4.11 / November 2009

The fanciest restaurant where I grew up was built inside of an old Boeing 747.

The man who killed himself in my bathroom is no longer in the bathroom, though he is in the dark green stink-taste of the water faucet, the torn window screen, the still cracked door. I can’t stand over my razor without feeling vertigo. Same with the tub.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_11/pink.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Today I have taught Yeti “walls.” He has built two woody sides that come only up to our knees. Yeti crafts them with care; he has felled ten trees. There are not many left in the valley. The Yeti labors.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_11/Seaside.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The condom looks like what a sea serpent miscarries in the gymnasium’s bathroom during Junior Prom. After naming it Carl, I use the toilet brush like a priest to give him last rites. I put the casket lid of the seat down, watch until the burial gargles, rinses.

Mercy is sick today. She was sick yesterday, and the day before, but tomorrow will be better. An old woman gave me herbs from the bush. I boiled them to juice and made my sister drink. Mercy lies wrapped in her chitenge on a straw mat outside the hut.

I didn’t want to take the lion because he’s scary. I mean, he’s a lion. Three-inch canines and all that. They don’t let pets in the dorms anyway. Take the lion, Mom said. We were packing my things into the car. Her offer surprised me because she and Dad love the lion.

In kindergarten, after confiding to her about my daily horrors, Mom showed up one day during recess and made a beeline for Jenny Willack, sticking a long finger in the blond girl’s face. “You l-l-leave my D-D-Danny alone!” Halfway across the monkey bars, Jenny began bawling and let herself drop to the wood chips.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_11/fragment.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] “Certain things can never be spoken.”   To demonstrate, my friend vowed to keep his big mouth shut for a year.   “Nothing said,” he said the day before he started keeping track.   Now he relies solely on gestures.

** Because it is raining Jules is a messy rain         past midnight no one is up           Jules put on shoes and walks into the halting rain, she goes to the curb the street unfolds         rolls and rolls ** Over the forest Jules

My wife would hate it here, she really would—the heat, the wind, the wavy mirages of the plain. This place cooks you all day, spits sand in your face at night. Cavernous in the way it makes you empty inside, carnivorous in how it swallows your every step.

1. I was dead by two a.m. Dismembered skillfully. My heart held in your palms as it pulsed narcoleptic. Not a drop of my blood touched the ground – of that you made sure. You bundled me up tightly. Placed me underneath your floorboards, told me, “Keep quiet. Don’t want to disturb the neighbors.

It was late night Tuesday, or maybe Sunday, early—I’m a recovering alcoholic, so bear with me—when I swallowed down my last cup of coffee, picked up the phone, and dialed my agent. I said, “Babe, I’d do anything to get published. I’d buy a scented candle.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_11/mali_octopus.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] As I sponged down the walls of his tank and scooped his excrement, he got grabby, all eight arms suctioned on both breasts, my crotch, my butt, both ankles and left ear, his beak nipping at my neck.

A woman climbs the sliding ladder by the shelf with books on sustainable living. She opts to stick around. The air seems, even if by the smallest of increments (a single molecule, less), cleaner — warmer, too.

I dream I am a mountain.   Alone until the sun dips behind me and everyone says how good we go together.   I want to believe, but when I wake up he’s glowing outside my window, not wanting company.

The art of dream interpretation has been practiced by people as long as we’ve been dreaming. Philosophers, scholars, poets and fools have all had their say, composing everything from exhaustive, meticulous dream dictionaries to texts as obscure as the dreams they’re trying to elucidate.

The way my wife rearranged the chairs, and how the kitchen table moved a few feet to the left in the living room.   How, at my favorite diner in town, they raised the price of two eggs and toast with bacon. The songs I don’t recognize on the radio.

1. Killing carpenter ants with hairspray and stick lighters got boring. The relatives said, “You’re wasting your time. Watch where they come from. You need to find the nest.” The relatives said, “Don’t forget the newspapers tomorrow morning.” We said, “But it’s always the end of the world.” The relatives said, “Fire up the grill.

I know a boy who called his girlfriend’s body a “crime scene.” Dad, my body is a crime scene. My body is lint and gasoline and matchstick. My body is a brush fire. It’s ticking, Dad, a slow alarm. I have rain boots. Lots of them. It isn’t raining anymore.

Break me. Swat me into a box. Put eighteen stitches in my lower lip, make my teeth the fault line.   You should not have to tell me twice. Whisper from your green, unbroken mouth into my pricked ears, make me believe it. Force me. Let me thrash. Teach me a lesson.