Someday, old and baggy-sad
I’ll slip on air,
land on earth,
shatter shoulder, hip or pelvis,
plant my bones and sprout a stone above the ground
Or I will wear so thin and slight that light
will fade me out completely
I will then address all shades and spots as
brothers, nieces, long-dead mothers
All things old and treasured,
patterned silver, china, linens
doctors, deacons, soldiers, fathers
tucked away, brought out and shown
on holidays
The wheels I rode up dusty roads
turn over, down, dip low again,
revolve
bow, splinter at the spokes, crack
collapsing under load of threadbare gown
and plastic tubing.
Deported of all other cargo long ago,
I bear through black dream night no burden
but memory –
a crying child, a shame-faced fight,
dignity, cowardice, cold water, red leaves,
silver-white streets slick with morning rain,
unanswered prayers, unknown replies,
all sin and honor,
Big hands, tar-stained,
that lift and throw me high, aloft,
The girl who sat in front of Max one row over could crack her knuckles in five different ways. None of them seemed to work for Max. He watched now as she carelessly grasped two fingers at once: she was about to do the double crack. He followed her actions with his own hands—secretly, under his desk—but twist as he might, his own performance remained a noiseless pantomime of the brief staccato across the aisle.
Alone that night in his room, he tested a new resolve. He must just never have tried hard enough. The simplest method seemed to be a straight-out pull, gripping around the second knuckle to crack the third. He chose his left middle finger as the most promising candidate. Pull once . . . pull again, harder . . . nothing. If he was honest with himself, though, he still wasn’t using his full strength. The third time he braced his wrists against his ribcage, elbows to the side, eyes to the ceiling, and pulled out and back with his whole arms and shoulders. Pop!
No. This was wrong. His hands had flown apart, and there was the finger, still locked in his right fist, and there were the four remaining fingers of his left hand splayed two to a side and shaking. In a panic, almost without thinking, he rammed the middle finger back onto its stub: with a snap. And there it stood again as though it had never left—except, that is, for a bright, thin ring of blood all the way around, circling the place where seconds before his flesh had given way to emptiness. Bewildered, he stroked the length of the finger, front and back, and felt every touch. The finger still curled and extended in unison with the rest of the hand, or in a ripple, and it wiggled side to side at his brain’s command. He licked the blood clean, where he could reach, and stared. It stung a little: almost like a paper cut, but he imagined that he could feel the sting all the way through.
For the first time in his life, Maxwell began to suspect that he was not entirely human.
Hour after hour, her fingers dance on the keyboard. Rarely, she glances
around, and only hastily does she get up to hunt around for snacks, which
she consumes quickly. There are pizza-stained paper plates on the counter
and empty cereal bowls on the floor, spoons glued into the hardened milk.
When her hair slips from its ponytail, she deftly pulls it back out of the
way, and resumes typing.
On late into the night she types, and when her eyes will stay open no longer
she throws herself on the couch and sleeps in her clothing, teeth unbrushed,
mouth open, snoring. As light creeps back into the disheveled room, she
rises, guzzles some milk from the jug, and continues typing.
After many days, her fingers stall. She types a few more words, hesitates,
and stops. She looks around, rubs her eyes, stretches. She stares at the
walls and ceiling. She knits her fingers. She stands, paces the room -
notices the empty bowls, the greasy plates. Slowly, she moves through the
room, gathering debris and carrying it to the trash, the dishwasher. She
opens the blinds. She tilts her head, as though listening for an inner
voice - but seems to hear nothing.
More days unfold. The apartment is tidy, the crumbs vacuumed, the counters
wiped. From time to time she sits in front of the computer, her fingers
perched on the keys - but the fingers remain still. She slumps in her
chair, sighs, and gets up to straighten a pile of books into a neat stack.
Then one morning, as suddenly as it had departed, the muse returns. The mad
typing resumes. She smiles, lifts one hand briefly to stroke her ponytail,
types.
She clicks on her printer, and the loose papers churn out. She gathers them
into a pile, its solid heft resting comfortably on her desk. The cover
sheet, printed in size 36 font, is visible from across the room:
“Ron Bites It: Harry and Hermione’s True Love Story”
A stripe of smoldering macadam from curb to curb, the air heady and saturated with gasoline vapor. The boys jump through heat waves that shimmer as thinly as the sun at the horizon. With every leap the rubber soles of their Air Jordans or Reebok Pumps grow more gooey. Girls with long bangs and french braids squeal, breathing heated antics into atavistic splendor. Beneath the cool concrete and Kentucky Bluegrass, low under the street black as wild vanilla, pleasures warm as dusk await. The howling thickens like manioc and every pulse becomes a drumbeat, remembering an ancient rhythm composed by capricious devils hooked of nose, cruel of face, red of eye and white teeth that flash and gleam like ivory spear points. Old men, pathetic, waxen skin, sneer at wasted hydrocarbons. Old women who never see the faces in the flames, arms folded over drooping bosoms, shout for their sons to come inside. In rooms painted antiseptic shades of pink and beige, coffins for the living lined with polyester, wicker, teak, slouching towards our stereos we hold our cathode torches high and in blue light at 30 hertz we walk a path of carpets, ankle deep in high celestial shag. The devils were never in the smoke and flames, but hide in pale and cunning forms, tasteful knobs, blinking faces of distraction. There is more life in every leap outdoors, in every curling flame, in all the darkness under the sky than in the tungsten-lit tombs they call home; young people had better die indoors.
I wake–it seems I had fallen asleep
On watch at the top of the hill.
I think how as the sun has set,
I’ve lost my own shadow in the Earth’s.
The day has moved it’s face
To look upon the fires far away.
From there, the last of the news that we heard
Came as rustling of the trees in the wind.
We hoped, and held to the last of our breath,
Then sighed, and shut the panes against the rain,
Till there came a clear and calm,
And I climbed to watch the orange turn to blue.
Sometimes,
when the winds hush,
You brace yourself
For the eye to pass,
And the far wall’s rush
To send its blast,
Driving you back
To the shelter.
But oh, this is no such storm.
For lo, forming as I watch,
A light appears
At the end of the lake.
My poor heart breaks
For pure joy’s sake.
They’re coming home!
They’re coming home at last!
My signal flares,
The town responds.
The midnight blue
Erupts in orange:
Fireworks–
The fire of peace.
The townfolk rush
To drown the docks,
And meet the waves
Of the final wake
Of the mighty ship
On its final call to port,
Never, never again to debark.
We’ll no more shut our eyes against the dark.
Awake, awake, everyone down to the lake!
Awake, awake, everyone down to the lake!
When I was a little kid
Riding in the car,
Sometimes I’d look to see
No hands upon the wheel.
No parent in the seat,
Nobody to slow it down,
Strapped too tight
To reach up front
And take the wheel–
I hope we stay on the road.
On my first day of class
I opened my front door.
Southbound birds and falling leaves
Swirled beneath my feet.
Further at the foot of the cliff,
The sea devoured the rain.
The closing sky took a heavy breath,
My vision swam,
I fell with a splash to my desk.
All throughout the day
The lightning bolts were too far away,
And I couldn’t see
To find my way to shore, but I
Knew there was an end,
Though the means ran thick with ashes and dust.
I swam with the current
Till the waters rolled more pure.
And now I’m older and smart,
With my own hands on the wheel,
But I’m not far down the road before I’m
Slamming on the breaks,
Spinning the car around.
I come to a sliding stop
To face the setting sun.
It’s burning a way through the frozen haze.
The world is turning in a drunken craze.
I should be afraid,
I should dig in my heals,
I should like to get off,
But I’ve learned enought that I
Know there is an end
Though the means run thick with ashes and dust.
I’ll Swim with the current
Till the waters roll more pure.
And now I’m older and smart,
With my own hands on the wheel,
But I’m not far down the road before I
Halt.
Stop.
But the Earth turns over again,
And the filthy slush slides away
Over the edge, lost
In the night pit.
Oh let it fall,
Oh let it fall
Un-mourned.
Only save up your tears for the dawn
When He’ll loosen His grip on the thorns,
And the petals fall into drifts
At the side of the road,
A soft landing for all the lost and aimless cars.
Another new contributor, Acheté, my brother of the sterling tongue, has joined The Buttered Slice. Excellence in poetry and language are his; he wrote the piece below, titled Gravity. We’re thrilled to have his gifts at our disposal. Please read more about him at the Contributors page.
