The Ugly Diphthong

Ovulation

2012-02-16T05:09:00.002-06:00

It's like an egg.
A hard, round shell
With an in-side and an out-side,
And whichever side is the in-side or the out-side
Is up to you.
To get from one side to the other
You have to break the shell.
But if you break it, you won't be able to see it anymore,
Except in pieces of shell and yolk and white and embryo.
But if you break it, the in-side and the out-side
Become the same side,
And you can see that there are no two places after all,
Just a egg.

Man, listen:
It holds it all together,
But it doesn't change what it is.

See, you began inside,
Nourished by the mother,
Brooded by warm breast,
Growing strong inside,
Like a bull.
But the shell was a real pain in the ass,
And as your heart grew and pumped blood,
And as your spine grew long and strong,
And as your legs grew restless
Because they grew larger than the space inside,
The shell cracked,
And we all celebrated because you left the egg,
And no one murmured, "Mind the shell."

Girl, listen:
Inside is a safe place to live,
But it is a safe place to die, too.

Moon Worship

2012-02-07T01:25:00.000-06:00

She illumines darkness

Without breaking it.

Revealing shadows

Of things, unknown.

Gently, she glides,

Witness of sorrow,

Angel of darkness,

Mountain of emptiness.

Milky, white, smooth,

Round, bright face.

Perfect in dimension,

Eternal in beauty.

Empress of Midnight:

To touch your face

Men have ridden gods

Of fire and metal

To bury foot-print in

Moon dust once,

But look now to Mars,

Beyond, Europa--

Yet she circles round me still

Each night. Sometimes

Seen, sometimes, not.

But you are here.

And you are beautiful,

Bright moon, full moon,

Daughter of beauty,

Virgin of the forest,

Sister to Apollo,

Reckless in love,

Guardian of daughters,

Keeper of night.

To you, bright queen,

Doth my heart bend

As the moon bends

The tides.

To you, inconstant mother,

Will I grapple with lads

To be the fastest and strongest

Of schoolboys.

To you, dark sister,

I reconcile my bright spirit.

Wounded, gnostics, we

Who feel the pain of beauty,

Grave illuminescence,

Unbearable whiteness,

Speck of stardust

In a sea of black.

Another Look: Spacetime

2012-01-03T03:22:00.000-06:00

In a couple moments from now,
The world will become a much different place
For many.

Some will become alive for the first time,
And some will become dead for the first time,
Which will be extraordinary experiences for those people.

And animals and plants, too, I suppose.

But in the same moments,
Not much will change for many others.

Some, for example, will finish writing poems,
While others, for example, will finish reading them,
And both will remain quite unchanged, indeed.

Regard

2011-03-13T04:28:00.003-05:00

At first, people smell you with great satisfaction.
Inhaling your pleasant newbornness like perfume.
Held high to their breasts,
Snuggling their noses into your wispy hair.
Pressed tightly to their chests.

They coochie-coochie-coo you,
Delighted by your weightlessness
And odorless feces.

You repay them with gurgle and gasp and--
If they are lucky, a smile
(Or passed gas).

Later, much later, your smell becomes fetid and stale,
And passers-by ask themselves if they can hold their breaths
For more than seven seconds.
But slowly, irresolutely,
They inhale your rankness in short, furtive sniffs,
Guarding their noses against the assault of you.

Eyes turned down, they avoid acknowledging you,
As you sit in a wheelchair near the sliding doors of the facility,
Wearing a polyester shirt,
Sweatpants,
And no-slip socks.

They disregard you,
Offended by your weightlessness
And toothless gums.

You repay them with gurgle and gasp and--
If you are lucky, a smile
(Or passed gas).

As you wait,
Alone, to die.

(On what day did you pass from adorable to ugly?)
(At what hour did your relevance end?)

This Is for You

2011-03-13T04:15:00.001-05:00

You, friend, are with me.
I am with you, too.
There is no violence between us, now.
We have passed from the days of discontent, have we not?
Let us now be hopeful,
And let us enjoy these moments while we live.
Is there time for any other endeavor?
Is love not enough?
Need we to supplement our time with contention?
Need we raise our spirits with vitriol?

Let us kiss each other instead on the mouths.
There hatred ceases.
There violence ends.

Dreams

2011-02-03T20:22:00.000-06:00

The other day
A man shot me in the face.
It was a dream
But it was still scary.

Really scary.

The Rock in the Meadow

2011-01-28T22:21:00.000-06:00

There once was a rock in a meadow. It was large, for a rock, but too small to be called a boulder. It sat in the meadow for a long, long time.

One day, a daffodil sprang up beside the rock.

"Hullo! What's this?!" the rock cried. But the daffodil did not respond.

What does it mean, you ask.

Rocks can't talk, silly.

Consummation

2011-01-27T21:37:00.000-06:00

To you who know that to love a man is to suffer his blows:

To be wanted you tread on serpents. To be desired, you present yourself to the tiger.

Ravished, consumed. Entombed in the belly of the beast.

Discarded.

Whisper to me, and I will sing for you. Call out to me and I will rescue you.

Not to consume. Not to ravish. Not to protect.

Only to lift you toward infinity, where all of you that was eclipsed will blind all

Who suffer to bear your radiance.

Present yourself not to the beast who consumes and discards,

But to your own glory.

Present yourself not to a man, but to gods, who invite you to reign over all creation

In beauty, and in power.

In great fearfulness,

In terror and ecstasy ascend the heavens:

You, uncovered, will blind us.

You, exalted, will cause all to desire you,

And our hearts will be yours to consume.

You, once loved, be loved once more,

In the fullness of you.

Gate H12

2011-01-17T08:09:00.001-06:00

She sits on a throne.
Ponytail pulled tight
As brassy loops
Dangle from sassy lobes.

5:20 in the morning,
Brown, velveteen boots
Slide up to knees, and thighs
Disappear into pleated cotton-poly skirt,

Commanding our attention.
Beige turtleneck and golden scarf,
Demure black petticoat,
Queen of Terminal 3.

We wait here at your leisure,
As you hide behind your touchscreen,
And sip coffee furtively,
Wetting your lips.

Upon Receiving an Oil Canvas, December 2010

2010-12-30T13:35:00.004-06:00

Had Dorothea Lange visited Claremont, Illinois in 1943,

She could have photographed my grandfather, Estes,

Feeding cows from slop bucket

While white chickens watched, waiting for kernels of corn.

Old, black cow stands 15 hands at hip;

Bloated teets sag tiredly from sharp, gaunt pelvis;

As white calf suckles, mother feeds from

Pail of farmer.

There is a thumbprint.

There is an underexposure of adhesive backing.

There is movement of a satisfied steer

Meandering off frame right.

There is a split-rail fence.

There is a straw hat.

There is a wedding ring on the left hand of my grandfather,

Who died in 1997.

I hold this photograph in memory of time not so long ago,

But before my own memory:

There was time before you, it says, and there is time after.

And there were many years more inside mind of man.

Not so many, for poultry, now dead,
Fine Sunday dinner, crisp fried in glossy bottom

Of iron skillet.

Nor many, for beeves, butchered now, swallowed now,

Ground into hamburger, or cooked long in gravies,

Well done.

Yet they were, once--with grasses that are now gone,

Fence rows, now gone,

Man in bib overalls, too,

Now Gone.

Where, now, is Florence Owens Thompson?

Where, now, is Estes Mervin Atkins?

Where, now, is Dorothea Margaretta Lange?

Where, now, is the person who left a thumbprint on a still wet glossy?

Kathlynn, you too have joined in this succession,

Of people who have documented

And of people who have been documented.

There is something left of you, too,

Still, here on my wall, an oil painting, trichromatic, smells like

Southeast Richland county,

In August, as weeds grow up around fenceposts,

Hiding crickets from hungry white chickens that scratched earth.

While calf suckles and cow chews cud

And farmer--frozen in time--lives in

Photograph, and painting, and memory

Of Claremont, Illinois in 1943.

Beatbox

2010-12-05T17:46:00.001-06:00

There is a story in the news about keeping hearts fresh
After harvesting them from corpses.
They beat for a while in a box:
A beatbox, I guess.

Here in this box,
The dead heart beats
Until it is placed inside a living body:
A different kind of beatbox.

How long will it live there
No one can guess.
Maybe it will be cut out again,
Replaced by a beatier heart.

Does the poet need to call attention to this?
Is this not a strange and magical world?
Full of Tin Men,
Full of beatboxes?

There is a ticking inside my heart, too.
But when my box dies,
Cut out this heart and feed it to blackbirds,
Crows and ravens.

And if they will not have it,
Feed it to the vultures,
Who know better than anyone about
The making of life from corpses.

My heart, then, will return to its brothers
Who eat life and make life,
Eating and beating upon itself as
Uroboros or Chronophage.

The beating never stops.

On a Friday Night

2010-11-19T22:19:00.000-06:00

The fireplace crackles with explosion of steam and cellulose,
Snapping like bubble wrap,
And there lies Joe, old dog, best dog,
Warm and arthritic.

Proposition Joe is no replacement for Avon Barksdale.
Marlo is no Stringer Bell.
The fourth season was mostly wasted.
Here I begin, with Joe, my evaluation of Season Five.

God, make it mean something--
Like Tony Soprano meant to me:
To be aware of our own storiness
Is no small feat.

Nathan Fisher, too, taught me this:
To live for today,
For this fire,
For my beautiful and loyal yellow dog,

Who warms himself by this fire,
Orange and yellow and red and crackly,
In Autumn,
On a Friday night.

Snow Leopard

2010-11-17T21:30:00.002-06:00

My laptop tells me I have seven minutes left on my battery.
It's nice to know how much time I have left, but it makes me worry that I won't get the job done.
Or that I'll finish this poem before it's good and ready.

Half-baked.

After all, we had sworn that we would forget all the Spanish that we had ever learned--
That time when we snuck back across the border, from Mexico.
Pounding the pavement. Sun scorching the crown of our heads.

I have only five minutes left, which is good to know.

Then there was that other time, when we came back from Canadia,
And those portly security police gave us the business
Threatening us with a $20,000 fine.

Four.

Do you think it will be that way on the other side?
When we cross the border again,
The final time?

Three.

Even when you are expecting it, it goes quicker than you hope.

Two.

And so much is left undone. Unsaid.

One.

It really won't make much sense.

In the end.

Occupancy

2010-11-03T21:17:00.000-05:00

There is nothing

As fulfilling

As emptiness.

A heart acutely aware of its own vacancy,

Leaves no room

For occupancy

Of joy,

Of contentment,

Of pride,

Of satisfaction,

Of love.

The heart must break to make room.

October

2010-10-29T16:40:00.004-05:00

It's always so depressing when October comes and goes,
Passing without a whisper,
Sneaking upon us like children holding toilet paper
Behind prickly, twiggy bushes.

I tried to get your attention the other day
To tell you about how I was feeling about all of this,
But you were busy, it seemed to me, and I was busy, too, I suppose.
Thus, it passed.

Instead, I shuffled through the brown oak leaves that were
Filling up the ditches and overflowing the sidewalks,
Falling from the old pin oak in my father's front yard,
Where grey squirrels bark as acorns drop like hailstones.

Looking down the street, I saw November coming quickly,
And I wished I had bothered to make you listen before it was too late.
But that is the way it goes, I suppose,
In October, as we walk too hastily toward winter, in all the confidence of summer.

When You Need to Write, but Cannot, Go Garrison Keillor

2010-09-29T17:13:00.002-05:00

There's this fly that keeps buzzing around my face. It lands on the rim of my mug and licks brown dried coffee stains with its proboscis. I shoo it, and it flies, landing on a letter from my attorney that lies on my desk: "Put this document in a safe place," the letter reads.

There is nothing nutritious about this sheet of bleached white paper from this law office, or there must not be, because the fly zooms off again in another direction, this time landing on my toes, where there are all sorts of deliciousness, or there must be, for that fly keeps flying away and returning with such determination, such persistence, such elegant clumsiness. So ticklishly it licks the tip of my pinky toe, till I swat it away again, and it lands upon the corner of my lip, where I thhbbt! it from my face.

It lights upon the back of my right hand, and I imagine splatting her with the open palm of my left--and I would, too, if the thought of fly guts on my hands were not more repulsive than the truth of them kissing my lips, or drinking my coffee, or licking my toes. There are annoyances I am willing to live with.

Such as this fly, or my mother-in-law, for example. Neither one so horrible as to move me to change my situation completely, but just horrible enough to make me feel slightly unsettled. And neither annoyance constant, no. The phone rings, and she asks to speak to her daughter, and for a moment I feel as if perhaps there is no danger. No unpleasantness. Only love, and warmth, and "How are you?" and "I am fine. How are you?" and "Just fine, thank you."

But minutes, or perhaps hours later, perhaps in the calm stillness of my soft, king-sized bed where I sleep comfortably at nights beneath a down blanket, next to my beautiful wife of thirteen years--there, in the dark and quiet of a soon-to-be-sleep, and quite possibly at the first glimmer, the very first inkling of a lucid dream about pistachio pudding and beaches, beautiful white, sandy beaches in the Caribbean--no, Malaysia--with coconuts and volcanoes and pirates hunting for treasure with Johnny Depp and for some strange reason Greta Van Susteren--I am awakened by a beautiful, beautiful woman, yes, but also angry, very angry woman, who wants to speak to me about something that my mother-in-law said, something that is very, very important to speak about, at exactly eleven forty-three p.m. on a Tuesday night.

And several hours later, as I close my eyes to try to sleep again, I cannot seem to put the O. J. Simpson trial out of my mind, nor can I explain my sudden craving for pistachio pudding and I wonder if perhaps, but doubtfully so, there might be a box of pistachio pudding in the pantry.

Reticence

2010-09-06T01:50:00.001-05:00

Sometimes
What you meant to say
Was the farthest thing from your mind.
Other times,
Though,
There are things
You never should have said.
Such as this--
Or that other thing--
That you regretted.

How fortunate it is
To recognize the difference
Between earnestness
And desperation.

Return to Sheol

2010-08-26T22:55:00.001-05:00

On a jagged outcropping of rock I stand
Surveying the battle scar.

The valley is one deep wound,

All one mass of misery, a compendium of humanity,

Like the emptiness left by the scratch of a fingernail,

Filling with blood.

Look! the Voice whispers.

A boy of eighty-three years inhales shallowly, in his last moments recalling the softness of his mother's lap, the smoothness of the yellow print dress with flowers of purple and magenta, the aroma of sugar and oil and daisies in her perfume.

A girl cannot remember the day she became a grandmother. The morning she collected dewberries with her sisters, and the hot mists of summer rose above the buzzing grasses at dawn. This was the same day she lost her third child--was it not? When he left his wife and his children at the dinner table, and hanged himself in the outhouse.

What is this? the Voice asks.

Each body is mangled. All faces contorted. There is no hope for them in the dust.

Cohort

2010-06-19T22:24:00.001-05:00

Here it is:

We walk this planet alone together.

Some of us will live.

Some of us will die.

And others will follow.

Today you join me in this cohort of strangers,

Each to his own,

Like passengers on a train,

Moving in all directions

All at once.

I approached you on the train and asked for a cigarette,

But you said you didn't smoke.

So I smiled politely, put my hands into my pockets, and returned to my seat.

The conductor stopped the train, and you left without looking at me.

I remained in my seat, and waited for my stop,

Looking around at strangers,

Hoping for someone to share a cigarette

With.

O Caminho Do Rio

2010-06-12T08:54:00.013-05:00

A woman wants to move a man to do great things. She wants him to desire her. She wants to be his sustenance and his source, to be the river to which he always returns.

She is the stream upon which he wanders to distant places, his path to destiny and his path home.

Like a mighty current she sweeps men away from herself, delighting only in those who dare to breach her.

His body is strong, and she surrounds him without nimbleness. Her only power is to pour over him and resist his return, to compel him to his greatness.

To feel him inside of herself, to watch him beat his arms and kick his legs into her, to see him gasp for air as she suffocates him: these are her desires.

A woman draws a man into herself, and he cannot resist. He must fight to enter her, to bury himself inside of her and swim into her womb.

A fool believes he will reach her at the end of his long journey, but she laughs at him, knowing her great pleasure was to be the current in which he swam all along.

It is not love she wants. She scorns valentines and roses. She is stronger than you imagined, and more treacherous.

Though she flows gracefully, and though her surface appears still and peaceful, do not forget her great depths, nor the dangers than lurk in her hidden places.

This is passion: a man struggles to reach the heart of a woman, though she resists him like the waters of the Mississippi.

Man, do not weep, for she is always with you. She is the force which carries you, and she is your path home.

She sweeps over you like a great flood, and who is not brave enough to endure her is washed into the sea.

Atirat

2010-06-05T10:52:00.002-05:00

Listen:

You drawers of spiritual diagrams,
You fourth Century monks, CE, BCE . . .

You systematic theologians,

You translators of apochryphal texts,

You spiritual counselors,

You bald priests in red robes,

You suited, sweat-faced evangelists,

You youth ministers with baseball caps and cargo shorts,

Listen, you abnegates, and I will teach you abnegation:

I have tried to love a woman

In the Holy Place,

Tie bells to my ankles.

Tie a noose around my waist.

She is the God I worship,

That I carry in my Ark.

My God my name has taken.

My God has borne my mark.

She is terrible and holy,

She has burned me with her fire.

But no shewbread fills my stomach,

Nor wine quench my desire.

You said: Wives, obey your husbands;

Husbands, love your wives.

You said: Eve had tempted Adam.

Serpents, women, lies.

But she is too terrible for your doctrines.

I cannot hold her.

She is a force too strong for me

Too imperfect for my poetry.
Too far beyond the scope of your doxology.

I cannot mold her.

She is a clay unmoldable.

You said: Go to the Potter's House.

And destroy her.

And be happy with her destruction.

You said: Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom, and have children of whoredom.

You said: Go, love a woman who is loved by another man and who is an adulteress.

And you bought one for fifteen shekels.

But my woman is not mine:

I can not contain her.
She will not dance for shekels,
But for John the Baptist's head.

She is a force.

She moves me against my will.

I look for her here and there, but I do not find her.

You should have said: Go, give yourself to a woman and offer children to her.

You should have said: Go, love a woman who is loved by another woman and who is loved by all men.

And give your soul to her.

Then, I would have found contentment
In her lap.

Hairs on a Head

2010-05-03T22:12:00.001-05:00

I found a dead bird in my basement tonight--
An odd final resting place for a sparrow.
It had been creating a stink in my bathroom,
Oozing through the floorboards and into my nostrils,
Seeking escape from the cold and damp,
Demanding to be missed.

One Fourteen

2010-04-14T23:06:00.001-05:00

On most days,
One fourteen passes unnoticed.

But today I saw it,
And time stood still.

I held it under my power, and it did not move
For forty-three seconds.

Though it was my gift to you,
You did not notice.

Eight Movements on Sunday Morning

2010-04-11T12:46:00.003-05:00

1
April daffodils and a solitary blade of grass.
Eddies of breeze carry cheeps and twirps
Of cardinals and robins
As two houses away the grass is cut.
The dull roar of Briggs and Stratton
Fights against the barking of squirrels,
Blue violets and mustard weed.
Can the world awaken before it is trod down?
Winter's yellow grass is still not overtaken
Before this blade of grass is cut down to size,
Nor the last of the brown oak leaves raked and burnt:
Cain's sacrifice, less satisfying than the steaks
Put on the grill at noon.
A tall glass of iced tea.
St. Louis versus Milwaukee.

2
Twelve years old I begin.
At thirty-three no difference.
Nor should there be, nor can there be.
In the eyes there is no change,
Nor in the heart.
What enters the soul through the eyes, ears, lungs
Remains for an eternity of a single life.
Bluebirds, Red-winged Blackbirds, dusty cornfields
Mown down since October,
Leaving stock and stibble to scratch my shins against
As I walk into a patch of trees, where mushrooms grow.
Tiny morels, awakening from beneath the detritus,
They appear:
One and one and two and three.
Enough to fill a plastic sack I pull from my hip pocket.

3
Where are you now, Voice of Winter?
Where are you now, Dead Man?
Where is Golgotha and Sunday School?
It is there in the heart,
With mushrooms, and blackbirds, and daffodils,
Speaking audibly:
There are other words than these.
There are other ears.
It makes no difference.
I die, too, and lie down to detritus,
Feeding mushrooms,
Waiting to be picked by scamperers,
Feeding daffodils,
Waiting to be picked by girls in summer dresses
Where are you, Man of Silence?

4
The sparrow has taken note of me,
And she calls the alert to her partner
To protect their nest of three speckled eggs.
I would climb into the bushes to take down the nest
Of dead grasses woven together,
A fitting bed for new birth.
I would take the eggs into my hands and admire them
Despite their rancourousness.
When the shell is cracked, and the viscous ooze
Of protein and yolk
Stickies my fingers,
It will be another beginning and end of beginnings,
As it always has been
And never will be.
The wood bees are not pleased. The dog will destroy them.

5
But still there are things that must be done.
The toilet must be flushed. The dinnerware put away.
There is an order that can not be overturned.
And businessmen and businesswomen will seek advanced degrees
To enjoy steak on Sunday afternoon,
And the blade of grass will be cut by ZTR yard machines.
There is no difference.
The wildebeest is slain by the cheetah,
And the magpie by the fox,
Leaving a mess of feathers behind.
Poor birds. Poor cattle. Poor blade of grass.
Poor unhatched egg that lies crushed on the playground
As children, smiling, swing higher and higher,
Giggling,
In ecstasy of sun and breeze and songbirds.

6
In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was God.
It was with God.
The Word was God.
It was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him.
Nothing was made without Him.
In Him was Life,
And that Life was the Light of Man.
The Light shines in Darkness,
But the Darkness has not overcome It,
Nor has the It comprehended It.
Oh, indefatigable Word!
Oh, inexcusable Darkness!
Oh, irreconcilable Knowing!

7
Twelve planets aligned in a far away solar system,
On which there may or may not have been single-cellular organisms.
But the alignment meant very much to those of us who gaze upon the Heavens
Through telescopes and horoscopes,
Searching for the Word
In bricks and mortar and Pyramids of Giza.
I saw one one, once: a spaceship.
It fell down silently, but the songbirds took no note of it.
Still, there was Golgotha,
But the blade of grass took no notice either.
Nor should it, being itself of the Plant Kingdom,
And without Soul,
Without the Blood of the Testimony,
And with no need of reconciliation
To the Word.

8
All you laborers and lovers, hear me!
All you who dance and sing, hear me!
All you who cut grass and flush toilets, hear me!
All you who sing hymns and spirituals, hear me!
All you who rob nests, hear me!
All you who look skyward, hear me!
I do not not cease!
I do not begin!
Nor do I cease to begin!
A blade of grass.
A sparrow's egg.
My hands, my feet, my side.
Let us take communion with each other,
Glutting ourselves with bread and blood.
There is hope yet for us.

Calhoun

2010-04-09T07:30:00.001-05:00

Does Paris change the taste of an egg,
steam from this bathtub,
moonlight on your skin,
lightheadedness from a cigarette,
the softness of your lips?

Had the Parisii settled the Bonpas
instead of the Seine,
perhaps these things--
your breath on my neck,
the aroma of smoked sausages,
mist rising from cornfields at dawn--
would have moved me
to tears.

Possum

2010-04-07T17:09:00.005-05:00

Here is a story from a few years ago. Many of you already know it. Forgive me for the formatting: I copied it from a txt file and the spacing is messed up, but not so much that it is worth fixing. We just moved back into this house "temporarily" until we figure out our next step. Yes, the bats have returned.

In our house is an attic. It's not your conventional pull-down attic:
it's almost like it was conceived as a separate upstairs but never
finished. The door to the attic is in my daughters' room. It leads to
a set of stairs that climbs up to a large opening. There are lots of
gables and dormers in my house, so there are a variety of nooks and
crannies up there. It even has real windows that slide up and down,
and sometimes I will leave these windows wide open to keep the
house cool. But the windows are rotted and there are
gaps in the woodwork here and there: I have had problems with bats in
the past, and there is plenty of guano up there to attest to it.

Like any attic, rafters across the floor are filled with
insulation, and there are loose tongue-and-groove boards
lying across it, but they are not screwed down. Sometimes
my cats will get upstairs and bounce around on the loose floorboards
causing a big racket. It's a nice place to sit and smoke a pipe, read
a book, and especially to store stuff. It could probably hold about
two semi trailers full of junk, and I have books and old clothes piled
all over the place. I even have an old 386 computer up there that I have
used for word processing. In fact, I wrote this story on it.

I actually killed some bats up there once. When you go up the
stairs, sometimes you can see shadows swooping back and forth in the
incandescence of the lightbulbs. No matter how brave I feel, it
always really freaks me out when a bat starts whipping around while I
am up there. The ceiling, which is nothing more than the underside of
the roof, has been "insulated" with some weird cardboard stuff. I
don't know what it is called, but it is what publishers used to use to
print newspapers. It has raised, three-dimensional print and images on it,
but it is obviously newspaper content. They are so old that you can't read
anything off them, but they are certainly old master rolls from some
news operation, and they have been tacked up to the ceiling for so long
that many of them have begun drooping, providing about a thousand various
crevices for bats to use as nests.

One day I was tooling around up there when a bat swooped by my head.
After wiping the stains from my underwear, I noticed that the bat came to
rest behind one of these newspaper crevices. I got up the nerve to
look closer and saw a small pile of guano piling directly underneath
the spot where the bat had flown in. After about an hour of dry-heaving, I
worked up the courage to peek behind the old newspaper stock to see
if, indeed, the bat were still in there. I gently pulled back the paper
and shone the beam from my dimming Mag-Lite in the hole to find six
beady eyes staring back at me. I could even sort of "feel" the bats
sonaring me; it's kind of hard to explain, but it kind of sounds like
someone clicking their tongue at you 20 times a second.

So I did what any red blooded republican would do. I got my staple gun
and an iron skillet. I'm sure you can imagine what comes next, but I
won't make you.

I gently put the news stock back in place and stapled it against
the ceiling to trap the varmints in place. Then, I took the nine-inch
iron skillet, and like a veteran tee-ball player, took four or five practice
aims before I waylaid their louse-ridden asses. When I was sure--and
I mean sure--they were dead, I pulled back the paper for a body count
to find six pancaked bats. That was earlier in the summer.

Still, though, I was hearing noises in the attic, and I would find
more guano around, so I knew there were still a few bats hiding up
there. Also, I was beginning to suspect I had a mouse problem.
Sometimes the girls would wake up in the middle of the night
completely freaked out. I assumed they were having nightmares. But
when I slept in their bed one night, I awoke to a horrendous
scratching noise on the inside of their wall. Even thinking about it
now gives me the shivers. Also, I started seeing droppings on our
kitchen counter. So I put two and two together and bought some mouse
traps and baited them with peanut butter. After three nights and three
cleanly licked traps, I became frustrated: the traps wouldn't go
off. I had to adjust the spring-loaded contraptions so much that it was difficult to set
them down without springing them, but eventually it worked. After the fourth
night, I finally caught me a big, fat mouse.

So I thought my critter days were finished. But last night I kept
hearing noises in the attic. I looked around downstairs and found both
of my cats, so I had no idea what I was hearing upstairs. It really
did sound too big to be a mouse, unless it knocked a baseball off a
shelf. But I went upstairs to inspect and found nothing. Everything
appeared to be in place, and nothing was disturbed, so I went back
downstairs. Still, I thought I was hearing something, so I went up
again. Again, though, I saw nothing. But something was very wrong. My
386 had been turned on, and its cooling fan was whirring like a Volkswagen.
This really freaked me out. It almost seemed impossible that someone
had not climbed into one of my attic windows to snoop around. But I
couldn't see anybody.

I have some guns, but they are in the attic and locked with
combination padlocks in a rifle case. I thought about getting one out,
but I didn't want to look like I was heading for a weapon if someone
actually were hiding. I was also very skittish about loading a gun in a house
with my children present. So, I just let them lay. I turned off the
computer, looked around a little, then announced audibly, "If you
leave my house right now, I will let you go without a problem. But if
you walk down these stairs later tonight, I will shoot you."

I paused to listen for movement, but I heard none. So I went back down
the stairs, looked up toward the lightbulb at the top of the stairs,
flicked the switch, and shut the door.

Fifteen minutes later, my curiosity had overwhelmed me, so I went back
to the attic to have another look. This time, however, I found my
villain. There was a possum (or an o-possum for those of you in the
city) sitting by the window looking as if she wanted out for her
nocturnal forage. I had been in the attic smoking a pipe earlier in
the day, and after I finished I closed the window. But the window has
been open for most of the summer. Apparently, this possum had been
making a home out of my attic all summer long, and I had spoiled her
routine by blocking her nightly exit. For a minute or two we had
ourselves a standoff, but then she turned to the side and waddled to
a loose floorboard where she retreated to a hiding place in the attic
floor.

Ok. It all makes sense. I had suspected as much, but I didn't really
want to believe it. But now I not only had the problem of having a
possum in my attic, I also had the problem of knowing I have a possum
in my attic--a problem which is much worse than the former.

What could I do? The simple answer would be to open the window. Surely
the possum would go out for the night. But then, how would I know
whether or not he had returned in the morning. It was a problem. It
was also 11:00 p.m., and I had to work in the morning. Still, I
couldn't really let sleeping marsupials lie; I had to take action. So
back upstairs I went.

Phase #1: Recon. Search and discover enemy hideout. Luckily, it
didn't take much time. I found the hole into which the girl
disappeared during our first encounter. A loose board had uncovered a
gap between two rafters that ran across the floor of the attic. For
some reason or another, these rafters were only separated by about 8
inches, and this created a long, straight "burrow" beneath the attic
floorboards. Upon close inspection, it didn't take long to pinpoint
the lady's exact location: her bristly hair was sticking up through a
narrow slit in the floorboards about 15 feet from the entrance to her
lair. As the bat flies, the possum was about 20 feet from the window.
Thus, the battlefield was laid out, and Phase 2 of Operation Possum
Sweep was quickly approaching.

Phase #2: Strategy. Quarantine and flush. I decided that I would begin
by trapping the bitch in her lair. I have a variety of spare boards
and drywall in the attic, so it didn't take me long to find two 8-inch
pieces to shove between the floorboards on each side of the enemy. She
didn't like it, and her growls began to mingle with a strong scent of
musk. As any warrior knows, you should never begin a war without a
plan to win the peace, so I prepared an exit-strategy. By lining-up a
corridor of boxes outside ground zero, I could remove one of the
floorboards to expose the Shelob and direct her in a path toward the
window. I quickly engineered this structure using old packing boxes
and tupperware tubs. Finally, I retrieved my broom just in case the
combatant didn't want to cooperate with my war plan. then, with the
strategy set, battlefield prepared, and weapons stocked, I prepared
for war.

Phase #3: D-Day. With the rat completely isolated and an exit tunnel
properly secured, it was time to open the hatch. Admittedly, I was
less than confident that I would enter a fray without injury, so the
moments leading up to the actual assault were rather harrowing. Slowly
and cautiously I pulled back the floorboard to expose the enemy, when
suddenly--nothing happened. The board I removed only exposed about 6
inches of the lair, and the old girl still had well over 12 inches
left to conceal herself, and with all the commotion she was content to
stay put. With this I remembered Eisenhower's famous line: no war plan
ever survives first contact with the enemy. We needed adjustments.

Phase #4: Chemical Warfare. I had to break the enemy's will, and
resolving that she had struck with her musky weapons first, I
considered which weapons to use against her. Bleach. I poured about a
half-cup of it through the cracks into her hiding place. Then, I
waited.

Phase #5: Wait. The chlorine didn't work as quickly as I had hoped,
but I could tell she didn't like it. She began to stick her nose
through the opening looking for fresh air, but she still wouldn't
budge from her den. The only answer was to add more bleach, and I did.
But still she wouldn't leave. I began to consider an all-out attack,
but this was dangerous and collateral damage was likely. Her den was
constructed between the rafters, and this meant that her weight was
being supported only by the square-foot ceiling tiles that are stapled
to the rafters from below. If too much force were exerted by either
side, there was a very real possibility of the possum falling through
the ceiling and landing on Veralee's bed. My wife, a long-time ally in
my War on Critterism, though supportive, was not as prepared as I was
to suffer casualties from this war. So I was in a tight predicament. I
considered retreat, and indeed, I was about to leave the battle until
morning when Queen Mab danced from her cave.

Phase #6: Combat. Though she stirred from hiding, my corridor proved
to be less directive than I had hoped. She easily sniffed out a
vulnerability and ran into open country, but she was still headed in
the direction of the window. Unfortunately, in the creation of a
corridor, I blocked off alternative access to the window, and just
when the ROUS finally appeared to be seeking an escape route, she
found her way blocked by a strong line of cardboard boxes. She
retreated into the bottom rack of a bookshelf a few feet from the
window, glaring back at my flashlight with her nocturnal eyes, and we
found ourselves again face to face, and deadlocked. But time was
running out. I had engaged the enemy successfully thus far in the
fight, and now was no time to turn back. IN--IN--IN I marched around
her with a broomstick in my left hand, a wooden rod in the other. I
taunted her with malicious swings at her face, and she only hissed,
hunched in defense. I quickly set to redefining the battlefield, and I
rearranged the corridor boxes into a line of defense that prevented
her escape to another area of the attic, or God forbid, beneath the
floorboards again, and she sat trapped, fully encircled, and
completely unmotivated to move two feet from safety. It looked as if
all hope was lost for a peaceful end to the conflict. I thought about
my .22 rifle. But then I turned to the only option reasonably left to
me: I toppled the bookshelf.

Phase #7: Post-War Resolutions. Bewildered and confused by chlorine
and the fog of war, Possie drunkenly waltzed from the wreckage toward
the window. Up on two feet she considered whether or not a retreat were
safer than her present circumstance, and six seconds later, climbed
leisurely out the window. I followed close behind, shining my
flashlight after her, but she disappeared into the darkness that sat
upon my rooftop. I shut the window, screwed it shut, and went to bed.

It was 1:30 a.m.

Good Friday

2010-04-02T08:38:00.001-05:00

Jesus Christ was 33 years old when the Roman soldiers nailed him to the cross.

Before that day, he was quite a public speaker.

Now, some 1,977 years later, I, too, am 33 years old,

But with much less public speaking experience,

And no cross to climb upon.

Yes, I am sorry. It is always this way.

2010-03-27T22:59:00.001-05:00

I love you.

   There, I've said it.

Life can now proceed so much more
   awkwardly

   now.

I hope you feel better

   now

   about

   all of this

now.

Hills Like A Break from Grading Online Essays

2010-03-12T20:29:00.001-06:00

"What are you working on?" the girl asked.

"The wrong thing," he replied.

"It's always that way," she huffed.

"Yeah. It is."

"So, whaddya gonna do about it?"

"Nothing, probably."

He kept his head down and would not look her in the eye.

"Can't you even just look at me when we're talking?"

"No. I don't suppose I can."

"And why not?"

"Seems like the right thing to do. It's not my style."

"Oh, you are a bore."

"Yes. I know."

The Fourteenth Way

2010-02-19T00:02:00.001-06:00

There were three things the blackbird told me:

Forget
Remember
Know

Which came first, I cannot recall. Which came last was Death.

I killed the blackbird, though. It kept screeching in my ear.

Writing Lesson #2

2010-02-12T18:03:00.004-06:00

Take something beautiful: a rose.
Place it next to something unbeautiful: a corpse.

a rose
a corpse

There is emotion in naming that does not require explication. Nor must you remind the reader of their father's father who was lying stiff and cold in a grey striped suit. They will find those places on their own. Nor need you remind them of pockets nor posies. They will remember the playground, or Aunt Sonia's gardens, or the undertaker, wheeling death from the hospital elevator under a blanket of red velvet.

Try another.

Take something mechanical: a conveyor belt.
Place it next to something biological: an earthworm.

a conveyor belt
an earthworm

Mess with the articles. Definite and indefinite change things.

a conveyor belt
the earthworm

Allow your reader to think for himself. Do not tell him that the conveyor belt is moving, slowly, nor that the worm is crawling, quickly, yet too slowly, nor that there is doom at the end, nor that there is a will moving the machine against the will moving, and crawling, and leaving a small, wet, slimy trail on the black rubber. Do not tell him that the worm is the conveyor; though that, too, is possible.

Take something abstract: forgetfulness.
Place it next to something concrete: coconuts

forgetfulness
coconuts

And do not tell the reader stories about gravity and slapstick cartoons, nor draw analogies between nut and brain. These things happen in multitudes, and there is no need for you to draw the distinctions so clearly. Nor should you force feed alliteration. Can you understand this, Evangeline? Or should I have called you Pyotr the Magnificent?

Hrumph! Are you disappointed that I did not say your name, Steve?

Cindy?

Frandreka?

Jelle Van Everdingen?

You must master the art of suggestion: Names are quite subjective.

Don't Put the Blame on You

2010-02-05T19:11:00.002-06:00

So you might ask: WHY AM I WRITING THIS? That's pretty much what I was thinking about it but here goes. STEP 1: WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION? Well, if there was something that a person (OK ME!) wanted to ask about it, then maybe it would be OK (like the CORRAL). So anyway. STEP 2: ASKING? If you knew someone who wanted a person who might be able to help, OK I'll just SAY IT. But when I would ask my mother, and then she would get upset, so I don't really ask as much. STEP 3: CAN A PERSON REALLY GUESS THE FUTURE? You know, a TIME MACHINE? And you might say no, but then again I don't know but in a way I DO because I am WRITING THIS. STEP 5: CLEANUP. Here goes, Did you ever notice that when someone wants something, and sometimes when they ask it takes them A LOT, but still when there is a lot of SMOKE then it takes a lot of TIME too for a first-grader. OK, nevermind about THAT. But that's really what it was in the first place. So anyway, the MAIN THING that it was is I wondering about the FUTURE (Jules VERN). And if someone could really go as fast in a Delorian as MICHAEL J. FOX with garbage in a nucular explosion then it would probably make fire. Because some people don't believe about the fire tracks like my brother did, but that is ANOTHER STORY. STEP 6: GOING BACK IN TIME: My brother and I used to play under the table with a sheet on the table and we HID from our MOM (AKA, NOT HAPPY). And maybe if a person (AKA, ME) could use a time machine, but then again it wouldn't happen as much. But I am not saying if it was MY fault (it WASN'T) but then again WHO KNOWS? OK, and that brings me to another thing: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? Just thinking about Aretha Franklin and it all makes sense: R-E-S-P-E-C-T! The only other thing was my brother because if I COULD (AKA: TIME MACHINE) then I would not have done it. But still, it was HIS fault.

A. D.

2010-01-31T23:57:00.007-06:00

It was the future, and the boy and girl were very old.

"Seems like we've been here before," he said.

"Yes, but it's beautiful," she replied. Her voice fell dead on a blanket of snow.

The sun was setting behind the Wisconsin tree line. Shards of light poured through the winter branches, like God escaping through clenched fists.

"Yeah, it is."

A snowflake fell between them.

It is the present, and the boy and girl are still very young.

"This is such a beautiful place," she sighed.

"Yes. It is."

He kicked into the sand with his boot, uncovering a shard of broken glass. She stared intently into the horizon. The sun rose through the mist: a pale ball of white behind the Lake Michigan fog. The girl walked into the mist, and disappeared.

Later, there was talking, and music, and tequila, and a glass of red wine. The boy with the guitar waited for a turn.

They stood on a stage in Little Rock. A mockingbird whistled in a Louisiana Live Oak.

In another time and another place, I went to the Gypsy and paid her five dollars. I asked her about the boy and the girl.

"What's you' sign, mistuh?" she asked.

I told her it was the Volcano.

"Ain't noboody gwine take duh Volcano," she said. Then she laughed at me and said that I had no business with the boy and the girl. But she kept the five-dollar bill.

It was later, and the songs were finished. The bartender was washing glasses, and hangers-on were mingling.

"I've seen this before," she said. "It was always so beautiful."

"Do you think anyone will remember it like this?" he asked.

She had no answer, so she lowered her eyes. He lit a cigarette and walked off the stage.

Now it's winter, and the geese are flying southward, down the Illinois Valley, down the Mississippi River, down toward Memphis. The air is biting.

"What's left?" she asks.

"Nothing, babe. Wasn't there to start, anyway."

"But didn't you see it?"

"Yeah. I did."

The train stopped in Balitmore. It was the end of the line. The conductor asked for their tickets, but they said they didn't have any, so he kicked them out of first class. They had to carry their gear to the 9:30 because they didn't have money for a cab.

"This is it, babe."

It wasn't as seedy as she'd imagined. Still, an odor lingered.

They played until midnight, and the manager paid them in cash. Afterwards, they returned to the conductor and gave him a hundred dollars for his trouble. They took a cab. When the train left for Phoenix, they stood on the tracks waving goodbye. From the caboose, the conductor waved a white handkerchief as he disappeared into the sunset.

"It's so beautiful here," she said.

"Yes," he said. "It's just like I remember it."

"Do you think anyone else is noticing this?"

"I am."

The boy picked up his guitar case and walked up the stairs to the platform. He sat alone on a bench and strummed an E chord, then walked his fingers down tinny strings with eerie twang. The girl stood on the tracks and lifted her chin, her cheeks illumined with golden red as thunder rolled from the West. Down in the holler, Blind Willie lifted his voice to the Volcano, and all the lovers trembled at the rending of the sky.

For Angie

2010-01-19T07:14:00.001-06:00

One
or Two
Is All

Three is One
And Two

All divisible by One
None divisible by None

All multiply into All
All add into All

There is One in Three
There is One in Four

More?

Not in Division.

All is more than we imagine.
We approach it discretely.

As One
And Two
And Three.

More is difficult.

Calculus

2010-01-12T18:49:00.003-06:00

Yin

There are two choices:
To create, or to not create.
Both are acts of creation,
And neither are choices.

Or maybe that's not true, too.

(Revision #1)

There is only one choice: To create.

(Revision #2)

Nobody knows what the hell is going on.

(Revision #3)

Josh McDowell once said: "Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."

(Revision #4)

Slice moon scold had Jew: "Acorn. Tree. Falcon. Talon. Fist. I. Destiny. Rust. Off. Active. Acorn."

(Revision #5)

Look for me under your boot-soles.

Yang

Ravenous

2010-01-09T12:04:00.001-06:00

The boiling swell of black feathers presaged unconscionable horror. Still, the Nothing left behind spoke a gruesomeness of its own. Yet in a whisper. Not a scream.

Writing Lesson #1

2010-01-06T06:36:00.001-06:00

My sister thinks she cannot write.
But then she wrote this:

"The earthworm/bandaid made me think of a sad story about a boy who thought if he put two frogs in a blender that he would end up with a really big frog."

Do this:

A happy young boy wanted a really big frog,
So he placed two frogs in a blender
And became a sad boy instead.

Or:

Two frogs
In one blender
Are not one frog
In one blender.
But they are, too.

Or:

When the blender erupted
In a WHIR! of splatter
And crushed bone,
Two toads became one,
But less toady.

Or:

To be blended
In a blender
Would be a bad way to die
For a frog
Or for a human being.

Or:

Several frogs that are blended together
Become indistinguishable

Or:

If I wanted a really big frog,
I would go to a pond, on a quiet farm
At night
With a large net
At the end of a long, bamboo stick.
In the black darkness
By the glassy reflection of moon on water
Surrounded by a cacophony
Of croak and ribbit and bulge,
I would lower my net
To the green giant
Who would struggle against capture,
Pulling the nylon web down, down, down
To the bottom of the pond
Into the blue and black and cold.
The giant's weight would bend the thin bamboo
In an elegant curve
As I pulled the king from his slimy citadel.
When I lifted him to the moonlight,
Regarding his blackness against the whiteness of the moon
While water dropped in rivulvets,
Retreating to the black water,
The shaft would not
Break
Like the bones of two toads
In an Osterizer.

Forget the Cheese

2010-01-04T20:52:00.001-06:00

I do not remember the first time I tasted Swiss cheese,

Poking my tongue through the flexible eyelets

Left behind from living gases.

However, that would be a remarkable memory--

One that I would like to recall.

Nor do I remember the first time I rode a bicycle

Without training wheels.

But I do remember that the bicycle was purple

And that I was very afraid

That my father would let go of the white banana seat.

Or was it yellow?

Other things I do not remember include:

The first time I made my mother cry--

Nor when she pulled my first tooth and made me cry--

Learning how to write in cursive

Unhooking my first fish.

Cutting my fingertips on sharp, tiny teeth.

But there are things I do remember, vividly:

Placing a band-aid on an earthworm I had cut into two pieces,

Drawing hand puppets on my fist in first grade,

Twirling my feet in the long, twisted phone cord

While my mother gossiped on Tuesday mornings.

Lost in conversation.

I also remember pulling a Morel from the moist, brown soil.

My father had found it first, and he had stopped me

From crushing it with my small foot.

I remember stealing a discarded cigarette from the side of a road,

And smoking it in the toolshed with my best friend.

The smoke poured out in white clouds.

What memories are left live in spaces I do not frequent.

They are immovable, yet most certainly suspect.

Stealing eggs from my grandmother's henhouse,

Splatting them against the grey wood of the weathered barn,

Yolks running in viscous rivulets.

My brother did it first.

But I do not remember poking my fingers through the holes of Swiss cheese

Past my knuckles to the palm,

Wiggling four fingers like a puppeteer,

And biting around the edges till no cheese remained, only fingers

In the empty spaces.

I can not remember this.

But I would like to.

Pachydermical

2009-12-27T21:00:00.003-06:00

If you close your eyes, you won't be able to read this.

But I would like for you to try.

Then you would know how the elephant feels:

Without understanding,

But much happier.

I Am Walt Whitman

2009-12-16T21:57:00.006-06:00

There is really no other reason to write, beyond this.

Have you ever felt a pop in the side of your neck that sent you into automatic ecstasy of pain--when you move your head just so, and in the side of your being begins a jolt of sensation so immediate, so complete, so impulsive--that you have no other choice but to accept your inadequate impotence?

Yes, these things happen.

But, of course, they are not all.

Children are born, and mothers laid to rest.

These things happen too.

A Prayer to St. Wallace

2009-12-05T01:08:00.005-06:00

I know you old man. And what I wonder is how you wondered without a keyboard at your fingertips.

I live my life in backspaces.

How did you touch that place with the permanent STAMP! of metal machine? The printing press? The die-cast word on ink-ribbon?

In here I've made a dozen edits already. Two dozen. More. I spelled it Mpre twice, three times in three seconds.

More!

I know you old man because you are in my mind (but not in me, though that is what I wrote in the original, which was never the original).

But I have seen your black bird.

And I have considered the slovenly wilderness of Tennessee.

And yet, and still. You must have been a different operator. The heart must have moved in different rhythms. You must have sung in separate songs than those that my heart sings in foggéd haze of too little sleep and too little time and too little love in words for those I love or actions in love for those I love.

With pencil lead. With fountain pen. The mark indelible. The eraser leaves a canyon and crumbles. It makes heat on the paper. Yet in two swift stokes this disappears.

ctrl-a del

And my soul would move only. And not yours.

To do this is felt beneath the sternum. One can feel it. Is it as easy in your sleep, too?

But you are dead but still live and have lived then more than I live now or will.

Or perhaps not will.

Phoenix

2009-11-30T23:28:00.002-06:00

I became an online university instructor,
and it killed this art.
But one day I will arise
from the ashes.

Gift of the Magi

2009-11-26T21:56:00.004-06:00

One of the keys, I think, of being who I am is having an aversion to aversion.

So often it just comes out:

Can I tell you what I really think?

I guess you want to know, or else you would have clicked the back button already.

You should do it.

Spare me.

Here it is:

I think that there is nothing to think, and that anyone who tells you different (including myself) is a chocolate salesman.

By the way, what is so great about Godiva anyhow? I never could tell the difference among

Ghiradelli, Toblerone, and Hershey's Special Dark.

There you have it:

Here you are thinking about chocolates.

That is my power.

Here, my friend

2009-10-03T17:35:00.004-05:00

Here, my friend, is a space of

White light, and covered in black text.

But to you it is more than just a good

Song on the radio that I am playing for your

Cousin who was from the Bronx--or Brooklyn--what's the

Difference to a white kid who knows

How it feels to jump into a wagon

Push the feet down, down, down

Into the cold and rough and

Sometimes prickly-smooth corn?

I supposed that it made very little difference at all to

The man on death row. Or to me. Or to you.

If you wanna know the truth.

The Very Short Story of a Very Long Life

2009-09-25T22:46:00.004-05:00

A boy was born at a very young age,

But then he died a very old man.

Not much happened in between.

Candy

2009-09-18T16:26:00.006-05:00

I was thinking the other day (you know how the mind WONDERS) and then again sometimes it DOESN'T. And then I remembered about what my dad used to tell me (then again did he really USE it I don't remember.)

So anyways enough about that. But anyway I remember when my dog would eat his food (HUNGRY) and I was supposed to feed him TWICE a day and then sometimes I wouldn't--but he would just get hungry (kind of like that kid in the commercial "He'll eat ANYTHING")!

When my dad got tired about the (DOGS) and then we would have to take them out to the country (PEACEFUL), but then again. Who DOESN'T??? But I said NO! because then again maybe it wasn't the dogs fault and anyways the can was hard to open (for a kid, AKA me).

But we had two cats, and I wasn't sure really about if that was so good (especially with the dogs, AKA "dead"). I asked my dad (AKA "shooter") about the cats too and did he noticed anything (OBVIOUS). And he told me . . . maybe I WONT say but here goes. And I wasn't sure if it was what I wanted to do, but then again (it's not easy to say).

Which brings me to my next point: BURYING THE DOGS. Because when its dead it doesn't move but still it feels warm (NO GLOVES) but I wiped it on my pants. And later MOM asked me (AKA: DID YOU DO IT!) and I said NO!

Silent Nocturne

2009-09-17T20:38:00.005-05:00

There was a night

When a gentle breeze stirred the cool, dry air.

A cricket chirped,

And the sirens of the ambulance did not abuse the sky.

Calisthenics

2009-09-16T15:25:00.007-05:00

To halve and halve not is to have two halves.

I would do?

Aye, would you?

Eye wood dew.

Forget it.

Forge tit.

Portuguese.

Port two geese.

Randomly.

Ran dumbly.

Ran Dum Li

Left it on the counter.

Left tit on the counter.

Lift it on the counter . . . (this never gets old)

Expectantly waiting, fourth in line.

Expect Aunt Lea, wading for thin line.

Heavens to Betsy

Heave in stew . . . bitsy. (What a Russian says when he wants just a little more soup.)

Heaven 's two bets. See? (Pascal's Wager)

Mystery

Miss Teary (Tammy Faye)

Word.

Were, duh.

That tickles me.

That tick ills me.

Two more?

To more!

To Moore! (Mandy? Demi? . . . no)

To amore!

Too much Moore.

Tumor.

A Trick

2009-09-09T20:35:00.003-05:00

There is meaning here.

The Answer Is Probably

2009-09-09T20:14:00.004-05:00

What is most probable

Is not always the most likely

. ?

Walnut Walking

2009-09-07T03:05:00.007-05:00

Crushed and not crushed--

Green walnuts turn amber, brown, black beneath my bare sole:

The living shell dissolves,

But the center will not break.

It is hard, like stone.

Sexist Gorilla: It May Be Running Away from You Already

2009-06-16T01:50:00.007-05:00

"Write a long poem,"

My brain told me.

"Make it long and obfuscated,

"Such that those triflers who would cause you trouble

"Will be bored by the second stanza."

"Aye . . . and reference Melville and

"Faulkner in order

"To make them feel

"Inadequate, inarticulate."

"And then in the middle of the poem, there

"You can place it

"With impunity."

"A long poem?" I replied

In question.

"But what metric? What

"Rule?

"What form

"?" I

Asked

"Nyt

"Hi

I remember at my good friend's bachelor party my brother did a strip tease dressed as Marilyn Monroe. He is a large man. And hairy, with coarse, dark hair covering his body. But he wore a blonde wig, and fake eyelashes, and a pink, satin dress.

Later, we ran away from my other friend Jim (that's not his real name). We made him run naked around the house. Well, we asked him to run naked around the house, and then we challenged his manhood when he did not want to do it.

So he took off his clothes and ran around the house.

And we drove away in our cars very fast.

I rode in a car with my brother,

Who was dressed like a street-walking mother,

And when Jim got undressed,

Monroe stomped on the gas,

And we drove all the way to Nantucket.

Ahem.

"Did we lose them?" I asked.

100 miles per hour

Is very fast to drive

At night

On blue highways

Where deer feed in the ditches.

"Did we lose him?" I asked.

"I think so," he replied.

He slammed the brakes and we slid sideways across the middle of the concrete pavement,

Like they do in the movies when the stuntman needs to stop quickly and drive back in the opposite direction.

But this was no movie, I think,

And no ")"

--yet it felt it would be.

The yellow headlights of his Japanese pickup had grown very dim behind us, and when we passed him at 110 miles per hour, I could still tell, even in the dark, and with the speed, that he had not yet dressed himself above the waist.

Melville. Faulkner. Whitman. Eliot. Pound. Hemingway. Frost. Beckett. Goethe. Dostoevsky. Atkins. William. Carlos. Williams. Steinbeck. Vonnegut. Irving. Dubus. Cummings. Kafka. Miller. King. Twain.

(Close readers will notice that there are no women writers listed above. This may or may not signify anything. "What's wrong with being sexy?" I asked.)

"Everything that Rises Must Converge"

When God molded man from the red clay,

Blowing breath into his brain,

Invigorating guts and sinews

Simultaneously setting soul and flesh

Together, inseparable,

He made man naked.

And when I want to remember that

I, too, am made by God,

I go out on a summer night,

Naked.

It is difficult not to know God

On the pavement,

In the nude.

My heart pounded, riding shotgun in Monroe's sports car. Accelerating through the gearbox at maximum RPMs. Cats meowing beneath the hood.

"Was it long enough?" I asked.

"I do not know."

When we arrived at our destination, he found us:

It is difficult to fool a man who is naked.

"By whose standards is this long?" my brain asked.

"By whose standards is this a poem?" I replied.

"Touché!"

Forced Poem in 45 Seconds, by Freud

2009-05-30T12:53:00.005-05:00

Always

Careful

Don't

Ever

Forget

Going

Home

Just

Keeping

Loud

Mouths

Noticeably

Open

People

Quite

Reservedly

Say

That

Under

Very

Wasteful

Yearnings

Z, is very difficult to force.

Unsatisfying

2009-05-22T22:59:00.002-05:00

However hard she tried,

The pickle jar lid would not budge.

So she returned it to the plastic tray of the refrigerator door,

And ate a banana instead.

Phonemenon

2009-05-18T06:20:00.004-05:00

the

(th)-uh

How remarkable the world of differences made by a single phoneme.

Consider:

a tragedy

the tragedy

The former brings to mind a not unlimited, yet still abundant list of tragedies from which to select meaning. It turns the mind into a slot machine, or Wheel of Fortune of possibilities, each whirling through the consciousness randomly to serve as markers of meaning.

The latter stops the wheel in an instant--forcing each of us to select just one of these not unlimited choices to serve as the simulacrum of tragedy. Here, tragedy is contained within a personal schema of experience, and all emotions (grief, anger, melancholy, sorrow, sadness) contained within each individual's reaction to a single, specific encounter with the word is carried into the bloodstream in endocrinal impulses, responding to the singular sound of tip-of-tongue-on-tooth.

The tragedy.

It is a personal experience, the reading of words.

The hearing of sounds.

Conversation

2009-05-04T22:40:00.003-05:00

How can I say this nicely? You are a fruitcake out to lunch. I have to tell you, you are not my best friend--you're not even in the top 1,000.

(How nice can a person be?)

I was thinking the other day that a friend is somebody you would tell anything to. It's true. I have people I like spending time with, but not you.

(Yes. You really should listen.)

Thomas Jefferson said that a friend is somebody you would lay your life down for. Will you be my friend?

(Nope. The circle is full.)

My friend George who commits fraud to get his cholesterol checked: He's my friend.

(It's important. I agree.)

But people don't really want to hear what you have to say, what your pain is. Go ahead: Pour your guts out. But he doesn't want to hear anything that you have to say.

(It's true.)

Essay: The Emperor of Ice Cream

2009-04-19T08:09:00.010-05:00

I was walking to the groshery store (you know WAL MART but smaller). A man walked in front of me and bought cigarettes (Robert Redford). And that leads to the next point: Cancer, i.e., DEATH. Which most people think is just a fancy way of going to Heaven (which it is). Because I remember when I was a kid (yes Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse) and my DAD died it maid me think about it (cold, dark, underground). And then most people like to think about clouds and harps (but that's not really).

Which brings me to POINT #2 which is my sister. Not everybody (umm maybe I shouldn't say) OK anyway here goes! And then she got pregnant (and I'm not saying who did it). Which is just like the coldness of the baby when it is dead and you are holding it (aka Robert Redford in the ground).

OK, so now you are thinking what about the other thing? And I don't believe (if it exists) then maybe it does. But I don't know about burning on fire (which doesn't burn forever).

In the fall time I would help my dad (leaves) and he told me not to jump over the fire (smoky) and I remember the smell. But still the leaves were gone in the morning and forever is a long time (but then again Walt Disney!)

OK, so point #3: HEAVEN. And if it is gold I think about my mother (whose dead too but not CANCER) but still = cold and stiff which again is like Ice Cream. Let Be BE! And John Lennin too. But thats enough about that. Anyway.

Umm, most people, (going to church) would say to me "READ YOUR BIBLE" and then I did. Lots of people died in it. And then again I think about Enoch and Elijah (and then again there is FIRE). Walt Disney (aka on ice) isn't in the Bible, but then again some people think Mickey Mouse = Noah's Ark.

So here goes Point #5. My mother would take me to school (and my sister). So anyway the teacher gives me a homework essay to write and I say here goes, but OK I'll try. (But in 1958 the rules were harder). And I wrote an Essay (Ralph Waldoo Emerson?) and I wrote about a frog = cold. And I was holding it, and I thought WHAT THE HE** (for the kids) and it jumped (or did I throw it?) into the burning barrel. And then it disappeard.

Dwarf in a Box

2009-02-21T09:49:00.016-06:00

Sally Davis walked down the sidewalk along Oak Street wearing a pink pea coat and purple galoshes. The melting ice from the late February snowstorms left a chilly edge on the sixty-degree sunshine of the March afternoon.

She carried a large cardboard box with her small, seven-year-old arms stretched beneath it and a tiny chin resting on the top. A concentrated face was accentuated by silky blond hair that wisped across her bright blue eyes.

George Sandros was a retired school-teacher who lived down the street from Sally. He was busy clearing the last clumps of snow from his wet driveway when he noticed his young neighbor walking in his direction with the oversized box. Mr. Sandros was a friendly neighbor who had taught sixth-grade for 38 years in the same classroom of the small Illinois town where he and Sally lived. He had retired four years earlier, before Sally was old enough to have had him as a teacher, but he had taught both of Sally's parents, and both of them had considered him one of their most beloved teachers.

Mr. Sandros was an indefatigable optimist with a pure love of children, a love bred from his romantic attachment to the magical mysticism of youth--something he had never lost touch with himself. His classroom had been a laboratory for the imagination, a place where words like no or can't were seldom heard. In it dragons were born, the dark side of the moon was explored, Chinese ladies ate pickle sandwiches with Napoleon, and apples grew on grapevines made from jumprope.

It was a final outpost of childhood. In the summers between the sixth- and seventh-grades, students changed. They would leave his classroom in late May, filled with innocence, optimism, and imagination, then they would return to the school in August with boyfriends, basketball jerseys, and pre-algebra books.

As Sally came closer to Mr. Sandros's house, he called out to her.

"Hey there, little miss! What cha got it the box?"

"A dwarf."

"Oooh," he replied. "What cha gonna do with it?"

"Gonna let him go."

"Can I see him?"

Sally put down the box and opened the flaps. In the corner sat a large, wet, shivering rat.

"Wow! Where'd you catch him?"

"Under my sandbox."

"You didn't touch him did you?"

Sally looked up suddenly at Mr. Sandros with a worried look on her face. George could see that she had touched it.

"Did he bite?" George asked is a playful tone, trying to preserve the mystery of the experience while at the same time looking out for Sally's safety. But he was well-practiced in this art, and he betrayed to her none of his adult sensibilities.

"He's a nice dwarf," Sally replied. "He doesn't bite."

His eyes moved to her fingers, and satisfied, he continued the conversation. "Where you gonna put him?"

Sally pointed down the sidewalk to a clump of bushes at the dead end of the neighborhood lane in Jennifer Collins's front yard. It was no more than a patch of weedy hibiscus and wisteria that Walter Smith had planted for his wife twenty-odd years earlier. But now both of the Smiths were dead, and the house was left in possession of their three children, who rented it to a single woman in her early twenties. Neither Jennifer nor her landlords took much care for the property's upkeep, so the grass was always long, and the landscaping was overgrown from a decade or so of inattention. For most of the adults in the neighborhood, the house was an eyesore and embarrassment, but at least it was conveniently located at the end of the lane where traffic never passed.

The neighborhood children, on the other hand, found the property to be a place of fantasy. All summer long, bikes lay on their sides at the end of the road next to Jennifer's house as kids played hide-and-seek and sundry other hiding games in the bushy habitat of the unkempt yard. Parents allowed this because it kept their children at the quiet end of the neighborhood, away from traffic and other sorts of trouble, and besides, Jennifer was almost never home to be bothered by the commotion. Even when she was home, she was pleasant enough to be completely uninterested in stirring up trouble with the neighborhood families and never made complaints.

Mr. Sandros looked down the street toward the budding wisteria.

"Yeah," he said. "I think that is going to be the perfect spot for him."

Sally stooped over to fold down the tops of the brown box, enclosing the small rat-dwarf in darkness. Then she picked up the box, stretched her arms beneath it, and secured the top with the bottom of her chin.

"Do you need help?"

"Nope," she said.

Sally walked away, and George resumed clearing his driveway. As he scooped ice and dripping slush from the concrete, he laughed to himself to think how upset Mr. Smith be if he knew that neighborhood kids were hiding rats in his wife's wisteria.

He was still grinning when Sally returned minutes later with the box.

"Mr. Sandros?" Sallly called. "I think my dwarf is dead."

George put down his shovel and looked inside the box to see the wet rat sitting in the same corner where he had been a few minutes earlier. He shook the box, and the rat didn't move. Wearing his garden gloves, he reached into the box and poked the ball of cold, damp fur with his finger, and he could feel that its body was already stiff.

"Yup," he said with a smile on his face. "I believe you're right."

Sally did not appear to be sad, but she did not seem to know what was to be done with a dead dwarf. George watched her as a sudden breeze blew between them.

"You know what? I got just the place for him in my garden. Do you wanna bury him back there with me?"

Sally nodded yes.

Picking up the box, she followed Mr. Sandros to his back yard garden. George retrieved a spade from his work shed and dug a small hole in the wet ground beneath a rose bush. Sally opened the box, placed the dwarf in the hole, and covered it with clumps of dirt. When the job was finished, Sally and Mr. Sandros stood looking down at the small mound of black mud.

From the corner of his eye, George saw a sparrow flit across the yard and disappear into the soffit of his work shed.

"I know it's just a rat," Sally said.

"I know," Mr. Sandros replied.

Devastation

2009-02-15T09:56:00.003-06:00

The only person who actually saw it was Sam.

He was standing outside when the sound came. The rest of us were in the family room watching the Super Bowl when a noise like a supersonic boom shook the walls. The wall-mounted flat-screen wobbled for several seconds after the concussion.

All of us ran outside to see what the commotion was, and there was Sam with his back to us, surveying the damage, and dragging on a cigarette.

For an instant we were frozen in time, unable to process the enormity of devastation that lay before us. So we stood there behind Sam, taking it all in.

Until Sam took one last drag on his cigarette, flicked the butt into the driveway, and turned around to go inside. He didn't look at any of us when he passed.

To this day I've never talked to him about it.

The Kentucky

2009-02-10T06:50:00.004-06:00

This is an old story, but I've cleaned it up a little. However, it is still very raw. In general, my policy on this site is to post things even if they are imperfect. Maybe one day I will get around to refining things. If I waited till everything was perfect, nothing would ever get posted. I wrote this in my Creative Writing class when I was attending EIU in 2000. I hope you like it. It's a little long, so give yourself time to read.

------------------

Jenna dreamt of the ranch silhouetted against the setting sun. The barn, quiet with an echo of pawing hooves and heavy sighs, prepared for another night of long stillness. The creek, crimson in the dying light, trickled relentlessly. It washed away the oldness of day and replaced a freshness from somewhere sublime; it flowed always toward the sea.

Heavily, she fell into her only comfort since the separation. As night covered her like a warm blanket, she was at peace.

Day always came too soon, and mornings exaggerated the emptiness of the house. She brushed eight hours of sleep from her mouth and gurgled with antiseptic. Dropping her nightgown into a silken pile, the cool air transformed her smooth nakedness into a battlefield goosebumps, as straight brown hair cascaded down her back. Bathroom tiles like rows of ice cubes stole the remnants of warmth that cozy sleep had wrapped about her. It made her wish she were still in bed. The shower was a refrigerator with a ceramic tub and glass doors; and the chill water, a frontal assault on her cold skin, slowly changed to a comforting warmness that she had not felt for a long time. She stood there too long, breathing long and heavy beneath the pounding flood of hot and steam, trying to remember him. But in time, the water ran cold.

In the mirror she inspected her eyes, wondering how she would ever be able to disguise her weakness under a fresh coat of Mary Kay. But she always did. With an army of brushes and pigments she fought back the advancing enemy that gained so much ground while she slept. One day they would win. She was tired of fighting.

Jenna ran a checklist through her mind. The purse, the bag, the keys, the badge, the labcoat. What else? Did I feed Lucas? Outside the front door her faithful sentinel waited with wagging tail and panting tongue. She scooped some food and checked his water like someone who has wasted too much time.

She rubbed the rich black fur under his belly and thanked him for another night of security. He was the only thing that remained of that other life. He was a stout black lab, and friendly, but he was growing old and grey. She got Lucas when she was 26; last month she turned 38. Jenna stooped to pet him better. She could be a little late.

She used to listen to talk radio on the way to work, but the Rush Limbaugh wannabes were beginning to annoy her. Even if she liked to listen to music, there was nothing but country on FM. She had spent all her life in Kentucky, raised 20 miles from Lexington and 200 miles from Nashville, but she had never developed an appreciation for the heart-breaking, my-lover-left-me songs that played on every station, even if she could write one herself.

She wouldn't sing songs of broken trust and abused love: songs that long for better days and climax in a life-long addiction to Prozac. Life didn't happen to her; she made her own choices, even if they brought pain every once in a while. To take responsibility for her choices was her focus, and she was moving forward with her life. She was not defeated; she still had strength.

This was her liturgy every morning during the 38-mile drive from the ranch to work. It was nice, but not as safe as sleep.

The echoing thud of a car door in a parking garage was her signal that the race was underway. She took brisk steps to the stairwell where she pounced up four flights like a tiger. Down the long corridor and up another flight of stairs she came to the locked doors of 3 West, the psychiatry unit. She had to ring a doorbell to get in.

She'd run the mile in high school track. When the gun sounded you just went and didn't think. She could hear no sound but the beating of feet all around her and a single voice calling from high in the stands. It was always around the turn after the first 100 meters that she began to worry. Am I running too fast? Can I do this? I can't breathe. But the voice pushed her on. She felt this way in the seconds between the time she pressed the doorbell and the on-duty nurse arrived at the door. There was always someone at her heels, threatening her lead. It made her run harder.

"Well hi there, Jenna!" said Carol as she opened the door. "You're just always so smiley and pretty in the morning. I wish I had your pretty face!" Carol was 63 years old and had overly permed hair that had been colored to look yellow. She was overweight and ugly, but her deficiencies in appearance did not overshadow her exuberant personality. Carol was only a nurse when she was at the hospital. When she went home, her life was devoted to her grandchildren. Jenna was glad to see her smiling face.

"Thank you," Jenna said and smiled back. Since the separation, the other nurses and techs on the floor had rallied around Jenna to boost her esteem. They seldom, if ever, mentioned anything specific about what kind of loser could have left someone like Jenna, but they were always telling her how pretty she was, and how they wished their sons had married her.

"Oh you're just gonna love being here today," Carol said to Jenna with a facetious grin. She always spoke positively. The more optimistic Carol was the worse day Jenna could expect. "Sam is mad again today because he still can't find his toothbrush, and Elly says she's having another nervous breakdown; she'll probably be askin' for more Ativan, but I just give her a Tylenol and told her it's a sleepin' pill and she calmed down. Otherwise things are pretty normal. I just gotta finish up these charts, and then I'm goin' to have dinner with my grandbabies."

Carol had a way of keeping her real life separate from her life at work that most good nurses develop over time. Grandbabies were the real matter of her life, and probably the only thing that prevented her own nervous breakdowns. Having the old nurse around made Jenna feel like her job wasn't so intolerable, but she hadn't yet discovered how to slip between her two lives as gracefully as Carol did.

"Oh, Sweetie, I forgot to tell you! We got a new one today. She's just a girl, though, only fifteen-years old. She's real pretty, just like you."

Jenna rolled her eyes. She knew exactly what was coming. She didn't need Carol to tell her that the girl had been brought in shortly after midnight because she had called a suicide hotline; that her wrists were pricked with "cat scratches" that had really been made by the dull point of a safety pin; that she had broken up with her boyfriend last night; that her father had abused her; that she smelled of cigarettes. Carol told her anyway, and added that the girl needed a good daddy more than she needed to be in the hospital.

Carol gave Jenna the keys. It was a sort of changing of the guard that happened every 8 hours on the psych unit. "You've just got six patients, honey, so you'll be the only nurse up here today. I'm off to see my grandbabies." Carol had a big grandma smile. Jenna couldn't help but smile back at her.

Jenna busied herself with the regular duties of nursing: mostly paperwork. They never told you in school that nursing was more about paperwork than caring for patients. In fact, they never told you that most patients didn't really need care. Jenna was a much harder nurse than Carol. She hated the fact that she had to work for a living while all the patients were able to sit around, be depressed all day, and collect disability. Most patients on the floor were, in fact, voluntary admissions for depression. There were 14 beds on the unit. Most of the time, at least eight of them were occupied. Six of those were always filled with people "dealing with chronic depression" or "combating suicidal thoughts." My God, Jenna thought, who isn't depressed or wanting to kill themselves? In her opinion, most patients on that floor just needed a kick in the ass. She blamed the doctor. Instead of teaching them to deal with their stupid lives, he would give them drugs: Ativan, Xanax., Paxil, Prozac, and other various anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, most of them at least psychologically addictive. The patient would "learn how to cope" with their problem after about 5 days, or as long as their insurance or Medicare would cover their hospital stay, then go out to face the big bad world with a new lease on life. A week later they would readmit themselves after finding that their homes were not as comfortable as the hospital. At home, they didn't have a nurse to bring them food at regular intervals, to wash their laundry, or to bring them a pill every four hours. At least the count was low today.

She looked at the clock and rolled her eyes. It was time to disperse the meds. She unlocked the medicine cabinet and filled six small cups with multi-colored pills

The first to get doped was Sam, the patient with the toothbrush problem. He was a legitimate patient, Jenna thought, not one of the depressed suicidals. He was 82 years old and suffered from both severe Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia. He was also about a month overdue to die. He would have been a good candidate for a nursing home, except he had attacked an LPN with his toothbrush, sending her to the hospital for four stitches and a buttload of antibiotics.

Sam was also DNR: Do Not Resuscitate. His family refused to have anything to do with him, and he lost his apartment when two boys in black ties and white shirts reported him to the Department of Health and Human Services. After spending an afternoon talking with him about Joseph Smith and the golden plates, the Elders were a little freaked out when they saw Sam rubbing Bag Balm into his cat's fur and sticking a toothbrush in its rectum. He had no physical calamities, like cancer or pneumonia, or even a cold; still, he was slowly dying because he wouldn't eat. Sam was a true crazy. He needed to be here.

Elly didn't. Jenna cringed to see the 42-year-old woman huddled in the fetal position by the window.

"I hate myself!" Elly's face was contorted in that pitiful manner that toddler faces are when mom leaves them with the baby-sitter for the evening. "I'm gonna die if I don't get something soon." Jenna thought Elly would have done well to blow her nose; instead, she let it drip down her shirt.

"Get up, Elly. I have your meds."

Elly became very friendly all of a sudden. "I'm sorry. I just can't handle this anymore. I'm so sick of being sick. I know I can get better; I just need some more time to sort things out."

"So, has the doctor given you any idea when you might be able to get back to your kids?" Jenna asked, although she knew the answer already.

"I'm not ready." Elly's eyes were like a jacklit deer. "The doctor said I won't be ready for a while. He said I have too much to deal with right now. Don't you dare tell him I'm better! I'm not better. I need to be here." She began to cry again and ask for more medication.

"This is all the doctor thinks you need right now, Elly. You should talk to him if you think you need something else." As much as Jenna hated it, she couldn't help but be polite to the patients to their faces. It was easier than confrontation, and they were always so pitiful when they were addicted

Jenna went to the other rooms and passed out the same prescriptions over and over again. Most of the patients were getting Ativan or Paxil. Jenna didn't know why they were called "patients." There was nothing patient about them as far as she could tell. All of them knew exactly what doses they needed, and most of them cautioned her that they needed more than the prescriptions indicated. A few of them flat out asked for morphine and/or methamphetamines. It was always a relief for Jenna to finish passing meds. It depressed her.

She had one last patient to see: the new girl. She knocked gently on the door as she entered and said hello. There was a small-framed, very attractive blonde-haired girl sitting in a chair staring out the window.

"What are you going to do to me?" The girl was rude, and Jenna was in no mood for games.

"Listen, you are going to be in here for a while, so I suggest you don't start it off with an attitude. You're not the only person in here with problems, and I'm not here to listen to you complain. So take your pills and lose the attitude."

Jenna always felt proud of herself when she was able to tell a patient where to shove it. She especially loved giving melodramatic first-time offenders the unofficial welcome to a lifetime of "overcoming clinical depression." If the doctor was too afraid to deal with the real issues, then she would, from time to time.

The new girl turned her face from the window and studied Jenna with cold blue eyes that were darkened with tear-washed mascara. "What do you want?" she said.

Jenna's expression changed from contempt to surprise. The girl's eyes were filled with a heaviness that Jenna had only seen in very old men and very good actresses. The nurse wasn't sure, at first, how to read the girl. But slowly she began to understand.

"My name is Jenna. I'm going to be the nurse up here during the daytime. At ten o' clock, every day, I'm going to bring you these two pills the doctor wants you to take. I'm not here to give you a hard time, but you're not here to give me a hard time either, ok?"

The girl turned her head again and looked out the window. Jenna walked toward her with the pills. As she came nearer to the girl, she noticed the girl's knuckles whiten as her fingers grasped the arms of the chair. Jenna stopped. "What's your name?" She knew already.

"You won't stop me!" The girl ferociously turned her head to Jenna and glared like a panting devil.

Jenna regained her stunted confidence. For a moment, she thought the girl might have been serious about killing herself, but the outburst revealed the charade, as far as Jenna was concerned.

"I'm not here to stop you from anything," Jenna sassed. "If you want to kill yourself, Megan, then I suggest you get on with it. But for now we're going to take these two pills so you can get some rest, and I can go back and chart the progress you've made today."

Megan took the pills reluctantly. She swallowed them without water, one at a time, gave Jenna the finger and resumed her window gazing. Jenna left the room to do the charts.

The drive home was hectic, as usual, until Jenna had made it to the exit that took her down 17 miles of blacktop road to the ranch. She called it a ranch. It used to be a tobacco farm, but the previous owner had kept several horses. Jenna wasn't a rider, but Greg was; that was why they'd bought the place. Greg wanted a somewhere to keep his horses, if he ever got them. He was that kind of guy-the kind that plans to do everything but never does anything. He planned to love Jenna. They both planned to be happy. Jenna tried to do what she planned, but her plans never worked.

Lucas scampered down the long driveway when he saw the car turn in. This was his custom, despite his age. Jenna felt empty to be loved so unconditionally.

She went inside and changed into a tee-shirt and sweatpants. After eating a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese, she put on her jogging shoes and put a leash on Lucas. Their evening tradition had become to walk down the wooded path behind the barn. A stream flowed along the path. A few miles down it joined the Kentucky River, , then the Ohio, the Mississippi, and down toward the sea. They would walk together through the darkening woods, and Jenna would try to remember in her waking hours a peace she had once felt there. The darkness grew around her, but she would walk deeper into the woods. Sometimes she would walk so far and for so long that she was afraid she would not be able to find her way back before sunset. Something always turned her around; though day by day her journeys tarried longer and farther into the woods to where the creek broadened, running deeper and more swiftly.

At last, she returned. She thanked Lucas copiously for his companionship and wondered how much longer it would last, but she didn't dwell on the question. She wouldn't worry about anything until she had to; there was no sense in getting worked up about things that haven't happened. Imaginary anxieties can be dangerous, and she drowned this one in a bubble bath.

That night she slept soundly, as she always did, slipping into that peaceful bliss of sleep. She thought of her mother, and how they had spent so many nights sleeping together while her father was keeping Louisville's escort services in business. He was a wealthy man, a racetrack shareholder, but he had no interest in the families he created. Jenna remembered little of him but his cigars and rough hands. He was sent to prison when Jenna was five. That is when Jenna's mother moved herself and her daughter from Louisville to Wilmore. It wasn't until the days before mother died that Jenna discovered why her father was in prison. He'd solicited a 15-year-old prostitute. He would never see his family again, and Jenna didn't care.

Jenna's mother, Constance, was an inspiration. Though she didn't have a lot of money, Constance always made sure that she and her daughter were well-dressed because, as she told Jenna, "A woman is as beautiful and strong as she looks." Constance supported her daughter in every endeavor she undertook. She woke Jenna for her six o'clock runs and waited for her to return with toast and a big glass of orange juice. She took off work from to drive to Jenna's track meets, sitting rain or shine on the highest row of bleachers yelling encouragement to her miler in making. Jenna had not realized at the time how deeply her mother had loved her.

Every good grace that Jenna had she owed to her mother, who used to work nights as a waitress at a small dingy restaurant called The Chicken Coop. The establishment drew many customers because of its legendary fried chicken. Later, it was rumored to be the place where Colonel Sanders found his famous original recipe. Business was good, particularly from outsiders, and outsiders gave good tips, especially to beautiful and strong waitresses. She worked there for six years while she studied to become a nurse. Eventually, she became an RN and worked in the obstetrics unit of the Wilmore hospital for 25 years. She was present, if not involved, in most every birth in Wilmore between 1973 and 1998. In April 1998 she was diagnosed with lymphoma, and she died the following December. She was 63.

Jenna's mother had been dead for a year and a half. Greg had left six months later. He told Jenna she'd changed and he met someone younger and more full of life. He was a pervert, just like Jenna's father. She wondered if she had ever loved him.

Jenna and Greg married later in life than most people do: there were in their thirties. They had been single too long for either of them to expect it to work. After five years of waiting for Greg to want a child, she finally realized he was a liar. She was glad to get rid of him. She didn't need all the problems he created; but as the anniversary of the separation approached, she found herself thinking about being alone.

In the morning the same routine. The alarm. The tiles. The shower. Mary Kay. The liturgy. It was another day to survive, and morale was low. At least it was Friday.

Thud!

In the parking garage the race began again. She took brisk steps to the stairwell where she pounced up four flights like a tiger. Down the long corridor and up another flight of stairs she came to the locked doors of 3 West. She had to ring a doorbell to get in. Don't slow down, Jenna. You gotta run!

"Oh, Jenna, you precious thing! You are so smiley in the morning. I wish my Jacob had met you a long time ago."

Jenna smiled.

"You missed a busy night last night, phew," Carol said as she giggled. "Oh I shouldn't laugh, but you just won't believe it!"

Jenna smiled with her nose wrinkled up. "What happened?"

Carol led Jenna into the nurse's station and lowered her voice so the patients couldn't hear. "Well, you know old Sam with the toothbrush?"

"Oh no, where did he put it this time?"

"Well, Sam died. I found him in his room at three in the morning." Carol's face reddened as her grin grew wider.

"Oh, that's too bad." Jenna was genuine, but Carol couldn't hold back her giggling. "What is it?" Jenna asked.

"Well, I had to get him ready for the mortician; you know, all washed up and everything. Anyways, I was pulling his sheets off and wiping his legs down when I saw something sticking out of his bottom."

"Oh no!" Jenna was disgusted, but Carol, always jolly, couldn't contain herself.

"He's been missin' that toothbrush for two whole days, and right there it was in his anus the whole time!"

The two nurses reveled for a short time in one of the crudest perks of nursing: gross stories. Soon, though, Carol's attention turned again to her grandbabies and she made her way out the door.

"You have a good weekend now, Sweetheart, and don't lose your toothbrush."

Carol always made the beginning of Jenna's day pleasant, but it only lasted 15 minutes. When the grandmotherly nurse left, Jenna settled down into the hard mode again, looking over paperwork and despising the patients. She read in the charts that Carol had given Elly two Tylenol last night. She could just imagine Elly complaining: Give me my sleeping pills! I need a Valium. She could see Carol go to the medicine cabinet and get out a Tylenol, telling Elly it was experimental and not to tell the doctor she gave it to her. She could imagine Carol telling her it would be too dangerous to take two of those pills because it might make her OD. She could see Elly marveling at the attention she would get if she OD'd on something.

She imagined Carol finding Sam and his toothbrush. She saw her running the wet cloth over his pale, clammy, old-man skin. It was a disgusting job, but Carol was the type of nurse who you would expect to do it without flinching; and now she has a good story to tell.

She imagined Megan and her attitude. She wondered how long it would be until Megan got tired of not being with her friends and decided to "overcome her suicidal thoughts."

Jenna looked at the clock. It was ten. Jenna went to the medicine cabinet that was always locked to keep patients out of it. She reached into her pocket to get the keys and realized that she didn't have them. She began to get nervous trying to remember where she put them. Suddenly she realized she forgot to get the keys from Carol.

The nurses had forgotten their ritual in all the commotion surrounding Sam and his toothbrush. She flipped the rolodex to "G." There it was, "Gwaltney, Carol." Quickly she dialed the number. Fortunately, Carol lived in town.

"Hello?" a voice answered.

"Hi, this is Jenna Chambers from the Psychiatry Unit at Chandler Medical Center. Is Carol available?"

The voice informed Jenna that Carol went out to lunch with her grandbabies and he didn't expect her back for an hour.

Jenna returned the phone to the receiver and thought. The nurse manager has a spare set of keys, but it would take a long time to fill out a missing-keys report and Jenna certainly didn't want to do all that on a Friday. Besides, Carol could be reprimanded for such a mistake. Jenna liked Carol too much to get her in trouble, and it was as much Jenna's fault as it was Carol's. She thought quickly about what to do. She thought about breaking the cabinet, or not passing meds at all. Then, an idea came to her.

She rummaged through her purse, pulled out a large bottle of aspirin, and began placing two or three pills in each medicine cup. No one was allergic to aspirin on the charts, and she would get the keys back for the next dispersal. This way she would save herself a lot of grief and teach the patients a lesson in the meantime.

As she walked down the halls of the unit, she was nervous of getting caught. The stakes were high. She would lose her job if anyone found out, but she wasn't sure if she cared. The plan went smoothly, though, with the exception of Elly. Elly insisted on the new drug Carol had given her last night. Jenna told her that the doctor wasn't pleased with the results of that drug and wanted to try a new one instead. Elly was adamant. Jenna wanted to keep things quiet, so she offered Elly an extra pill, as she called it, "Viathol." People like Elly love new names of prescription drugs, and Jenna assured her it was the newest and strongest stuff on the market. Finally, Elly conceded and took the pills.

Megan was not in her room. She was in the common shower, the only place patients could go for privacy, and the only room patients could lock themselves into. Sometimes patients smoked in there, despite hospital policy against smoking indoors. Most nurses turned a blind eye. Still, patients were not allowed to be in the bathroom for more than fifteen minutes at a time, no matter what they were doing: smoking, masturbating, or-God forbid-taking a shower. Jenna was uneasy knowing that a patient was in the shower when she didn't have the keys. Every workshop on patient safety she had ever endured stressed the importance of having access to patients all the time. Never let yourself get into a situation where the patient has the upper hand. Always know where your patients are. Don't leave suicidal patients alone. She rehearsed all the important rules she had just broken.

Still, she was the only person who knew the keys were gone. Megan didn't know. The patients knew that the nurses could get into the bathroom any time they wanted. The bathroom only provided privacy from other patients--not from nurses. Jenna decided to play it cool.

"Don't take too long in there. There are others out here who want showers." Jenna was talking to a closed door, feeling very vulnerable.

For two agonizing hours Jenna waited for Megan to come out the shower. Only once, thirty minutes after she dispersed the meds, did she check on Megan. Megan told her where to go. At least she isn't dead, Jenna thought. She didn't want to press the issue because she didn't have any leverage, so she thought it was a good idea to leave the girl alone. If she asked Megan to unlock the door, she would reveal her mistake. It would be best to let Megan believe the door could be opened at anytime. But Jenna was beginning to get desperate. The shower had run for two hours, and Jenna had no key.

The other patients began to notice as well.

"I need to smoke, but that new freak has been in the shower for two hours," Elly complained. "Nobody else around here gets to take no two-hour showers!"

Jenna scrambled for an explanation. "The other patients aren't really your business, Elly."

"They are too my business when I don't get to smoke my cigarette." She stomped back to her room, stopping by the bathroom door to cuss at the new girl.

Jenna wondered when Carol was going to call. She considered giving up and calling the nurse manager. It was too late for that, though. If she admitted that she didn't have the keys, she would have to explain how she unlocked the cabinet at ten. She was also not sure what she was going to find in the bathroom once it was unlocked, and she didn't want to find out.

She thought of her father. She remembered his rough hands and the smell of cigars on his tongue. She thought of her mother and the security of sleep. She thought of Greg, the barn, and the empty stalls. She thought of Lucas and their long walks. She thought of the river; and she wondered how far it was to the sea.

The phone rang. Jenna didn't tell Carol that Megan had locked herself in the shower for two hours.

Carol arrived with the keys in less than 15 minutes. She looked embarrassed: "Oh, Sugar, I'm so sorry. I just plain forgot about those keys when I left. I just put them in my purse like they was my own. I feel so terrible." Carol was sincere. Relieved, but anxious, Jenna took the keys from Carol.

"Don't worry about it, Carol; everything has been fine. I'm just glad I finally got in touch with you before I had to call someone else."

Carol looked at Jenna and breathed a sigh of relief. Jenna wasn't ready to sigh. She watched as Carol turned and left through the front door of the unit. She waited ten seconds just in case Carol forgot something. Then, she hurried to bathroom door.

She stopped at the door for an eternity. She remembered track, the starting line, the smell of gunpowder, the long-legged harriers in multi-colored singlets. Don't let her beat you, she told herself. You're stronger than she is. She waited for a signal.

The key slid into the lock like a bullet in a chamber. The shower fell like the hush of spectators before the gun. She prayed for a false start, but the gun sounded loudly. Steam from the shower enveloped her like blue smoke from the signaler, and Megan lay bled and pale on the cold tile floor.

Jenna lied to everybody. She lied to the police, to the doctor, to the nurse manager. She would have lied to Carol if she had to. She explained that she didn't know there was a patient in the shower until another patient complained. She unlocked the door and found the patient face-down in the shower. The patient had deeply slit her wrists with the broken pieces of the bathroom mirror, and the patient had lost a lot of blood before the nurse found her. The nurse called for help and immediately began first-aid and CPR, but the patient was already dead. The doctor pronounced the patient dead at 1:23 p.m. The mortician was notified. She said nothing about aspirin, keys, or locked doors. She also avoided saying Megan's name.

Jenna's shift was almost over by the time the commotion had passed. She was exhausted from all the questions and paperwork, and had not taken a break all day. She went outside the hospital and sat at a bench in a small park across the street. An evening fog was setting-on, and the moist air cooled her hot face. She put her face in her hands and sobbed quietly.

When she had cried for a few minutes, she wiped her face and pulled her hair behind her ears. Through the fog she noticed a mother in a long wool coat and heels standing at a cross-walk. She was holding the hand of a young girl who wore pink ribbons in her curly blonde hair. Jenna watched as the mother monitored the heavy traffic, looking up and down the street, waiting for an opportunity to lead her daughter safely across. The girl only looked at her mother.

Jenna went back to the unit. The nurses on the new shift had already arrived. Jenna told them she would stay to prepare Megan's bloodstained body for the mortician. She was tired, but she couldn't bring herself to leave--not yet.

Jenna had prepared bodies several times, but this was her first suicide, and her youngest corpse. She smoothed back wet hair from the dead girl's face. For the first time she saw a trace of peace on a face that had always looked so full of pain and contempt. She dipped a washcloth in cold water and touched it to Megan's ashen cheek. Blood and mascara were washed from the girl's eyes with a flood of tears. Like a mother, Jenna wiped down the child's neck and small breasts, baptizing her unceremoniously for a new world. She drew a wet cloth across her lifeless legs and knew that she would never run again.

"You were beautiful, Megan. You were beautiful and strong." A tear rolled down Jenna's cheek.

Jenna remembered standing in the receiving line at her mother's funeral. She remembered all the ladies dressed in black that told her how strong her mother was and how she reminded them of her mother. Jenna didn't cry at the funeral. She didn't cry when they closed the lid of the casket, and she didn't cry when they lowered it into the ground. Jenna had learned to be strong from her mother, but she had never learned how to love.

Jenna poured her heart onto the gurney of the dead. She put her cheek down on Megan's breast and sobbed as tears began to flow.

Fifteen years of promise lay lifeless on the gurney, awaiting the mortician. He was supposed to pick he up at five o' clock. Jenna wanted to stay until he arrived; she felt a motherly obligation to stay with Megan until the end. A man in a suit arrived shortly after five and asked where he could find the body. She thought he smelled of cigars as she led him to the room where Megan lay. The mortician pulled back the sheet and studied the corpse. "Sure is a young one, isn't she?" He asked with a smile on his face. "What a waste."

Jenna followed Megan's body out the unit, down the elevator, through the lobby, and to the hearse. There was nothing to be done. She did not want to leave Megan alone, and she did not want to be alone herself.

The drive home may have been hectic, as usual, if Jenna could have thought of anything besides Megan. Time suddenly didn't matter, or didn't exist, and she was pulling into the long driveway before she realized she was home, and that Lucas was gone. She called for him, but he didn't come. She sat down on the porch and began to cry.

Jenna needed not to be alone. She found her running shoes and grabbed Lucas' leash. She ran past the empty barn into the woods.

The path narrowed as brush and briars bit at her ankles. She felt like crying. Instead she bit her lip and ran harder. The canopy overhead closed as she flew deeper into the woods. She found the stream trickling from its everlasting source and followed it downstream. She went deeper and deeper into the darkness, running away from the ranch and away from light. She ran to where the stream deepens and broadens as it joins the Kentucky, and she looked at the sun. It was going to fall on her.

Jenna wanted more than anything to run to the sea where waters as deep as eternity would bury her, to be swallowed in the river and swept away by tides that forget the past and press ever toward the stillness of the deep. She climbed a rock that overhung the river and stretched out her hands. She closed her eyes as she inhaled breath after breath of clean and fresh air. She drank air like a runner at the end of a marathon and wanted more than anything to collapse into the flood, but a still, deep voice inside her rose above din of the deluge.

Don't give up Jenna. You have to keep moving, Jenna. Use your legs now. One step at a time.

"Mom! Don't leave me alone!"

Keep running, Jenna. It's just a little further.

You

2008-12-17T16:55:00.007-06:00

Let's get the obvious out of the way: I don't exist.

And really, the only reason why I even seem to exist is because you are creating me.

Like right now. You imagine that I have a voice. You're reading me as happy, angry, sad, aggressive, passive, suicidal, [insert emotion here]. I mean, this story is as much about you as it is about me anyway.

And the truth is that there is a person who is typing a bunch of words on a computer right now. Actually, it's not now anymore because these words were typed in the past. Then, in a subsequent now, the person who typed these words came back and edited them. But those words weren't any good either. They've been deleted, and changed, and rearranged. What's most important, though, is that now you are reading them.

And now--in your now--you are imagining that those words are me.

But I don't exist.

Except inside your head. Or at least, I will exist there if you let me inside you. If you keep reading.

If you do keep reading, then I will live inside your head with those other things that live there. Those things that you don't want anybody else to know about. Those things you are hiding from your friends, your spouse, your children, your boss. If you want, you can put me there too. I promise I won't tell anyone what I see there. Though if you let me in--I mean--if you really give me a spot inside your head, you might not be able to hold onto those secrets anymore. You might let go of them yourself.

Because even though I don't exist, you won't be able to keep me inside your head without being changed. That's really the main thing about me: I change you.

I'm sorry. I seem to have gotten ahead of myself. I haven't even introduced myself. But that's not really necessary, is it? After all, I'm not real. Still, I will be whatever you want me to be.

I'm either a boy or a girl, or neither. That's for you to decide. I'm not God, unless you want me to be. So many people need gods, but it is so easy to become one that I'm not sure it's worth the effort anymore.

You'll probably imagine that I have a body, and if you do it's probably nice. That's what people usually imagine. It's what they want to see.

However, some of you are looking for someone specific. Someone who died, perhaps, and you will probably imagine that I am that person. Others of you always hear the voice of your third-grade teacher at times like these, when the narrator is vague. A few of you clever readers have already pegged me as the foul-mouthed taxi driver who picked you up on 32nd and Main, or maybe the college professor who finally understood you. But I've worked behind bars too: dancing, pouring, and serving time.

I'm young, and old. I'm Lithuanian, if that's what you want. But I can be Cherokee (or Lakota) too. I am a child. A family pet.

I've been a preacher and a prostitute at the same time. I tickle you where you want.

I look like Kathy Bates and Nathan Fillion.

And most of all--this is important--no matter who you are: I am in love with you.

In fact, I think you are perfect. I would never criticize you because we see the world through the same lens, and I agree with everything that you believe. Even when I don't see things your way at first, it's just because I sometimes jump to conclusions. I'm sorry about that. You are right after all.

So I hope you will get to know me a little better. I hope you'll give me room to grow inside you.

Because until you put me inside your head, I won't be real.

But you are real, aren't you? You have skin and hair. You breathe. Your heart beats. You have felt love and loss. You know the salty taste of tears and blood.

It is because of you that I need to be here. For even though I am not here, I can help you to be here more than you are.

I'm here to remind you about death.

I'm here to remind you about soft lips and warm breath.

I'm here to remind you about the beaches where you first saw the ocean. The snow angels you made with the person you love. The roar of the winds in a summer thunderstorm. The blue mud at the bottom of a pond.

I can remind you of many things when you let me inside you.

I can bring to the surface a memory that you are trying to keep deep down.

If you want me to seduce you, I will. If you need me to protect you, I can. If you want me to judge you, just remember . . .

I'm not real.

But what you did was real. Everything you have done and everything you will do.

Memories, too, are as real as I am. They are you. I am you. And when you die, so do we.

Then none of us--you, me, your memories--will exist.

It is important that you remember this.

Valediction

2008-12-13T22:03:00.001-06:00

Marcy Watters opened her eyes as light from the grey February dawn softened the dark corners of the room where she had slept alone.

After fifty-seven years of marriage Roy and Marcy had been separated on two occasions. The first was when Roy had been stranded overnight along the bread delivery route that he drove each week through central Illinois. A blizzard that developed in the early morning hours had dumped thirteen inches of snow on the highway, and by four o'clock even the state roads were impassable. Roy stayed overnight at his brother's house in Charleston, forty miles south of the house in Villa Grove where Marcy waited up all night, rocking their newborn daughter Jane. Though Roy had called Marcy to tell her that he was safe, she couldn't keep from worrying: she was eighteen, a mother, and alone.

The second occasion was when Marcy, against her better judgment, agreed to accompany her son Tom and his family on an overnight trip to St. Louis. Unable to leave his job, Roy had stayed home to work at the hardware store where he was the weekend manager. Despite Tom's best attempt to show his mother a good time, Marcy couldn't relax. It was uncomfortable for her to be apart from Roy.

When Roy left her for the third and final time, Marcy did not know what to do. She remained with his body in the hospital room for as long as the coroner would allow her, but eventually the hospital manager was called to help remove her from the room. Jane and Tom had both moved out of the state, and though they both made arrangements to fly back to Illinois as quickly as they could when they received the news, no one could have anticipated the suddenness of Roy's passing. Six months earlier he had shingled their house by himself. After the hospital manager spoke to Tom on the phone, he made arrangements for someone to drive Marcy to her house--Roy's house--where she slept in a bed alone for the first time in over twenty years.

Marcy rolled onto her side and looked out the window beside her bed. A red cardinal was perched in the leafless lilac bush. He cocked his head and seemed to peer into the window, returning Marcy's gaze. Slowly, Marcy raised her hand, stretching out pale, thin, blue-veined fingers to the bird. The cardinal looked at the ground, then it flew away.

On the nightstand next to the bed Marcy kept a plastic cup where she stored her dentures in water overnight. She reached for the cup and placed the cold oral prostheses into her mouth. The plastic tasted mealy, like dried bologna, but she sucked them into her gums and jawed them into place.

Tossing the covers from her legs, she pulled them over the side of the bed as she sat up. She looked down at her feet as they flattened themselves on the cold wood floor. Her feet looked unfamiliar to her. After seventy-five years of life her entire body seemed to have been transformed, and she didn't recognize herself. Her ankles were thin and bony, and the tops of her feet were corrugated with thick veins. They were not the plump, yet slender feet that slid across Roy's hairy legs for the first time of thousands on her wedding night.

"Do you remember that night, Roy?"

No one answered, and the silence that followed filled her with an emptiness that could be only filled by tears.

When she walked into the bathroom, she pulled a chain that hanged from a light fixture above the mirror, and the small room flooded with yellow light. She looked into the mirror and returned the gaze of a frazzled old woman with deep, sagging wrinkles and white hair. Her eyes were filled with the colors of age: red, blue, yellow, and grey. She put her hands to her cheeks and pushed against her skin, pulling it tight against her cheekbones, but she could not find the face that she had known so many years ago. She searched the face for any sign of remembrance, but was met only with the gaze of an unfamiliar old woman. Summoning the courage to speak to her, Marcy asked, "What do I do now?"

The old woman said nothing. Marcy had hoped that she would tell her something. Perhaps to die, for what else was there left to do? But she had said nothing. She offered no hope for something better to come, no warning for something worse. She gave only one message: nothing.

"Thank you," Marcy said. And she pulled the chain of the light.

Marcy stepped into a seafoam green polyester dress, and placed her best Sunday hat upon her head. She walked into the kitchen and reached for the hook where Roy kept the keys to the Buick. Her hand paused above the keys just before she touched them. Roy was the last to put the keys on the hook, and she placed her hand softly on the keys, caressing them, knowing that one day everything that Roy had touched would disappear, that the world as Roy had left it would forever change. She put the keys to her lips as tears rolled down both cheeks.

She opened the door that separated the kitchen from the garage and pressed the green-lit button of the garage door, which began to open with a clunk, followed by the roar of chains and rollers. Marcy opened the driver's side door of the Buick, a car that she and Roy had owned together for thirteen years, but that she had never driven. Marcy didn't drive. She had driven a tractor on the farm before she was married, and she had driven the car on short errands before Roy had retired. But after Roy's retirement Marcy never had a reason to drive anywhere. Everywhere they went, they went together: the store, the post office, the church, the doctor. And Roy was always the chauffeur.

When she turned the key, the console was illuminated by red and yellow lights that were backlit with indecipherable symbols, and bell chimed fifteen times. Eventually, the chiming stopped, and all but one of the yellow lights turned off. The Buick rumbled under her feet, heaving convulsively like a rooting sow. Marcy stepped on the accelerator, and the car coughed out a cloud of blue smoke that filled the dark garage before the engine settled into a low rumble. Marcy adjusted the rear-view mirror, placed the shifter into reverse, and backed slowly from the garage.

It was still cold in February. The ground was still hardened by frost, and piles of dirty ice lay along the roadways and in parking lots. Marcy drove slowly through town past the downtown shops and grocery stores in the morning traffic of small-town Illinois. At the main four-way intersection in town, Marcy, in her blue-grey sedan, waited at a red light as traffic passed by: High schoolers sped to school in salt-crusted farm trucks. The windows of yellow school buses filled with elementary children were steamed from the inside. On the sidewalk a young couple walked to school hand-in-hand, with backpacks strewn across their shoulders.

A horn blared from behind Marcy's car, and as she looked up she saw that the light had turned green. She turned on her right turn signal and drove the car out of town.

The cemetery where Roy was buried lay twelve miles from town beside the small country church where Roy and Marcy had been married. Marcy had not visited the gravesite since the funeral. On that day there had been sadness, and she had cried, but she did not know how to feel. The death had been so sudden, so unexpected and unlooked for. Though many of their friends and relatives had begun to die at a rate of one or two a month, at the age of seventy-eight Roy was a picture of health. He was fit. He wore the same size pants that he had worn when he joined the Army at eighteen. He was a jocular man with big arms and a bigger heart. His ruddy face brightened a room as he strutted about like a peacock, poking old men in the sides with a smile, bending over to lift toddlers for a kiss, and pulling chairs out for the widows who were waiting for Marcy to pass. Roy was a man who was alive and a man who lived. But Death, when it marked him, took him in a thunderbolt that left many stunned.

It was reasonable that a seventy-eight year-old man could die, and most of the people at church or the lodge came to terms with Roy's passing without much difficulty, despite the initial shock. But for Marcy, the truth of his death had never rested upon her with the severe weight of mortality. He had died and been placed in the ground before she had a moment to reflect that he was really gone. After fifty-seven years with one man, she had lost him in three days. One day to sit beside a bed next to his white, dead body for two and a half hours before she was escorted from the room. One day to receive her children who made quick arrangements in order to catch return flights early the morning after the funeral. One day to receive a line of a hundred guests who paid their respects. And the next morning he was in the ground.

Fifty-seven years.

Marcy would see him again. She needed to go to where he lay and tell him that she wanted him to be with her still. She needed to convince herself that he was stiff and cold beneath the frozen sod. That death had stolen him. That he was not coming back.

Marcy parked the Buick in the parking lot of the church next to the cemetery where her husband was buried. Still sitting in the warm cab of the car, she looked out across the gravestones that rested beneath the overcast February sky. At the end of the row nearest the road Marcy saw a sunken mound of clay beside a stone that was engraved "Watters."

As Marcy stepped from the car, strong winds blew the hat from her head, and it blew across the field and out of her reach. She had not worn a coat, but she turned to face the chill of the winds that whipped her hair from her face. She stumbled uneasily across the gravel lot toward her husband, squinting in the wind and crossing her arms tightly across her chest. As she approached the graveside, the front of the stone came full into her view. When she saw it, she raised her face to the sky and let out a whimpered scream. Marcy walked to the stone and collapsed into a heap of tears as she fingered the name engraved on the front of the marker.