On “The Maury Povich Show”

Slap. (Howdy, partner.) Double slap. (Hang the hat and spit.) Big boot. Palmstrike. (Let the fandango commence.) Bear hug. Waistlock. Body slam. (Mist of grease and sweat.) Armbar. Snake eyes. Crossface chickenwing. (Blood.) Knee drop. Fist drop. Spinning headlock elbow drop. (These bones are gospel sharp.) Go to sleep. (Stars.) Stink face. Uppercut. Stomp. (Crowd like Oh!) High knee. Mule kick. Heart pinch. Canonball. (Crowd like Ah!) Cobra clutch. Saddle scoop. (Blood on the goddamn boots.) (Spitshine.) (Close-up.) (Lick and wink.) (Ride shank’s mare round the ring.) (Yeehaw!) Pumphandle powerslam. Pendulum. Battering ram. (Crowd like Damn!) Hangfire. Arm drag. Tree of woe. (Blood.) Tree of woe. (Grimace grit scream.) (Blood.) (Blood.) Sack tap. Handspring. Hogtie. Cattle drive. Cow dog. (Long shot.) (Soppy as a nickel night whorehouse.) Butt drop. Sugar stick. Horsebite. (Whoa, Nellie.) (Bird’s eye.) Bull flip. Stunner. Big time shining hump. (Crowd like Roar!) Bronco bench. Chin music. Knee trembler. Chinaman meat cleaver. Skin the cat. Skeedaddle face smash. (Full as a tic.) (Blood in the spit.) (Spit in the air.) (Teeth on the fly.) (Canine bonsai.) (Blood.) Alabama jam. Grudge grind. Clothesline. (Bone through skin.) (Cut to:) (Wiry grin.) Choke. Avalanche. (Second wind.) Snapmare. Scissors. Crucifix toss. (Crowd like Oh, my god!) Tilt-a-whirl. Eye rake. (Pair of egg yolks runny down the face.) Rolling thunder throat thrust. Dust buster. Gore lust. (Slip in the drip and trickle.) (Cuss the carnage.) Facelock. Knee bar. Cactus spear. (Rustle up a rage.) Gutbuster. Rattlesnake fang. (Crowd like De-ranged!) Flapjack. Spider twist. Bite. (Take a fucking bite.) Hangman. Nut clutch. Rooster dung. (Throw up the sponge.) Facebreaker. Double facebreaker. Double knee facebreaker. Straightjacket. Crucifix. (Crowd like Finish him!) (Climb the buckle.)(Giddyup.) Lariat heave-ho of doom. (Freeze frame.) (Sunset.) Boneyard. (Goner.) (Tip of the hat and saunter.)



Dear Maury,

Most of your guests have the same loud emotions and they raise them like war flags to gather around. Others braid their quiet feelings into whips for self-flagellation. I imagine your show with blood. The fistfighting preteen girls have no friends except when they choruscall their mothers bitch/slut/ho. I will become great friends with other guests for whichever show I am chosen. I will pretend not to notice hidden cameras backstage and I will speak of torrid affairs to your undercover producer. And I will lie to you at first, because I must, but when you reveal the hidden camera tape I’ll confess and stand up urging the others to gather around my flag and hopsplash with me in the blood that pools at our feet.



Dear Maury,

How many rooms are there backstage where the cameras won’t go? How many rooms? When there are eight guys and the babydaddy is no one the mothers go running into that crypt that tomb that labyrinth you keep behind the stage. Sobbing directionless and flailing through the corridor knot. So many halls, Mr. Povich, and exit signs and her fraughntess running a hysterical path through the maze. How do you find her so quick? How are the cameras swarming in seconds to record you, calm with advice for the hyperventilating? I understand the meticulous editing of your show, but just once I’d like to see you chasing wildly through the labyrinth in a desperate search for the wailing woman.



Dear Maury,

The repeat guests are what keep me coming back. I cannot let go when bastards are still bastards and the end credits roll. DNA is always drawn as a careful spiral but I feel it is more of a quarrel, a raging tangle like the scariest parts of jungles where mean apes reign. You do not put up with monkey business. One of your guests returned again and again screaming for a babydaddy, dragging her infant along. I knew the kid was dead dead dead. The limpness was my clue. And how it became more rigid with every show. By the woman’s ninth appearance her baby’s corpse was mummified. But she would not let go. She kept the stiff rag slung across her back and screamed for you to untangle the jungle and she would not let go. She combed the mummified hair and said look at these eyes, my baby has your eyes. But the baby had no eyes. You swabbed the cheeks of all those men as the baby shriveled more and more until it was just a crumbly mess on the mother’s lap. And when you returned from commercial the dust of the baby had all blown away. I guess you will never find that babydaddy. I guess you sneezed when all that dust hit the air. I guess you breathed some in real deep and felt a burn when it rushed out of you.



Dear Maury,

I assume you’ll book as a guest the woman whose face was devoured by a chimpanzee. I am nervous when it comes to appetites. I watch your freak and phobia episodes with one eye closed. When the babymommas get catty there is nothing wrong in the world because they are fighting for what they want but when the phobes collapse in their anxiety we can only see what they dread. The chimp was domesticated. All behavior is learned and all learning is watch and copy. Who was eating faces in front of the chimp again? What hideous things did humans see that taught us all of this? Surgeons pulled the chimp’s teeth from the woman’s skull and stitched a new face – a lumpy approximation. No one will say she is ugly and that is part of who we are too. I know violence is about desire but that makes the opposite of violence something like hate. I bet that chimp ate her face because he ached to evolve.



Dear Maury,

I have thought, I must confess, that sometimes I could do your job. You seem smug in the babydaddy chaos as everything happens around you. If there is a joke, I am in on it with you. You have cameras and security and complete numbness to exposure that comes from ignorance or omnipotence. Sometimes I see in your eyes the urge to flip the blue card and shout I am the father just to get in the fray.



Dear Maury,

Anything you can mumble is the name of a bird. Chickadee. Egret. Grackle. Like they are made from noise and flap out from our throats. Shrike. Thrush. Warbler. Like any jerk’s grumblings are something actual with wings. There is a flock of these feathered thrums always hanging above the neighbor’s house. I cannot stand the chirps or the compost pile, their dive. Do you garden? I can see the compost’s peak above our fence and I will often stare it down. I watch the worms grow. They have no brain no eyes and both sexes in one chubby body. They never stop churning at the surface. If you sit with me we can watch the postman sometimes reach across the fence and snatch the juicy ones. Excuse me if my letters are soiled. I did not write the dirt.