[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Demeester.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

When we met, you whispered in my ear, your breath hot, wet, and heavy with whiskey, that you wanted to know the feeling of my skin under your fingernails. There was lace around the collar of my dress, and I wanted you to take hold of it, rip it off of me, take my skin with it. Then you would see the spiders that live under my skin, the knife points of their legs splayed open like desperate women.

I turned away from you even though you couldn’t see them. I wanted you to see them, wanted you to feel them slice through you from the inside out.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” you said and laid a finger along my collarbone. Under my skin, the spiders traced the tips of your fingers.

“They’re memorizing you,” I said, but you didn’t hear me.

“You want to get out of here?” you said, and I nodded. The spiders pushed against my skin, an obscene blooming in the darkness, and I brought my hand to my stomach, pushed their dancing legs flat.

“None of that prude bullshit for you,” you said as we walked, and I let the clack, clack, clack of my heels answer you. The spiders settled against my stomach, their legs fluttering like fans.

We walked slowly, and you wound your fingers in my hair. I like to think you felt them then because as they shifted under my scalp, you pulled backward, and I let a sigh escape.

“You like it rough, huh?” you said and looped my hair around your fist, pulled it towards you, exposing my neck.

“Back there,” I said. Inside of my throat, the spiders threatened to split through my windpipe, but their sudden movement only jerked my head towards the empty alley just behind you.

You grinned, and your mouth was all wetness, your teeth covered by the slick velvet of your tongue. The spiders flooded my mouth now, clattered across my teeth.

I let you pull me into the alley, let you yank up my skirt. Your hands were rough, calloused, and they pulled at my skin. I could feel everything pulling away; skin from muscle, muscle from bone, and the spiders were singing, pushing against my broken flesh as you fumbled with your belt, your zipper.

Your fingernails pushed into my back, and I parted for you like the folds of tissue paper. If you held me up to the light, I would be translucent, a milky image of myself.

“Shit,” you said and pushed deeper, and I stretched around you, my insides bulging as the spiders rushed towards you, their sighs whistling out from between their fangs. A sound so slight, so lovely, that I wanted to cry.

“Do you hear them?” I said, but your movements had become jerky, your breathing labored.

I wanted them to make you slow down, wanted them to let you hear them singing, but they could not. They were too busy. My skin swirled with the pinprick designs of their legs searching for an opening. I had become like a piece of lace, delicate and airy.

“I feel beautiful,” I whispered to you as you finished, your fingers full of my skin.

“Fuck,” you said and you leaned your head against mine. Your sweat smelled sweet, and I brought my tongue to your cheek.

My own cheek burst open, and the spiders poured out, a beautiful glittering army in the night.

When you saw them, you smiled. For that, I think I loved you.

Warning Silo

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I’m from the future, not 20 years from now
when I’m a general commanding the new
continental army, overseeing

the government’s time travel
stuff-No, I’m from later tonight. I slip
into a worm hole or a cosmic string

when I hit the gravel ditch off I-94
in the middle of a spring storm
which hasn’t yet started

but will pull up little pines
throughout St. Cloud before
I make the jump back. I can’t

do anything about the coming storm,
but I’m determined to fly
to my apartment, to find

myself, to warn myself
about anything important
I’ve learned in the last few hours

that might save me or help me make
a nest egg to fund my research. Trouble
is, I can’t figure out what will save me,

where I’m at, or where I’ve been. I hope
they haven’t found me. When I was a boy-
white gloves and sleeve protectors

for comics-staring each night
at the moonlit silo on the edge
of beans, I swore that even if

I rule over the future
counsel on time travel, I’ll keep
my priority on returning

to tell myself I’ll be okay.
When you find this, it might be
too late.

Prayer to the American Goddess

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Dear Oprah, giver of life, death,
and Ford Tauruses, Oh, where did you go,
O? Where is our guide? How will we know
the books, gizmos, and diets
you’ve sanctified? Have you
forsaken us? How will soccer moms
shake off suicide and sense that Palin’s
a twit and Barack’s Adonis?
For your finale, they made a garden
of your set. James Frey, in a cold sweat,
kissed your cheek. The Network
drug you up Lake Shore Drive.
We threw smug stones at your
bountiful bodice, and on a hill
in Grant Park, they crucified you,
our American Goddess. Tom Cruise,
the prig, jumped on the nails. Travolta
warbled “Amazing Grace” as they raised
your Versace cross. Atop your wig,
a jeweled crown of thorns, as you cried out,
“Why, haven’t we cut to commercial?
This really hurts.” We didn’t. You died.
Tyra stabbed Dr. Phil, silly man.
We giggled. Ellen, our new pearl, danced
over the bodies to a song she picked:
“Hollaback Girl.” They aired a montage
of you being you, telling us how to be us.
We calmed, returned to our little lives,
now empty each day at 4 o’clock. Our Oprah,
who art in Harpo, hallowed be thy fame.
The world’s your studio kingdom come.
Your will be done to give us this day
our daily advice or tickets to the set
of Paradise. Amen.

He Doesn’t Know the End

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of Jesus Fights the Crocodile. He tells
Christ’s miracles as bedtime stories, gifts
of grace to weave with dreams. His daughter sifts
his golden threads from heaven’s spool, not hell’s.

He’s sure she knows his stories aren’t the same
as magic vases, swords, and such, till she
begs to tell the bestest Jesus story
she knows. With pride, he thinks, she’ll tell The Lame

Walks or The Blind Sees. But the croc eats Christ
in her prologue-Crunched his teeth; Jesus cried
and fell like this-she swoons-and Jesus died
like Bambi’s mom. She turns away. She’s sliced

his truth. He feels lame, blind, and begs, No, wait-
what happened next? She grins: Dad, he got ate.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Inguanta.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

It’s End of the World Karaoke at Big Daddy’s and Lara takes a photo of herself for Facebook before she goes on stage. She’s holding a basket of nachos in one hand and her phone in the other. After she takes the photo, she says, to Javier, “Hold these,” and hands him the nachos. He holds the nachos and stands there, beside Lara, admiring her long, brown hair and floppy hat. She sings “Heaven Can Wait” by Meatloaf and gets the whole crowd to sing. They even hold up their lighters.  Javier holds his lighter with one hand and Lara’s nachos in his other.  He wants to kiss her before the world burns down, and he knows it’s coming.

“Don’t put those nachos down!” Lara says to Javier as she hops off stage. She takes a chip and dips it in the cheese and bites down, hard. “I’m getting us more drinks,” Lara says, and before Javier knows it she’s back with two White Russians.  Usually he drinks 7 and 7’s here, in Big Daddy’s, because that’s what his father drank. And usually this guy who looks exactly like Santa Claus sings, and they drink 7 and 7’s together, but he’s not here tonight.  None of the regulars are here tonight. Not Santa Claus or Cat Woman or Mary Ann from that island. Javier misses them for a while, then puts his lighter away and takes a gulp of his drink, which tastes a lot less milky than he expects.

When he and Lara sit down at a table, finally, she gives him permission to place the nachos in the table’s center, so they can both reach. Javier does what she tells him then says, “You know this is it, right?”

Lara says, “Yeah,” and scratches her nose.

He wants to kiss her.  He just met her ten minutes ago, and he has only kissed one other girl in his life. Her name was Jonah and she had a small breathing problem and Dirty Dancing was always playing in her living room. They worked together, doing advertising for Frito Lay.

“This is IT,” Javier says. “No more of anything.”  And then the MC calls Javier’s name, but Javier didn’t submit a slip of paper; he doesn’t want to sing.

“Your turn!” Lara says, and the moment Javier opens his mouth to say No, she takes his photo with her phone with one hand, has a sip of her White Russian with the other.

Javier knows he won’t make it through one song without the heat coming in. It’s almost here.  The world’s all smoke outside. Everyone can see it, through the windows.  And they’re all just sitting here, in Big Daddy’s, knowing.

The MC calls Javier’s name again.  He’s walking up to the stage now, thinking Why not?

“Your turn, Javier!” Lara says. She eats a nacho, offers some to the men at the table beside them. She tugs the rim of her floppy hat as she offers.  And of course, all those men take handfuls of nachos, nod as if to say Thank you.  Javier wishes he could be anyone but himself as he stands on stage, waiting for the music. He doesn’t even have a song. He knows this and of course he doesn’t care. They’re all watching him, those men. And Lara.  She’s watching him, too. He wonders if she is everything he will ever need. He wonders if their world will stay like this, a mass of energy, of relationships and music, even after everything else burns down.  This place is heating up. The smoke is coming in.  Javier will never get a chance to sing, to move the crowd. He never wanted a chance. It’s when Lara finishes her basket of nachos the MC looses the next track, deadening all sound, transforming their world into a silent, disappointed, flimsy thing. And it’s when Javier turns around, walks offstage and steps outside, their world turns into something else, something certain.

Nation

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Walking down the street feels clogged with embarrassed millionaires. Holes in the shirts, holes in the soles in various silver plated denominations. Assured of arrivals, shipping magnate inventories, most favored nations. Melancholy picture settings set afloat in obsolete instruction manuals, sliced delicatessen. Flash forward to routine risk-taking, swayed less by the possibility of adventure than the adventure of possibility. Asked to walk a mile in my shoes, the response is unequivocal – foot power is out of favor in this modality.

Ten

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I.

If he had been born fifteen years later, would the act itself or the aftermath go viral, splashed on youtube? What muffled sounds would we hear before the click, and would we hear the click or only imagine it, our minds working ceaselessly to provide the details until it doesn’t matter whether they were ever there at all?

II.

In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino never shows us the ear being removed, but millions swear they saw it, the cut and spurt like a fountain of quarters being pulled to infinity by a funny uncle.

III.

Fifteen years later, fifteen artists attempt to recreate the splatter pattern from cultural memory using various substances for a gallery show that lasted one night only in an Oklahoman dream. The least thought-provoking substance was semen. The most daring, pressed flowers.

IV.

The music never seems as special as the moment that it stops.

V.

If he had been born fifteen years later, teens would have uploaded thousands of copycat videos, twitter tagged cobaining. Some are entirely mimed, toes toggling triggers of air. Some utilize props, elaborately staged or everyday objected. Some make use of the real thing, loaded or un, the former a reminder that blood is not truly red.

VI.

Or nothing and everything would be changed. None of the details differ – the gun, the greenhouse, the chosen ending. Only the scale would shift – the outside world would ignore the loss, never hear the name. He would become just one of many sad young men, only celebrated statistically.

VII.

Fifteen years later, I still remember it as breaking news on MTV. Closing my bedroom door and crying, a performance looking for a camera, as the vultures circled in the west and reality bloomed outside my window. The smell of chlorine and basketball leather. The texture of ink in SPIN magazine. The waft of going nowhere.

VIII.

Somehow the image appearing on my eyelids is black and white, him in a dress. I feel like I saw the video and thought, how cool is that? How fucking cool is that? But I cannot be sure of the authenticity any longer, of the memory, or the performance. I remain curious about the color of the dress, about its provenance, its calculation, its size, the texture of its fabric on skin.

IX.

Fifteen years later the music seeps through everywhere and nowhere. Guitar heroes and cold cases shimmer in the atmosphere. His forfeited take is debated, the bloated fact of argument itself a perversion.

X.

Somewhere there is a field with a lingering strawberry sky, dead poppies underfoot. Somewhere there is a dour boy stoned at a high school football game in the drizzling rain. Somewhere there is meaning within the illusion that transcends illusion, gives pause. Somewhere the cold damp is providing warmth – the comfort of being sad.

XI.

Fifteen years later, I still cannot bring myself to look at the autopsy photos.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Sharp.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Three brothers are blind men
groping an elephant. The first

says the elephant’s skin is their father’s
ashy elbows. The second

says the elephant has ingénue eyelashes,
like their mother, while the third feels

that the elephant’s substance lies
in its heavy middle. The first then asks

Where is our sister? No one knows.

In the hours they spend rubbing truths
from the elephant, they
never allow their hands to touch

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Yee.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

You’ve been one-legged since the lasso trap.  Your personal ad says “Kids: undecided” even though you desperately want two.

When the maître d’ shows you to your blind date’s table, you are pleased with her prominent forehead and symmetric face.   She has potential.

Before you can sit, her eyes drift to where your missing leg would be and snap back to your face.  She forces a smile.

You talk menu.

She likes the braised shank.

You are relieved they have salads.   “I ate barbecue last weekend,” you lie.  “I’m in a tuna salad mood.”

“We don’t do fins or hooves,” the waiter says.  “How about torn hamstring on lettuce topped with blocked arteries?  Or liver simmered in stomach juice?”

“Seahorse salad,” you say and close the menu.  You’ve never had seahorse but you do The Seahorse – a side split by a one-legged dancer – for a living.

“Salad number three,” the waiter says, writing slowly.

She orders the braised shank on garlic spinach.

You sip your wine and give the weather report.  You’re not ready to explain how a fact checker for a weekly tabloid became the warm-up act at Ole Ole six nights a week.  Your specialty is one-legged pole dancing. The tips are fantastic.

“Sooooo, you’re a journalist?” she says.

Uh oh.  She must believe all those lies in your ad.

“I freelance,” you say, spearing a seahorse.  It tastes like black licorice.

“Cool.  My brother consults.”  She cuts a bite of shank and chews.  “How’s your seahorse?”

Reminded of The Seahorse, you twirl the spine of your wine glass.  “Perfect,” you say.  “Try?”

She looks straight through your thick lenses into your eyes.  “I had three dates with a weirdo who wouldn’t admit that he had never eaten human flesh,” she says.  “I hope you’re not one of those.”

You squint.  “I was raised Catholic.  Mom didn’t cook body parts at home.  But I partake now.”

You rummage your brain for suitable conversation.  Ole Ole features midget wrestling, ex-basketball players stripping, and pole dancing.  Your act closes with The Seahorse.  If the crowd is drunk enough, this flourish earns you a shower of coins and bills.  You doubt this would impress.

“Try my shank,” she says.  “The meat is falling off the bone.”

You scrape off a sliver and chew.  To the casual diner, braised shank tastes like the beef pot roast served in high school cafeterias.  But you taste the tang of a single mother who lost her shin when her biker boyfriend sped into a double-parked ice cream truck.  You smile for the first time. “Delicious,” you say.  “I love the dissonance.”

She smiles back.

You notice dimples when she smiles.

She leans forward and spears a seahorse.  “I live for flesh.  My last boyfriend and I tried a new species every weekend.”

You worry that she had a white-bread childhood and would never understand your scars.  When six, you stepped into a lasso trap during a cub scout outing and dangled upside down against an oak tree for two nights before a birdwatcher sighted you in his binoculars.  They amputated your gangrened right leg to save your life.  You refused prosthetics and learned to hop.  In high school, you competed against the best soccer players.  You are as able as any biped.

She doesn’t know any of this.  She saw only that your one leg is thicker than two normal legs.

You clear your throat and lean forward only to hear your voice squeak.  “You up for some something-something next Saturday?”

She reaches for her glass and crinkles the prominent forehead.  Maybe she sees you as a bouncing pogo stick.  Maybe she doesn’t want to dance the yoyo at her wedding.  Maybe she didn’t hear you.

“Oh, I won’t embarrass you,” you say.  “Let me walk you home tonight.”

“Oh no,” she says.  “I wasn’t worried about that!  Not at all.  I’m a physical therapist.  And my brother had his leg blown off in Iraq too.”

Now you worry.  A physical therapist that eats amputated shanks might like your nub a tad too much.  But seahorses have limited opportunities.  So you lean back and point your thick leg between hers.

She doesn’t scream.

“Well, then,” you say, “ever had a Bloody Mary of your own blood?  I know a place.”

And you know that place.  It’s Ole Ole.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Holderness.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Allen Wonkin was an emotional man, but he didn’t know how to express it.  He sat at his desk, thinking what was the best way to be emotional, but all he could do was scrunch his nose as hard as he could and then twitch the side of his eye for a few minutes.

Cici, the teenage beauty, was watching him from across the room.  She stared at him in horror.  She was crazy in love with him.  Cici was the star cheerleader and chess club champion from Popealomaloma High School and told herself so often.

Jeeter leaned in next to her with his hand on the wall.  Jeeter had truckloads of confidence, wide-open eyes, and a voice like a guinea pig.  In his spare time he built model airplanes and then buried them in his backyard.  He ran his fingers through his hair and said, “Wanna play airplane?”

The Xerox machine, sounding as if it ran on gasoline, was struggling to drown poor Jeeter’s small-whinnying-rodent voice, but somehow the little legs of Jeeter’s voice just kept kicking.  Everyone in the room thought it was only a matter of time before the Xerox machine finally overwhelmed the little feller.  When the time came, they planned to put Jeeter’s voice in a shoebox and bury it outside.

Oskar, the maintenance man, was kicking the Xerox machine with his boot and chewing on his tongue.  His tongue had all types of holes and scars and was almost always bleeding.  Sometimes he knelt by the wastepaper basket and spit blood.  When people asked him what was wrong, he would say, “I’m dying” or “I’m looking at God,” and the people would say, “Go back to work, Oskar,” and he would stare down into the mouth of the waste paper basket, the shadows’ fingertips reaching up towards him, and all the while the Xerox machine would whine and click in some murderous calypso.

Meanwhile, Dottie drew itsy-bitsy kittens on her nails with huge adorable eyes.  Her desk was full of Chinese mechanical cats that waved their arms back and forth.  She had them wired so that they waved at her on the hour, only once.  At the Christmas party last year, she had showed up late in the night, after everyone had had too much to drink, and meowed at people.  She was the most popular person in the room.

Little Billy Demeanor was asleep on the toilet.  His eyes had a bright spark in them, but every visible piece of his skin sagged, like someone had stuck two marbles into a clump of putty and dressed it up in a small business suit.  He drank whiskey and almost never ate. He was afraid of the waste paper basket and everyone knew.  Somehow the waste paper basket always found its way next to his desk no matter how many times he told Oskar to move it.   Billy didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to go near it,  didn’t want to see it.  Whenever he had trash, he just threw it under his desk.  One day, he was eating marshmallows and threw one in.  The waste paper basket spit it right back out.  Billy wasn’t surprised.

Lana saw it too, but she never said anything.  She hated how people talked about the universe as if it was so mesmerizing, how something had splattered all the stars out there, all the ones that she used to look up to in Montana, the billions of little white dots barreling down on her every night, barreling down on Montana, and she guessed that Montana was barreling too.  Lana believed everything was part of some fancy-schmancy explosion that had always been there, that will always be there, and that comforted her because she could see it all happening as if it was swirling around in her cornea, like an eye floater, a visible tear casting a shadow on the retina, that strange grey shape on the eye lens that moves further away the harder you look at it.

Beethoven, Mary’s boy, was opening and closing the curtains, flooding the room with light and sucking it back out again.  The sun was right outside the window.  “Behold,” he screamed as he pulled back the curtain, “the awful power of nuclear fusion!”  Everyone in the room squinted up for a moment and then went on about their business.  Beethoven, roused with the anxiety that he had become a hallucination, continued to open and close the curtain with newfound fury.  He looked up at the wooden rings sliding along the curtain pole, smiling frantically.

Sitting next to the window, Bankot, ruthlessly pensive, cared little that Beethoven was pulling the curtain.  Bankot too believed that Beethoven was a hallucination.  Bankot also believed that he himself did not exist and was sorry to see young Beethoven beginning to come to terms with it.  Over the years Bankot had been so consumed in his thoughts that he had stayed at his desk for days upon end staring at Dottie’s Chinese mechanical cats, or the waste paper basket, or Allen, or Cici, or anything really.  His eyes followed everything and for the most part he remained still and quiet while the others swirled about the room.  But at the present moment, he rocked back in his chair and heard it squeak.  He rocked back again and listened to the squeak again.  He rocked back again, slow this time, and the chair belted out a long, crackling groan.  He rocked again and again and again and again and stood up, kicked over the chair and threw his arms up.  He stood there like that for ages and ages, long after everyone had died and sand piled up all around him.  He stood there until other beings found his arms sticking up out of a river.  They dug him out, shipped him to a museum, and put him on display as “Man Without A Gun.”

One day he let his arms fall, blinked his eyes as if he had been daydreaming, and sniffed.  All around the room were horrified faces.  Bankot said “Hello,” but they stood still like a crowd of statues, watching him.  They watched him climb down from the display and walk out of the museum.  They watched him walk further and further, his detail crumbling away, until he was only a small speck on the horizon.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_5/Bellas.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Starter

Smoked meats,
nitrate free.
Local cheeses:
Peppered goat cheese
from Colrain,
Franklin County Camembert.
Good bread.
Pinot noir from southern France,
Languedoc region,
in 50-cent Goodwill glasses
etched with wild geese.
There are two birds
on each,
endlessly flying one
after the other
over tall grasses,
again
and again
as I turn them
in my hands.

***
Main course

We had an extra glass of wine,
the windows steamy,
snow falling
as in a snow globe
when we walked back
to find the vegetables
a little too mushy.
All soups have their own stories,
you told me,
and that makes this one.
Split pea soup is now
first snow, red wine, possibilities:
ingredients I wish I could bottle
and file under a new name –
one that could call forth
this particular moment,
bowl and bread and you.
Call it Auspicious-Friday-
Winter Night-Northampton
Bus Trip-Bad Picker-
Hopeful Dreamer-January
Soup. Words that mean nothing
to anyone else;
one of those recipes that never
comes out exactly the same
but is worth trying to get right again.

***
Dessert

The chocolate bar came with
instructions:
Look. Breathe. Snap.
It was Black Salt Caramel,
the salt from Hawaiian volcanoes,
which erupt
when I place a square on the roof of my mouth.
Hold it
there
with your tongue and
press.
The chocolate will melt in 30 seconds,
you read aloud
in a voice as smooth
as the cacao.
Listening to you is like
licking the burnt sugar caramel,
is music.lamplight.two bodies
on the floor
inches from kissing,
mouths sharing a taste
from an exotic place.
A vacation could last forever
in these endless minutes
but after awhile
we breathe again.

We are a band of girls, and we run the sidewalks.  Like the boys who used to run the sidewalks across town, we use guns.  But unlike the boys, when we need to make an example of someone, we do so personally.  We’re skilled with knives and wire.

After the incident last fall, we run the sidewalks for blocks and blocks.  We’ve gained new territory.

In spring, we hold membership drives, and recruit girls from the fourth grade.  Sign up with your best friend, and we issue you two dull, rusty blades.  The first to draw blood from her friend is in.  We have beautiful and many scars from this ceremony.

We hear the boys were much harsher with their recruits-made them fight someone they didn’t know-but we are girls, and sensitive to one another’s loyalties.

Our band of girls is very successful at running the sidewalks, and at the corner stores, we eat egg sandwiches in the mornings.  We love egg sandwiches-with cheese-and we guard the stores that make them.  We have guns, and we have wires and knives.  We’ve discovered threats are for children, and we don’t need them anymore.

Last fall, we were distracted from the start of school by a problem with the boys, a problem the principal and parents, when they first heard of it, blamed on the boys.  Girls are sweet and smart, and last fall we were particularly sweet and smart.  So smart the principal and parents didn’t know what was coming until they saw it on the sidewalks.

Before last fall, we had let the boys onto our sidewalks, provided they were quiet and did not try to eat egg sandwiches.  But last fall we held a meeting and decided a change was necessary.  The girls who first suggested it said if we did not get rid of the boys, soon they would get louder and try to kiss us.  There were those of us who felt this could never happen, those of us who felt nature should take its course, and those of us who worried the disagreement could tear us apart.  Votes were taken, and in the end, we decided the greatest danger was disagreeing with one another.  We decided on swift execution.

We love pie, and look forward to the day when we will have it with coffee, after an egg sandwich.  And the corner stores in the boys’ territory had the best pie.  A bonus to battling the boys.

It all came together quickly.  Because once our band of girls makes up its mind, we act.

So some of us met some of them at one of their corner stores.  We ordered blackberry pie and while waiting for it to warm, we told the boys-

We don’t want you on our sidewalks anymore.  If you come, we will make terror.

When we returned to our sidewalks, our lips and faces stained with the berries we’d soon conquer, the boys followed closely behind, ready to challenge.

We knew this, and we took the wires from our pockets and made sure we knew our knives.  And we waited, knew the boys were strategizing.  And we, we already had our strategy.  While those sweet, stupid boys were thinking of solutions, we sent them notes they mistook for secrets.

We had kept careful track of their numbers, so in our band, we had a girl for every boy.  And sensitive to one another’s loyalties, we had chosen our boys.  We’d been stalking for weeks.

So we each wrote the same note, one for every boy.  We said-It’s against the rules, but I’ve got to see you.  I want your hips out of your jeans.

And every boy, so sweet and so stupid, agreed to a meeting he thought was secret, a meeting he thought was singular.

With wire wrapped round their throats, their arms lost strength, and their hands were no trouble, once they were severed.  In the spirit of Halloween, which was fast approaching, we carved new faces for our boys, on top of the old ones.  And we tied their feet together, and threw them up over telephone wires and tree branches.  The feet say-We have something you want.

We have knives and wires, along with guns.  We have egg sandwiches, and now we have pie, too.  We have each other, and soon we will start drinking coffee.

Our mothers say now we will have no one to marry, but we have each other, and we’re thinking about getting rid of the mothers.  We have knives and wires, along with guns, and once our band of girls makes up its mind, -!

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I knew you’d be angry when I climbed up the colossal statue of Paul Bunyan.

We were on our honeymoon.

I don’t know why I did it.

We were driving up the narrow highway, and the morning was just coming.  You were buying doughnuts inside, and I was watching through the glass.

The sky was rimmed in tangerine.

My cigarette was smooth and sweet.

It was easy, what I did.

I was always good up high.

You had run outside by the time I reached his shoulder.

My shoes had tumbled off.

Your eyes were very dark.

My hand was inside the curve of his ear.

Your mouth was moving.

The sky was swelling.

I pushed down the ladder.

The ladder crashed.

Sometimes we went with the top down, and you took the turns fast, and our hair went wild.  I remember wanting to take off my blouse.

I was naked underneath.

On the good days, you opened your mouth against me everywhere.

On the bad days, you talked about philosophers I had never read.

I remember the first time I saw you; the gutters were filled with trash, and the wind was nipping my skirt around my legs.

We were down by the thrift stores and warehouses.

I scraped my periwinkle pumps against the cement.

I was waiting for someone who never came.

Ash toppled from my cigarette, and then the sun flooded over us, and I laughed.

I didn’t mean to say anything to you at all, but then I did.

Hello, I had said.

Later we had tacos from the truck down the street.  The men called us mija and mijo from the shady interior.  The tortillas were the size of your palm.  We sat on the curb.  You rolled up your sleeves, and I stretched my legs out.

There were children playing in the school yard, and the sky was milky with the heat.

The taste of cilantro lingered in your mouth all day.

I remember that.

We drank iced coffee in the shade.

I put my feet on the dash, which made you nervous.

I accidentally crumpled the map, which made you laugh.

Later on, you were angry about that.

We stopped for a while.

I ran into the sea.

We were driving up the coast.

We saw a whale in the Klamath River.

She wasn’t supposed to be there.

From the bridge with the others, we watched her move like a dark, languid bruise.  She had been there for weeks, and I thought I would die when she broke the surface and sighed away her breath.  The hiss of the traffic behind us was unbearable.

I thought I would die.

You told me something from your science magazine.

I was always thinking of her after that.

We made love a dozen times that day.

The doughnuts were scattered on the ground.

Paul Bunyan was cold against my legs.

My hand was on his whiskers, and then against his eye.

The sky rippled and rang like a bell.

I thought of my coming life, and the days broke open.

They broke and broke again.

Weeks later, she would throw her body upon the bank.

We were in Seattle then.

The climb had been easy.

The swallows were dipping.

I swung open like a hinge, and something moved over your face.

I wouldn’t be yours forever.

And then everything was wondrous.

Everything was fine.