Keyhole Magazine

My one brother was adopted
So I don’t share any of his natural qualities
And my same-mother brother he’s no good
He claims a mix up at the hospital
On account of his curly blond hair
And I’m so obnoxious

We went on a ski vacation then came home
I went directly next door to tell Brian Fronczek
All the snow in Utah is exactly the same as all the snow here
It’s the depth that makes the difference
My natural brother fetched me home
On account of our grandpa
Was dead in the basement

We used to sit down there me and each of my brothers
Tossing Nerf balls to my grandfather's good hand
But now there would be no more of that
There would be a pronounced lack
Of throwing Nerf balls to paralytics
In the basement

Our dad would bring meals down to that carpet-ceilinged room
Peel for his own dad an orange, shred kernels off the cob
Then once a handicapped mess had been made of the food
That man down there would yell his own name which was Albert
or he'd yell, "CHRIST ALMIGHTY"

I kept calling my one brother adopted
I said, you're adopted, adopted
I ran from the laundry machine to the bathroom
Yelling Adopted! and You have a hole in your heart!
Because he did. People smarter than me call it a murmur
a ventricular septale defect
I yelled, You, Adopted, have a hole in your heart
through the locked bathroom door
and he kicked that shit off its hinges

rather than answer the telephone, we will arrange dominoes into stonehenge and we will be the druids. rather than answer the telephone, we will go to the MOMA and point at the exhibit that is a tarpaulin with an electric fan blowing underneath it. rather than answer the telephone, you will skillfully propel a dixon ticonderoga around your finger and i will curl my wrists and wave my elbows in awkward interpretive tribal dance. that way we will fly up away from the city and its rococo people. we will land knee-deep in poppy fields and snort ginger and ice. at the end of the fields we will be sleepy and there will be a lake of honey that is full of stalagmites. we will paddle across the lake in a stolen dinghy, or maybe a canoe. cupped wooden hands gliding over jelly skin, knuckles braiding a hull. for a second you will look anxiously down at the stalagmites and the hundreds of fish suspended, unmoving, wide-eyed in the dense amber. i will say don’t worry, we will find something to be young in.

Note from the author:
At Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, I decided to use 4x6 inch post-it notes in a 23-day writing exercise. I wrote 5 stories a day, each had to fit onto one side of one post-it note.

The beauty of post-its is that they’re easily post-able and thus a person can feel a sense of accomplishment seeing them stuck all over the studio walls. They’re also colorful, which helped in December.

In my last week of residence, the visual artists planned an open studio night. Michael Merry graciously offered me a wall (and even lit it properly!) in his studio, where I posted 25 of my stories in a grid along with an artist statement, a table, a chair, a stack of post-its, a pen, and a request that other fellows write stories and slap them on the wall beside mine.

It was fun.

These stories came from that project.

The quiet house and abandoned tangerine peels. The hi-fi equipment, dusty. The runner along the stairs, doilies on the arms of the couch, on the rocking chair where a head would hit. Books—hard leather spines cracking in glass bookcases. A pantry. Jars of jams. Beets and tomatoes pulsing. A clothesline in the backyard, a garden, a doghouse.

Each time Katy drank a cup of coffee, she made a paper crane. It was an origami thing—a square of paper folded up impossibly until wings, a beak, a tail.

The coffee tasted better because of this ritual, almost.

Everything folded and unfolded in the right order until the morning she came upon her five-year-old son, Tim, smoothing all the cranes flat again—turning them all back into paper, saying, “There. There.”

Trees

The trees are a stark horizon, they are skinny men in ill-fitting suits selling bibles, they’re impossible brooms stood on end so the cats won’t eat the thistles.

They’re deep sea creatures, scraggily-haired women who’ve had one too many perms. They are the anorexic cheerleaders, waving their ghost arms chanting: go! Go!

The tiniest tree arrived in the tiniest package—all folded up but ready to assemble. It had glitter and a star and tinsel and little electric lights that blinked, ornaments and a train set with an engine that raced around hooting. There were live microscopic mice wearing striped stocking caps. They sang (in harmony!) but caused all kinds of havoc once they got bored.

1.
She doesn’t know there is a man inside her pillowcase. At night, she is drowning him. Her drool seeps through the pillowcase and covers him, drenches him. It is overwhelming. He’s tried sleeping in a raincoat and scuba mask, but the moisture always finds a way in. It clogs his ears and clings to his eyelashes. He doesn’t open his mouth to speak or eat, fearing the saliva will roll down his throat and choke him. He is so quiet, the man inside her pillowcase. 

2.
The man inside her pillowcase likes to be between her legs. He feels safe there. She tucks him in every night and he nestles against her crotch, damp and warm.

3.
While she sleeps, the man inside her pillowcase gnaws at her. Eats bits of her hair and freckles. Each morning she wakes and is a little less herself than the day before. She spends all her time looking for things she can’t remember, lists she never made, and people she never knew.

4.
The man is trapped inside her pillowcase. He thought he could escape, but then she put the pillow sham on and he couldn’t find a way out. After a bit, the pillow sham made him feel more comfortable, like she was the kind of girl that would piss with the bathroom door open and drink beers with him on Sunday.

5.
The man inside her pillowcase has not always lived inside her pillowcase. He once lived in a baseball, a cooler, a DVD player, a dictionary, a package of bubble wrap and a can of tuna fish. He cannot stand the smell of tuna fish.

6.
The man inside her pillowcase is not quite a man. Legally, HE is still a SHE. But she has the paperwork for a legal name change in her glove box. And she just started hormone therapy. The name she picked for herself was “John,” so she would blend in.

7.
The man inside her pillowcase has been submitting stories to the Paris Review once a year, since he was nine years old. The rejection letter he receives each year hasn’t changed. One time there was a footprint on the envelope.

8.
The man inside her pillowcase has trouble sleeping at night because his nipple piercings are infected and every time she rolls over, it rubs his chest raw, till bleeding. He holds his hands over his chest, but bleeds through the pillowcase anyway.

9.
The man inside her pillowcase has no upper body strength. Instead he spends all his time running laps around her pillow and stretching his calves. He worries about shin splints.

10.
The man inside her pillowcase applied to law school and got into North Eastern Ohio with full tuition and fee waivers. He plans to buy a house and give his cat away.

11.
The man inside her pillow keeps her awake at night, practicing ‘da stanky leg,’ a dance he never feels comfortable doing at the urban club he frequents on Saturday nights. He can’t bend and twist his leg like the other guys.

12.
The man inside her pillowcase refuses to come out because he is ashamed of the crown tattoo he got on the back of his neck. He just thought it looked cool. He had no idea it was a gang symbol for the Latin Kings.

13.
She is in love with the man inside her pillowcase. At night, after her boyfriend falls asleep, she whispers into her pillowcase. She breathes heavy and rubs her tongue across it.

14.
The man inside her pillowcase is unsure about their relationship. He doesn’t want to move west with her and he doesn’t want to break up. “Can’t we just see what happens?” he asks.

15.
One morning she wakes to find the man inside her pillowcase is dead. She isn’t surprised. She knows if she hadn’t suffocated him, he would have smothered her.

Asked him to help keep watch, thought it something to keep the time, but he’s afraid.

Why’re you building this thing? How can this help us?

Could still build complete sentences then. Wish I could smell only myself. Shine rottin’ in my cellar, roots no longer in my folds, against my loin some dry sweat. My roll dying away and I hardly care. Who carries the length’a my blindness? Remaindered, a pair of old merchandise. My sleeves grow tight against my swellterin’ arms, restrainin’ circulation, pinchin’ need, need to take a bath, burry my face in my arms, smell only my leftover. No longer his slake. A wake through the house, reaching floors where he doesn’t have the strength to climb. Lost track’a days in this seat, facin’ them that might come by, markin’ whatever goes by. Those that I can see.

The innertia of my trap drives me.

A thin glue holds us, not able to want my flesh. Unfondled ‘cept for occasional rummagins’ through my shell, draggin’ me along his life. The emptyness of him, a difficulty moved to the toilet for a shit.

Pissin’ in a bottle.

A wig when I am outside to cover my thinnin’ hair, bald pate no longer brushed. My bald spot flat and dull, all a mud color. No longer thick.

Who wants me? When will you again, Nub?

We stare, waitin’ to get away from our home. Need to wash, clean the mustard stain from my housefrock, wash the waitin’ he’s draggin’ me through, trapped in his scant breath. Dim. Dim at the end’a days. A din. Dim Sum. Haven’t been out for good dimsum in such a while. Whiling away of my time.

Used to want. Both of us wanted. Barely now we wish.

Not to wish him dead, but to be rid’ve his spiralling. Surrounded by it.

My unclean mouth. A moth tryin’ to digest without enough spirit.

Some early mornin’ hours I rummage through neighbors’ garbage, look for something where nothin’ there is goin’ to be. Some Mornin’s I am by the river. I clean, wipe his thin ass down with baby wipes and empty his bottle. Bound to him by the wipin’ of his ass, bone and glued together. Not much more, the glue yellowin’. All still. Unable to imagine a time further along, no return. Severed. Would sleep except for mysterious traces I am not followin’ that eat me awake.

    8/21, 2am: Dark & nothing to look for accept the kid at 1111 Bale to come
    home. Not returned yet. Or Cindy. With her boyfriend if she gets home.
    Sometimes awake, I’ve seen her return at 4, 5. Others, others can go, and
    come.

Others, others want to be awake ‘cept for me. Sleep. My train comin’. When’ll it be? The rail’s constant clatter, unable to sleep. So quiet, Nub not up, still asleep, just the noises’a the house, nobody wonderin’ at my train’s agitation. Nothin’ more he does ‘cept dance a dance’a shakes and muscle loss. Despond! Relinquish! Nobody leachin’ ‘cept for me. Do we get hungry anymore? Got to eat. Eat for me. Could gain some muscle for me, could gain some desire.
If the damn thing weren’t eatin’ you alive, weren’t finishin’ you, would you eat for me? Are you hungry? Do you want?

Oh my God the one I sank my heart into. Where is my heart goin’? To a life and country I don’t understand, one I am shut from. I haven’t been let enter. I am a no entry sign.
 
   Night: Son hasn’t called. Is it early or late?

Divinations, my son’s visitations, to put us elsewhere. To look away. Wish I could imagine somethin’ in the cracks, sediment at the bottom of my house.
 
    Night: Another night I dreamt a hallway, narrow & waivering, leading to
    rooms with grapefruit colored doors. All shut. Then opening, but who’s
    coming out? I don’t see nobody rising out of the indoors, just these doors
    closing or opening. Not one coming in or out. I stand there, not seeing
    myself, but only that I wait, thinking I’m there though I might not be.
    Looking and looking, wanting to turn but not. My wants. knots.

Monthly to tear his father out, our boy.

We can get ‘round the belly’a our house. The upstairs not for you anymore. Do you hear? Are you still asleep, Nub? If awake, where are you?

Son wants his ill father to die in a wilderness, in a place he knows nothin’ about, and has none of us. A Home that will only take our sleep and soon to be silence, a weight for both. Nub in the other room, behind the thin wall’a my skull and bone; can hear him wisp thin and raspy, breath uneven now. Not the breath that would take my neck, the breath that’d kiss me and reach down and exhale so to take more of me, mornin’s breath its nightlong dampness and dank in his mouth, memory of my other. Now a fowl breath without the struggle to have me. What we had been.

    3am: A car down Bale Street. Ann dropped off. Known her since she was
    a child, talked to her about him. So little control. They don’t hear me. Runs
    deeper into the house.

Scent of the house full with his determination. Caught wishes now. Not yet forever, before this. Bones beggin’ to go and rid himself, pain of walkin’, not the strength to lift him, of the smell of the father.

What’re your wishes, Nub? Cat got your tongue?

    Night: So blank and uneven. Go faster, slow down. Must sleep.

My son’s visit to wheel him out if the sun permits; to squeeze out again what can be meant. Heavy rain that day, his hat drippin’, my head rainin’ down onto my toes. Puddle in the chair, his lap a pool of water. This unreasonableness.

A stick man. Was strong as a wrestler when I first met him, not tall, broad, him in my arms and felt his breadth, the muscles of his tightenin’ round my meat. The odds dim. On my haunches, worried ever over the rustlin’s through the bay windows, peopling of my place, to will the place to have me. So late. Late for me. My frame’a mind late. For it won’t now, ‘cept as an illness it cannot wait to heal, be rid of. Both an illness in the wake of things, the roil I am forced to reel in.

    Night: Nothing far off. N sleeps, has not awoken from my conversation.
    Talk to him though it is not to him I know. Don’t talk to another though I
    talk on.

Everyone from distance; him though we been together so long. I’d play with’im if there were somethin’ to play with, to play with the lightnin’ storms, my map and journals, rods and the stars on clear nights and the beforehands, those things that were sucked into me fore he came sick. My husband’s slow sieve away from me, toward the sky, cloudy and won’t let me see far. The thing in the seed that growed into a flowerin’ more, not anymore. The weeds takin’ the ground I used to till, a small bit of soil. The flowers I planted relentin’. Relent.

    Night: Release.

The hollyhocks’ bloom range obscenely tall and thick. Day lillies just above the weeds, like the weeds now, promising bloomin’, to bloom to the last day yet not a promise. The oak tree droppin’ its seed, to spread progency, my small red roses climbin’, a surprise against the weeds, diminished. How much further without my attention? The soil don’t wait. The smell of his leaving, thick in the house, like juice out in the sun too long. Nobody wants to drink the warmth anymore, the thickness of him.

Towards the surface
of the water
my mind
shouting

with greater
difficulty
moving up
from my chest

the name
still holds
this throat

the echoes
cling
inside this skull
from longing

a quick blur
a quiver

down to
black earth
not below
yet-
no voice
comes.

   
    I am praying
    she who owns my mind

    hear my prayers

Her rising fire
spreads beneath
my skin my
tongue sticks
to my mouth

I cannot speak.

Her shaft moves across the blue
like a hand
a line of sight.

Uncompromising
on both sides
her arms rise
above the water.

He finds
an impossible focus
of two things at once
in that single ray
of light
the living arrow
stands at the world’s center.

The image
bears upon the silent water
apprehending it.

His eyes
alone
capable of immortalizing
the instant
of his
destruction

falling away
to an older threshold
some simple object
found him

amazed
a mere novice
between the hammers
in the cosmos
for his
indulging

in speaking her name.

Unrehearsed
her
concentration
here
is elaborate.

The sudden absence
of her nymphs
transforms her thoughts
into physical distance

all birds possess a core of fire

His dull movement arresting
the visual image
her form then
has nested in his eye.

It is the name
Artemis
the name alone
he whispers

which unleashes her wrath.

So saying
she turns him
back
for she has shame
to deal
in blows.

Diagonally
she looks up
again there is sky.