And when it came down to it, he knew everything about himself was a cliché, the pigpen room with sour-caked pipes, the wet pizza boxes, the turpentine cocktail he sipped from a martini glass at this, his lowest. It was all in good fun until every bit of it seemed so ordinary, and then the self-loathing scabbed over. He’d pick at it, pick at it until it was time to rip it off and bleed out. Checking the ol’ ticket in this, a room where every skittering cockroach, every expended condom was a dire reminder that there was not a shit to be given.
“The image will be complete if I die sucking on my bong,” he thought. A kidney went as he lit the crusty thing up.
It bothered him that when his grisly remains were found later everyone would know he was such a slob, so he decided that his last action may as well be doing the dishes. Stomach wasn’t too pleased when he stood. A cap gun pop from inside and some blood on the undies.
“Jeez,” he said, to no one.
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Gentlemen, we have results.
After 4 weeks’ data collection
and observation carried out
in terrifying proximity to our subject
we have formed a hypothesis.
There are two of her.
Two. In the same body.
A science fiction dream walking around in blue pants.
Consider her as the two faces
of a city snowfall first encountered past midnight
when the sky is bright enough to read to, and coral,
and the only sound is the occasional distant boulder crash
of a salt plow trundling over a level white street.
This woman we found easy to love.
The other is the city of
the wretched next day. The sidewalks turned
to slippery rock, and everything
going slower. Hopping a curb, sloshing
ankle deep into spoiled socks
we saw the hard mud lanes of the same streets
two centuries prior, when horses trod in offal
and we loved that woman easily too.
If she were here she would dispute our easy categories
and romanticizing of her vigorous faults
but it wouldn’t be clinical to ask the subject’s opinion.
We mustn’t jeopardize future research. We have work to do.
Circles in his eyes widened, as do city limits, to accommodate the area he saw himself diminish in. He shouted he tested positive. Javier stood 6’ 4’’. Weighed over 250 lbs. His face was wide and heavy. His ankles seemed larger than his knees. The noise woke the birds. No longer dreaming they flew to less familiar heights in the city. The crowd opened its eye on Javier. Any one disappointment so often suggested the man’s larger failings in life. They let him pass and he escaped into the Old City.
The public history of the Old City consisted of its stonework, half-completed projects, a public garden of vines mixed with weeds, bridges disappearing into sand. In this neighborhood one was never sure, as in Javier’s life, of a thing’s beginning or its decline. I called Javier’s ex to help me find him. Night fell. My vision was weak. Black spots hoof-printed through sand in my eyes. Cells behind the retina, Javier’s doctor had reassured me. I kept looking. Turned down another street. Sounds became muffled. I turned the corner and I saw the man. Javier’s ex was massive. When he appeared, cars drove slower. Children climbed higher in the trees. Sand blew higher in the sky, audible against the wind.
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The white meat sweats,
wafting, tempting
my friends and me.
The butcher turns.
Jake gets itchy.
Fingers, that is.
Nervous glances,
licked lips, twitches,
tentative steps,
The two of us
try to swipe it.
Every action
brings reaction.
Butcher brings knife,
Jake brought home meat,
and I brought home
one less finger.
I can see us in the countryside,
but I have terrible allergies.
Free give-aways, everything free on this table.
Toys, shoes, limbs, you name it we got it.
The way that you move is so demanding,
Free dance lessons on Tuesday, won’t you join me?
off sufjan’s satan saxophones,
and while i create verse somewhere in my head from marshmallows,
the dinosaurs are walking around in swamps expecting to survive.
in their pleated iron armor and six-inch spikes off their spine
they could very well have been purple or polka dotted,
’cause who’s to say they weren’t?
when i was little i dreamed ‘what ifs’ like mad, what if
a dinosaur egg hatched in tasmania, and they returned to earth?
i used to think we could coexist—when i got older i was sure
we didn’t have a chance. nowadays i know the baby would be killed,
probably with a quick clean razor, so as not to upset mothers.
it would throw us all up in the air for a while, though,
sharing this earth with an antiquated boogie monster.
it would not bode well for science.
