pickup truck, shifting and shifting

the gears rolling and rolling,

i glance to my right over the swamp

as a white-blue sky breaks over

the rain-laden landscape, voluptuous

black swirling eddies of water dangerously

high. but only for a moment as

a sharp curve of road narrows

my focus (down shifting,

rolling and rolling)

night is still there,

purplish-black laying a-top an industrial fringe

land cum ghetto apocalypse.

as I am

still rolling and shifting down this

blighted lane, I come

to a gas station and pull in

for a coffee.

To Work is a post from: Pif Magazine

Falling briskly against the chinks in the window

Uneasy sleep

A voluble accompaniment to

An out-of-work cello.

Scooting, crawly insects beat against it

With a frenzy of scrawled brevity

Tattooed on its soft shell.

Horns bleat somewhere in the inky distance.

Town criers bellowing news to a somnolent brain.

Alternatives roll away from eyes

Cemented closed with a.m.’s dream glue

And the clinkety-clank of Sir Gawain’s armor

Makes its way into the room.

Declaring additional valid seconds

Feet flopping like pimpled pancakes ready for turning

To the cold floor

The morn ready to mourn another day.

Morning’s Broken Armor is a post from: Pif Magazine

when I first, without malice, called bitch

into the empty receiver, the girl I had tried

to kiss, holding it up to my chin, teaching me

how to swear. Then, those fuck fuck fucks

I strung together while my youthful body

found the reality of my sporting talent,

my shoulder fraying with every slight pull,

like those dreams had been made of cotton

& how good it felt to swear in the YMCA

when I dropped the dumbbell on my finger,

had it split the bone right through. True

in spirit, how I miss that innocent language,

awful in its expression, shocking to the spirit,

but now I use those words in earnest, in full

meaning. The man that knocked down

my daughter at the post office is a bastard

or a motherfucker. The ex-girlfriend, waving

herself at me online is a petty bitch

& with every bill I open, the math in my head

says fuck fuck fuck. All shit, I still like the sailor

in my vernacular, but it feels too close to me

now, too low on the hip, like a damned weapon.

Low Pleasures is a post from: Pif Magazine

I’m the oldest of four, and was by far the most athletic and coordinated, yet I was the one who frequently ended up in the emergency room, at least when were kids. Such accidents create vivid snapshots of the moment, though, in truth, I don’t exactly remember everything else that was going on in my young life.

The first accident, one in which I can clearly remember how I felt at the time, happened when I was five, I think, because my brother hadn’t been born, and my parents only had to contend with myself and my sister, who was a year younger than me. How the accident took place, I’m still not entirely sure. We were living in Queens and I was across the street playing with Jeanie DeMaeo, who was my age, though I don’t think we had much in common. I can still picture running in her backyard and watching her seem to pass magically through a wooden gate which looked like it opened on its own. I was right behind her, but nothing special or spectacular protected me, the gate came back toward me, swinging and hitting me smack in the face, leaving a rusty nail sticking out of my lower lip.

Standing there, seeing the blood, and the nail jutting out, I was more stunned than scared, and the pain hadn’t hit yet, but I knew, knew desperately, that I had to get to my mother, the only one who could make things better. And that’s when a major dilemma popped up. I wasn’t allowed to cross 32nd Avenue, where we lived, without an adult accompanying me. I remained on the DeMaeos’ side of the street, wondering what to do. Different degrees of fear were swirling through my head, that of the dire needed for help because of the nail in my lip, and also my reluctance to break a rule my mother had instilled in me. I waited, crying, debating what to do, and then the panic increased so much, my decision was made, and I anxiously glanced right and left, watching the traffic on 32nd Avenue whizzing by until I saw an opening and dashed across the street, continuing on up the steps and into our house, blood dripping on the carpet as I screamed for my mother.

My mother was great in emergencies. She was very practical and never lost her cool or overreacted, and she possessed a gentle sense of genuine empathy which always comforted others. She didn’t gasp, or let on that anything terrible was wrong, but simply took me by the hand and led me out to the car in the driveway.

We went up the block to Kenny Krueger’s house, a corner house up a hill, to see his father, the doctor. These were still the days when doctors made house calls, and would still come home at a reasonable hour, so Dr. Krueger was there and immediately took me into his office, which was above the garage. My crying, and fear, had increased, but Dr. Kreuger sat me down in the equivalent of a chair in a dentist’s office and told me in a reassuring voice that all would be okay. I still didn’t quite believe him, but my mother remained calm, and seemed to accept what Dr. Kreuger said, so I tried not to look at the nail and hoped for the best.

When I saw Dr. Kruegr’s hand reach toward my lip, I closed my eyes and gripped the sides of the chair with each hand, squeezing as hard as I could. I felt a sharp pain as the nail was pulled out and opened my eyes in time to see blood spurting out and down the front of my shirt. I wanted to run, but where could I possibly go?

I also knew, as much as i might not be able to articulate it all that concisely, that Dr, Krueger was the only one who could save me, and it helped enormously having my mother there, never worried she wouldn’t protect me and trusting everything would be okay somehow, even if I couldn’t imagine how.

Dr. Krueger, with complete confidence in his voice, told me that excessive bleeding was not unusual with an injury to the mouth and there was nothing for me to worry about, that he was going to stitch up the wound in my lip where the nail went in, but first he needed to give me a booster shot. The instant terror of being stuck with a needle, and the anticipated pain was far more intense than the blood coming from my lip, to which Dr. Krueger began to apply antiseptic gauze.

For those who remember shots as a kid, the thought of it was always much worse than the actuality, at least in my case, but it still hurt like hell and made my entire lower arm sore. And then I remained as still as possible as Dr. Krueger took needle and stitches and began sewing up my lower lip. It was a strange sensation, not painful, almost as if I could’t quite believe I was actually the patient, the one undergoing such an unexpected process, one which I never would have dreamed a possibility, much less a reality, when I awakened that morning.

Dr. Krueger stitched me up and gave me the green light to leave. He gave my mother some instructions and said I should come back in a week or so to have the the stitches removed, a total of three if I remember correctly.

I wasn’t that freaked out about the stitches because I knew I’d had stitches before when I was one-years-old, though obviously was only aware of that previous accident from my father telling me about it. Apparently, my mother was in the hospital, having just given birth to my sister, and my father was looking after me. I was standing up in a stroller on the landing at the top of the steps to the apartment in San Francisco where we lived in at time time when I guess I bounced too high, falling out and biting clear through my tongue, my teeth almost severing it in half, but a flap still remaining, which made the hanging part easier to stitch back together.

I have no memory of the incident, but in later years, I realized my father must have been completely caught off guard, though he was a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, and instinctively, after his training and internship in a hospital in New York City, recognized what to do. Still, it must have been stressful, with his wife in the hospital, and then having his son, me, almost bite my tongue off. He related to me when I was older that doctors were hesitant to put stitches in anyone’s tongue, but my situation wax such an emergency that it took 10 stitches to ensure my tongue remained intact.

The next accident resulting in stitches happened when I was seven, shortly after we moved from Queens to Englewood, N.J.  I was in second grade and entered  school there in March, and was terribly uncomfortable being the new kid. Fortunately, the street we lived on had kids close to my age so I made a lot of friends out of school. In typical grown up fashion, the line dividing which kids went to Roosevelt School and which went to Quarles was our street, and since we were on the north side, my sister and I went to Quarles, while those on the south side went to Roosevelt.

I think it was in early May, or it could have been April, but it was a warm day and my father’s colleague, friend, and mentor, Dr. Markowitz came up from southern New Jersey with his wife and two boys to visit our new house. My father had set a small rubber swimming pool, really so small it would be laughed at as a wading pool, in the backyard, for us to stay cool. It was a thoughtful gesture in theory but there was only room for maybe three of us to sit in it at the same time, and it contained only a few inches of water. I was sitting in the pool, and I have no idea why he felt compelled to do this but Joe Markowitz, who was my age, came running across the lawn, taking off and leaping forward, then doing a cannonball as if entering a large swimming pool and landing on my head.

The impact to my head resulted in somehow forcing my teeth teeth toward my left cheek. Thinking of it now, it almost seems impossible, yet, I managed to bite a hole through my cheek. I was stunned and wasn’t quite sure what had happened. Then I spotted the blood and slipped my right finger in my mouth, only to be horrified when my finger was able stick out from the inside of my mouth, its tip wiggling on the outside of my cheek.

At that point, fear and panic took over, and I popped out of the pool, rushing toward the house, with my hand across the hole in my check screaming for my mother. As usual, she was calm and reacted in a reassuring manner, but since we were new to the neighborhood, she wasn’t quite sure where the hospital was located. Within twenty minutes or so, however, we were at the emergency room and a doctor was sewing up the hole in my cheek, putting in five stitches, while giving me instructions on what not to do while the wound was healing.

I’m not sure if my constant anxiety started in small part from these childhood instances of proof that life was unpredictable and everything could change in a second. I do know i was very self-conscious going to school after the pool fiasco. It was bad enough being the new kid, but to also not be able to speak without sounding like someone talking in a slurred mumble, did not help inspire confidence.

A couple days later I was with a new friend, Miles, who lived one block over from the far end of our street. I had walked over to his house, not because he was fun, we didn’t much in common, but more because he was mild mannered and friendly and I still hadn’t made many friends yet. He told me about the wild kid next door, who was our age, and went to a special school because he had emotional problems. His name was Jed, and he seemed okay, just a bit hyperactive, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was listening when I spoke to him.

Jed seemed absorbed, completely fascinated when I related why I was speaking the way I was and how I had needed stitches in my cheek. Miles and I were standing toward the end of the driveway running past the backyard toward the garage at Jed’s place. The next sequence of events is still somewhat blurred, though the results certainly weren’t. Jed grabbed a power hose which was coiled up and hanging on the side of his house. He turned the tap, then aimed the hose at my face, releasing a gush of water that hit my cheek full force, loosening the stitches and undoing all the doctor’s recent work.

Once again, I was running and crying for my mother, moving as fast as I could to get home, while pressing my right hand against the reopened wound caused by the power hose. Fortunately, my mother was home and we went through the same routine again, driving to the hospital, where I was given five more stitches, which resulted in me mumbling for an extra week before they could come out.

My next accident was by far the most serious and the scar from it is still visible, though faded with time. I was fourteen and just beginning the experimental period of drinking. I was at my friend West’s house, whose parents weren’t home, with a few other friends. West’s older brother was home from boarding school and was supposed to be in charge of making sure we behaved and didn’t do anything destructive.

I’d already had a couple drinks when I approached West’s brother in the living room, and who knows why I said this, but looking at his parents’ immense liquor supply on shelves on the wall, I asked if I could take a slug from every bottle. I guess West’s brother couldn’t believe I was serious because he said sure, then went to another room and promptly forgot about me.

Time is difficult to pinpoint. I don’t know how long it took but soon I was raging and staggering drunk. West and my other friends weren’t sure what to do. They wanted to sober me up, the sooner, the better. No one had much experience in such matters, which was to be expected. Someone came up with the idea of putting me in the shower at the poorhouse, a structure which was actually larger than many average suburban homes.

I don’t remember much, the next two conscious memories were similar to “beam me up, Scottie” in an adventure of Star Trek, where I was one place one moment, and then followed by an extended blank and gap, I realized I was lying on a bed in the hospital. The first memory is standing in the shower in my underwear and seeing the thick glassed shower door being closed. I raised my hand up to stop it and the palm my right hand went right through the glass, though the real problem didn’t occur until I pulled my arm back out, slicing my wrist in the process. I slumped back against the far wall of the shower, sitting stunned, as blood spurted up and out and down across my body.

That snapshot of reality didn’t last long, and the next thing I was aware of was my mother and father standing off to the side, while I lay screaming and cursing and crying, a scared and rebellious teen, without any conception of the dire situation in which I was in.  I made quite a spectacle of myself, and looking back, trying to crystalize vague recollections, I feel remorse and guilt about what I accused my parents of being, things I didn’t believe and would never have even thought to have said under normal circumstances, the old it was the alcohol speaking and not me.

The doctor who stitched me up saved my life, a concept that didn’t register with me because I still was operating under the premise of the invincibility of youth. I went to school the Monday after the accident with my hand and wrist covered with gauze, giving my arm the appearance as if I was a Mummy. And still, in my adolescent mind, I was more embarrassed about having my hand bandaged when I went to school than actually realizing I was lucky to be alive.

Most of us have scars on the inside, coming from the experience of living, though some are deeper and darker, depending on the person. I only have had one other accident, at least so far, where external scars exist, but are now almost unnoticeable due to the passage of time. I was in a car accident when I was eighteen, and it was an accident in which it’s amazing I survived.

The accident involved a case of two drunk drivers coming straight at each other from opposite directions on a two land road. I was the passenger in one of the cars, sitting in the so-called dead man’s seat in the front next to the driver, a guy named George, who was a friend of a friend. We were coming back from a party in Manhattan at a dorm at Columbia University, had crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, and then were heading north up through New Jersey to Rockland County in New York, where the drinking age was eighteen, and not twenty-one. I have no idea how I ended up in a car with George and was not riding with my friend, the one who knew George, since he had been at the dorm room party with us.

Everything happened so fast, in a blink, it’s difficult to accept, though the consequences were undeniable. George was clearly drunk, and then another car with a drunk driver swerved into our lane and was coming right at us. George instinctively moved to the other lane, the one the other car should have been in, just as that car also returned to the proper lane and we were once again headed for a direct collision. George’s only option to avoid a head on crash was to turn the sharply so we were back in the proper lane again, but we were going too fast and I could see my side of the car was going to smash right into a telephone pole.

In a flash, I was lying on my back on the hood of George’s car, my face littered with pieces of glass and blood flowing down from the top of my head which had been split open from above my left eye to the beginning of my hairline. It was a rare case where I was still alive because I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. My side of the car hit the telephone pole directly, and there were a couple hundred pounds of pipe cutting equipment behind my seat, equipment used on the job by George’s fathe, which was propelled forward, crushing my side of the car between it and the telephone pole.

George’s claims he alertly saved my life, but I know he was lying. He grabbed me, using me as a shield, and when the car hit, I went flying up over the steering wheel and then out through the windshield, doing a somersault and landing on the hood of the car with my feet pointing forward. Not having a seatbelt on allowed George to grab me, and with my body propped up in front of his, he bounced off me when we crashed, sustaining no injuries except a minor cut on his face.

I wasn’t exactly sure in anything close to a coherent awareness of where I was and why, only sensing the warm sensation of blood, and seeing swirling red lights about me, lights from police cars and an ambulance, though I couldn’t move and everything around me looked like blurry images in a watercolor painting. I do remember my last conscious thought before passing out and waking up in the hospital two days later. I simply thought, “I wonder if I’m dead,” and then all went blank.

I received something like 150 stitches to sew up my forehead and a nasty gash above the lid of my left eye. When I first held a mirror up to my face while lying in my hospital bed, I was shocked, and then deeply depressed, at how hideous I looked, with one side of my head similar in appearance to that of he Frankenstein monster, with bits of red dried blood still caked across the stitches. But I was alive, and aware I couldn’t change things no matter how much I wanted.

It took time, though really not much time in the scheme of things, especially given the severity of the injuries I sustained in the car accident, but the scars healed nicely, despite my original thoughts of being doomed to looking horrible the rest of my life. In fact, over the years, and certainly today, no one even notices the vertical scar on my head, the sun, I suppose, over the years, helping it fade and blend in with the natural color of the skin on my face, and all without any cosmetic surgery, which I must admit never even came to mind as a possibility.

I’m not sure what to say, though, of course, I’m grateful to be here writing this. If nothing else, I learned, and think I’ve internalized, that present pain and discomfort can eventually be overcome, provided one does not give into despair brought on by a feeling of the eternity of the moment. Naturally, these experiences and the scars, still visible to me, serve as reminders of different stages of my life, that there are some actions I wish I could take back, or make disappear, but overall, each reminder of the past, whether prominently showing or not, reinforces a resolve to do the best I can, and to try and behave like a decent person, with each subsequent day ahead.

Accidental happenings along the way is a post from: Pif Magazine

I want to shape it after your likeness

light it and step within the smoke

that dared to come over you

I’ll dip the ash

in the mere that reached my knees

I will brush your eyebrows

on a booklet of clay – so you can waft them

in the empty pocket on the chest

with every heartbeat

fine particles will penetrate through skin pores

will give birth to embossed tattoos

that will carry you

slowly

slowly

toward death

Smoke is a post from: Pif Magazine

Photo by Camila Svenson (São Paulo, Brazil)

“Brian Wilson is the most underrated artist of the twentieth century …” I am telling Sam as she leans forward to light yet another cigarette from a lighter that once was mine. “Can you hear this! Are you listening?”

“Yes.” Puff. “Listening, I’m listening.”

“Really listening?”

“To what? To you?”

“No, to the stereo … the stereo!” I wail as one hand rises from steering wheel to sky. “So pure … so … so fucken pure!”

The horizon teases as brush and foliage sweep past, the centre line blurs and the Beach Boys take over as harmonies rise and Sam offers another line off a delicate wrist as her peace sign bracelet swings ever so gently with the beat.

“And he’s deaf! Well, half deaf. His father was a right asshole who once gave him a beating that left him deaf in one ear,” sniff, “so he had to record in mono … do you understand!”

“Yes, I understand …”

“And so,” sniff, “and so he recorded in mono and the sound engineer had to flip it to stereo and still … you hear that? You hear that!”

“I hear it, I hear it … the guy’s a fucken genius already!”

Sam punches my shoulder and mumbles ‘Sweet Jesus’ as she exhales and we speed toward a destination that speaks of endless possibility and we smile and we laugh as Brian Wilson guides the way.

And yet as we arrive James is lent against the bent and buckled railing of a porch in need of repair and he receives us with half-hearted wave more warning than welcome.

As we exit the car Sam bites her lip and we enter to find James’ warning well advised. The shades are drawn and yet this seems a detail at best as there is morbidity in the air that no amount of light can repel. The house appears raided by relatives from far and wide, the remaining piece of furniture a single sofa draped in soiled white cloth.

“This is the ‘formerly-living’ room,” James deadpans as he points to the spot next to the sofa where his Aunt was discovered.

Sam crosses herself as James removes a hip flask from his rear jean pocket, lies in front of a laptop and begins to tap at the keys.

“This was a favoured Aunt?” I ask. “So how was the funeral?”

“I didn’t go to the funeral, I had exams,” he says as he taps.

“But you didn’t go to any of your exams …”

“Yeah, but when she died I hadn’t planned that far ahead,” he replies and then, “She suffered from Anhedonia. That’s what my Mom used to tell me every time we came to visit. Mom would remind me that ‘Great Aunt Dee suffered from Anhedonia, so I should keep that in mind’. And it wasn’t till I was a teenager I realized Mom was talking shit.”

With this he reaches for the flask, “Anhedonia’s the inability to derive pleasure … it was my Mom’s way of getting back at Dee for all the grief she’d caused.”

James tips his head and swallows twice, his eyes water, “Shit, she wasn’t a sociopath, if anything she was the last of the puritans. At the end of the day Dee simply wasn’t afraid to bring others down to her level, and for that I figure she wasn’t so bad.”

And so Sam and I head for supplies while James promises to make an effort, if only for an evening.

Sam and I search streets of abandoned homes and lawns waist-high. The odd local leans against a wall, an elderly couple inch along a side-walk.

We park outside a 7-Eleven and as if on cue a stray approaches. Sam bends to pat its head before recoiling at the dog’s condition, all skin and bones, matted fur, tongue lolled to one side.

Sam grabs my arm and as we enter the store the stray lays down and sees us inside.

We grab two bottles of Jack and a bottle of Rum and approach the register beneath the gaze of a man with a beard to his belly and knuckle tattoos. Sam pays no mind and points to the dog outside.

“That dog? That damn dog’s been hanging round for weeks Ma’am.”

There is a definite emphasis on ‘Ma’am’.

“County’s supposed to take care of it,” the Beard continues, “but damned if I know when they’ll pull their thumbs out long enough …”

“The dog’s been here for weeks?”

“Uh huh.”

“And no-one’s looking out for it?”

“Nuh.”

“So if she’s …”

“Don’t know if it’s a he nor she nor fiddle-dee-dee,” interrupts the Beard, “but I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna go anywhere near a dog that far gone … bitch like that’d be more than happy to bite you on the ass and pass on all sorts of devil and disease.” With this he takes a sip of coffee from a polystyrene cup the size of a thermos.

“So you’re just going to …”

“Ma’am, that’ll be ninety three dollars and seventy five cents.”

“But …”

“Ma’am, that’ll be ninety three dollars and seventy five cents.”

“And this …” says Sam reaching for some beef jerky, “for the dog.”

As Sam pays I return to the car, the dog is nowhere to be seen. Sam places the meat on the asphalt as I start the engine.

“He’s gone.” I say.

“He’s here somewhere. He’s just learned his place, that’s all.”

And as we drive away I find I am lost, Sam gives direction while I try to remember why I’m here, with these people …

…I first came across James sprawled in the park one morning as he attempts to convince a blonde that in ‘no way’ has he slept with anyone the night before.

She storms off and James calls after her, “You know when beavers are attacked they tear their balls off and hurl them at their enemy… I’m starting to see the wisdom in that!”

And I laugh and James raises his head and it seems he’s swiped a bottle of bourbon from his roommate and we get drunk while sophomores in short shorts play frisbee.

James drinks and jokes and drinks and smokes and drinks and asks if I’m aware of the affairs of the damned and at the time I assume this relates to an assignment but looking back I’m not so sure.

“Do you know when the Devil rallies the witches of the world?”

I shrug.

“Friday after sunset,” he answers with a slight slur. “Many Priests tortured many girls to acquire this information. They’d break them on the rack, scorch their flesh, shove an instrument up an orifice or two …” He considers for a moment, “you can always rely on the celibate to employ the most perverse methods of torture.”

I return the bottle of bourbon.

“Turns out it was Friday after sunset witches came together. They would meet where soil refused seed, strip off their clothes and dance like freaks in impromptu circle while wolves howled and the Devil played the bagpipes.”

A frisbee falls.

James downs the last of the bourbon. “It makes you think man … I mean, I’m no fan of the Devil, but that sounds a hell of a lot more entertaining than Morning Mass at St Sebastian’s.”

And with this James places his hat in front of his face and I wait a while, then rise and walk away …

… and Sam and I met in circumstances where details differ but all felt strangely familiar.

I was approaching love with an actress who panted favoured monologue during foreplay and who – confined to bed with whatever virus was hep that week – struggles to wave farewell as I close the door to her dorm and proceed toward a house far off campus, where rumour whispers of Dionysian delight.

As I enter I find myself accosted on all sides, concert posters from decades past surround me, as I move through the house there appear more and more and the carpet is frayed and faded and all is broken light switch and cracked counter tile.

I am in the shell of a house – leave your soul at the door and all else be damned – and yet as I turn to leave I overhear a declaration that, “He’s such an asshole that word was he handed out confidentiality agreements at his 21st and, while this wasn’t in the least bit true, you can believe the rumour took its sweet time to die.”

I enter a far room to find the voice belongs to a brunette somehow central to gathered circle, others lean in and nod and offer the odd “Right on” and I approach and sit.

The brunette – cigarette in hand, full lips, dark eyes – listens as a blonde speaks in staccato.

“And my gyno said … he found traces of cocaine … up … you know … up there.”

“You may have a coked up cervix,” the brunette states most matter of fact. “That’s a huge problem right now and … you know, I just think you should get that checked out.”

The blonde is dumbstruck, she attempts reply but can’t … quite … find the words.

“Does your boyfriend rub coke on his dick?” The brunette asks without skipping a beat. “It’s actually a problem, so you should, you know … tell him to stop.”

The blonde slowly shakes her head, mouth wide open, eyes like saucers.

“But if not …” The brunette inhales and emphasises final point with a stab of her cigarette. “If he isn’t coating his cock with coke …” puff, “then you have a more serious problem. Cause if that isn’t the case …” puff, “then there’s a serious possibility that he’s using so much coke that it’s found its way into his seminal fluid.”

And with this the brunette turns her head to receive a joint from a random Rastafarian as the blonde slowly gets to her feet and staggers away …

“We should close the windows,” Sam says as the first drops fall and I take a step before realizing the windows are already closed as Aunt Dee wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sam and I have returned and the weather has turned and James has failed to move an inch. He briefly looks up from the glow of the computer screen, flicks a finger, music begins and “We should stay inside,” says James as the rain grows louder.

“We should stay inside,” repeats Sam.

“We should …” I begin as I turn toward the porch, the roof drumrolls as shower turns to downpour.

I take a breath as a candy wrapper makes its way down the road ahead. James appears and mumbles “the inability to derive pleasure” as he fashions a line on the railing and I lean forward and the coke is white and pure and Sam removes her blouse as ‘Sexy Sadie’ fills the air and she spins with arms outspread and her bra is a blur and her shoulders are bare and the notes are high and fine and

And I’m lying with my back to the wall as James regrets and Sam revels and so much more can be learned from the events of the night before than I am yet ready to admit.

James kneels, fingers gripped to toilet rim, feet rising as he lurches forward with each revolt.

Each howl echoes down the hall.

Sam stretches atop soiled white sheet, toes curl and hands rise to the ceiling as fingers flicker toward stars known to Sam and Sam alone.

And as I step outside I remember how Sam leaned in, I recall the warmth of her lips and the slight tempt of her tongue and the way she rubbed her nose as she withdrew and how she returned to my lips and

we

are

naked

and Sam is above and we come together as Lennon cries and I close my eyes as Sam rolls aside and I smile and open my eyes to witness Sam and James and I return to the darkness and the music and years go by and I feel a hand on my shoulder as Sam returns and throughout my eyes remain closed as while they are closed this night must come to an end.

“It’s sad in a way,” says Sam as she leans against the railing and offers a light.

“What’s sad?” I reply as I accept and inhale.

“James … he’s got everything ahead of him and yet he’s knee-deep in all this.”

There is silence between us, and then, “James is one of the last people you should feel pity toward.”

“He has his problems.”

“James has the problems of any rich mother’s son.”

“I love it when people live down to your expectations.”

And in this moment I’m lost, as if it’s no longer James we’re talking about.

“And when I feel my finger on your trigger,” I begin, “I feel nobody can do me no harm, because …”

Sam yawns then turns to face me. “What?”

” … happiness is a warm gun.” I take a breath. “Just your typical Lennon bullshit.”

And with this I stub my cigarette against the railing and turn away, a few seconds pass and then footsteps follow and we drive back in silence as for once harmony offers little consolation.

Wild Honey is a post from: Pif Magazine

Photo by Huong Nguyen Fralin (Roanoke, VA)

“I don’t like Doug’s new girlfriend at all,” Earl confessed.

His wife Grace lowered the oven’s jaw and extracted a roasting pan of steaming sweet potatoes with mitted hands. “We don’t even know her,” she said, sighing effortfully as she released the pan onto the stove with a clang.

Earl stared into the hot black metallic maw and felt unsettled. He swirled a glass of red as his wife dried her brow with a forearm.

“Would you like some help?” he said.

“I’m done.” Grace scooped potatoes onto a serving dish. “So what don’t you like about her?”

“She talks too much.”

Several weeks ago, Earl, Grace, Doug, and Laura had taken a short walk in the park, and Earl’s ears still rang from Laura’s nattering. Oh, how hard her dance performances were! Oh, what a grind, those commercial auditions! Earl and Doug had been best friends since grade school. They had gone to college and business school together, and even ran a startup for three years before selling it to a public company. Of all of Doug’s girlfriends (and there had been many), Laura was the most irritating. Earl tried to commit to memory what she looked like. Blue eyes, blonde, not from a bottle.

“Has to say every feeling that comes to her head,” Earl added.

“You don’t talk about your feelings at all,” Grace said.

Her back was turned to him. She was washing the cutting board in the sink. The way her elbows churned, Grace looked like she could have been strangling someone. Was she still upset at his cold reaction to her recently expressed desire to have children? Grace accused him of flip-flopping. Sure, he’d previously claimed to love kids. But was he being unreasonable to say that they were too expensive? She was a city social worker! Sure, they had a decent nest egg after selling the company. But none of Doug and Earl’s latest ideas had taken off yet. What if none of them would? How would they manage then? No one liked to admit that having children could be an irreversible, life-altering mistake.

Grace emptied the sink and began to scrub it. She was growing her hair long again. He liked her hair long, so hearty, so dark—smelled of black figs. His sweet Grace. Earl wrapped an arm around her waist. They could overcome anything.

“Some feelings need not be said,” he said, sliding his hand down to her backside.

Grace moved away. “For God’s sake, Earl! Set the table.”

Doug and his girlfriend arrived late, arms crooked and intertwined. The blushing Laura handed Earl a bottle of vodka. “Good to see you again,” Earl said. She hugged him more tightly than he preferred. Earl inspected the clear glass, which was the color of faded clay against Laura’s blonde hair. Vodka at a couple’s dinner?

Doug was grinning sheepishly. “Sorry we’re late.” He glanced at Laura. “Traffic.”

In the decades Earl and Doug had known each other, Earl recalled Doug being tardy perhaps twice. Doug’s father was big on discipline and structure; he was part of the Japanese civilian military before immigrating to the States. In the few times he’d seen Doug and Laura together, they’d been late each instance (not just a few minutes like today, but thirty, forty, fifty minutes). Earl imagined Doug and Laura stopping for sex in the car. Seemed like something they might do, something she might initiate. Earl vaguely recollected the one time he and Grace had been so bold as to make love in an automobile. He practically had to get the community to sign waivers promising not to watch before Grace was comfortable.

“Your timing is perfect,” Earl said.

“No thanks to Earl,” Grace said, smiling as she walked out of the kitchen. She hugged Doug and then Laura, kissing them on both cheeks. “Let’s see if he can get you something to drink.”

Grace was definitely still upset, Earl thought. He raised the bottle of vodka. “Well, there’s no shortage.”

Earl poured a very full, very dark glass of Bordeaux for Laura, who was already on number four. “Thanks, Earl,” she said loudly, her blue eyes wide. Earl looked away just in case Doug and Grace caught him staring too long at Laura. Grace ladled sweet potatoes onto Laura’s plate.

“Every dish is so delicious,” Laura said, her eyes rolling up on the words “every” and “so.”

“It’s been too long,” Grace said. “Whenever Earl makes an effort to invite friends over, it’s a special occasion.”

“I make effort,” Earl said, forcing a smile.

“As long as it doesn’t cost you too much money,” Grace said. “As long it doesn’t take precious time away from your next ideation.” Ideation: finger-quoted.

Doug laughed. Earl followed suit. “Apparently, it’s not only the potatoes being roasted tonight,” Earl said. “Someone should have told me ahead of time. I’d have worn a tweed jacket and bought a Lazy Boy to sit in.”

“Grace knows you can take it,” Doug said, placing an arm around Laura. Laura squeezed Doug’s thigh. Earl leaned over and kissed Grace’s clammy cheek. The laboring oven had warmed the dining room to the point the windows were fogged, frosting their view of the black night.

Laura slapped the table. “Oh my God! So here’s why we’re late.”

Doug’s eyes dropped. “It was no big deal.”

“So we’re at the liquor store,” she said. “We’re both standing at the counter. I pay for the vodka, and the owner looks at me, and then he looks at Doug, and asks him, ‘Can I help you?’”

“Why would he do that?” Earl said.

“He couldn’t believe we were together!” Laura said. “When I told the guy Doug was my boyfriend, his face literally went white.”

“Pun intended?” Earl said. Grace rolled her eyes.

“He actually said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’” Laura said. “He called me ‘Ma’am!’ He was so scared to admit his racism.”

“He may not have been racist at all,” Doug said, resting fork on plate. “Maybe I looked distracted or maybe we weren’t standing that close together. Who knows?”

“Doug!” Laura scooted her chair so that she and Doug touched thighs. “We were this close.”

“Wow,” Grace said, shaking her head. “In this day and age.”

Doug glanced at Earl, then Grace. He forced a smile and shrugged. “It happens.”

“All the time,” Laura said.

On the balcony, Doug set his near-full wine glass on the rail and lit Earl’s cigarette. The outdoor light bulb had burnt out and Earl hadn’t bothered to replace it, so the two men were standing in near-darkness.

Doug had always been the man Earl wanted to be. Tall, thin, good-looking, well-spoken, perpetually genial. People were drawn to Doug. Earl considered himself short, a bit fleshy, generally undesirable to both women and men. When they ran the startup together, Earl led the engineering team, and Doug was the chief executive and spokesman to the media and the investors. He was good at saying the right thing and convincing people that he was genuine, a man of integrity. Someone in which you could invest with confidence. Earl was good at working long hours, coming up with ideas for his team to execute, observing workforce dynamics and maximizing non-optimal outcomes—avoiding the big mistake. Sure, Grace liked to make fun of Earl’s cards-close-to-the-vest approach to life. But someone had to make sure what Doug sold was actually delivered upon. At his wedding, Earl wept during Doug’s best man speech. Doug said that the two of them would be friends for life because Earl saw things that Doug didn’t; they were eyes on the same head, halves of the same heart. The touching nature of Doug’s words, the emotion of the moment, surprised Earl.

“So what did you do to piss Grace off?” Doug said, grinning. “Too much time in the man den?”

“She thinks she wants kids,” Earl said.

“That’s great!”

“And I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

Earl shook his head. Doug laughed. “You guys have been married for ten years! How could there be a miscommunication about this?”

“Well, maybe I misled her,” Earl said. “Misled may be strongly stated. I changed my mind. I like things the way they are.” The truth? Saying you didn’t want children seemed somewhat uncouth, especially when you knew your future wife wanted them. It was not unlike when he worked at a large corporation and his boss wanted Earl to drive a project that Earl knew was ill-fated. Do you tell your boss that her idea is ill-fated or do you do as told and act surprised when aforementioned fate turns ill? Earl had never wanted to subject another human being to what he went through as a young man. The bruising expectations of his parents. The awkwardness. The bullying. By boys and girls alike! Asian boys were never cool. And the Asian women! My, someone stop the white boy train! Perhaps progress had been made since Earl and Doug grew up. But was perhaps good enough?

“I think you two would enjoy parenthood,” Doug said.

“Are you kidding?” Earl said. “I’m glad my parents are dead.”

“Jesus, Earl.”

“I know that sounds cold,” Earl said, realizing that he probably wouldn’t have said those words aloud if he were sober. “But that’s the way I feel. That’s the way lots of people feel. No one wants to admit it.”

“All I’m saying is, you’ve got a good woman there,” Doug said. “Supportive. Patient. She put up with a lot during our boom days. You’re a lucky dude.”

“I am,” Earl said, glancing inside at his tiny Grace chatting with statuesque Laura. “Absolutely, I am. Whatever it is that’s bothering her, I’m sure it’ll pass.”

“What do you think of Laura?” Doug asked.

“She’s fine, perfectly nice.”

“I’m really head over heels,” Doug said. “It’s scary.”

Earl looked up at Doug. Laura? Dramatic Laura? “That was quick,” he said.

“Mistake?” Doug sipped his wine, his eyes still fixed on Earl.

Earl rested his elbows on the balcony’s black steel rail and ashed his cigarette into his dark garden. The full moon was visible through the branches of the large tree that walled off Earl’s house from the neighbor’s. “I don’t know her, really,” he said, his voice tentative. “She’s just so…”

“White?”

Earl laughed. “For the record, I was going to say ‘animated.’”

“Like a cartoon.”

“Stop.”

“You don’t like her,” Doug said.

“That’s not true.” Earl wished he had brought his wine out with him as Doug had. His buzz needed re-sparking.

Doug again rested his wine glass on the rail. He gripped Earl’s shoulder and gently turned his friend away from the balcony’s edge. Doug pointed at Earl’s chest. “Tell me if I’ve lost my head. Not another joke. The truth.”

Earl swallowed, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. He stared into the seemingly unending blackness beyond them. He took a deep breath and borrowed a sip of dark wine from his friend’s glass. He cleared his throat and looked into Doug’s eyes.

“The liquor store incident,” he said. “Does that happen a lot?”

Doug nodded. “I’ve dated white before and I’ve never had these issues.”

Doug told Earl that when he and Laura were alone together, it was great. Great sex life, relationship give and take, lots of common interests, and all that. But in public, Laura drew attention to herself—to the issue. He speculated that the attention came from her looks. She was an object of envy, perhaps. Earl pointed out that Doug had dated many good-looking women (“Remember the Latvian-what-was-her name? Holy cow.”). Earl theorized that the attention came from Laura’s lack of subtlety, her enjoyment of confrontation. For that reason, Earl expressed his reservations about Doug’s potential long-term commitment to Laura.

“There’s no way around it,” Earl said. “She prances.”

When Earl and Doug returned to the women, Grace was sitting in a living room chair, and Laura was standing, half-full wine glass in hand, stooped over Earl’s wife. Grace was eyeing Laura’s glass, frightened for her clothes and their furniture. Earl drifted toward Laura, trying to empty her hands. She was quite fit, possessed a dancer’s effortlessly vertical posture.

Laura was practically singing about how her father, a Texan, had objected to Japanese Doug. That’s what her father called him: Japanese Doug. Her father reasoned that if Laura stayed with Doug, his future grandchildren would never get to play high-school football because they’d be too short, even though Doug was five-foot-eleven.

Doug sat on the couch and beckoned for Laura. “I won him over,” he said. “I took him to a Cowboys game and knew all the players.”

“He did like your earning potential,” Laura said, nearly hitting Earl in the face with her glass.

“Let me freshen you up,” Earl said, taking the wine from her. He teetered into the kitchen. He realized that he also might have had a few too many drinks.

“He still thinks I’ll find true love elsewhere,” he heard Laura say.

“That is so awful,” Grace said somberly.

“I think he’d have preferred that Laura brought home a Mexican,” Doug said. “Then he could at least use his broken Spanish.”

The conversation went out suddenly, as if someone had flipped a light switch. Earl pressed a throbbing spot in the orbit of his eye. It seemed everyone simultaneously realized that they were now discussing aloud topics better left unvoiced.

“Long story short, the man was calling me ‘Son’ by the end of our visit,” Doug said. “I let him beat me at chess too. He was so proud.”

Instead of uncorking a new bottle of Bordeaux, Earl retrieved the vodka from the refrigerator and poured out several shot glasses. He knew Grace wouldn’t approve; she wasn’t much of a drinker. But Earl felt tonight was indeed becoming a vodka night. He peeked into the living room. Laura had finally stopped talking for the moment. She was sitting next to Doug, her shapely legs crossed and wagging, as if impatient, anticipating a dramatic moment. Choosing to ignore Grace’s admonishing look, Earl rounded up the shot glasses and headed back to his guests.

Sitting in his living room armchair, Earl reached for Grace’s hand. She left him hanging for a good thirty seconds before finally grabbing two fingers carelessly, without so much as looking at him. She might as well have flipped him a coaster.

Laura was now talking about how the bassist in her friend’s band hit on her after every show even when Doug was in attendance. The bassist is black, Laura made a point of mentioning.

“I told Serge to back off last time,” Doug said.

“He’s so disrespectful,” Laura said.

Laura was fairly well-endowed, Earl noticed. He wondered if her breasts were natural.

“Makes you wonder if we’re lucky, doesn’t it?” Grace said to Earl.

“How’s that?” Earl said, noticing the way Laura’s blouse exposed her creamy lower back as she reached down to strap her heels.

“We’re both Chinese,” Grace said.

Earl looked over at Grace. Her breasts were smallish. Then he glanced at Laura, whose eyes were glassy from drink. Earl reminded himself to look at Doug too.

“No one questions us,” Earl said.

On the balcony, vodka and O.J. in hand, Earl struggled to hold the lighter steady enough to fire Doug’s cigarette. Inside, Laura’s voice rose over Grace’s. Earl tried to glimpse Laura through the glass doors and couldn’t see either woman. Doug grabbed the lighter from Earl and lit his own smoke.

“I’m starting to see what you’re saying,” Doug said, smoke spouting from his lips. Earl held up innocent, surrendering hands. “Don’t put this on me.”

Doug gripped the railing and stared skyward. “I wish I had what you and Grace have,” he said. “I’m tired of looking. Money changes things. And not for the better. It’s harder to tell who really loves you.”

Earl laughed. “Oh, come on, you can’t be serious.”

Doug glanced at Earl, flat-lipped. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, marriage isn’t a life sentence,” Earl said. “You can always get divorced, so you’re always looking for something better.”

Doug’s head tilted, his lips parted slightly. “Does that mean you don’t think of your marriage as a life-long commitment?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Earl said. “I’m just saying that, unlike child-rearing, love and marriage are reversible decisions. Like if she can’t shut her trap about how proud she is to date your non-whiteness, it’s your right to walk away. Just like it’s my right to walk if I don’t like the way my marriage is going.”

Doug began to say something, then stopped. He stubbed out his cigarette and headed inside.

“Was it something I said?” Earl said.

“Gotta piss, bro,” Doug said, squeezing himself through the sliding glass doors before he had fully opened them.

Earl sipped his screwdriver and closed his eyes, relishing the warming of his frontal lobes. The wind picked up, raising the hairs on Earl’s arms. He looked down at the patches of reddened skin and realized he had been scratching all evening. Earl gazed down at his back garden, the egg-shaped shadows of the hedges wavering in the black. Perhaps he’d been a bit disrespectful to his marriage. Earl wasn’t like Doug though. He never feel head over heels for Grace. Grace and Earl happened to attend the same California college, happened to be engineering majors, and their friendship just seemed to happen. In fact, Earl didn’t like to admit that their courtship could have been considered arranged. Grace was the daughter of childhood friends of Earl’s aunt and uncle, who lived in Shenzhen. Certainly, he didn’t plan to discard his sweet Grace. Their life was happy. She always seemed to think more of Earl than he thought of himself. But would he rule out divorce one day if things deteriorated, if she insisted on ruining their very comfortable existence by having a litter of money-eating dwarves (and they would be dwarves; thanks to Earl and Grace’s below average height)? No one liked to speak of it, but Earl was just being frank, blunt perhaps, but ultimately honest. If Doug were to get serious with or perhaps even marry Laura, Earl felt Doug would be making a mistake. He’d have his fun, but the things that bother you before marriage only magnify after. Like Grace’s incessant criticisms, their sporadic sex life, her smallish breasts, and the fact she didn’t wear makeup.

The glass door slid open. Laura staggered out. Her arms were bare; she wasn’t wearing a jacket.

“It’s cold out,” Earl said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Laura rubbed her toned, goose-pimpled arms. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a small spliff. “Mind if I smoke?”

Earl said nothing as he lit her joint. Seemed there wasn’t an intoxicant Laura didn’t like.

“Grace is a wonderful cook,” Laura said. “The potatoes just melted in my mouth.” She stretched the words, saying them loudly as Earl heard Doug laughing with Grace inside. Laura’s nipples were visible against her top.

“That’s my Grace,” Earl said.

“You have a wonderful house,” Laura said. “Doug often says he’d love a place like this instead of the pad he has.”

“It’s pretty modest,” Earl said, inhaling the secondhand pot smoke, trying to feed his inebriation. “But it keeps us from being targeted.”

“What?” Laura laughed. “In this neighborhood?”

“You can never let your guard down around the gangland Asians,” Earl joked. “You know all about them, don’t you?”

Laura shivered. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” Earl drained his cocktail and turned toward the glass doors.

Laura grabbed his arm. “What did you mean?”

Earl looked into Laura’s blue eyes. Her lashes were long, dark, and attention-grabbing thanks to her glittery mascara. Maybe she was blonde out of a bottle after all. Her lips were not so thin like other white women.

“You make race such a big issue,” he said.

“What?”

“You’ve been talking about it all night,” Earl said. “Constantly. You make it an issue with how you act.”

“How do I act?” Laura said, her voice rising.

Earl massaged the back of his neck. Laura repeated the question. Should he answer?

“Like you’re part of some struggle,” Earl blurted. “Like Doug’s your blacklight for intolerance. It’s just silly.”

Laura’s face reddened and her features began to converge and strain and crease her heavily made-up skin. She was not nearly as attractive when angry. “I can’t believe you would say that.”

“Ask Doug,” Earl said. “He agrees with me.”

She licked her index finger and thumb, pinched out her joint, and stuffed it in her pocket. Earl’s eyes drifted toward a prominent mole near Laura’s cleavage. Perhaps he had said too much.

“You don’t think I’m good for Doug,” she said.

Earl glanced inside, hoping to be rescued. Where were Grace and Doug? “That’s not what I’m saying,” he said, softening his voice. “I’m sorry I brought it up.” He waited for the murmuring inside to commence. “Doug is a lucky man.”

Laura placed hands on hips. “You don’t mean it.”

“I do.” Earl palmed her shoulder. Sinewy to the touch, not like soft Grace. He leaned in ever so slightly to whiff her blond hair. She smelled like sweat and crisp laundry.

Laura backed away. “I can tell you don’t,” she said. “Your wife says you lie all the time. About wanting kids. About not wanting kids. About what you like. About what you don’t like. Doug and I don’t have a perfect relationship but maybe you should look at yours more closely.”

Earl stopped listening. Again, he moved in, nodding, his face close to hers, close enough to smell her boozy breath. Out of the corner of Earl’s eye, he observed tall, thin Doug and little Grace talking, her looking up at him. Footfalls on the hardwood. The slit of yellow light between their dark figures. They were clearing the glasses from the living room. When was the last time Earl’s pulse drummed this intensely? Back away, he told himself. His sweet Grace, his boy Doug.

He lowered his hand, wrapped an arm around Laura’s waist, and pulled her close until their flanks touched. There was resistance, but Earl held firm. “I like white ladies a lot,” he whispered into Laura’s ear.

Earl and Grace stood in their front doorway, arms around each other. They bade their guests farewell. Grace said they’d get on each other’s calendars soon, and Earl reminded Doug to drive safely. Earl’s hand was numb against Grace’s flank. Would Laura mention their encounter to Doug? Christ, of course, she’d go on and on about it! Earl would have to explain to his best friend that he meant to complement Laura and, in his slight inebriation, had come off sounding a bit uncouth. Would Doug understand? Would he forgive?

“What do you think of her now?” Grace asked, letting go of Earl, walking into the kitchen.

“As long as Doug loves her, I suppose,” he muttered, following his wife. He rubbed his side where Laura had elbowed him. She had called him a number of pejoratives. None could be construed as racist (save perhaps “limp dick”). He was lucky Grace had convinced him to splurge on double-paned glass for those sliding doors during last year’s remodeling.

“What were you two talking about out there?”’

Earl peeked out the kitchen window, now streaked with dripping condensation, clearing a view of the black streets. “Nothing much,” he said. Downstairs, Doug opened the car door for Laura. He waved up at Earl. Earl held up a hand that didn’t felt like his.

“Didn’t seem like nothing,” Grace said, turning on the faucet.

Her back was turned to Earl. She was rinsing a bowl in the sink. Her hair was tousled on top, frayed at the ends. She would say it was time for a cut soon. His Grace. No one would question them.

“She said they’d love to have what we have,” Earl said.

“Did she?” Grace didn’t turn around. Was she still upset at him? Earl wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his cheek against hers. He shut his eyes. Grace smelled milky, of sweat, her face cold. She wriggled free.

“What is it that you think we have?” she asked.

Blacklights is a post from: Pif Magazine

His recent poetry collection, The Draw of Broken Eyes and Whirling Metaphysics, published by John Gosslee Books, was greeted with great critical acclaim.

Clifford Brooks

Brooks lives in Athens, Georgia, and has been featured on the Joe Milford Poetry Show and vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry. He is currently on the road, seeing what he can and doing what he can, and of course, continuing to write emotionally moving poetry.

Derek Alger: With the publication of your first poetry collection, The Draw of Broken Eyes and Whirling Metaphysics, it looks like you’re getting some well deserved recognition.

Clifford Brooks: Being nominated for the Pulitzer and Georgia Author of the Year has already exceeded my expectations concerning creative writing in poetry.  It’s still surreal for me to think about.  I have been writing since the fifth grade, but until my early 30’s that writing concentrated on prose.  I won contests with fiction and non-fiction while writing poetry when necessary to woo a young lady.  I am grateful to John Gosslee Books for seeing the promise in my verse, and getting behind my double-volume collection.  It’s always been my highest hope to grow into an established poet/writer.

DA: How did publication come about?

CB: In 2003 a literary agent in New York accepted me as a client.  He decided I should pursue publication as a poet.  Working with the agent, Whirling Metaphysics was edited from a wad of memories into a focused account of a man trying to interpret the world.  In 2004-2005 a small publisher showed interest in gaining rights to the work, but as the current economic recession crippled America’s spending habits, both the agent and small press went under.

Losing this initial launching point didn’t destroy me.  I realized that this setback was due to the stock market, not my lack of talent as a poet.  Besides that, more pressing matters were on my mind like a divorce, moving back to Athens, Georgia, morphing of Bipolar Disorder symptoms, new chemical dependency issues, leaving a career with social services to write full time – then, of course, the love story with a gorgeously dark heart behind the birth of The Draw of Broken Eyes.

DA: Sounds like you definitely had persistence, despite the obstacles.

CB: In January 2010 I was unexpectedly trapped by an ice storm in my father’s home built in Watkinsville, Georgia.  I decided in that isolation that a young lady, the first/only to slow all the internal chaos, needed a love letter to know I would wait.  That letter is the central thread of The Draw of Broken Eyes.  Annmarie Lockhart announced the completion of Broken Eyes on her radio show vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry.  After that program Annmarie introduced me to John Gosslee, the obvious namesake of his press.

In May 2011, John Gosslee Books signed a contract with me for both collections to be published under one cover.  After agreeing on the terms of publication, every page was furiously edited and re-edited.  By publication date the book had become my sole obsession. The release date of the collection was April 2012.

DA: You’ve described your childhood as “idyllic”.

CB: I grew up in Crawford, Georgia.  Both of my parents were college educated, hard workers, and afforded their two sons a safe, nurturing, and spiritually sound upbringing.  I was never told to go outside and play.  I was always outside.  Nature features prominently in both books because it’s always helped me maintain an overall sense of calm.  Growing up in the South has its benefits and unique attributes, as does anyone’s hometown.

During the day while both parents worked, my little brother and I were watched by a wonderful black woman named Virginia Smith.  Her influence on me runs deep.  I went to church with her.  I often played with Virginia’s children, and they taught me to dance.  My father loves Motown and I grew up hearing it, learning from all sides a spiritual connection to music.

Behind my house were a lake, gulley, a slow stream, and trees that seemed to hug my childhood’s playground.  I never took a shine to school.  I was expected to make good grades, and I did pretty well with that.  I was undoubtedly more Huck Finn than Tom Sawyer.  I got into my share of “mischief”, but a healthy respect of my mom and dad kept it in check.

DA: You have close family ties and roots to Georgia?

CB: Georgia is where you find all my family ties.  I love to travel, I feel in my bones an extended visit to Europe, or somewhere with a little sunnier in the winter months, but Georgia will always be “home”.  You love or you hate the South.  I cherish this land, but understand why others don’t – I simply don’t agree with them.  The mountains, coastline, and humid spaces in-between are in my bones and blood.  I am named after my grandfather and father: Charles Clifford Brooks III.

Since moving back to Athens. my father and I spend every Sunday maintaining the family plantation house in Lexington, Georgia.  It’s all about bloodlines and appreciation of one’s history.  When it rains on Sunday, dad and I go inside and work on preserving newspaper articles from decades past about our ancestors.  Reading the meticulously-kept documentation concerning our family tree back hundreds of years to France, forward to American politicians, businessmen, artists, and scoundrels, it helps me understand –  me.

My mother’s people are in the Rome, Georgia area where I graduated from Shorter College.  I spent my senior year living with my Granny (my mother’s mother).  To this day she is my favorite roommate — ever.  My mother’s family is also hardworking, brilliant, and are eccentric characters.  I am a storyteller ahead of all else.  I get that talent and passion from both sides of my family, with both sides adding to the yarns I spin in ink.

DA: Sounds like your parents instilled you with the right values.

CB: What both of my parents fostered in me was an open mind and social tolerance.  Color lines blurred for me from birth.  That’s never changed.  I do not state that to announce a moral superiority on my part.  I feel I confine that rare experience from childhood when I say, from Virginia, I still find personal strength from gospel music, love God for all His love and not fear of His wrath.  Actually, that feeling about God marries in with my parents, too.  My entire young life I never had to be convinced of God’s existence.  I felt it on an atomic level.  I didn’t really dig Sunday School because it was too damned early, but the concept of God I never remember being “taught”.  It made sense.  It still does.

Two ministers are also partly responsible for this ease of belief.  Reverend George Hall and Charles Walker were both Biblical scholars who beamed with compassion, always emphasizing God’s infinite love.  I never experienced “hellfire and brimstone” preaching.  I would rather have my hand slammed in a car door than sit through a sermon of fear.

DA: If I ever want a tour of Georgia I’ll know where to go.

CB: In North Georgia there are rolling mountains that seep into the Appalachians.  Middle Georgia levels out into a delicate, straight line that meets Florida where swampland is introduced.  Driving all over the state as a college student solidified these regions in my writing life.  On my travels I took note of the elderly couple dining in a roadside diner, a woman sitting alone in a truck outside a hardware store, and conversations between friends at a gas station.  The cliché, “Write what you know” is the first rule of any creative writing.  I never “tried” to be a Southern poet.  Being Southern is all I know.  I don’t write poetry to sway people’s racial tolerance, religious views, or whom they vote for in the next election.  I write what I see every day, how that makes me feel, and the way it influences where I put my faith.

In my extensive walk across these Southern states I’ve discovered that New Orleans, Louisiana, Savannah, Georgia, Athens, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina all share the same wind, identical Old South voo-doo/devotion to Sunday, and a palpable devotion to music –- real music.  In these cities there is easy traffic, blues tunes, electric jazz, and a flavor of rock-and-roll that still defines America.  We have Elvis Presley, John Lee Hooker, Thelonious Monk, Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, The Allman Brothers, Pat Conroy and Rick Bragg.

We have no reason to apologize to anyone.  Many white Southerners, white men especially, have been yoked with “White Guilt” where the racism chronicled in our history isn’t the norm of us all.  I have never had slaves.  I have never controlled anyone.  I can barely take care of myself, failed at caring for a wife — I do not have the wherewithal to have sway over anyone else’s life.  Southern tradition does not mean “ignorance”, or “hate-monger” or “Ku Klux Klan”.  The tragedy is that generations of Southern Americans have grown to be ashamed of themselves and buy into the propaganda accepted in even mainstream standup comedy.  I find it disgusting.  I find it false.  I find it — a tragedy.

I do not glorify Southern tradition.  I do not build a case in defense of it.  I don’t have to.

DA: Your poetry speaks to universal experience and emotion.

CB: Phrases and memories rush into me from everyday, mundane events.  Though they all happen in my area of the country, they are also applicable to anyone who’s caught “people watching”.  I constantly scribble in Moleskines notebooks, jotting things down, breaking conversations with friends to record some line I’m afraid I’ll forget if not put on paper immediately.  My friends are very tolerant cats and kittens.  They are the only ones to see the true effects of my Bipolar Disorder, the insomnia, paranoia, addictions to skirt the inferno of the manic highs and their antithesis, the Nothing.  There is a mystery to poetry I hope to never understand where, out of the ephemera, poetry often finds me.  I can’t explain or pinpoint it.  My friends know that about me and thus give me the grace to be a scribbler-of-thought.

During the spring and summer, imagery flows through me in Technicolor.  I want to make dark subjects pretty through deceptive rhyme, not to be glib, but to show awful things happen from what seems divine at the start.  They are hard lessons learned.  I don’t preach.  I abhor a soapbox.  These are poems I picked up from raves in Atlanta, dirt roads that brought me back to Athens, and on a train when I took the eight hour trek to North Carolina where my first girlfriend lived.

DA: Your poem “A Plantation Myth: Vengeance” is compelling, and evocative in the simplicity of its power, and a great empathy and understanding of others.

CB: That poem is an invented Old South parable.  I grew up hearing nearly-forgotten Old South, Uncle Remus-esque moral tales.  With “A Plantation Myth” I wanted to keep that vein of storytelling alive.  Song of the South, a Disney movie built from Uncle Remus, was banned not that long ago.  I saw it in the movie theater as a child.  The past, its nuances, that kind of metaphysical storytelling is unavoidable in my creation of written word.  I talk about Uncle Remus in my poem “Six Chapters of Swerve”.

The Draw of Broken Eyes and Whirling Metaphysics

DA: You took a circuitous route with different geographical stops before graduating from college.

CB: I started college at Campbell University in North Carolina as a Religion major.  From there I moved to Shorter College to pursue a Degree in Education.  After there I took classes at a few other schools during the summer, and then took a year off after adopting alcoholism, going back to Shorter to end with a History/Political Science degree.  This degree gave me a taste of everything at a school like Shorter.  From Prometheus passing on fire to the advent of our computer, I got to learn about it all.

DA: I suspect many would be surprised what your first career job was.

CB: Right out of college I worked for Barnes & Noble in Athens, Georgia.  A friend of mine called me two years later about being a juvenile probation officer.  He was big in the police, knew that I was good with kids, and knew I would put their welfare ahead of accepted policy.  After six years as a probation officer I moved to the Department of Family and Children’s Services.  Four years after taking on that gig I realized too much of my soul was being left at the office when I went home to escape.  In this job the epic poem at the end of Whirling Metaphysics called “The Gateman’s Hymn of Ignoracium” found its source.  So many came through court that were incapable of loving their own kids, those who used God or money to manipulate the legal system, and I thought one day as I sat as an observer, “Hell is too good for some people”.  In that epiphany I brought my love of Dante into my daily writing life.  “The Gateman’s Hymn of Ignoracium” was a way to cope with what policy wouldn’t practically allow.

DA: You’re also known for your perfectionism when it comes to editing.

CB: The hardest part of the publication process, for me, was editing.  It made me go line-by-line through every page to make sure my first book, the mother of two books, spoke the exact language I use every day, that it was me without melodrama, and that it was honest to anyone who invested in the book’s reading.  There are many love poems, but as much as they speak to the Only Her, something always feels off.  She isn’t here.  At any rate, I still find peace with an impossible affection.

John Gosslee wouldn’t let me half-ass any of my poems.  He challenged me.  I finally divorced myself from the poetry.  By the end, I was able to walk away from the pain.  In that hollow space left by catharsis I still have a hard time making deep, emotional connections with other people.  Creating my book took a bit of me I’ve yet to replace.

DA: I see you derive inspiration from Beethoven.

CB: I have three heroes:  Dante, Beethoven, and Doc Holiday.  All three have their place in my heart.  Beethoven, however, is my Father of Music.  I found his sound when I was in the eighth grade.  It is the most influential music for me to this day.

Poetry from the New Book “Athena Departs”:

The Self

Peer into the mirror

without fear,

and I’ll show you a fool.

Beneath acne scars, make-up,

and shaving cuts

there are the bones of discarded lovers.

Bad Poems

Bad poems are unlucky pennies.

To sell this poem

is like trading dead puppies

for an abortion.

It gets by.

It’s the result of bitching

to a grocery bag.

In the Beginning

there were two callused hearts.

Early dawn brought distraction, labor,

a lack of luster

pharmaceutical companies adore.

Last night saw black dogs,

heard the gasps of a panicked child,

struck dumb the boisterous voice.

At noon you said:

Get over here and drive me!

I spent hours with you

lost, boozy, knowing you were thinking

of someone else.

We sped in a thoroughbred

until tears were chased behind

the moon.

Gordon, calmest of man’s best friends,

took us to the river

by way of a path with wildflowers,

hidden behind a low stone wall.

We sat near a spot turtles stop to sun.

Do you need your little notebook?

[No.  No I don’t.]

The supper we shared

was served by a Lebanese man

sporting bad teeth and good Mexican food.

Our new evening got topped off

with tequila and kisses.

You said:

I like you too much.  I don’t need to feel

this affectionate blood.

Remember that there are others.

That’s fine, dark-haired frightened one.

My days are a malady

where I am thrown asunder in time.

I do not know the day.

I am not aware of tomorrow’s appointments.

In the face of all evenings kin to our memory,

I am cognizant of only this encounter,

this college football game,

the breath before I leave.

Remember how I said before,

as I do now:

I’ve grown beyond wanting anything

from you.

Clifford Brooks is a post from: Pif Magazine

Photo by Matthew Ruch (Garnet Valley, PA)

In the diner parking lot, the sun beat down on the cars. Inside, though the fans swirled, the leatherette was sticky from the sunscreen and sweat of shorts-wearing tourists. Trying to escape, a fly buzzed at the upper corner of the large window.

With the familiar smile, the waitress served the man his iced tea and the woman her coffee. She told them, in the raspy voice of a heavy smoker, “So you know, there’s no pancakes since Eddie left. No one else makes them.”

“Fired?” the daughter asked, eyes on her coffee, reminder of her status. Three cups had been brought to her today: by her maid, her secretary, and the waitress.

“Didn’t have to. Cook was always giving him dirty looks, shoving him out of the way.” She barked in a low voice, mimicking Cook, “Not good for clients. Too much sugar. Diabetes.”

The father had heard the shouting last time he ate at the diner. Eddie had argued that clients, in the diner for so short a time, should enjoy themselves. Cook had yelled that he knew what was best; pretty menu photos would sway the judment of vulnerable clients. Owner’s silence, which each side interpreted as approval, had escalated the mess. “So, Eddie quit.”

She nodded. “Who’s sorry now?”

“I’ll have egg whites with a whole wheat bagel,” the daughter ended the conversation. “Dad?”

The man shook his head. The waitress touched him lightly on the shoulder before shuffling back to the kitchen.

“You should eat, Dad” the woman said. “A body needs three meals a day.”

“A man’s body needs other things, too,” he said.

The woman looked down at her grey suit and arranged the paper napkin on her knees. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” the father said. He sipped at his iced tea. “How are the girls?”

“Jane is reading three grades above her level. Kelly is a clown.” The woman placed her slender fingers around the mug of coffee. “Like her grandfather.”

The man scoffed. “I’m not so funny any more.”

“I think you’re funny.”

“I don’t feel funny.”

“Just because you don’t feel it sometimes,….”

“No, not sometimes. Never. I never feel funny, not since she left.”

The woman shook her head. “Move on, Dad. She was too young.”

“I’ve been trying to for weeks now. Laundry. Movies. Golf.” He clasped his fingers together and began to roll one thumb over the other. “Always thinking about her.”

The woman looked around the diner. Her eyes fell to a couple near the back, shoveling food, not saying a word. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” he said, like a Clydesdale in Florida, proud of the weight it shoulders in unbearable heat. “Even if you could do something, I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“No,” she said, stretching her trim torso. “And you shouldn’t. I would never ask you to do anything you would not want to do.”

“That’s right. I would not ask.” The father bit into the straw and accidentally cut his upper lip. He wiped the blood away with the paper napkin and placed it on the table.

His daughter looked at her watch, did not notice the napkin.

The waitress winked at the man as she brought the woman’s plate. “Hon, isn’t there anything you want?”

“I want pancakes,” the man replied gravely.

The waitress coughed as she laughed. “You and me both.”

The daughter shook her head. “Pancakes fill you momentarily, but lack any real sustenance.”

“She sounds like Cook.”

When the waitress had gone, the man said, “Jealousy and pride make a world without pancakes.”

The woman cleared her throat. “How’s your cat?”

“Big.”

“Don’t feed him so much.”

“When I love, I spoil. Maybe I spoil too much. Did I spoil you?”

The daughter chewed her food, head down. She did not notice her father looking at his smart phone. No messages. No texts. No calls. After she had finished half her plate, the daughter asked the obligatory questions. “Are you all right? Need anything?”

“I’m fine.”

In the silence that followed, the waitress returned with the check. “For next time, Cook makes mean eggs and bacon.”

The man spoke up. “She doesn’t eat bacon. Her husband is vegetarian. When they come over, I don’t serve meat.” The waitress nodded politely and left. The father continued, “In my own house, I don’t serve meat because I don’t insult your husband. That would tear at your relationship. That would make anyone unhappy, wouldn’t it?”

The daughter’s eyes became like slits. Had she been a cat, the ears would have folded down on the top of her head. “It’s not the same. You can’t put her in the same category as my husband.” She pushed the plate away.

The father’s head bobbed imperceptibly. “No, I can’t do that.”

“My husband and I will be together for a lifetime.”

The father saw the dark spots on the back of his hands. He put his hands under the table.

The daughter leaned into the table. “If she felt so strongly for you, she would not have cared how I treated her.”

The father still tasted the blood inside his mouth. He took out his wallet and placed two bills on the table. “That’s enough.”

“You need to move on, Dad. Maybe somebody without children.”

Beyond his control, his thoughts returned to his former lover. Her curved hips, her symmetrical breasts, and the lips she opened for him so willingly. She would have noticed the blood on his lip, given him ice to seal the cut, and doted on him afterward as if it were a war wound. Staring at his daughter, the father mumbled, “Move on.”

No Pancakes is a post from: Pif Magazine

Photo by Fabi Duprés (United Kingdom)

Keller could not say when he first heard it. It was not there when he went to bed and he could swear that he had not slept a wink. But perhaps he was wrong. Maybe I dozed off, just for a minute, he thought. And in that unguarded minute, it had begun–the dripping.

Drip…drip…drip.

It was not loud; it was faint. Very faint. But it was undeniably there, impossible to ignore. Keller was tired from his chronic lack of sleep. Despite the pills, he had not slept well for the past three months, since his wife Janice left him. He wondered how Janice was sleeping these days. Probably better than he was; she was a decisively sound sleeper.

At first he simply lay there. What did he care about the drip? He couldn’t sleep anyway. Better to lie still, under the blankets, where it was warm at least, and hope that sleep would overcome him eventually. That was better than getting up and traipsing down the cold hall to the bathroom to turn the faucet tight. Let it drip till doomsday for all I care, he thought. He fluffed his pillow and turned over on his back. Despite now being the lone occupant of the bed, he still tended to sleep on the left, his side, rather than encroach on the right, her side. Janice was a woman who did not liked to be encroached upon. Fuck it, he thought, scooted over to the middle of the bed and spitefully spread his arms and legs to claim maximum space. But he was not comfortable.

Drip…drip…drip.

Keller glanced at the clock on the night table. The clock’s blue digits glowed 2:02. The little blue dot in the upper left hand corner assured him that the alarm was set and would buzz him awake–if he was lucky enough to have fallen asleep–at 6:15 so he could get up and go to work. It was important that he get to work on time. Recently he had been repeatedly late and he knew he was on thin ice with his new boss. They’d had a heated argument about the polar ice cap. Keller did not believe it was melting and said even if it was he didn’t care. But now it was one of the things he thought about when lying awake at night.

Drip…drip…drip.

Keller sat up in bed, the blankets falling to his waist, and felt a rush of cold air wash over his bare chest. “Alright, you win, you win,” he said, pushed the blankets down and hoisted himself out of bed, his feet hitting the frigid hardwood floor, and hurried, shivering in his shorts, out of the bedroom, down the hall to the bathroom.

He clicked on the light and stared at the gray sink. The faucet was dripless; the sink was dry. He pulled the shower curtain aside, bent down, and looked at the faucet in the bathtub. No drip. Bone dry. He sat down on the toilet and listened. Somewhere something was still dripping. He got up and lifted the lid of the toilet. The water in the bowl was still as ice and tinted a pale yellow. Shit, he thought, and shook his head. Janice had a habit of not flushing the toilet after peeing, something Keller had mildly chided her about. It had become an issue between them that transcended personal hygiene. Now he was the one being negligent. He ran his hand through his sparse hair. Although only forty, he had little hair left. Janice had hinted at a hairpiece. She said bald was not sexy, despite what bald men hoped. He flushed the toilet, put the lid down, and sat on it, waiting for the slushing and gurgling to stop, so he could listen.

Drip…drip…drip.

Keller dropped his face in his hands and began to cry. Oh, get a grip, for Christ’s sake, he thought. He took some toilet tissue, blew his nose, and sat looking around the bathroom. Janice was never happy with it. She had always wanted a bathroom attached to the master bedroom, en suite, as she said, like everyone else had. But they couldn’t afford to remodel. She hated that the bathroom was down the hall and was so dark and old fashioned. The white cast iron ball and claw foot tub–with its polished brass talons– particularly disturbed her. She called it predatory. But Keller loved it. He loved everything about the old house, the house he had grown up in and had inherited from his mother: the wide slightly warped plank floors, the high ceilings where shadows played, the drafty casement windows, the sooty stone fireplace, even the creaking and groaning of the house in the night, as it settled to sleep. Lately the creaking and groaning had become a drawback; they seemed to conspire with a host of other subtle disturbances, previously unnoticed, to keep him awake.

He considered what else could be dripping in his house. He was just headed down the narrow stairs to the kitchen when the phone rang. He hurried back to the bedroom with that urgency inspired by a ringing phone in the night and picked up the phone after the third ring.

“Hello?” Keller whispered, as if not to wake up the rest of the house.

There was a silent pause on the other end of the phone, then it went dead.

“Hello?” he said again, a bit louder. He sat still and listened to the dial tone. He glanced at the clock: 2: 22. Who’s up at this time of night, he thought, except me?

He got up and took a sweat shirt from the chair by the bed and slipped it over his head, picked up his pants, hesitated, then threw them back on the chair. “Fuck it,” he said and headed downstairs in his shorts to the kitchen.

He clicked on the kitchen light and saw something–although he couldn’t swear to it–scurry along the baseboard and disappear. Janice claimed they had mice, but Keller had never seen one. And the traps she made him set were never sprung. When Keller would show her the unsprung traps, instead of being relieved, she looked resentful. She seemed to blame him, somehow, for not catching her phantom mice, as if they were outwitting him or were in some other way simply beyond his grasp. Keller even considered going to the pet store, buying a few mice and feeding them into the traps, just to have something to show her and put the issue to rest. He was willing to break the necks of a thousand mice if it would appease her. But before he could get around to it, Janice left him for Spencer, a man he had never seen and knew little about, except that Janice worked with him, he was an attorney, and, by her own admission, was substantially younger than her. Janice was shocked that Keller was surprised to learn of the affair; she said she thought it was obvious.

“I had no fucking idea,” was what Keller told her. And it was the truth: he had seen, heard, and thought nothing. Sixteen years of marriage dissolved in ten minutes; Janice left and moved in with Spencer who lived just three hours away, returning a few times to collect some things. But she seemed in no hurry to work out a divorce; nor was Keller.

Keller stood in the middle of the kitchen and listened closely. The refrigerator was humming softly and steadily. Warm air was hissing gently from the heating vent. The window over the sink rattled a little in the night wind. And somewhere something was dripping; but it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from, whether above or below, in front or behind him. Keller seemed to hear it just under the surface of all the other small sounds around him.

The faucet in the kitchen sink was closed tight. He ran his finger around the drain. It was cold and dry. He opened the refrigerator and peered inside. The hum was louder but there was no sign of dripping anywhere. He checked the ice box section. Not a sound. Just chicken in cloudy plastic bags, each bag boldly marked by Janice in waterproof black marker: legs; thighs; breasts; livers. Janice bought in bulk and kept the parts separately. The dismembered chickens had been there since she left and remained frozen and untouched. Keller did not like chicken and was glad not to have to eat it anymore. But he could not get himself to throw it out.

He opened the cabinet under the sink, got down on his hands and knees, and peered inside. He moved the arsenal of cleansers in cans and bottles–Janice has enough cleansers to sanitize the whole fucking world, he thought–and stuck his head into the cabinet, twisting his neck to look up at the bottom of the sink and the pipes beneath it. Just as he put his hand on the old copper drain pipe, the phone rang.

Keller ran back up the stairs, ignoring the phone in the living room, but when he got back to the bedroom, he stopped suddenly. He sat down on the edge of the bed by the nightstand and looked at the phone. It was on the fourth or fifth ring and seemed to get louder each time. I don’t need this, he thought. He pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape. “It’s almost three o’clock, for Christ’s sake,” he whispered to the phone accusingly. He picked it up and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Oh, hi. Is Janice there?”

“Who is this?” said Keller.

“Spencer.”

“Spencer?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Mr. Keller?”

“Of course it’s Mr. Keller. Who the fuck do you think lives here?” Keller shouted.

A pause. “Is Janice there, Mr. Keller?”

“Of course she’s not here,” Keller said, whispering again. “She’s with you, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh come on, Keller. Why don’t you just put her on the phone and maybe we can all get some sleep tonight.”

“Listen to me, you prick,” said Keller, standing, the blanket falling off his shoulders and pooling around his feet, “Janice is not here. I am alone. The room is cold. Something is dripping in my house. Do you hear me? Something is dripping.”

The phone went dead.

“Shit!” shouted Keller. He slammed the phone down and began to pace around the room. “Son of a bitch!” He was hot and breathless. He crossed the room and cranked open the casement window and stood leaning on the window sill sucking in a rush of cold night air. He looked up and down the block where the only light was a faint one on the porch of a house half a block down, and even that light was flickering. The night was deep and dark with no moon and not a single star in the sky. He looked at the leader where it joined the gutter on the corner of his house. He wondered if the gutter was clogged with something. He thought of climbing out onto the small pitched roof under the window, but realized he was barefooted and without pants and had a terrible sense of balance. He craned his neck out the window and peered through the dark at the gutter and listened. Nothing. He looked at the trees, bare and black in the winter night. Could the trees be dripping? he thought. Of course not. It had not rained for a week. But as soon as he pulled his head back inside he heard it.

Drip…drip…drip.

The phone rang. He sat back down on the edge of the bed. I should just let it ring, he thought. He glanced at the clock: 3: 03. “Oh Christ,” he said and picked up the phone and yelled into it, “What now?”

“I’m sorry for hanging up, Keller. I apologize,” said Spencer.

“Did you call and hang up before?”

“No,” said Spencer. “Well, yes. I thought Janice would answer. She said you never answer the phone. That she has to do it for you. I didn’t think I’d get you. Sorry. I’m just upset.”

“You’re upset? Are you joking?”

“I know Janice is mad, but I don’t know why. She’s–inscrutable.”

“Inscrutable?”

“If she won’t talk to me perhaps you could just ask her a question for me.”

“She is not here,” said Keller, “not here, not–”

“Could you ask her if she knows where Dante is?”

“Who?”

“Dante. My cat. He’s missing.”

“Why don’t you go to hell,” said Keller and hung up.

The cat. You should check your freezer, he thought. Cloudy plastic bags marked Head , Paws, Tail. He laughed and the sound of his laugh scared him. He turned on the lamp but nothing happened. He took off the lampshade and unscrewed the lightbulb from its socket. He shook the bulb by his ear and heard the filament rattle around inside. Dead, he thought. And then he thought, Inside. Maybe inside.

Drip…drip…drip.

Keller got up and put his ear to the wall. Maybe that’s where it was coming from, inside the house itself, behind the old plaster, between the studs or the joists, trickling down from Christ knows where. But he heard nothing except for little clicks and clacks and barely audible scrapings and scratchings. The mice? he thought. Was Janice right after all?

“There are no fucking mice!” he said aloud. He looked down at the spent light bulb in his hand. He threw it hard, like he was pitching a fast ball to an invisible catcher crouched down in the dark. It hit the wall and shattered.

The phone rang. “No,” said Keller and rushed out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. At least there, the light was working and it was warmer. He sat at the table and wondered why the bedroom had always been so cold. He thought about the furnace in the basement. The basement, he thought. Of course. The basement was full of things that could drip in one way or another. And sound carries in an old house, particularly in the silent night. He began to feel hopeful.

He walked down the rough wood stairs to the basement, feeling his way in the dark, then reaching out for the old overhead light he knew was there just at the base of the stairs, and pulled the chain. The light was dim and he reminded himself he needed to have better lighting put in when he could afford it. The basement was unfinished, a big dark place with bare concrete walls and cement floor. Pipes and wires of various sizes and lengths ran chaotically across the low ceiling of wood planks and joists. The dark underbelly of the house, thought Keller, the hard underbelly, where things go wrong and you don’t even know it. Keller felt the grit under his feet and wished he had put on shoes, or socks at least.

He went straight to the far corner and turned on the light near the furnace. It was a gas furnace, now 15 years old, which he’d had installed just after he and Janice moved in. He took off the metal facing and glanced at the furnace’s inner workings, not knowing what he was actually looking at. Inscrutable, he thought, yeah, inscrutable alright. But he could tell it was warm and dry, with no moisture and not a drip of any kind. He replaced the facing and felt along the concrete floor around the furnace for any wet spots. Nothing but dust. Dry dust.

He walked to the center of the basement, stood very still, and listened. He could hear something. The phone. The phone was ringing again. How could I hear the bedroom phone down here? he wondered. Then he remembered the phone in the living room. It was probably just overhead. He walked over to the washing machine and lifted the lid and the smell of bleach hit him in the nose. “Christ,” he said. I’m using too much bleach, he thought. Janice was a big believer in bleach. He closed the lid and looked behind the washer at the hoses and connections. Something red and limp, like a blood soaked rag, was draped on the lowest hose. Keller hesitated. He looked up at the ceiling and listened to the phone ringing. Then he bent over the washing machine, reached down, and grabbed the red cloth. It was not blood soaked and it was not a rag. It was a pair of red lace panties. Janice’s? he thought. He had never seen her in red panties. I should throw them out. The phone stopped ringing. He folded the panties carefully and put them on top of the washer.

Just as he reached the top of the basement stairs, he heard it.

Drip…drip…drip.

But it definitely did not seem to be coming from below. He went to the stone fireplace in the living room. He moved the three-paneled metal fire screen aside, bent down and put his head in the fireplace. He could hear the wind whispering in the flue. He put his hand in the dry ashes.

The phone rang. Keller sat in the armchair by the fireplace and picked up the phone, but said nothing.

“Keller?”

“Yes, Spencer.”

“Tell Janice I found Dante. He was under the bed all the time.”

“She’s not here.”

A pause. “Suppose I give you the benefit of the doubt. If Janice isn’t there, where is she?”

“Perhaps she’s with another man,” said Keller, quietly. “Have you ever seen her in red panties?”

“Red panties? No. What are you talking about?”

“She likes red panties. Or someone likes them on her.”

“You’d like to think she’s with another man, wouldn’t you?” said Spencer.

“Of course. What husband wouldn’t?”

“I am worried about her safety.”

“So use a condom. Use two.”

“You think you’re funny, Keller?”

“No.”

“You think this is some kind of fucking joke? Are you and Janice having a big laugh over this? Cut the shit and put her on the phone, Keller–”

“Hold on,” said Keller. He put the phone down in his lap and began to cry. He pounded his bare leg with his fist. He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sweat shirt, took a deep breath and cleared his throat. He picked up the phone. “Janice doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Let her tell me that.”

Keller put the phone down again for a minute. His leg hurt. Then he said, “She says it’s over and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Now leave us alone. Be a man, for Christ’s sake, Spencer. Not a mouse. Women don’t like mice.”

“Go fuck yourself, Keller–and fuck her.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Keller and hung up.

He got up and began to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace, then through the dinning room to the kitchen, then back again. “I’m wandering around like a ghost in my own house,” he said aloud and stopped. Like a ghost, he thought.

He climbed wearily back up the stairs to the bedroom. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head, dropped it on the floor, and got into bed. He glanced at the clock: 3:33. He was exhausted. I’ll be a fuckin’ corpse in the morning, he thought. He thought of Janice and for the first time actually wondered where she might be.

The phone rang. Keller let it ring. Never send to ask for whom the phone rings, he thought. He had read that somewhere a long time ago. Or perhaps he had seen it on TV. He picked up the phone.

“She’s home, Keller,” said Spencer.

“No she’s not.”

“I mean here. She was just–”

There was a pause and Keller could hear whispering.

“How could you do that?” It was Janice.

“I didn’t do anything,” said Keller.

“You told him I was with another man.”

“Weren’t you?”

“And then you told him I was with you. With you, of all people.”

“I just wanted him to leave us alone,” Keller whispered.

“Listen to me,” said Janice. “Are you listening? Because these are the last words you’re ever going to hear from me.”

“I’m listening.”

“I hate you.”

“Janice?”

She hung up.

Drip…drip…drip.

Keller lay in bed staring up at the ceiling and listening. He had decided he was not going to work tomorrow. He got out of bed, walked down the hall to the bathroom, and took two of the sleeping pills his doctor had been hesitant to prescribe for him. Then he took another two. Then two more. He put the little amber plastic bottle to his mouth and swallowed and swallowed, helping the pills along with his tongue, until the bottle was empty. He took a long drink of cold water.

He slipped off his shorts and went naked to bed and pulled the blankets over him. He watched the blue numerals on the clock blur and meld together into a number he had never seen before. He was floating on a lake of black ice. Little by little, drop by drop, the ice melted, and fell a long, long way and he fell, drop by drop, with it.

Drip…drip…drip…drip….

In the Night is a post from: Pif Magazine