5.08 / August 2010

Tonight I am sitting alone at the kitchen table, lighting matches and watching them burn.   I like the way the match flares when it first catches, and for an instant, during this tiny explosion, the room is illuminated.

1953: the American Government decides The Mojave Desert in Arizona for the Plowshare Project Nuclear Weapons Test Site.   But no one bothers to tell the Hopi Indians of Oraibi Village to evacuate.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/davis1.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Pituitary gland: well the size of a pea at the base of the brain— floods my whole self in the wet rush of feeling. Rivers of fire across channels of   thought begin to form an image. The sun is falling in orbs the size of grapefruit.

I used to have a sexual relationship with a girl who would beg me to cut her with a scalpel. The reason why I called it a sexual relationship is because all we did was drink, fuck and watch her bleed. Well — that is a half-truth.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/fischer.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] The Astronaut wakes up on the floor again. Today he is in the basement, a cinder-block storage space with a water heater in one corner. He has slept heavily on his side, as though he were still in bed.

The fathers came home from work, set their briefcases on the polished floors of their split-level homes and doffed their hats in anticipation. But the daughters did not rush down the stairs, sleek ponytails trailing them, to kiss the fathers hello.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/goebel.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Out there beyond the tables, past the candles and the bar and the chairs and stations, over all the seats with the couples having dinner, over the head of the daughter of J.P.B.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/goodrich.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] When he starts sucking on my nipples, all I can think about is goose grey clouds.   I link my fingers behind my head and think of dogs barreling down the road before a big rain, filled with electricity.  The sky green with heat lightning.   Lake water.

How vulnerable these machines we live in. How this skin keeps us together. How little time this thing beats to maintain us. How I couldn’t look at your face. How you lay with your palms up as if even in death there was something left to want.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/lapata.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Absalom sits on the white floor and looks at a bubbling puddle of bronze in the middle of the room.   The walls, like the floor, are harsh and white and lined with grey rivets.   The room is small.

The day she came, we were restless and expectant though we didn’t know why. It started with the older ones. They had sensed something and their agitation trickled down to the rest and made us spill the milk and miss stitches in our sewing. Before lunch, we were called into the chapel.

When I meet the five-hundred-pound man he’s sitting on a hospital bed wearing jeans and a t-shirt.   He’s graying, balding, and looks to be about sixty, the same age as my father. I clear my throat and say hello. He squints up at me.

She, reticent, lithe, her fingers bent around the curve of her throat, tooth to knuckle, reaching for the rot inside. She, in a high-waisted raincoat, painting with the rot inside or hiding it in plastic bags in her basement, the trunk of her car. She, quelled in her coffin, emptied, fingers uncurled. She, constructed.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/salesses1.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] 1. Our island had epidemics, which came and went, but the epidemics were not exactly illnesses. They were epidemics of  unrequited love, or  memory loss, or  obsessing, or  unstoppably growing hearts, or farts. Our island had always had epidemics, as far as we knew. 2.

Patrick believes that his heart is the shape of a triangle, not made of end-stops or two inverted treble clefs, a curvature. He believes, because of his triangular heart, that he understands the space in which many different people can love many different people.

Got good shirt then cold soup and dog that’s no dog but a wolf: who can tell the difference? An appreciable difference, really. Appreciable dead-versus-living difference, like the one soldier here, dead, and the other still living in his own bed that a previous dead left him.

Is that your head? It’s missing things. The lighting in here is for shit, this bar, but still. This guy is sitting alone in the corner with his weird head in his hands. It’s kind of big and out of round. Blank and smooth. No eyes, nose. Nothing. Don’t worry.

Dear Today, I’ll put the favorite part of me Inside of you, If you put the favorite part Of you Inside of me. Dear Yard, There is a lizard dancing in you, Attracting another lizard. Maybe I should dance in you too. Dear Future, Keep coming.   That is all that I ask.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_8/zobell.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Ed wheels his cab around the block and takes a second look. He stubs his weed in the ashtray, sticks a meager plastic bag into the dashboard opening before sliding the radio back in. The girl still stands there, can’t be fifteen. “Hey, mister!” she calls.