4.08 / August 2009

Canto I – Whereas He Wants To Tap That Ass In the club, lapping at rum and Coke like a wolf cub on its mother teat, I see an ass that makes hands clutch at the thought of grabbing a cheek. On the dance floor, she twitches.

Hanging from a tree, noose around his thumb, her son. She rushes to save him (she knows the law: the thumb = the child) ….again the uncontrollable discretion of neighbors must be counted on.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/DavisJesus.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Judas, bury me in the sand. I don’t wanna. Come on. I’ll let you use my glass shovel. Leave me alone already. Don’t make me make a miracle of you. I’m busy. Put that dolly away and start digging. It’s a Roman Guard with special Whip-Motion-Action. Dolly.

Anna Blue had been an actress before the orange. She was wild and beautiful and didn’t care what the world called her, except for being here in the Asylum. Odd how that mattered too much. He wished her out, though he loved her until he was sick.

We set out at dawn because Melinda said she had one more thing about Albion Tech to show me before we met my parents at the cafeteria for breakfast. My head felt like it had a coat of rubber cement on it.

1. I didn’t answer. But the difference is failure. Consider War and Peace: When Andrey is dying — that’s literature. But in the final chapters, when Pierre and Natasha live happily ever after, it’s schlock.

When it became clear that the end of the world was coming, and coming soon, the government tried to pull one last trick out of its sleeve: “Yearlight Savings Time.” Although everyone knew it was a way of cheating quantum inevitability, we bought it.

I. Georgia wanted to cook me dinner. I agreed to it. There are worse things in the world to agree to. She probably hadn’t cooked for anyone in a while. I was happy to humor her. It was a Thursday night. I asked what I should bring and she said nothing.

  At first I think it’s the upstairs dog, the one that’s always running around, so I yell “Shut up!” at the ceiling. I’m still half asleep, and don’t know whether or not I’m dreaming. The barking continues.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/Levine.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] There are two girls next to me knitting. We are at a coffee shop/restaurant/bar. One has a dark blue ball of yarn in front of her. The other has a ball of burgundy yarn from which she’s working.

My mother used to vacuum away disappointment Polish hurt into a lemon shine Knock those cobwebs down like they had spewed abuses and blackened eyes She wore sweet little dresses and petal pink lipstick Hair swept up like the kitchen floor We never knew a thing but that she liked things tidy When I see

People like to take pictures of him eating. He wears a baseball cap and holds his knife and fork like he is ready for anything. Everyone is touched that he still eats this way. In the pictures, he is usually staring down at plates piled with chicken, his mouth slightly open.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/Sliver.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Coming out of the tall grass onto the sand at the top of the beach, she paused. Saw him before he saw her. Not too late to take control, she told herself.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/musselman.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The day Truman Capote died my heart reeled from the headlines that rivaled a non-fiction novel.

They held the mermaid auditions in the aquarium bathroom, made the girls stick their faces underwater in the sinks and hold their breath. Shona lasted the longest. I heard her say when she surfaced that the room was sparkled with black dots. One of the other girls had gotten sick on the floor.

“I always did what I was supposed to do,’ Ravina Varnish explained to the police officer with the presidential name, “and no good came of it. My sister Babette was always bad, and she had the best time.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/Walls.J.Ginger.Ale.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The first newspaper I ever read informed me that I may or may not get cancer from drinking ginger ale.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/Bosworth.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] My beard is a haven for battered children. They hide in the hairs when things get scary. My beard once lectured on the dangers of drugs. It wore a checkered tie and pounded the podium with knotty fists. The audience sat up in their chairs. Men fidgeted.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/4_8/Babcock.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] If nothing else, I have this: I once saved a girl’s life. Five years back, before our son was born, I was walking a street that had grown as familiar as your pulse. January. Twenty below. Chestnut trees, stripped of their torches, hardened in the fragile air.