angels clubhouse in Oakland and saw the sign “WHAT YOU SEE HERE –
WHAT YOU SAY HERE – WHAT YOU HEAR HERE – STAYS HERE
WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE”. Sort of like the “take only snapshots and
leave only footprints.” Except with more rape. I’m not saying that all Hell’s
Angels enjoy raping, I only mean that if I did either at Hells Angels HQ, the
snapshots or the footprints, I’d be fucked. And then killed. And then
probably fucked again by the super renegade guy who’s always trying to
prove something.
Being aware of people’s feelings and their privacy issues is important,
but when you are sitting in a steam room and it is usually fairly quiet in
there, almost silent really, except for some show-off doing the yogic breath
of fire, there are types that emerge. There’s the loud talkers. Who does that?
In a steam room. Talk super loud. That’s a type of something. So the lady,
the loud talker, was telling another lady that she should come to the Oakland
Museum this Sunday because, she says, “I will be doing a performance piece
with my parrot.” And the other lady says Your What? And she says “my
parrot” and the other lady says Your What I’m Having Trouble Hearing You
and she says this because the steam valve has kicked in, so now she is
shouting over the demon hiss of it and I want to shout too but I think it’s
awkward to shout when you’re naked. Her parrot! I want to snap, Her bird!
The steam abates and she calmly states, “My African Gray Parrot. I have an
African Gray Parrot named Randall. He’ll be with me on stage at the

museum. It’s nice to have a handsome date on your arm.”
Oh, the woman says. That’s fun. Send me an email.
“I will,” the woman says. “The show is called Nature on Nature and
it’s all about nature.”
iii.
When I get to my office, the DSL is down again so I wander the halls
with my laptop opened. Here are things I’ve bummed: Pens, cigarettes,
lighters, diapers, wipes, and now wireless passwords. WEP. Wireless
Equivalent Privacy. I choose a company on the second floor of the building
called GreenTech Media because their logo seems friendly. Why? I must ask
myself. Because there’s a leaf on it?
Hi. I have an office up on the third floor and our DSL is down today
and I was wondering if I could use your wireless to check my email. The
woman is dumbfounded, almost shocked at my question. It’s as if I asked
her to come lunch with me at the new dead baby restaurant down the street.
Oh no, she says. No.
Come on. We can get dead baby patty melts and the little fries out of
baby toes are delicious and a side of cradle cap fritters? Really? I say. I am
so surprised by her answer that I don’t turn around to leave. I keep standing
there with a cartoony confused look on my face. She gets a co-worker, a
lady who looks like the boss.
“I am sorry,” the woman says. “We cannot release our password. It is
a security violation. Thank you.” She says Thank You in that final way
people do in movies when they’re done with you. People hardly ever do that
in real life. You know, like, Good Day Sir! I can’t think of anything else to
say to them so I say, that’s so funny.
I find it thrilling to be rejected. It is a thrill. You going out on a limb
in all your human vulnerability and another human shutting you down to
your face. Remember when you were a kid and you first saw magnets repel
each other? They look exactly the same and can’t stand each other. That was
like us. Human on human. Human in jeans and tennis shoes on a sunny
afternoon in downtown Oakland against human in jeans and tennis shoes on
a sunny afternoon in downtown Oakland. I WANT/YOU CAN’T HAVE.
On the brink of the apocalypse and I can’t use your wi-fi connection. Fuck
you and your company. Striving to be an integrated online media company
designed to deliver the highest-quality content in the industry, whether it is
research, news or critical networking events. Farting sound. I’m sure I have
some really important email that’s come in since I last checked fifteen
minutes ago.
iv.
It’s dumb to get mad at things you can’t control. Why get mad on
BART when the woman won’t stop staring at the rocking man and is kind of
looking around trying to make eye contact with people when they get on the
train and then direct their gazes over at the rocking man so hopefully the two
of them can bond in that urban this-sure-is-a-crazy world way when all he is
is a rocking guy. He likes to rock. I don’t know. It makes him feel better. It’s
a fairly common disorder. He’s going to be rocking all the way through
downtown SF and through the tube to Oakland, so what? I don’t know,
grown woman with your pink cell phone with all the little plastic baubles
and bangles hanging off of it. Why does the infantilization of your sexuality
make me want to put you in a onesie and give you a huge cock to suck. I’m a
woman baby!
A guy I like but don’t know very well once told me that the only way
he can carry on in so much darkness is to think about today and say, This is
what’s happening. I drank a 7 Up for the first time in years and it tasted
really good and I got so much genuine glee from the lady with the parrot. I
keep thinking about her so I look up the Oakland Museum website and see
the performance listed: Nature on Nature. It’s About Nature. And her name
is either Krystyna Bobrowski or Wendy Reid, but it does not disclose the
parrot’s role in the proceedings. I kind of want to go. I want to sit in the
audience and be one of the few who knows there’s going to be a cameo by a
parrot. I want to watch her take the stage, and then like a kid, I want to have
the satisfaction of saying to myself, Hey, I saw her naked. And also, I knew
she was going to be here because I am like Nancy Drew. This is what’s
happening.
Drop Out of College
if you still believe in love

leave school as soon as you
finish reading this
esp. if you're still young
if you find yourself old and thinkin'
bout going back to school
don't do it
even if yr really lonely
if you've finished a degree already
don't enroll in graduate school unless
they never taught you how to read
you can learn to sing in the shower
don't go to college in the first place
if it's too late
try to get an advance on yr financial aid
and buy a plane ticket to Greece
everything there is to know
people knew two-thousand years ago
in Athens collect stones
the government collapsing all around you
will be sure to blame any and all deaths
occurring as a result of popular
anti-systemic movements
« 35 »
june 2010 » andrew paul nelson
on anarchists
throw stones at professors
who moonlight as riot cops on weekends
few people actually care to listen to you
go on and on bout what you're thinkin'
bout majoring and minoring in
you can't learn how to start a fire
in creative writing departments
don't major in psychology or international relations
major in other people
start with yr immediate family
there are infinite things you don't even know
bout yr older siblings
if yr an only child
get a minor in the regulars at the dive bar
odds are they never went to college
avoid universities all together
the humanities bldg. at yr school
was built after nineteen-sixty-eight
it was designed by the same architecture firm
as the California state penitentiaries
instead of cells they have offices
the halls there are long
and narrow where
you can only fit
a few people
at a time
on purpose
throw a party on New Year's Eve
invite everyone you know in town
be sure to tell each individual
at some point in the evening why
they particularly have held
a profound place in yr life
over the last year
and then
as soon as you wake up
the next morning
sell everything you own
cancel yr phone and move to a town
you've never been to before
start over
get a new job
get a new phone
a new apartment
make new friends
good friends
the ones who can influence you
the ones you can confide in and then
on New Year's Eve
throw a party
invite everyone you know in town
at some point in the evening

be sure to tell each individual why
they particularly have held
a profound place in yr life
over the last year
and then
as soon as you wake up
the next morning
sell everything you own
start over
stick to places where people speak
the same language as you
if you run out of places like this
learn a new language
study mandarin instead of French
if you are currently enrolled in French classes
drop them
you can learn basic mandarin colloquialisms
just by asking the right questions on the bus
yr professors only possess answers
don't listen to PHDs unless
they are encouraging you
to drop out of college
you can still sleep
w/ yr philosophy professors
even after you drop out
you cannot be taught to ask questions

esp. in universities
they give seminars
on how best to keep quiet
keep pushing
classrooms are perfect
breeding grounds for homogeny
they are too sterile for thinking
try and do yr thinking in places that are
aesthetically pleasing to you
like busy street corners
or rare antique stores
study mandarin in antique store basements
w/ pretty things on the wall
the things you do once every hr
do these things once a day
the things that you do once every day
do these things once a week
the things that you do once every week
do these things once a month
the things you do once every month
do these things once a year
the things you do
once a year
do once
in yr lifetime
do more things!
the first thing you need to do
is drop out of college
while you're still young
while you still affirm life
before the banal becomes
so unbearable you forget
that you knew everything once
if you are currently putting off graduation
because you are afraid of thinking to yourself
"fuck, now what am I gonna do?"
don't graduate
you've spent enough time
up to this point
following instructions
the dive bar opens at 4pm and
you can save a lot of money
just by quitting smoking
june 2010 » daphne gottlieb
The Bearded Lady
and the school calls and I rush down there from work and they tell me that
calvin was fighting and I say fighting? and he comes in to the principal’s
office and he’s got an eye blooming like a sunset, like ovenrising and he’s
got an ice pack in his hand but not on his eye and I look at him and say put it
on and he says it’s warm and I say okay I keep my voice steady when I ask
what happened and calvin says I can see fine mom don’t be scared and the
principal says calvin and calvin doesn’t say and so I say what happened
calvin and he says jeff called my shoes jerky and I say jerky and the top of
his head bobs up and down and cheap too he says so they bring in jeff and
jeff snickers and strokes his chin right in my face and says he did not and
calvin says he did too and it turns out jeff also hit calvin in the eye but calvin
hit first but jeff used calvin’s toy truck hence the donut on his face and I
wonder where the hell jeff’s mother is and why she isn’t here but the
principal makes calvin apologize first since calvin hit first and then jeff too
and jeff gets two days out of school but they ARE cheap MAKE THAT
THREE DAYS YOUNG MAN and calvin gets two days and the eye is puffing
like a blowfish and I nod at the principal and you’d think they’d get the kid
some better medical attention than an ice pack and I look at it and it seems to
be what it is, he’s right his vision’s fine and the secretary hands us his
homework for the next two days and he says nothing on the way home
which is fine because I don’t really know what to say either except your
shoes are not cheap and he says I need new shoes mom and I say ask your
dad and those are perfectly fine shoes but what is the price of a black eye
and what is next, his pants? and I call my mom to tell her he’s coming over
« 41 »
for the next two days cause I can’t lose my damn job and she says I’ll buy
him the damn shoes and I say don’t reward him and he’s listening to the
whole thing and says mom I need new shoes it was just about the shoes mom
it was just about the shoes it wasn’t about anything else I just need new
shoes and she says he gets the shoes and I say okay alright if he gets his
homework done tonight and I say no more trouble at school okay and he
says it wasn’t my fault and I say never swing first if you don’t swing first you
don’t get in as much trouble and he says I didn’t get in as much trouble as
jeff and I say okay enough do your homework and he does and I say you
could have lost your eye and I start dinner and his dad gets home and says
what’s with the eye and calvin says that guy mom works with has one eye
hey would you love me with just one eye and frank sighs and says those
shoes are not cheap and I open the mushroom soup and brown the beef and
boil the noodles and his dad says I’m gonna call jeff’s dad and then we’ll
see what’s what jeff’s dad’s gonna tan his hide til he understands he can’t
just go around hitting people and I say are you going to tan your son’s hide
too and frank says of course not no more trouble at school son and calvin
says I’m just doing my homework I’m just doing my social studies I’m not
doing anything wrong lay off and no one says anything for a while and
calvin does his homework and frank goes to wash up and call jeff’s dad and
when I look over calvin’s doing his social studies and he’s drawing a beard
on George Washington and blacking out one eye.
I Do Not Want to Fuck You Like a Poem
I want to fuck you like whatever it is

that makes the birds scatter from the wires
over traffic
all at once.
I want to fuck you like there are angels

tied up in the prayers of birds over traffic
watching us fuck .
I want to fuck you like angels covered in mud

scattering from the wires,
like earthworms cut in half,
like disaster is sacred,
like your name comes, hot and hard on my lips,
like mess is a sacrament,
like looting is holy,
like the sidewalk cracks through the sheer force
of grass and desire.
I want to fuck you like you’re a femme and I’m not.

like you’re healthy and I’m not.
like you’re Catholic and I’m not.
like you’re scared,
like you’re smart,
like a virgin,
like you’re cheating,
like a rumor,
a secret,
a psalm.
I want to fuck you like a pilgrimage,

like you are the road trip and every wrong turn,
like you are a bad neighborhood,
like you are mine.
I want to fuck you like your teenage car,
« 43 »
like a hitchhiker and a 12-pack,

fuck you speeding, broken, like a paintslash skyline,
fuck you like skidding stars, dead deer and fresh fruit on the roadside
like the radio never stops.
I want to fuck you like a hit and run, like body damage,
like the jaws of life open and open and more
and more I want to fuck you like the clock is ticking

like the ship is sinking
the moon is sobbing
like the bomb is falling
like the kingdom is coming –
I want to fuck you like we’re not
in Kansas anymore --
-- I want to fuck you like we’re home.

elegy for dave
Johnson? Jackson? About 10 years ago.

He hung himself in his closet. Do you
remember?
His girlfriend found him.

I never understood why he didn’t
use a gun.
He seemed like the kind of guy

who would have a gun. Everybody knew him
at the bar.
He mostly drank beer: PBR.

He always wore the same jeans and flannel.
And boots, too.
And his leather jacket. His motorcycle jacket.

Dave liked punk rock and Dave liked his truck
and what else?
Do you remember? We had some good times. I think

he was from here. I think he had a cat. We
were good friends.
After he died, everyone had a Dave story but

I can’t remember a single one. He chewed his
fingernails.
He rubbed his hand over his jaw a lot. He loved

that cat. He wasn’t that tall but he wasn’t
short either.
I guess he was sort of stocky. I don’t know why he didn’t

just OD on junk. Junk was so easy to get
that summer.
We were good friends. I don’t know what happened

to his girlfriend or his cat.
I saw him
cry once. I didn’t go to the funeral but I can’t

remember why. I guess we weren’t that close
anymore.
He walked with his toes pointed out. Do you

remember? He smoked Camels. His
eyes were brown.
He had a mole on his cheek but

I don’t know if it was on the left
or the right.
like I stole it
I wear mostly black.

Cat burglars wear black
and anarchists wear
black. The difference
between cat burglars

and anarchists is burglars
are quiet. There are no memorable
burgling chants. You can’t
use a bullhorn to lift

someone’s watch
but it’s okay to
leave fingerprints
on a demonstration.
Don’t carry a sign
to a B&E job. Don’t
squat the house you
rip off. People in foreign

films also wear black.
When I do my laundry,
it looks like the television
is turned off. Rent is theft.

People who wear black smoke,
except when they don’t.
Ninjas wear black
and are quiet.

Ninjas jump through
windows but so do
anarchists. And cat
burglars. I used to smoke

but I quit. Johnny Cash

wore black. And Zorro.
And Dracula. I never
use bleach. Morticia wore

black. Theft is
not theft. Robin Hood
should’ve worn black.
Death wears a black

black robe. I quit
smoking. I wore protest
black to a funeral
and everyone knew.

I can’t save the world
by yelling. I’m too old
to kick high. My laundry’s
almost dry. I’ve got

my black gloves on.
I’ve got my hand
in your pocket.
Sexy Balaclava
I tried to rent the movie

about the protest,
but the store didn’t have it.
In the film, the underdog wins.

That’s how you know
it’s a movie.
They are passing a law here

to keep people from sitting
on the sidewalk. Poverty
is still a crime in America

and I am looking more and more
criminal, by which I mean
broke, by which
I mean beautiful.
Holy. Revolution
is not pretty,
but it can be
beautiful, I’m told.
The protest was dull.

There was no tear gas
and there were no riot cops.
Nothing got broken

and nothing got gassed
and nothing got smashed.
There was no blood

and the world was not saved
so we went to the movies.
In the film,
people kissed
at the end.
The underdog won.

That’s how we knew
it was a movie,
a pretty lie.
Revolution
is not pretty
but I don’t care

about looks.
Set the dumpster
on fire. Break
the windows.
Don’t kiss me
like they do
in the movies.
Kiss me
like they do
on the emergency
broadcast news.
Derek Catches Us Up On What Really

Happened » from Termite Parade (Two Dollar Radio)
We arrived at the Bon Voyage!, and immediately Mired started drinking

vodka tonics. Really drinking. Rock star drinking. Her piss-poor mood had
gotten pisser and poorer right when we walked in because Shawna
pronounced Mired’s name wrong, calling her Meer-red.
“It’s pronounced like the verb,” Mired said to her. “You know: mired
in depression, mired in immense mental anguish, mired in a diabolical
vortex of low self-esteem.”
“Got it,” Shawna said.
“That’s what you said last time,” Mired said, batting her eyes like a
sly homecoming queen.
While the other twenty guests and I were in the living room, talking
about Shawna, her move to Cleveland, and all the opportunities that awaited
her there, Mired sat alone in the kitchen, though we could all see her down
the hallway from where we’d planted. Every once in a while she’d yell, “I’m
sure going to miss you, Shawna,” and she’d laugh real hard and these twenty
other guests with their forty wide eyes just stared at her.
You see, all these surprised eyes weren’t just learning that Mired
drank too much and had a sailor’s mouth and didn’t like Shawna. No, they
soaked up the fact that there was barely trust between Mired and me, and the
trust we did have was heavy and rundown, a burden we lugged behind us
like concrete shadows.
After an hour or so, and probably seven drinks, Mired blurted,
“Derek, maybe as a going away gift you should have sex with Shawna.”
« 51 »
june 2010 » joshua mohr
Forty humungous eyes and twenty tongue-tied guests. Shawna looked

at me. I tried to change the subject, asking, “Does anyone know the average
rainfall in Cleveland?” but no one was listening, all looking toward the
kitchen at Mired.
Guests reluctantly nibbled on chips and slurped the bottoms of their
empty cocktails, chewing ice cubes, everyone too uneasy to replenish
supplies because that meant a trip into the kitchen, near Mired’s mean
mouth. I knew her well enough to assume that things would diffuse if the
other stunned guests and I ignored her outbursts, and it worked for a while.
But then Mired slurred, “Shawna, are you sure you wouldn’t like to
give Derek a blowjob for old time’s sake?”
Twenty other guests and forty scathing eyes, their naked disgust, all
staring at Mired as she embarrassed herself, embarrassed us, me. Guilty by
association. Their awed eyes ricocheted from Mired to Shawna to me and
back around, a vicious carousel, all these gazes grazing each of us.
“We’ll all watch,” Mired said, aiming another homecoming smile
toward Shawna. “Make a big batch of popcorn.”
“Out!” Shawna said, “out, out, out of my house!”
I helped Mired stagger to the door and stagger down the stairs, almost
falling twice, and I put her in the passenger seat and drove us home.
The whole ride she kept saying, “Drop me off and go give it to her.”
“Shut up.”
“At least let her jerk you off.”
“Shut up.”
Our conversation vanished as Mired passed out right in the middle of
our latest screaming match. I pulled up to our lousy apartment building. I
shook her, said, “Get up,” but she didn’t move or say anything. The key was
still in the ignition so I turned the car on and found a radio station playing
Lynyrd Skynyrd because Mired hated that hillbilly shit. I made the music
blare and gave her a few shakes, but she didn’t move so I shut the car off
and went to her side, opened her door and said, “Let’s go.” She finally
answered me by saying, “I can’t,” and I said, “Can you walk on your own?”
but since her eyes had shut again and her head swiveled every direction like
a broken compass, I knew she couldn’t, swooping her up in my arms, the
way a groom carries a bride on their wedding night. I started struggling up
the stairs, and she said, “Admit you want to have sex with her.”
I tried to ignore her, tried pretending that my ears were locked like
safes and her words didn’t know the combinations, but it didn’t work. I had
no guard from anything that came out of her mouth.
I was halfway there, only six steps left. My arms shaking. I looked at
Mired’s face as she kept telling me how much better she deserved, which got
me thinking about how much better I deserved, which got me thinking that
maybe everyone thought they deserved more, which led me to the very
notion of love, and I remembered that old cliché: If you love something set it
free.
All I wanted was to set Mired free and never hear her say another
syllable. I arched my back because she seemed to be getting heavier with
every step – she’d been getting heavier for months now, every time she
forced me to appointments with our lousy couple’s counselor, every time she
said mechanics don’t make enough money, every time we had our
maintenance sex, something we did these days to avoid a breakdown, like
getting an oil change.
Now I craned our combined weight up to the next step, my biceps
burning, arms unable to hold her as high, which put increased pressure on
the small of my back. Mired said, “You should love me more, Derek, but
you can’t stop treating me like I’m a worthless dog,” and I felt a puncturing,
like a nail jammed into a tire, except there was no tire, just me. Like
something had ripped into my skin and there I was, leaking affection and
patience and resilience. Spilling love.
Before I really realized what I was doing, my feet worked their way
around, doing a one-eighty on that thin step, and I faced the bottom, and
Mired mumbled something but all I could make out was worthless dog and
knew she’d said it again, so I let my arms go limp and dropped her and
watched her hit right at my feet and flip backward and then bounce all the
way to the bottom of the stairs and land in a contorted heap, tangled like
human laundry.
I looked around to see if anyone was watching. There didn’t seem to
be so I rushed down the stairs and crouched next to her mangled face.
I said, “Are you all right?”
I said, “Jesus, baby, you fell down the stairs!”
june 2010 » nic alea
My Mother Is a Fish
my mother is a fish
and my mother is plate glass windows
nailed into the cedar of each bone box figure,
my siser is not my sister,
my sisters mother is a horse
with wings caught swollen body
swaying in the tops of trees,
my mother
is a fish.

was it because
of small pond serpents
oil pastel scales and razor teeth,
was it pulling charred bone’s
from a furnace
that my mother is not a tree,
my mother’s father
died only because
something in his brain
snapped to say that this isn’t
germany anymore,
this is the decomposing
of your brain,
are you ready?
« 55 »
this is what it’s like

to see air for the first time.

my mother kept her breast
made of stone,
kept sutures made of wool
to make skeletons
from her bones
and my mother doesn’t know
how to swim
but carries water inside her eyelids,
searches the cemetery to
pick out the prettiest plot
with the prettiest view
and i don’t know my mother
i don’t know my mother
i don’t know my mother
why ain’t i a town boy?
why do i not know my mother?
why is she digging mass graves
in the garden
where i found her,
wrapped up in morning glory arms,
she is not a gazing ball
but i see my life
consumed by gardens
because my mother
has soil in her veins

they sought to plant bulbs into her collar bone,
they sought to spread pollen along her neck line,
let her iris’ bloom,
nurtured like children do,
but my mother is a fish,
she can barely even breathe
without being under;
“then s/he comes up out of the water,
(my mother calls me son)
s/he comes a long way up
(my mother sends me argyle socks in the mail)
slow before hir hands do
(my mother wants to die, except when she’s talking to me)
but s/he’s got to have hir
got to
so i can bear it
so i can bear this,
have i told you lately about my mother?
look at the picture when she was seventeen,
did she think that she’d have me,
been anything less than this stability,
i’m sure she’s in my old bed sleeping,
where is my mother,
my mother is a fish,
she’s probably sleeping,
having some aquarius dreams
about the next letter

she’ll send to me,
today you are 18,
tomorrow you are 20,
yesterday you are 22,
are you 23?
are you still a baby?
can i leave you alone
in the bathroom while
you’re crying?
can i leave myself alone?
i built you a garden
out of holocaust texts,
civil war artifacts,
and your own favorite lilacs,
are you ready?
this is what it’s like
to see air for the first time.

i wish my mother
would wake up
and smell the lilacs,
but she’s probably sleeping.
she’s always sleeping.
from “The Summer of Lost Jobs”
One day my friend Katrina stopped by for my break. I cleared my tips for
fries and a coke from The Great American French Fry Co. and together we
sat outside, smoking and snacking and staring at the tourists staring at us.
Near to the street magicians and jugglers and mimes on unicycles, I let the
tourists snap their cameras. I had a real job.
Katrina lived in Brookline and didn’t have to work. She got money
from her parents. She got booze from them, too. While they were out
Katrina would take a mason jar and fill it with a bit of everything in the
liquor cabinet. The best was a combination that included Triple Sec and
tasted exactly like Fruit Loops. Katrina opened her army bag and showed me
the jar, full of amber liquid. The plan was, she would pick me up after work
and we would sit in the Boston Common, beneath a willow tree by the pond,
and drink 'til drunk. Then we would walk up Newbury Street, to the library
at Copley Square where all the goths and punks and skaters hung out. See
You Later, I said, back at Chuck’s. The time clock bit into my time card
with a crunch. Heather turned to me. Who was that? she asked, sort of
breathless. I looked around Fanueil Hall. Who was who? Had a celebrity
stopped by? Fanueil Hall was stupid, but once I’d seen the singer from
Missing Persons strolling around in leopard stilettos and a matching rain
coat. Your friend, said Heather. That girl. Who was she? She was beautiful.
You Mean Katrina? I asked, shocked. I hadn’t known Katrina was beautiful.
Katrina was just, she was Katrina, she was regular. I thought her hair was
kind of weird, actually. Her bleach job was mediocre, and one half of it was
a short bob, with bangs, while the other half was completely shaved, with
« 59 »
june 2010 » michelle tea
just a skimpy yellow rat tail snaking down her neck. Katrina was beautiful? I
felt a punch of emotion. No She’s Not, I wanted to say. I didn’t know why it
bothered me to hear Heather call Katrina beautiful. I smacked and I smacked
the ice cream, splattering my apron with chocolate, getting bits of Reece’s
Pieces in my clumpy red hair.
Katrina came with her jar at four, and we walked quietly to our place
in the park. I studied her. Her nose turned up. I pondered it. I had read in
books about noses shaped like ski-slopes, had come to the conclusion that
this was a positive thing, the pretty way to have a nose. I guessed Katrina
had a popular nose. I guessed Katrina was beautiful. I liked hanging out with
Katrina — her parents went away frequently, giving us a place to
congregate. She liked to get drunk, as did I. She was a regular target of
skinheads, so she had a sort of tragic danger about her. The skinheads didn’t
like her hair, called her a poodle, threatened to kill her all the time.
Personally, I had a feeling that Katrina was not as invested in being goth as I
was, but I kept my suspicions to myself. Katrina’s family had a lot of
money, their house was really nice and Katrina herself spent Sunday
afternoons baking cakes from scratch with her mother. I thought there was
probably a really great, really normal life available to Katrina if she wanted
it and inevitably she would. Beautiful Katrina. I almost told her what
Heather had said, but I couldn’t.
Towards the end of the summer I bleached my hair. There was a day,
the first day, when it was so flat, so straight and pale on my head it looked
almost like Joshua’s. I looked, I thought, like David Bowie. I couldn’t recall
him having my exact shade or my exact choppy haircut, it was more of an
overall David Bowie feel. I wore my new color to work, to show Heather.
Was it beautiful? Swiftly the color turned, became that tarnished yellow.
Nobody wanted that color, everyone wanted white, a white so silver it

flashed lavender under certain lights. Gay Bobbie, who was in beauty
school, told me I had to get a special toner, and then a special shampoo, but I
had spent all my money on the plastic bottle of developer, the forty-volume
peroxide and the envelopes of Super Blue. I had no more cash for hair dying,
not if I wanted to drink vodka and smoke cigarettes. I was stuck with yellow
hair. And it was falling out. It fell into the of ice cream, customers
complained. One man bellowed, Forget it! I just saw your hair fall right into
my ice cream! The manager was around for that one. He made everyone
start wearing hair nets. I had ruined it for everyone. My hair looked terrible
squished down, dry and frizzing beneath the black web. Katrina sometimes
tucked her asymmetrical hairdo into a little crocheted sack pinned to the
back of her hair and it looked good, very elegant, very French, very goth. I
tried to do something creative with my hair net but it was impossible, the
thread was thin and flimsy. Even Heather looked bad, her long, magnificent
hair snagged, like a fox shot and bagged on her shoulders. You bleached
your hair! Heather exclaimed when I came in with it freshly blonded. And
that was it. You look beautiful, I’d wanted her to say. Your hair is beautiful.
That shade is beautiful. You did a beautiful job. I just wanted to hear that
word, beautiful, coming out of Heather’s mouth, aimed at me.
We went to see the Ramones — me, Vinnie, Gay Bobbie, Joshua, Beautiful
Katrina, and a new boy named Jessie who called himself Zebediah. We
drove down to Providence to see them at an all-ages club. Zebediah was a
runaway from Los Angeles who wanted to be my boyfriend. He worked at
the Store 24 in Harvard Square and slept on an abandoned mattress in a
Cambridge parking lot. Zebediah had a story. He had run away from a
mother who told him all the time how she wished she’d had an abortion. He
did a lot of something called crystal meth and set her couch on fire. Then he
ran away. Zebediah was sweet; he drank a lot, as everyone did, but he wasn’t
doing anything called crystal meth, and it was hard to imagine him setting
his mother’s couch on fire. He wore eyeliner and long black prairie skirts,
painted his nails black and was into girls. Zebediah spoke in a truly authentic
California surfer accent. He didn’t seem very bright, but I wondered if such
accents made people sound dumb. Perhaps I was prejudiced against
Californian voices. Because I feared Zebediah was not smart I resisted his
advances. Unless we were both drinking vodka, which was anytime after
sundown, and then I would make out with him forever and later pretend it
never happened. Why won’t you go out with me? Zebediah pleaded. I’d
make up some intense reason why I couldn’t go out with anyone at all.
Something having to do with the deep, dark state of my soul, my
impenetrable loneliness, my unfathomable inner pain.
I drank too much at the Ramones. We guzzled our bottles quickly in
the parking lot, then stumbled inside. Vinnie and Zebediah went directly into
the men’s room to barf. I was okay as long as I leaned against the wall at the
back of the room. I leaned and waited for the show to start. A man walked
up to me. He was luminous, so pale he glowed, and his hair was long,
dragging down his rat-like face, a pair of glasses stuck to his nose. It was
Joey Ramone. Do you have an aspirin? he asked me. I stared at him. I shook
my head. No, I Don’t, I said weakly. The shaking of my head had made
everything spin, and I had only just gotten it all to stay still. He wandered
off, was swallowed by his crowd. Vinnie and Zebediah returned. Joey
Ramone Just Asked Me For An Aspirin, I said. It was a magical night. We
almost died on the way home, Bobbie was so drunk. The car veered
violently to the side of the road. Everyone screamed, then laughed and
laughed.
It was late by the time we all got to Katrina's. Her parents were away,
so we all stayed over. Most of my new friends had parents who went out of
town. They went on vacations, it was wild. My parents never went
anywhere.
At Katrina's we drank an improvised punch siphoned from the liquor
cabinet. We Saw The Ramones! Everyone cheered, though I at least had
only seen a hallucinogenic mass of throbbing people moving as one,
bouncing up and down, the blob. Occasionally light would glare off Joey
Ramone’s glasses, like an S.O.S. sent out to me across the ocean of moshers.
Even the music was a indistinguishably loud, sonic blur. I had spent the
concert staving off vomit and Zebediah. Now at Katrina’s I could start anew.
Where was Zebediah? I walked around Katrina's roomy house, a mystery
cocktail swishing in my crystal goblet.
I found Zebediah in a bedroom. His shirt was off and he was slicing
his chest with a razor. His big, black hairdo flopped down over most of his
face, all that showed was his mouth, the curl of his lips. Zebediah’s body
was lean and etched with light scars. White and pink, they rose up from his
brown skin. I thought of the marks skate blades left on a rink of ice, or of
stone shot through with marble. Blood beaded up along the freshest cut and
slowly slid down his body. It was so super sexy. I went to where he sat upon
a chair and climbed onto his lap. He looked up at me. I took the razor from
his hand. Don’t, I said dramatically, and touched his scars. No one was
going to be locking Zebediah up, not like the other recreational cutters, these
kids from Brookline with big houses and vacationing parents. Zebediah was
free to slice himself to ribbons. We made out for a while, until he started
trying to get me to suck his dick, ruining everything. Forget It, I said. He
looked at me with mournful eyes. I didn’t mind touching it but fuck if I was
going to put it in my mouth. He put his hands on my shoulders, weighing me
down towards his dick. Subtle. I got up and went back to my goblet of
alcohol. Just Put It Away, I said, motioning to his crotch. If you were my
girlfriend I’d treat you like a princess, he said, zipping up his tight black
jeans. Huh. Princess Blowjob, I figured. I went back into the house, looking
for Katrina and the others, leaving Zebediah alone with his skin and his
razor.
I woke up the next day around noon. Katrina had prepared some sort
of fishy lunch for herself and, having grown bored with it, placed it in front
of the fan, to blow the vile smell across the living room where I had passed
out on a couch. I crept out into the bright, bright sun, onto the porch where
Katrina and Joshua were smoking cigarettes. I Was Supposed To Be A
Work, I said. At Eight. Oh, no! Katrina gasped. I thought about what I
should do. I had the next day off, so that gave me an additional twenty-four
hours to strategize. It seemed like the simplest thing would be to pretend I’d
forgotten. I’d been confused about my schedule. Could happen to anyone. I
spent the day smoking cigarettes and longing for Zebediah, who had walked
out into the Brookline night after I declined to blow him. I did love making
out with him. I loved the way he walked in his combat boots, especially with
a skirt kicking out around his legs. Perhaps if I stuck to making out with him
in public I wouldn’t have to deal with his dick. But if I was making out with
him in public all the time wouldn’t that make him my boyfriend? My head
buzzed with nicotine and hangover. Eventually Vinnie and Bobbie woke and
we all walked through Brookline pretending to be droogs, kicking over
trashcans. We walked to the movie theater and saw Wings of Desire, and
then I took the long train ride, the long bus ride, back to Chelsea.
Two mornings later I walked into Chuck’s with my normal smile on
my face, my hair net scrunched in my hand like an extra-large dust bunny.
The manager stepped into my path, blocking me like I’d come to rob the
place. Hey, I said. I said his name, whatever it was. Sorry, he said. This area
is employees only. I laughed. I Work Here, I said. I’m Michelle. You do not
work here. You did not show up for work, so you do not work here. The
tourists waiting for their mix-ins were getting a show. I stayed in character. I
had yesterday off! I cried. And the day before! You Did Not. Two Days Ago
You Did Not Show Up. I gasped and feigned outrage, feigned indignation. I
snatched at the schedule and looked at the hours penciled into my slot. Oh
My God! I feigned shock, feigned apology. You’re Going To Fire Me? It’s
A Mistake! I tried to move past him. I Have Things Back There! I feigned
entitlement. Heather stared at me, sadness in her face. She wasn’t wearing
the 'It’s My Birthday' sticker, the manager wouldn’t allow it. He’d been
threatening to take away the tip jars all together. I have your things, he said,
and thrust the book I’d left behind at me. The Basketball Diaries. Leave, he
said, Or I’ll Call Security.
Outside I sat on the broad, stone stairs, a few feet away from a clown
pulling rolls of rainbow ribbon from his mouth. Tourists lined up to throw
money at him, his upturned felt hat glittered with coins. I wondered how
much money he made. Wondered if I had any skills that could be performed
publicly for change. In a few hours Katrina would come by to share my
break with me, and I would not be there but Heather would. Maybe they’d
take her break together. I dug out my cigarettes from my army bag and
pulled out the last, my lucky cigarette, upturned in the pack. I lit it with a
match and wished for a new job. I smoked it slowly, meditating on my wish.
A flash went off, and as the glare cleared my eyes I saw a tourist smiling at
me. Uh-uh! I hollered at him, melting the smile from his sunburned face.
That’s A Dollar! I stood and started toward him. He reached into his pocket.
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Q uiet L ightning

© 2010 by Evan Karp + Rajshree Chauhan

front + back cover art by liz worthy

Your support is crucial and appreciated.

a monthly submission-based reading series

you have to be able to be there to submit

you only get 3-8 min

1 attendee of those who put their names in a hat

gets 2 weeks to respond

via mail or email

to the last reading b4 break

and read at the subsequent

the longest 20 seconds 11

sarah fran wisby

two men, the face 15

dear local boi #1 23

excerpt from ch. 5 of The Adderall Diaries 26

ladies, one day 32

andrew paul nelson

drop out of college 38

the bearded lady 45

derek catches us up on what really happened

from “the summer of lost jobs” 66

No Respect » from The Rise and Fall of Third Leg (Manic D

Dad! » from Wake Up and Smell the Beer

I met Dada Trash aptly enough, on Halloween. We were both in our

The Longest 20 Seconds

Missy was the 38 express-driver whose ugly orange ramshackle bus I

Two Men, the Face

In last night’s dream I was trying to be clever, to follow through on some

The Myth of the Buried Tether

Dear Local Boi [#1]

Dear Local Boi,

Let me first just say that I am a huge fan.

We ate lunch at one of those CPK joints.

Noelani told us a lot of Hawaiians

Local Boi, why would your people leave Hawaiʻi?

» Bored Of Desert Life

So, cuz all mainland people are real akamai²,

Nah, nah, sistah B.O.D.L, da real reason is dat

Hope I gave you at least some small kine help, sistah.

from The Adderall Diaries (Graywolf Press)

stations and a brothel every fifty miles, listening to Radiohead's OK

Ladies, One Day

African Gray Parrot named Randall. He’ll be with me on stage at the

Drop Out of College

if you still believe in love

at some point in the evening

you cannot be taught to ask questions

The Bearded Lady

I Do Not Want to Fuck You Like a Poem

I want to fuck you like whatever it is

I want to fuck you like there are angels

I want to fuck you like angels covered in mud

I want to fuck you like you’re a femme and I’m not.

I want to fuck you like a pilgrimage,

I want to fuck you like your teenage car,

like a hitchhiker and a 12-pack,

and more I want to fuck you like the clock is ticking

-- I want to fuck you like we’re home.

elegy for dave

Johnson? Jackson? About 10 years ago.

His girlfriend found him.

He seemed like the kind of guy

sPARKLE & bLINK 4 :: Neighborhood Heroes, v.1

sPARKLE & bLINK 4 :: Neighborhood Heroes, v.1