Jordan Trethewey lives and writes in Fredericton, NB, with his wife Tina and animal menagerie which includes felines Rembrandt and Mortimer and sheltie Porter. He is currently job hunting, but is proud to be the co-founder of this group of talented literary vagabonds.
Below are are some stories and poems he’s published. At the moment, a novel and short fiction collection are foremost on his plate.
Jordan’s poem If You Turned Into an Alien, How Would I Know if You Still Love Me? was published at feathertale.com
His long travel poem Everything is Coming up Rose Blanche is published in the new St. Thomas University lit mag stuart.
Jordan’s poems Checkout Girls and The Butcher and the Baker can be read online at the Alberta-based magazine blueskiespoetry.ca
The story Longest Known Dinosaur was published in the anthology Dinosaur Porn (Ferno House, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9812053-1-1)
His story You Got Yours and poems Elegy for Wilson and Two Will Grow Back were published by the Fredericton-based independent magazine Nonymous (vol.1 Issue 4, and vol. 2 Issue 1 respectively).
The poem Vagabond (published in Qwerty Winter 2009) was written on the Vagabond Trust ferry excursion to SW Newfoundland in August 2008.
Jordan’s poem Wooden Silhouettes was published in the July 2009 issue of the now-defunct e-journal Inscribed: A Magazine for Writers. His story Her Bargain Kingdom was published in the March 2009 issue.
Why They’re Laughing Matters was published in the spring 2008 issue of Qwerty magazine. Gordon Is Gone was published by AB Collector Publishing in 2006 in a book entitled A Quiet, Bashful Man, Remembering Malcolm. Jordan has published other poems as well. Four appeared in the Fall 2002 issue of Connections magazine and won him the inaugural Robert Clayton Casto Prize in Poetry. Concealer was published online by outspokenart.withtheworks.net.
Jordan also writes plays, some of which have been produced across Canada: A Stable Base (Fredericton, 2003), How’s It Going? (Fredericton, 2004, 2006, Montreal and Ottawa International Fringe Festivals, 2006), Stay Away From My Mother! (Fredericton, 2005, St. Andrew’s, NB, 2006), The Spitting Image (Moncton, 2008).
Please read and enjoy.
Cannonball Captain
~~~~~~
EVERTHING IS COMING UP ROSE BLANCHE
A Mainlander’s Ode to Newfoundland
by Jordan Trethewey
A beatific black Lab sees us
off at the Grand Bruit wharf.
No ferry out of La Poil to Burgeo
for a week, none at all ’til Friday.
So back we go.
In La Poil, cats travel
in duct-taped, cardboard boxes
without whimper, while
Katie helps find my sea guts on deck.
As the ferryboat rocks out
of the brown water bay,
looking down just means
finding a better way.
Comforting to see salty Islanders
grab the little laminated bags
as quickly as I do
before wild white waves
crash on shore,
leaving frothy impressions
of inland villages
below rockslide detritus
reminiscent of children’s
white-glued sparkle patterns.
The thesis, I’m reminded,
is: Don’t panic,
we’ll get ‘er dun b’y!
Foggy windows pout continually,
empathy for the impenetrable coastline
and my vain attempt to quell queasiness.
Saw the original, wooden fisherfaces
before they became self-deprecating art
haunting the cod-absent walls
of the Friendly Fisherman.
Informed the fishery still sucks,
and if you wanna get welfare,
youse gotta be tough
to make enough hours,
to collect your stamps,
even if you’re 60, and
enough is enough.
Talk of migration West,
Newfies striking out,
maybe come back
another “Welcome Home” day.
We change as
our memories mutate
and money is made.
The young try to never stop,
’cause once you put down roots
it costs ya, me Trout,
maybe more than you’re willing,
or know.
I’ve stopped moving,
youth given way to
welcome stability and
ugly fiscal demands,
and noticed pay dries up
and fixes you to:
taxes, insurance,
homes, kids, cars,
in distant locales.
Roots in your pocket.
Roots in your guts.
But movement,
ah, movement,
doesn’t make the locals seasick.
They keep a granite heart beacon
trained on those with
wet, itchy feet:
roots tomorrow,
credit today.
The Friendly Fisherman’s girls are
Yes, we’re open-minded
to our soggy lot, not,
No we’re closed.
They help us find
the cheapest route to Burgeo.
Today, we’ll shake the demon
and ride the Black Horse;
here’s to no rain, just cruel, sightless fog
as we surface from Isaac’s
smoky blue stage.
“‘Dis da wurst summer we’ve ev’r had,”
says Pauline. “It usually only stays foggy in June.”
Newfie’s ability to predict the weather
really is a length of yarn,
percentage of accuracy
lower than a meteorologist.
“S’posed ta be sunny tamarra.”
This prevailing attitude serves as
grains of rice to a box of table salt,
keeping the moisture out,
preventing nature
from hardening them.
Newfoundland has tricked me
into believing it’s fall.
Fool us one day…two days…
fool us three days
we’re missing something obvious,
maybe even the point.
On the rippled 480 asphalt,
a patch of blue sky brings tears
as we leave it behind,
bending coastward.
Wipers on the cab so well worn
they’ve scored victory arcs,
and I wonder if the subtext of coastal
is always rain.
Stubby tress accenting the shrubland
mean opportunity to see roadside rabbits,
1,2,3,4, caribou grazing.
The scenery reminds me
of Irish iconography,
a sentiment echoed in
gift shops province-wide,
on hats and mugs with
The Rock’s silhouette on
a tri-coloured flag proclaiming:
Republic of Newfoundland.
A republic of coastal rivers,
peculiar cluster communities of
caravans and two-room houses
popping up like the carefully-placed
boulders on the horizon line.
Standing on sandy
Sandbanks’ shore with
piping plovers ignoring the cliffs
taking their infinite punishment,
the tide makes us shorter,
the ocean reclaiming its land.
In Burgeo, they are
what they are: Muddy Hole Rd.,
Playground St. say it all.
Sun shines forth better moods,
Charlotte’s lice and fleas tickle,
so does Griff’s story of shortcuts
to cash and more dubious ferry schedules.
We wait for the next missed opportunity,
give other travelers advice
and anticipate a Burgeo ferry chantey
about Grandpa eating Grandma’s laxatives
instead of his proper Viagara tonic.
Think about the girl at the one-room
museum staring blankly
when asked about a payphone and hot coffee
(neither of which exist), and
Mr. Jake, the 11-year-old Airedale Terrier,
travels well, but has been going downhill
toward the maximum twelve.
No matter what others believe,
comfort is bliss:
knowing for a short period
you’ll be displaced, but will
end up in affable arms and
rough tongue kisses;
seeing a male killer whale dorsal
display its extroverted side
Yes, Gord, we’re in nature’s killer whale tank;
being with old and newly-old
friends dropping as one,
wet, from the rock diving board
to Chapel Arm below,
encompassed.
“Don’t'cha fuckin’ worry ’bout dat,”
says a wharf angler.
Touché.
Different personalities, foreign scenery,
release the grip anger had
on my mossy brain,
washed clean, now,
by the Atlantic and Grey River,
where homes are in city proximity
but look distinctly rural,
where the rocks were recently
combed clean by glaciers.
Constant rushing water audio
complements constellation video
and inspires such writerly attempts as:
“These stars are like sky acne,”
“These stars are like freckles
on an eight-year-olds face.”
~~~~~~
Looking in the mirror at
one neon white hair growing
just above my forehead, I know
at my age there are 31 things
I could have said or done
to have made all the difference,
sending my life off to
one of 31 possible alternate
universes available to me
through those 31 strikeouts.
My acid-smoothed finger-tips
are unable to pluck the damn hair
nested in the thin, brown field.
Chagrined, conceding defeat, I
accept my younger wife’s ageist
humour staring at me in the face
with thin, robin’s beak fingers
dead set on the worm.
Out and presented to
me in all its ghostly glory,
I make a firm decision to
never see one again and
birthday blow it away.
But, wish in one hand,
shit in the other. Now
there’s 62 if the old wives’
were true. If misses double
like grey hairs plucked,
I’d better settle in at the plate
knowing I’ll swing through
many more chances,
unaware of the consequences
until they hit me.
Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~~
Crouched on the balls of my cleats
at shortstop, anticipating
the enemy’s offence,
I’d relentlessly open and close
you, my left hand man,
along the crease of your wear-beaten palm —
a communion preparing us for the
Ting of aluminium
connecting with leathered cork.
When you were store-bought new
I taught you with Neatsfoot oil
how to conform to the ball’s demands.
I shaped and moulded you
with the constant breaking in
of ball to basket, fist to palm,
until you were perfect
for infield play.
The product of my nerves
would absorb into your supple flesh
and eat away at your insides;
too involved to know
I was destroying you
with constant affection.
Night after game, day before practice,
I wore you like a talisman –
never to be defeated
as long as you were there
to help catch the pop flies
I tossed to myself.
Eventually, you began
to wear away at the seams.
My salty enthusiasm,
having disintegrated your inner heel,
forced me to a decision –
do I part company,
or maintain loyalty?
No longer in your prime,
conditions led me
to trust you, my exposed leathren,
to an East Indian cobbler
for disabled-list care.
Hoping for the best,
I expected him to mould you once more –
this time with a new piece of cowhide
to match your unwavering interior.
A week later, as I paid for your return,
heartsickness clouded my gameday appearance.
He had callously stretched your existing portions
until they met, cobbling you together.
My 13-year-old mind expected too much
from a craftsman whose title says it all.
Ruggedly attending to my every
childish Major League whim,
until I could no longer remember
whose signature was stamped
in your palm – a mark of
Gold Glove excellence –
we managed to finish a banner year
at the number 6 position on the scorecard
for the Bantam team from
the New Germany & Area Ball Association.
I owed it all to you despite,
and because of, your scarring.
This is why I gave you to my brother.
Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~~
YOU GOT YOURS
by Jordan Trethewey
My fellow retail slave and I had this little game we enjoyed playing with customers. Actually, it was, technically, a game we played on them. After an aggravating week of arbitrary eight-hour shifts we each picked a favorite. The biggest jerk we each waited on won a prize furnished by we often-abused, always-neglected servants of the public.
“The prize?” you ask. Relax. I’ll be getting to that.
This all began innocently enough, as a fun way to assert our obvious superiority over the masses of rude, obnoxious slobs who pass through our registers every day. You know these people. Right now they are arguing that the cheesies are 95 cents, not 99 cents, while twenty other customers stand waiting behind them. These are the people who argue that their copy of Miss Fucking Congeniality was not returned five days late, and therefore they will not pay the late charge.
These people know goddamn well they return their movies late because we call them and tell them so. It’s not our fault their mental shortcomings cause them to return a clearly labeled Movie Mart movie to Video Hut. If you happen to be that dumb it’s your responsibility to correct your mistake and suffer the monetary consequences.
You know these people, because they hold you up in line and make you wait twenty minutes while they quibble and argue, proving they are dumber than you actually thought. Haven’t you always wished you could get rid of these people?
Nick and I worked at a video store as sales associates. We looked around for a job with the least amount of responsibility possible and found it, sadly, years ago. After being dumped on night after night, day after day, for months on end, we thought it would be great to mess with these people who found it so satisfying to screw with us on a daily basis. It was bad enough I had to work that menial and servile job to pay my rent and tuition, but what really stuck in my craw was the fact that these people seemed to think that this job was my chosen career, and I was the policy maker. This misguided notion apparently allows these jerk-offs to feel that they have the right to take out their shitty days on us. Well, I hope they feel better.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Every time I think about how quickly things got out of control, I always try to justify it. But here it is, the cold, hard facts which have been simmering in my mind for quite a while.
***
“Thank Christ that’s over with,” I mutter, flinging myself onto my ratty futon. “One more retard saying, ‘Do you have any copies of What Women Want behind the counter,’ and I would have snapped. Now I have to write a paper on the presentation of gender themes in Lysistrata for tomorrow.”
“Fuck you, man. At least you have a night off,” Nick says, playing with his plastic lighter, “Week after week they schedule me all night shifts. I’m sick of it.”
“Why does anyone need a video store open Sunday nights anyway?” I ask.
“Never underestimate the public’s 24/7-need to giggle mindlessly at Ernest fucking up his pathetic life and/or Whoopi Goldberg wearing nun attire.”
“You get off at 11 right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Want to get high?”
“Yeah, okay. But what do you say about doing something a little different this week?”
“Such as?”
“Well, I was thinking of giving our hatred for the public a more creative twist,” Nick says. “I mean we’ve bitched and moaned enough. It’s time we did something about this town’s asshole quotient.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” I say sarcastically. “Give them the wrong change. Slip a five up our sleeve when giving them change for a fifty? I mean what could we really do? We need these shitty jobs, no matter how much we hate ‘em.”
“No, no, no. We wouldn’t do anything that connected to the store,” he says. “Look, we have access to customer accounts, right? We have their addresses.”
“So?”
“So, we get the address of the customer that pisses us off the most during the week and we plan something nasty,” he says with a grin on his face. “A little payback for having to meet them in this lifetime.
“Did you ever get the feeling you’ve had exciting previous lives where you’ve lived life to the fullest,” he asked, “and now this is the one where your paying for all your prior lives’ mistakes. A sort of karmic Hell.”
“I know what your saying, but what can we really do to them?” I say. Nick just grins. “Halloween-prank them?”
“No. Fuck that,” he says. “None of that kid stuff. I’m talking temporary-pain infliction. Pain comparable to the angst we suffer by having to deal with them on a daily basis.”
“Shee-it,” I laugh, “the only pain comparable to that is a Chinese-torture type of slow-and-painful death.”
Just then Nick flicks the lighter under his scruffy chin and grins. This gives him a skeletal look. “That’s exactly what I was thinking, buddy,” he says, as he punches me on the shoulder and gets up off the couch to change for work.
“Okay. But how about we start off slow,” I laugh, thinking this is one of his twisted rants, “just some minor maiming at first”
“All right ya fuckin’ baby,” he laughs. “I’ll ease you into it. You won’t believe how much fun we’ll have.”
“Okay psycho,” I snort.
Nick starts up the MP3 playlist on his computer. Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson bombards our little apartment.
“What’s with you and that song?” I ask.
“It prepares me for my adoring public.”
“Have fun at work.”
“Fuckin’-A,” he says. “Starting tonight I’ll be making a list and checking it twice.”
“You’re the epitome of benevolence.”
Nick shakes his head and says, “Good one, Webster.” He walks away, still flicking his lighter.
***
I just sat there on the couch, feeling numb with the flashing TV muted. I shivered and not just because we couldn’t afford to have the electric heat on most of the time. Nick is weird, but that little chat was different. It had serious overtones. I decided to forget it. I just figured I’d see him tomorrow afternoon when I got back from class. He’d just be waking up from working until 1 a.m. the previous night and then watching a movie until three. That’s all he did since dropping out of university last semester. He’d laugh about what a sucker I was; that I actually believed him.
He didn’t mention it again until the following Thursday.
***
“Well, do you got yours?” Nick asks me after I got home from Irish Lit. class. He was sprawled-out watching A Clockwork Orange again.
“My what?” I ask.
“Your favorite customer.”
“You were serious?”
“As cancer, buddy.”
“Well, no . . .”
“You mean nobody pissed you off? C’mon, man!”
“Well lots of people pissed me off in the last few days, but I thought you were talking out of your ass like always.”
“Fuck that. I got mine. So, tonight you can help me with it. By Saturday I expect you to have yours.”
“Yeah, all right,” I say, thinking that flat tires were on the agenda, “I’ll go.”
“Good. Meet me outside the library tonight at 10.”
***
The guy obviously needed to get laid. Internet porn couldn’t have been cutting it anymore. I figured I’d go with him that night and we’d blow off some steam. I was usually the sober voice of reason, so if things got out of hand, I’d be there to stop him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned though it is to never underestimate the power the self-righteous possess.
I showed up five minutes early on Thursday night, right after my class. Nick said he picked Thursday because that was the day most people were statistically less careful and more preoccupied.
“The week is almost over, the next day is Friday, and then there is the sweet relief of the weekend,” he told me. “Nobody’s going to be expecting this shit.”
There’s a thought to make a person feel all snug and warm in their bed at night.
***
“Here,” whispers a voice from the bushes.
“What th. . .”
“Over here dickhead.”
“What the hell’re you doing in the bushes?”
“Never mind that, “he says. “Here. Put this on.”
He throws me a black ski mask and hoodie.
“Are you serious?” I say.
“As cancer,” he says, flicking his damn lighter. It’s a new red one. He held a hefty crowbar in his left hand while tossing me a bag of granulated sugar with his right. He was also carrying a bucket that was white and looked like it was streaked with purple. But it was dark. “We’re going to pay Debra “Dipshit” Chamberlain a visit this evening.”
“Why?” I reply. “What did he do?”
“Well, this particular asshole came into the store just before closing on Monday night and demanded to speak to the manager. Well, Tim was the supervisor that night and he told the woman she’d have to wait until the morning to speak with Cathy, but he’d be willing to take a message for her.”
“So what happened?”
“She had a late charge of 46 dollars, but of course, she had never heard of the movie, let alone rented it,” Nick said, “So, she bitched and moaned. I believe she called us, ‘Incompetent, ignorant little shits who shouldn’t be allowed to flush a toilet, let alone operate a store,’ or something like that. She was holding us up from closing the store and getting the fuck home. We have enough to do Monday nights after close, like putting out the new releases, without having to deal with that shit.”
“I know . . .”
“The bitch wanted us to call Cathy and wake her up over this petty shit. We finally just took off the charges to get her the fuck out of the store.”
“So what are you proposing we do?” I ask
“A little symbolic smash and trash.”
“Symbolic?”
“Yeah, English Boy,” he says. “The movies she said he didn’t rent were The Godfather trilogy.”
“Oh,” I say, still puzzled.
We arrive at Debra Chamberlain’s house a half-hour later. Actually, it wasn’t really a house, it was a bungalow divided into two apartments. According to Nick, Debra lived in the top-level apartment.
“Fuck!” Nick mutters.
“What?” I ask.
“I had designs on her car,” he says. “But I don’t know which one it is”
“Jesus,” I say, as we stand on the sidewalk in front of the house squinting in the dark.
“Let’s go closer,” he says
We move closer to check out the cars, and low and behold, the little red KIA sports car has a license plate which reads- “PRNCESS.” We laugh.
“Shit,” says Nick. “Well, ‘Everyone deserves a well fucked car. Start pouring the sugar in the gas tank. Hurry up, man. You have to do the sugar before we move on to Phase Two.”
“Fine,” I say, as I pop the lock with the crowbar and unscrew the cap. “I’m pouring.”
“Good. Hurry up and don’t spill any,” he says. “Don’t want her walking to his car in the morning and seeing a little pile of sugar on the ground beside his car.”
“All right!” I hiss, annoyed. “Done.”
“Look in the bucket,” Nick smiles.
“Oh, shit!” I gag. “That’s not what I think it is.”
“Quiet, you idiot,” he says, flicking his lighter over the mouth of the bucket.
“That’s sick, man,” I say. “Just hurry up and do what you’re going to do with it. It’s cold out here.”
Nicks puts the lighter back in his denim cargo pants and walks over to the picture window. With one swift motion he hits the center of the window with the hook end of the crowbar. It crumbles. I’m so scared I’m about to bolt, but I manage to calm myself enough to wait until he dumps the contents of the bucket into the gaping hole. We hear a dog start barking incessantly as we race down the street.
“What was attached to that bloody pig head?” I pant.
“A note,” Nick says.
“Humor me.”
“It said, ‘Don’t mess with The Family’s business, you pig fucker!’”
We stop running about five blocks away from the scene. By this time I’ve collected myself a little. I was mad as hell at Nick for what he just sprang on me, but laughing in spite of myself. I couldn’t help it. It was exhilarating. It was like all my nerve endings and synapses were firing at once. I was the Robin Hood and Nick the Little John of fucked-over sales people everywhere.
“Remember,” Nick says, “it’s your turn next. You better have a victim for Saturday night. You’re a part of this now. I saw you. You were lovin’ it. Besides, I know where you live.”
“Obviously.”
***
So, two days came and went. And let me tell you, by the end of my day shift on Saturday I had forgotten all about how scared I had been Thursday night. So many pieces of shit flowed through my cash in those two days that I relished the thought of a Saturday revenge. I even went out and bought my own black attire for the occasion.
***
“Well man, who is tonight’s ‘Miss Manners’ Failure of the Week,’” Nick smiles, as I walk in the door, around 6 p.m.
“I’ll tell you on the way,” I say, “Get changed.”
Walking to our subject’s house I feel as giddy as a 14-year-old who has just acquired his first Hustler. I’m bursting with anticipation and loathing. This will be sweet and just.
We arrive at the three-storey, brick facade around 11:30 p.m. There are no lights on. The neighborhood is quiet as a corpse.
“So where the fuck are we?” Nick spouts while lighting a smoke.
“This is where Dan “Ass Face” Jacobs lives,” I say, as we creep through the shrubbery into the Jacobs’ front yard.
“What’s his issue?”
“Oh, this fucker flicked movie coupons in my face Friday night when I told him he couldn’t redeem them at that time,” I smile. “He then proceeded to call me an “ignorant little bastard” in front of about twenty customers. The embarrassment factor was huge, but I offset that with thoughts of what I’m about to do right now.”
I look down both ends of the suburban street and see no one. Nothing. I tell Nick to make himself useful and be on the lookout for party crashers. He walks back to the sidewalk and gives me the thumbs up while sucking on a cancer stick. I pop open the first spray bomb and start writing. Three cans later and ten, “Hurry the fuck ups,” from Nick, the message was complete.
On the side of the house, painted in four-foot high orange letters, was, “REDEMPTION DAN? NOT FUCKING LIKELY.”
“Nice can work,” Nick says. “However, it took you so damn long I was expecting it in Gothic script.”
I move toward the front door and put on my black ski mask.
“What the fuck are you doing,” he whispers. “I’m tired.”
“Shut up and put your mask on,” I say, pulling his crowbar out of my bag. “I followed you on your rampage. Now you’re signed on for my first planned attack.”
“I’m not going in there.”
“Yes you are, or I crack your shins and ring the doorbell.”
“Are you fuckin’ crazy?”
“Just c’mon.”
I smash the bottom-right glass panel of the door, just above the lock, and reach through to unlock it. We enter the home of Dan Jacobs. A nice place if I do say so. But anything is nice compared to the “student luxury condominium” we live in. Once inside, we listen for the ominous sounds of sleep.
We climb the stairs to the top floor and move down to the last door on the right. I toss Nick the crowbar and vice-squad kick the bedroom door in with my aerosol can raised. A flabby, half-naked silhouette, which is presumably “Ass Face,” sits up in bed. His wife turns over and screams.
“Don’t you fuckin’ move you anal bandit,” I say calmly, motioning Nick to control the bitch, “or her skull gets caved in. Understand?”
“O-okay,” says Jacobs. “Take whatever you want. Just don’t hurt me.”
“Shouldn’t you be worried about your lovely wife, you selfish fuck?” I yell, can pointed at his face. “You’re an inconsiderate cocksucker, you know that don’t you?”
Jacobs sits gape-mouthed.
“Agree with me asshole!”
“O-okay,” he says.
“No. Don’t say, ‘O-okay,’ dickhead. Say, ‘I’m an inconsiderate cocksucker.’”
No response.
“Say it asshole!” I scream.
“I-I’m an i-incons-s-siderate cocks-s-sucker,” Jacobs stutters.
“That’s better,” I say. “See how much more pleasant I am when you cooperate.”
I turn around to hear Nick yelling something at the woman. Finally, he’s into it.
“The three of us are now going to try and save your husband’s eternal soul,” Nick says to her.
“Now stand and join us in a rousing recitation of the Golden Rule, bitch,” he adds, yanking her out of bed and to her feet.
“Yeah,” I add, nozzle at fat ass’s eye-level. “Help us, help him. We’re not even asking for a donation.”
“What?” she whimpers in fear, tears rolling down her damp face. “I can’t.”
“Is that, ‘I can’t,’ or, ‘I won’t?’” Nick asks. “For your sake it better be the former. Just because I hadn’t intended on bashing someone tonight, that doesn’t mean I won’t. I think you should lead her, brother.”
“All right,” I sigh. “Now all you have to do is repeat after me. ‘Kay?”
“P-p-p-lease,” she stammers. “L-let us g-go.”
“Shut up! Now say it with me bitch, or we both start tenderizing some flesh,” I yell. “‘I will do unto others . . .’”
“D-d-d-d,” she sputters.
“SAY IT!” I shriek.
“‘I-I w-will d-d-do u-unto oth-th-thers,’” she lisps.
“‘As I would have them do unto me,’” I finish.
“‘A-As I w-w-would h-have th-them d-do u-un-to m-m-e,’” she repeats.
“I don’t think that was as sincere as it could have been,” I say to Nick. “Do you?”
“No,” he agrees.
“So, I have a solution,” I continue, gripping Jacobs’ throat tightly in my left hand. “I’ll give him a temporary benevolent appearance, in the hope that it will wear off on the fibre of his very being.”
And with that, I unload the can of bright neon spray paint into the wide-open, uncomprehending face of Dan.
As I’m doing this, Nick watches, amused. I finish coating the guy’s face, eyes and mouth. Then, turning around, I see a spastically-twitching woman pointing a hand gun at Nick. She’s on a hair-trigger after what just happened only moments before. Then, almost at the same instant that I notice her, the bedroom door swings wide and I get a glimpse of a mammoth-sized teenager with a baseball bat before the lights go out.
***
At the trial I was the scapegoat, seeing as I was the only one left to charge. I didn’t expect to get away clean. I was at fault.
Apparently, the kid was a ‘roid-addled, 17-year-old football player. He took one look at his harried Mom, and seeing that her attention was focused on Nick, assumed he had raped her. He didn’t stop batting practice until the police arrived and found the boy hammering a rack of ribs with legs. I can only shudder at what the cops must have seen in that bedroom—a sweating Goliath pounding hamburger; a skinny student unconscious on the floor with his limbs at odd angles; a woman with running mascara, in a sweat-soaked nightie standing knock-kneed and haphazardly holding a gun; and a sobbing fat-man kneeling on a bed rubbing his eyes, and gagging and spitting up paint.
How was I supposed to know they had a kid? He wasn’t an authorized user on their account. Amateurish, I know, but it wasn’t like Nick and I were organized crime. The impetus was to let off some steam, who knew it had fogged our judgment from the get-go.
I’m now in the second year, of what my cellmate likes to call, “an eight-to-tenner.” I was charged with two counts of destruction of property and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. The incidents were pretty easy to connect. As clever as we thought we were, we weren’t.
I’m looking on the bright side, though. What better way is there to get an education? I’ll finish up my BA in here and maybe do an MA too. It’s all paid for by the taxpayers. I don’t even need a student loan anymore. There’s also free room and board. It’s too bad Nick isn’t alive to take advantage of this; we could’ve been roommates again.
Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~
Banjo balladeer,
Tennessee tuning.
Don’t sleep with your
three axe handle-wide sister
though she may be cute,
the troubadour croons,
smiles his rueful
sideways smile:
cousin is as close as close can be.
He never dreams of his father,
only thinks: one day, right person,
might settle down
stop this street corner life,
return home under
a warm sun and god.
NOTE from CANNONBALL:
This poem was written in the Rose & Thistle Pub in St. John’s. We encountered a very charismatic Tennessee banjo player staying in our hostel, who had only to bust out a folksy tune to make a quick fifty on the street. He came out to the bar to hear us and relayed that he’d been on the road for six years, ever since parting ways with his preacher father, and had only gone back home once: for his sister’s wedding.
Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~
a story by
Jordan Trethewey
I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning
- Stevie Smith (from Not Waving But Drowning)
For Twinkles and Tinsel
It’s a tough pill to swallow with dignity when your child calls you stupid for the first time. There was a window of a few years there, Giggles thinks as she pilots her minivan down Rural Route 2, when Sean thought my job was cool. Suddenly I’m an embarrassment.
If she was not as tough as she is, Giggles would never have gone into the party personality business, let alone gone through with the pregnancy. So, as usual, she lets the drizzle on the windshield stand in for the tears of a weaker woman.
Sean sits staring out the passenger-side window, calm as ever. She dares not ask him to explain. An outburst like that from such an unusually reserved child likely has roots in issues too convoluted to be expressed by a seven-year-old in any other fashion.
She replays the scene in the kitchen from this morning, trying to figure out how this surge of resentment toward her could have weighed anchor in their placid domestic waters.
* * *
“Why do I have to go?” Sean asked, spooning Corn Pops into the air and letting them fall back into his bowl like so many yellow boulders over a white waterfall.
“I didn’t realize I had to force you to play at Jason’s house,” Dolores replied, beginning to apply the white base to her features using a desktop mirror.
“I just don’t want to go over there today.”
“Jason invited you to play while his sister’s party is going on.”
“So what? Doesn’t mean I hafta go.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. But maybe you can play video games or baseball in the backyard, like you always do, while I’m painting faces and doing the usual shtick.”
Sean loudly slurped the sugary milk from the bottom of his Spider-Man cereal bowl.
“I thought you were excited to visit him last night,” Dolores added, applying the red and blue paint to her face, signalling the change from mother to clown.
“I was.”
“Well then, what’s changed?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“Why, because I’m too silly?” she shouted while honking a bicycle horn and doing a two-step. She realized he wasn’t responding, and was instead mutilating a piece of soggy cereal he found under the lip of his bowl.
“It’s because I’m going to be there, isn’t it?”
Sean was silent.
“Look, honey, I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed but . . .”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“Then let’s hear a giggle when I jiggle,” Dolores shouted, rocking her body in an oddly intricate manner. No response. “Well you can still go play with your friend. You don’t want to hurt Jason’s feelings, do you?”
As soon as the antagonizing question left her lips, Dolores knew she had pushed Sean too far.
“Why do you have to do this party at my friend’s house?” he yelled.
There was nothing to do but allow him to spew forth what had already been set in motion. Nevertheless, she attempted to plug the emotional dam.
“Don’t worry. You know I keep my name a secret,” she explained. “Only the people who hire me know. I guess you could say I have a secret identity, kind of like Spider-Man.”
“You’re not Spider-Man,” Sean fumed, “and I don’t want to go to Jason’s if you’re going to be there.”
“They’re having a barbeque,” she sang. “You love barbeque ri-i-ibs!”
“I’m not going if you are.”
“I show up to the parties already in costume. You know that.” Dolores gestured for him to help her zip up her multi-fabricked jumpsuit. “No one will know we’re related.”
She honked her bicycle horn.
“I’ll drop you off first, then circle back so no one will suspect.”
“Why can’t I just stay home?”
“We’ve gone over this, Sean. You’re too young, and your grandparents are away.”
Dolores moved to the utility closet and removed her giggle bag of party favours, balloons and games. She then retrieved her unicycle and made sure the tire was properly inflated and the seat was adjusted.
“Can’t you just drop me off at the arcade for a couple hours ‘till you’re done?” Sean said, increasingly defiant.
“Look, you know I have to do this. It’s my job.” She smiles. “It’s how I keep you in Corn Pops.”
“I don’t need Corn Pops!”
“What do you need, Sean?”
“I need a normal mother!” he yelled, exploding from the table.
* * *
Dolores believes her friends-first policy with Sean bridged the gap created by the lack of an adult male in both their lives. So how could this have transpired between them? Dolores ponders this as she follows the seldom-traveled two-lane river route back home. She loves this drive between communities as opposed to the new four-lane spider with its many off-ramp legs. The spindly deciduous trees on this roadway create a web of their own as their overhanging branches and offshoots reach to meet the swelling spring river.
* * *
“I’m not getting out of the van,” Sean sulked. “You can’t make me.”
“I gave you the option of getting dropped off early,” she responded, as the minivan idled suspiciously in her client’s driveway.
“I’m not getting out, Giggles.”
“These are automatic windows, Sean.”
“So?”
“We’re supposed to get our first really warm spring day today,” she tells him. “It can get mighty stuffy in a van with the windows rolled up and no way to get them down.”
“You’re not even supposed to do that to dogs! You’ll kill me!”
“The doors will be unlocked,” Dolores replied, “and since you’re not a dog, you can open them to get out whenever you feel like it.”
“It’ll have to get pretty hot.”
“You could go as my assistant,” Dolores offered. “You could run some of the games you liked as a kid. Help me out a bit.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you could brag to Jason that you have a job,” she tried. “I’ll pay you. Girls love a guy with lunch money.”
“Jason would laugh his ass off if he saw me working for a clown.”
“Hey, watch your language!”
“Clowns are dumb. Why do you think you only get hired for little kids’ parties?” he asked with a rhetorical viciousness. “‘Cause everyone else thinks clowns are stupid.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dolores replied with parental calm. “Adults laugh too.”
“Yeah, but why they’re laughing matters, Mom. They’re laughing at how stupid you are.”
Dolores felt like slapping him. She wanted to remind him who was boss, but he’d probably just resent her more. So she took it for the time being, at least until she could think of a good way to punish him. “They’re laughing because I’m making their kids happy, Sean,” she said instead; still stung that he didn’t understand she was doing it for them both.
“No, they’re not. They’re laughing at you.”
“Well, it really doesn’t matter why they’re laughing, as long as they’re laughing and paying the bill,” Dolores snapped, removing the key from the ignition. “So make up your mind,” she added, getting out and removing her party gear from the back seats. “You can either sit here and think I’m stupid, or play with Jason and think I’m stupid. The choice is yours.”
* * *
The forecast for the day was ninety per cent wrong as usual. Rain has created shallow, glassy-black puddles on the tractor-trailer pocked road. Dolores is careful to avoid them as long as there is no oncoming traffic. She tries to think of her successes. She may have to hire a second person to play Giggles this summer to keep up with the demand. To bolster her confidence, she reminds herself that she has never taken the sneers and snide remarks from her peers lying down, so no child of hers is going to make her feel any different about her chosen occupation. These same people who look down their noses at what she does usually end up calling her to do their own kids’ parties. She almost always has the last laugh.
As the wipers whimper against the glass, Sean childishly continues to hug the inside of the passenger door in an attempt to distance himself from this newfound embarrassment behind the wheel. Dolores usually feels a sense of satisfaction after a job, but today, with the rain outside and the precipitation of attitude inside, she is thrown unwittingly back to thoughts of how she got here in the first place.
When Dolores’ husband left, with Sean on the way, she was a wreck: financially, not emotionally. She despised him and was glad when he was gone. Keep on Truckin’ became her apropos motto in regards to her long-haul trucker. He never turned that rig back around once he found someone who did not have an expanding stomach and did not require a growing commitment. He simply informed the company he had moved and stopped in a town that had the best of both worlds: another seafood processing plant and a new piece of tail.
Sean does not know him. He never asks about him, and Dolores does not offer information. She likes to think it is another way that they are a team.
Sean decides to readjust his relationship with the passenger-side door and looks out the windshield.
“Did you and Jason have a good time?” Dolores asks, taking his movement as a cue that he might want to be civil.
“I guess so,” he grunts, as if it causes him monumental pain to speak.
“What did you do?”
“Played video games in his room.”
“Which ones?”
“Wrestling mostly.”
“Wrestling? I’ll never understand what’s so fascinating about all those lumpy men in tight pants beating each other with blunt objects,” she laughs. “And you make fun of my work clothes!”
Sean rolls his eyes.
“Which wrestler were you?” she asks with less condescension. “Hacksaw Jim Duggan?”
“Who?”
“He was my favourite. Carried a two-by-four,” she says. Sean stares at her. “Oh, never mind. I guess I’m getting old.”
Silence envelops the interior of the van as Sean considers his mother’s reflection in the windshield.
“The party sounded like it went all right,” he says, attempting conciliation.
“Yep. Everyone laughed for all the right reasons.”
Sean emits a pride-swallowing sigh.
“I didn’t mean to call you stupid.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“I dunno,” he pauses. “I just want to be normal.”
“Too late for that, Hon,” she smiles.
“Everyone else has parents who have normal jobs.”
“Normal, huh? Well, I think a normal job is one that suits your personality, makes you happy,” she explains.
“Being a clown, and making kids laugh, it just feels right. And as long as I’m earning enough to take care of us—”
“Mom, look out!”
“Oh my God!”
A little blue Toyota, which passed their minivan seconds earlier going well over 120 kilometres per hour, hits a slick patch of Route 2 and careens onto the soft April shoulder. It does an incredible aerial manoeuvre, hits the riverbank and spins top-down into the river.
Dolores cannot believe her eyes and drives on, stunned.
“Mom!” Sean cries.
The only response from Dolores is the shaking of her forearms and white knuckles on the steering wheel.
“MOM!” Sean yells. “Pull over. That car just crashed! Call an ambulance!”
“Yes,” she says, pulling to the shoulder about fifty metres down the road, “yes. You’re right, Hon.”
“We have to do something!” Sean gasps, craning over his right shoulder to see if he can still see the car in the river.
Dolores pulls her cell phone out of her handbag and dials three digits.
Sean unbuckles his seatbelt and pulls the latch to exit the van while Dolores gives the dispatcher their approximate location.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Dolores hisses, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.
“To see if anyone is yelling for help.”
“Get back in the van, Sean.”
“But it might be too late if we wait for an ambulance.”
“Just get back inside,” she says, giving Sean a desperate look. She closes her cell. “Just get back in and I’ll think of something.”
Sean reluctantly gets back in the vehicle.
“Someone probably needs us, Mom. They could be knocked out or drowning or something.”
“I’m thinking. Just give me a minute,” she says, knowing the 911 dispatcher gave her an ETA of twenty-five minutes. The bottoms of four all-season tires are barely visible in the river.
“Okay,” she says. “Sit back and buckle-up.”
Dolores puts her engine in reverse and backs up to the skid marks left by the blue compact.
“What are we going to do, Mom?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to stay here with the doors locked,” Dolores replies.
“But I can help!”
“I want you to honk the horn really loud if you see any cars coming. Your eyes are better than mine so you can see them coming further away,” she says, putting the van in park and removing the key. “I’ll wait here with you and wave someone down.”
“What about the people in the car?”
“We’ll just have to wait for another car to come by, or for the ambulance. There’s nothing else we can do, Hon.”
“But…but,” he stumbles, tears standing in his eyes.
“What is it, Sean?”
“But they might drown. They might die, Mom!”
“No, Sean, honey, they won’t drown,” she lies. “Help is on the way.”
“It might not get here in time!” he cries.
“They will, don’t worry,” she says. “If anyone comes, I’ll get their attention. Okay?”
“Sure,” he sniffs.
Dolores exits the vehicle, which sits about three feet from the white line, and shuts the door. She waits beside the van in the wet spring air. Cupping her hands, she breathes warm breath into the hole formed by her cold, inflexible fingers.
“Come on, come on,” she mutters to herself. “This is ridiculous. Somebody’s gotta be out-and-about today.”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“Jesus Christ!” Dolores exclaims, ducking and covering her head as if being attacked.
Sean hears the curse and realizes he’s scared his mother.
“Sorry,” he shouts through the glass, “but someone’s coming. Up ahead. Someone’s really coming!”
Dolores smoothes herself out and takes a few deep, relaxing breaths. As the vehicle rapidly approaches, Dolores begins to do some jumping jacks to draw attention. The car is close enough that she can see it’s a green Ford station wagon of some sort with two passengers. I hope they’re young and fit, she thinks, already coordinating the rescue effort in her head.
Sean continues to honk the van’s horn while Dolores flails about on the right hand side of the road. As the car comes within twenty metres, she notices that the bearded man piloting the vehicle and the permed woman in the passenger seat are frantically pointing at her.
“Oh, thank God,” she shouts. But the vehicle does not slow down.
When the wagon comes nose to nose with the Giggle Van, Dolores sees smiles on the adults’ faces, and as the rear passenger windows go by she sees things in slow motion. Three kids have their smiling, snotty, ice cream-smeared faces pressed against the glass. They’re waving and laughing. It is horrific.
Dolores stands frozen, repulsed. Can’t they see I need help, she thinks while Sean frantically honks the horn. At that moment, the bearded man honks too, and a desperate cacophonous symphony is created.
“Did that just happen?” she whispers.
Sean opens the window. “Mom! Why didn’t they stop? What happened?”
“I don’t know, Sean,” she replies, “maybe they were in a hurry.”
Could she have been so delusional as to think that part of the pleasure of her work is the pleasure of others; the smiling faces of children; the happy, doting looks of parents?
Just then, Dolores notices her reflection in a rear passenger window.
“Oh no.”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Dolores looks into the distance and doesn’t see anything.
“No false alarms, Sean!”
“It’s not! Look behind you.”
Approaching quickly, from around a bend about 500 metres behind them is another car.
“Okay, Hon, keep honking.”
Dolores rips off her multi-coloured wig, tosses it in the driver side window and steps out of her over-sized pink floppy shoes.
Realization strikes Sean’s face as it did Dolores’ moments before.
“Take off your clown suit too,” Sean suggests.
“What? Have you gone bonkers?”
“You’re wearing your swimming suit under there, right?”
“Yes, but it’s pretty cold out here,” she says. Dolores then realizes that this might just be the point. They might laugh at her in a clown suit, but might wonder what she’s doing standing in the road in April with her black swimsuit on.
“Hurry, Mom. They’re almost here!” Sean yells, laying on the horn.
Dolores rips the buttons off her one-piece jumpsuit as she rapidly peels off the damp costume in favour of the one-piece underneath. It occurs to her to take off some of her make-up, so she quickly tries to remove it by smearing her face from forehead to chin with her clown suit.
As a black Volkswagen sedan comes into view, Dolores stands in the middle of her side of the road. The car seems to be struggling to keep between the lines. At twenty metres and counting, she sees why. The windshield is opaque. Someone rolls down the passenger-side window and a billow of smoke pours out. The car begins to slow down.
This is promising, Dolores thinks. She begins her aerobics once more, as the driver’s side window rolls down with accompanying smoke signal.
“Please let there be someone sober in there,” she prays, panting to the rhythm of her jumping jacks.
As the car pulls to within meters of her position, she sees a head pop out of the sunroof and a hairy ass plug up the passenger-side window.
Dolores stands immobile as the car suddenly increases its speed and blows past her to the sound of Doppler hoots and, “Nice tits, Baby!”
Sean continues to pound the horn in desperation as he sees the inhuman response to his mother’s heroic efforts.
Dolores walks over to the van and signals Sean to roll down the window.
“It’s okay, Hon,” she says, bolstering herself. “It’s okay. I know what I have to do. Lucky thing I’m dressed for it. Wait here for the ambulance.”
“But, Mom—”
“It’s okay, Sean. I’ll be all right. It’ll be just like going into the lake for the first swim of the day: cold at first, but you get used to it.”
Sean can’t respond.
“Keep the doors locked and keep honking if you see anyone coming, even the ambulance.”
“Okay,” he whimpers.
Dolores manoeuvres to the front of the vehicle and descends the slope of the soft shoulder. She carefully picks her way through last summer’s highway-crew deadfall so as not to puncture the bottoms of her bare feet. At the water’s edge, she senses the dual nature of the surrounding habitat.
The otherwise welcoming arms of the drooping trees seem to know what is happening. Depending on your point of view, Dolores thinks as she surveys the river, they now look to be either trying to reach the submerged automobile or holding it under.
While searching for signs of life – something, anything that might indicate where the blue Toyota might be parked underwater – Dolores hears a large air pocket break the water’s frigid surface. She turns in the direction of the noise and sees three more bubbles burst through under the fingers of one of the riverbank trees.
It is impossible to see the car below the spring-thaw surface. The banks of the river have a misleading muddy slope, leading one to believe there is a gradual decline from the shore to the river’s deepest part. There is no way for Dolores to tell how deep the moving black water might actually be this close to land.
Dolores bends down and puts her right hand into the river’s outer edge. She feels a cold pinching sensation immediately, and her hand disappears. The nerves are no longer sending signals to her brain. She removes her hand to find a throbbing red claw in its place and tucks it under her left armpit.
She scans the river once more for signs of the car. Nothing. She wonders how long it has been since she left Sean: seconds, minutes, hours? She hasn’t heard another honk. Time has become warped.
Putting a stop to these distracting thoughts, Dolores decides to shallow-dive in and swim to where she saw the bubbles. Ten swift front-crawl strokes later she is where they broke through. There is still ice clinging to the ends of the tree fingers. She dives under and is gone for thirty seconds before returning to the surface, red-faced and breathing heavily. She goes under a second time. Nothing.
Sean remains seated behind the wheel, eyes straining to the road’s vanishing point, when he decides to try and spot his mother. He looks to the river over his right, corduroyed shoulder and sees nothing. He begins to hammer the horn in fear for his mother’s life. People have died in cold water of hypo—, hypo-something. He remembers seeing a man getting CPR on the news after one of those Polar Bear Dips on New Year’s Day. He begins to panic.
Sensing that her son may be worried, Dolores waves from the river that she is okay and to let him know her position in case someone has stopped or the ambulance has arrived.
In the warm van, Sean’s guilt over his safe environs leads him to assume his mother’s waving is a plea for help. He immediately crawls over the console and opens the passenger door. In his hurry to get to the riverbank, he stumbles headfirst down the soft shoulder into the thorn bushes and deadfall. Fear and adrenaline pick him back up and carry him through the tangles to an opening in the trees.
“Mom! Mom!” he screams, losing sight of her.
Dolores’ head breaks the surface.
“Mom! Get out! You’ll freeze and die!” he begs, tears cutting clean streaks through the bloody scratches on his cheeks.
“I’m okay!” she yells. “Go back to the van! Don’t want someone to pass us by!”
“But, Mom!”
“Just do it. I’ll be fine. I thought I could see something last time.”
“Please wait for the amb’lance,” he screams, hoarse from the strain.
“Go! Quick, now!” And with that she dives back under the cold current.
In no position to argue, Sean scampers back to the van and closes the door on his mother and a distant shrill howl. He looks back to the river and his mind screams out that she has been down for far too long. Sean’s eyes frantically scan the rear of the van for something that might attract serious attention to their position. All he can find, however, is his mother’s clown gear. He grabs Giggles’ bicycle horn from the back, puts on her wig and rolls down the driver’s side window, sliding his body out so he is sitting on the ledge. Unable to process the potent mix of terrified concern and unexpected pride, Sean does the only thing he can think of; he presses the van’s horn with his foot while squeezing and waving the bicycle horn in the air as the searing whistle of an emergency vehicle intensifies.
Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~
by Jordan Trethewey
Gordon stands at the foot of the undersized bed.
“I wish you could have known me.”
As the moisture wells up in his eyes, he moves to the double-paned window. The blind is halfway up, and solemn moonlight spills across the foot of the red and blue racecar bed, onto the floor.
“It’s just—,” he chokes back, as he gently slides the windowpane shut with an apprehensive click, “—I had so much to offer you; to show you. I could have loved you better than anyone since Pharaoh’s daughter loved Moses.”
As he initiates the blind’s descent, he notices a faint breeze ripple through his button-down shirt.
“I showed you how to open this the other day,” Gordon recalls while double-clutching the release cord for the blind. “But I never got the chance to remind you to close it at night.”
He looks up.
“You see? It’s the little things you’ve taken away from him. From me!”
He glides over to the side of the small, sleeping boy as the last current of fresh air wafts through the staleness of sleep.
“I mean, Jesus! Who’s going to show him the right way to hold a bat, or catch a pop fly? How to read his first chapter book, play cribbage, fart discreetly, and drink pop so fast his nose burns when he belches?” he asks the ceiling, as he smoothes out the cowlick in the boy’s hair. “A stepfather? The lover she’s bound to take? Who?
“This is so unfair.” Gordon bends over and whispers a kiss on the boy’s forehead.
“What’re you going to think as you age?” he asks the rising falling mound covered in a plaid blanket. He turns once more to look at the ray of moonlight, now dissolved into quivering white horizontal lines on the laminate floor. “What kind of a memory will I be to you?
“I just wish you could know how much I love you and your mom. There is no past tense in matters reaching the marrow. I mean, I told you both, but not often enough,” he continues, wetness staining his five o’clock cheeks. “I wanted to say it so badly, over and over, but the tubes. Those tubes wouldn’t let me and it hurt to move my throat.”
He returns to kneel at the side of the young boy’s bed and looks at his motionless watch. The room is now a hospitable temperature. The boy rolls over on his stomach.
“I don’t know if you’ll carry that with you as you get older,” he laments, drifting toward the door.
And Gordon is gone.
Copyright 2006. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~
Rummaging through stale bins
for words never believed attainable
Then there it is
calling from inside a cardboard box
The musty smell of old, brittle paper
and ultimate elation
collide, causing headiness
Clerk paid
a bell sounds its warm good-bye
The sidewalk welcomes
with the mingled odors
of fast food, warm coffee and tobacco smoke
nearly edible
Savoring all mundane sensations
while temptation waits
Prior to devouring the long-neglected contents
sitting on a park bench
rifling through the parched pages
out falls a concealed polaroid
a 1970s man in a brown, polyester suit
Dad, teacher, brother, mentor
left to haunt the pages
Forget the text, he is more interesting
Is this true for all buried treasure?
Flipping through another
lying snugly in the spine
out of librarian sight
lies a student card
long-past expired
from some unknown school
A frantic search ensued
to find this seemingly-worthless artifact
before endangered money
was forked over to replace it
A Joker wild
from a cruise-ship deck
marks the time
when the search ended
for “The Running Man”
Maybe the reader was distracted
by the next glossy, plastic port-of-call
biting the tacky hooks
locals make in jest
The story suffers the fate
of the next new thing
Headstrong, youthful poetry
fill the inviting white spaces in a horror collection
bought and given
over and over
as a gift
These hasty stanzas
a thrift-store missive
reveal faded joy and sorrow
the title’s new attraction
Maybe these secrets are loaned
knowing full well they will never be returned
a gift from one faceless being to another
But how do I find them?
these memories of strangers
Or do they find me?
the second-hand literary archaeologist
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.
JANUARY BURDEN
Snow underfoot
wizened hands
cup mouth
carboned lungs
give warmth
Immobile creaky steps
propel shuffle plow
winter cooled veins
seek plaid shelter
a January burden
Steel bannister
arthritic grip
threatens release
rubbered feet
prevent collapse
Flake sombrero covers
fragile grey head
others find refuge
wild white brow
a January burden
Damn plows
hermetically sealed
yet again
better call
caffeinated grandkids
Latch in hand
quick glance up
confirms what bones
have already forecast
a January burden
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.
UNDER THE OVERPASS
A cool, nostalgic feeling
from overpass graffiti
High up, nearest the highway
Nirvana in skinny red
psychedelic mushrooms
full cartoonish ideal
Coming down, near the crab grass trail
Wu-Tang in symbol
marks another notch
a lineage of expressionistic vandalism
Climbing up
into the visual
this is where the needle skips
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.
MEAT MARKET
Squeeze tight
Punch, elbow
Kick if you like
Just get in
become
part of the undulating mass
of pent-up
raw sexual desire
Determination
exaltation
frustration
inebriation
The dance is liquid
with alcohol and sweat
The odorous musk of
five-dollar aftershave
rancid breath mints
leaky, suffocating pores
sickly sweet shooters
time-frozen carcinogens
An overpowering
desensitized mixture
which would not be tolerated
in normal, everyday life
A plane
a train
a classroom,
a grocery store
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.
Every night dark circles
under beautiful
bright eyes
reveal the latest secret to
her world
and dark blue finger tips
mask the furious
fresh past
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