2009-06-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

Do you have the great obsession?

I’m trying to impress you, who stand next to the chestnut tree with your morning like a short skirt. I hit the tree and try to conceal myself like a liquor bottle. You know me already and when I tell you about the times I went black-footed through the parking lots you nod, toss away the shell of a nut.

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Did you engulf all those whose lives you touched?

I go touching everyone I can find. It’s like food poisoning. Have I told you how glad it makes me? I’m on the tiled floor of the world all night. I’m watching you, watching you downstairs watching TV, watching shit drain into the hole of the toilet, watching myself washing my face clean as if it were a pan in the sink. May I buy you a bouquet? May I steal you a lighter? I’m watching you across the street pumping gas like a novelist. I’m on the stained carpet of the parking lot scrubbing a misfire from my left eye.

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Have you been open minded?

I was feeling reckless. I wanted to tell you how everything was like the grey glue of oatmeal. I wanted to tell you that I was working as hard as I could to bring home a new set of wheels, of televisions, of shoes, of swings, of lingerie…

I wanted to turn around and go back to the bar, I tried to buy a bottle of rum, I tried to drink seltzer with lime.

I squeezed a wedge into the door space and tore the weather stripping, the rear quarter-panel crumbled like a bridge.

I stepped out into the road and hoped you would slow down. I crossed the street and felt like I was going to be okay, for a few minutes everything was going to be okay.

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Have you been obstinate, sensitive, and unreasonably prejudiced?

I’ve run you down. I find you, sometimes, under the bed, looking for bits of my heel.

I have a shiny new coin and I won’t let you see it. I don’t mind if you’re feeling alone.

I tell myself that I am the firm juice of a perfect apple, if I kiss you, I will taste my syrup on your lips and I may stay there, barely holding you, imagining that you are riding a scooter in sweatpants and a camisole.

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Did your idea work?

I took six ripe avocados and let them mold on the counter. Kristin, from the cold kitchen, left a message. I told you I would have told you no, anyway. I felt that I shouldn’t tell Kristin about the avocados.

I told her, instead, that sometimes I feel like a worm.

I would have told you no because I would have wanted to stay inside where it is damp and sometimes cool and sometimes like a cave.

I tell her that if I am ever buried alive I will be able to survive for at least two days. I am not afraid of twitching too much and pulling out most of my hair.

Outside, for example, you pick me more avocados, your Mastiff leaves a swatch of drool on my pants.

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Have you abandoned this idea completely?

When you are blocking the fence with your sedan I am busy watching the mucus of an egg drip off your spatula.

When you are blocking the sedan with my past I am on my knees with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser scrubbing away our toughest secrets.

When you are keeping secrets in a can like tuna, I am thinking through a long tunnel as if I were a worm.

I worry that I am being inconsiderate, again. That is, I worry that I am being subtle like a pocket of grass near the freeway.

Either you are a sleeve of flowers or you are a sack of oranges and I am sweating in the median.

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Are you willing to lay aside your beliefs and prejudices?

You are alone in bed with me alone in bed with you and if we were trying to lay aside I was confused like a pillow which rotates around the bedroom and into the floor.

I slept early, fried my sleep, tried to unscrew that dream you had about falling through the zero-gravity mattress of space.

I told you I didn’t mind folded sheets. You said you didn’t care for the chalky light of my chest. Does my heart which bruises like my tiring legs bother you?

2009-04-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from a Currently Untitled Project