Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, August 6, 2009
rats/stars, to a secret girl
Chin is a mouse tucked into a tiny matchbox bed under a square of olive green wool.
Eyes are subtly colored, and calm, almost cold, and it's hard for me to meet them.
A perfect woman-shaped woman, with the perfect amount of space between everything, perfectly formed.
Hair is the color of the world's cutest potato.
She's like a dream to me. from the moment I saw her I knew she was my destiny. Finding her is like running down the escalator as it numbly climbs up and up. Something I felt in the bed with me, but can never find on waking. Something I could search my whole life for, and see it recede forever.
I will take her and run away with her and knit our hair together in the night while she sleeps. and we'll go on like that with our faces pressed together forever, only ever having to whisper, and never let our cheekbones cool. We will sleep with our faces pressed together. and let each other drool into each others mouths and eyes. and not care. My forearm will grow moist and stick to her waist under her shirt. her hand and wrist will live on my belly. and when we eat we will raise a sandwich with one hand each to our twin mouths. and bite and chew in unison. she will put the lipstick on my mouth and I will put the lipstick on hers. and together we will devour you, giggling, and making sounds like an aquarium. devour you, all the while making sounds like a bathtub filling up, and we'll shit out rats and stars.
Eyes are subtly colored, and calm, almost cold, and it's hard for me to meet them.
A perfect woman-shaped woman, with the perfect amount of space between everything, perfectly formed.
Hair is the color of the world's cutest potato.
She's like a dream to me. from the moment I saw her I knew she was my destiny. Finding her is like running down the escalator as it numbly climbs up and up. Something I felt in the bed with me, but can never find on waking. Something I could search my whole life for, and see it recede forever.
I will take her and run away with her and knit our hair together in the night while she sleeps. and we'll go on like that with our faces pressed together forever, only ever having to whisper, and never let our cheekbones cool. We will sleep with our faces pressed together. and let each other drool into each others mouths and eyes. and not care. My forearm will grow moist and stick to her waist under her shirt. her hand and wrist will live on my belly. and when we eat we will raise a sandwich with one hand each to our twin mouths. and bite and chew in unison. she will put the lipstick on my mouth and I will put the lipstick on hers. and together we will devour you, giggling, and making sounds like an aquarium. devour you, all the while making sounds like a bathtub filling up, and we'll shit out rats and stars.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wax Lake, Minko
WAX LAKE
A slightly attractive young brunette woman with no legs below the knees is crawling up a set of stairs. She is plump and motherly looking. Someone moves her wheelchair up the stairs for her and she hoists herself into it without help. A bus comes down the lane slowly and cannot stop, and turns with great slow turns in the roundabout, eventually losing momentum and crawling with nose pressed gently up against a brick and glass fronted gas station café. Everyone is wearing polyester shorts, hats with foam, Velcro sneakers. The edge of the lake is white. Minerals crust on it, thick, opaque and firm like bacon grease in cold water. It is cold and damp and the air billows with lucid mist. I peek into the bus and a young woman comes down the stairs with a rustling vinyl bag. A live rabbit's head out pokes of the bag, over her shoulder, its big flat eye watching me as she trudges away.
MINKO
A series of 20th Century pickup trucks sleep in a thicket of blinding, diesel-hot sunshine. Dark denimed deliverymen pause for a polite exchange under a silvery, sickle day-moon right above the horizon. They have thick, blond forearms and thoughtful, Mormon delivery. They are tasteless and clean. The gas terminals shimmer under a dark haze—-mosquitoes, and hot exhaust, and the seeping grey mirage of water vapor in the heavy air. The grass is soaking wet. The rain shimmers in the near future like a bell or the train sounding far away. The sun inexorably retreats into a pink smear. Insects take over in the few hours they have left to live before being drowned in the deluge flashing ever closer on the horizon.
A slightly attractive young brunette woman with no legs below the knees is crawling up a set of stairs. She is plump and motherly looking. Someone moves her wheelchair up the stairs for her and she hoists herself into it without help. A bus comes down the lane slowly and cannot stop, and turns with great slow turns in the roundabout, eventually losing momentum and crawling with nose pressed gently up against a brick and glass fronted gas station café. Everyone is wearing polyester shorts, hats with foam, Velcro sneakers. The edge of the lake is white. Minerals crust on it, thick, opaque and firm like bacon grease in cold water. It is cold and damp and the air billows with lucid mist. I peek into the bus and a young woman comes down the stairs with a rustling vinyl bag. A live rabbit's head out pokes of the bag, over her shoulder, its big flat eye watching me as she trudges away.
MINKO
A series of 20th Century pickup trucks sleep in a thicket of blinding, diesel-hot sunshine. Dark denimed deliverymen pause for a polite exchange under a silvery, sickle day-moon right above the horizon. They have thick, blond forearms and thoughtful, Mormon delivery. They are tasteless and clean. The gas terminals shimmer under a dark haze—-mosquitoes, and hot exhaust, and the seeping grey mirage of water vapor in the heavy air. The grass is soaking wet. The rain shimmers in the near future like a bell or the train sounding far away. The sun inexorably retreats into a pink smear. Insects take over in the few hours they have left to live before being drowned in the deluge flashing ever closer on the horizon.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Saturday, November 3, 2007
found journal entry from 4/15/2006
April 15 2006
The beautiful monsters swallow mountains, well, they chew through them eventually. And through the countryside.
They swallow and swallow and reproduce . . . they take things and make them nothings. They want everything and eat everything wantonly-- there are lumps of gold and whole wondrous pearls in their shit.
They are the layers of waste. At all times their stomachs swell against the skin
And rib cage. They are always full and shitting, and always moving on and discussing the next kill, the next morsel, the next feast or recipe. All orifices on the beasts must be taken into account for constantly—the mental one, the nodal bones in the jaw vibrating.
Spitting out words with the mouth and swallowing them in the ear. Gulping in and out.
The beautiful monsters swallow mountains, well, they chew through them eventually. And through the countryside.
They swallow and swallow and reproduce . . . they take things and make them nothings. They want everything and eat everything wantonly-- there are lumps of gold and whole wondrous pearls in their shit.
They are the layers of waste. At all times their stomachs swell against the skin
And rib cage. They are always full and shitting, and always moving on and discussing the next kill, the next morsel, the next feast or recipe. All orifices on the beasts must be taken into account for constantly—the mental one, the nodal bones in the jaw vibrating.
Spitting out words with the mouth and swallowing them in the ear. Gulping in and out.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
An Ode to New Womanhood.
The new woman: an ode.
Dear, sweet sisters, let me start by saying thank you for using plastic applicator tampons. Deep undersea, a cloud of white oblong tubes swells and sighs, then settles on the ocean floor. . . a permanent plastic shrine to a moment of your intimate convenience. Like a cloud of lily petals, your plastic applicators turn and tumble with grace. Thank you for choosing “silk glide” plasticity over the intruding brutality of your own finger. Thank you for being in terror of your own juices, in fear of your own vulgar meats. Thank you, new woman, for your fastidiousness.
Thank you, new woman, new liberated woman, for your toilet seat coverings, precisely manufactured from pulped, waxed and bleached trees. Thank you for demanding these toilet seat covers, so that your buttocks might never touch the same plastic as another’s buttocks. New Woman, what better destiny for the spreading thicket, the arms of forests, than a sheath for your perfect, untouched, superior buttocks? Thank you for your exemplary cleanliness.
Thank you new woman, for reclaiming the prerogative of the village healer through Whole Foods endcaps and “aromatherapy candles.” Thank you for taking back the power men stole from us and giving me organic eye-shadow. Thank you for reviving the words “spurious,” and “cupping,” ear candles, homeopathy. New woman, for your astrology—sweet, sweet exotic and marketable astrology, I thank you. What guidance could I possibly have found in this male-dominated patriarchal society if not for your sisterhood bookstores, your Mother Jones classified ads, your leftist vibrator boutiques? All hail the new Woman, for she is Healer, Witch, wise crone, herbalist, amazon.com preferred shipper and keeper of arcane knowledge.
Oh, new woman, OHHH!--let me thank you again for the sex toys. Masturbation no longer means “shallow, meaningless auto-gratification”—thank you, new woman, because of you, masturbation is “empowerment.” Masturbation is something I choose—not the default setting of loneliness, a bad personality or ugliness. Thank you for training me to make myself come—men cannot be taught or trusted to do so. Men and their five minutes of kissing, their too-fast pulses of pearl jam can’t possibly please the new women. She is a sex goddess, a sex machine-- thus only a machined, motorized, brightly colored vinyl fuck-stick pleases her.
A woman’s natural mate is not a pork-sworded, complex, stinky meat-slab, a woman’s proper mate is a motorized, hot-pink, bunny-shaped piece of silicone. All hail the multi-orgasmic new woman! Lo, how she hath nobly gotten her groove back all over a bouncy chew toy. All hail her pussy you may ejaculate inside of again and again without unseemly odor or pregnancy! All hail her jerking off alone with a blue plastic bird while her callous mate showers or snores! Hip hip! Hurray! New Woman wins again!
Thank you, sister new women, new WOMYN, for radical feminism. Thank you for officially codifying, reinforcing and re-defining all male stereotypes about women under a new brand. Thank you for “eco-feminism,” that no one might think of earnest, womanly workers for the earth without snickering-- therefore we can go on working un-noticed and un-funded. Thank you for the “stay-at-home-mom” that command-within-a-role, for that we all thank you.
New Woman! I hail you and your tamed body- waxed, toned, proana, promia, all hairs under direction, fat liposucted, controlled! I hail your amphetamines and lap-band surgeries! Your implicit trust of all advertisements, your sweet innocent acceptance of images of other human bodies, your naïve and adorable striving to be and look and feel just like the woman in pictures, forever.
Hail “Seasonale”! Hail “Yaz”! Viva “Norplant” and “Nuvaring.” You are truly a pioneer—turning your body into a machine. Turning fertility on and off like a light! Today’s lady doesn’t take orders from her menstrual lining-- she’s the one giving the orders! On our marks, get set. . . Menstruate! Ovulate! Now quick—conceive! Ready. . . set. . . give birth! She, and only she, controls each of her functions with a pink pill, an injected wash of proteins, hormones and enzymes are her handmaidens. New womankind has total medical and technological mastery over her fully submissive body. Her body is the Conception Clubhouse--no boys allowed! Should science prove impotent, and New Woman accidentally conceives—it’s cool, because she has also preserved her “choice.”
Oh, new Woman, this most serious capital C, I especially hail your Choice, your Right to Choose-- the abortions you crave, the privacy you deserve. The only moral abortion is your abortion, good New Woman, good New Wife; you are free to return to the pro-life picket lines as soon as you’ve cleared the recovery room. No one will rat you out to daddy or hubby. Choice! It’s your choice! You don’t even have to TELL the poor sucker who knocked you up before you clean out that womb. It’s YOUR choice, girls, not HIS!
You and only you, have the power of giving life or choosing death. You can always light a “focus” aromatherapy candle. Play some Alanis or Cat Power “post-procedure,” groove on Ani after the “appointment.” Buy a new iPod docking station or some weed and forget about it, kiddo! Hip hip Hurray! Pink is back! Glitter and marabou are back—heels and pointy toes are back, but now we wear them not just to balls, but to work! YES! You can get lumps inserted into your humps. You can get lumps taken out of your humps. You can- truly- have it, ALL: big tits, perfect teeth, voluptuous lips, wide eyes, unlined skin, thick hair, no hair, all these. Woman’s bodies are more beautiful and powerful than ever—slitted and sewn-tight faces, stitched and tightened vaginas, fat suctioned out, ribs cracked off and removed, broken and re-molded jaws, cheekbones and noses, metal and glue and ceramic and silicone inserts under her skin.
This is the dream of the New Woman. Corsets are back, but it’s because we like them now! Nipped-in waists and missile-tits are more popular than ever! Now we get to dress like the 50’s, not have to dress like the 50’s! We’ve come a long way, baby. The New Woman, she is verily—A Superwoman. Isn’t it so much better than the dumb old days, you know: reclining nude in moist brothels, or posing up on that pedestals. . . so much better than the rule of thumb, the barefoot and pregnant days, when they called us the weaker sex?
Dear, sweet sisters, let me start by saying thank you for using plastic applicator tampons. Deep undersea, a cloud of white oblong tubes swells and sighs, then settles on the ocean floor. . . a permanent plastic shrine to a moment of your intimate convenience. Like a cloud of lily petals, your plastic applicators turn and tumble with grace. Thank you for choosing “silk glide” plasticity over the intruding brutality of your own finger. Thank you for being in terror of your own juices, in fear of your own vulgar meats. Thank you, new woman, for your fastidiousness.
Thank you, new woman, new liberated woman, for your toilet seat coverings, precisely manufactured from pulped, waxed and bleached trees. Thank you for demanding these toilet seat covers, so that your buttocks might never touch the same plastic as another’s buttocks. New Woman, what better destiny for the spreading thicket, the arms of forests, than a sheath for your perfect, untouched, superior buttocks? Thank you for your exemplary cleanliness.
Thank you new woman, for reclaiming the prerogative of the village healer through Whole Foods endcaps and “aromatherapy candles.” Thank you for taking back the power men stole from us and giving me organic eye-shadow. Thank you for reviving the words “spurious,” and “cupping,” ear candles, homeopathy. New woman, for your astrology—sweet, sweet exotic and marketable astrology, I thank you. What guidance could I possibly have found in this male-dominated patriarchal society if not for your sisterhood bookstores, your Mother Jones classified ads, your leftist vibrator boutiques? All hail the new Woman, for she is Healer, Witch, wise crone, herbalist, amazon.com preferred shipper and keeper of arcane knowledge.
Oh, new woman, OHHH!--let me thank you again for the sex toys. Masturbation no longer means “shallow, meaningless auto-gratification”—thank you, new woman, because of you, masturbation is “empowerment.” Masturbation is something I choose—not the default setting of loneliness, a bad personality or ugliness. Thank you for training me to make myself come—men cannot be taught or trusted to do so. Men and their five minutes of kissing, their too-fast pulses of pearl jam can’t possibly please the new women. She is a sex goddess, a sex machine-- thus only a machined, motorized, brightly colored vinyl fuck-stick pleases her.
A woman’s natural mate is not a pork-sworded, complex, stinky meat-slab, a woman’s proper mate is a motorized, hot-pink, bunny-shaped piece of silicone. All hail the multi-orgasmic new woman! Lo, how she hath nobly gotten her groove back all over a bouncy chew toy. All hail her pussy you may ejaculate inside of again and again without unseemly odor or pregnancy! All hail her jerking off alone with a blue plastic bird while her callous mate showers or snores! Hip hip! Hurray! New Woman wins again!
Thank you, sister new women, new WOMYN, for radical feminism. Thank you for officially codifying, reinforcing and re-defining all male stereotypes about women under a new brand. Thank you for “eco-feminism,” that no one might think of earnest, womanly workers for the earth without snickering-- therefore we can go on working un-noticed and un-funded. Thank you for the “stay-at-home-mom” that command-within-a-role, for that we all thank you.
New Woman! I hail you and your tamed body- waxed, toned, proana, promia, all hairs under direction, fat liposucted, controlled! I hail your amphetamines and lap-band surgeries! Your implicit trust of all advertisements, your sweet innocent acceptance of images of other human bodies, your naïve and adorable striving to be and look and feel just like the woman in pictures, forever.
Hail “Seasonale”! Hail “Yaz”! Viva “Norplant” and “Nuvaring.” You are truly a pioneer—turning your body into a machine. Turning fertility on and off like a light! Today’s lady doesn’t take orders from her menstrual lining-- she’s the one giving the orders! On our marks, get set. . . Menstruate! Ovulate! Now quick—conceive! Ready. . . set. . . give birth! She, and only she, controls each of her functions with a pink pill, an injected wash of proteins, hormones and enzymes are her handmaidens. New womankind has total medical and technological mastery over her fully submissive body. Her body is the Conception Clubhouse--no boys allowed! Should science prove impotent, and New Woman accidentally conceives—it’s cool, because she has also preserved her “choice.”
Oh, new Woman, this most serious capital C, I especially hail your Choice, your Right to Choose-- the abortions you crave, the privacy you deserve. The only moral abortion is your abortion, good New Woman, good New Wife; you are free to return to the pro-life picket lines as soon as you’ve cleared the recovery room. No one will rat you out to daddy or hubby. Choice! It’s your choice! You don’t even have to TELL the poor sucker who knocked you up before you clean out that womb. It’s YOUR choice, girls, not HIS!
You and only you, have the power of giving life or choosing death. You can always light a “focus” aromatherapy candle. Play some Alanis or Cat Power “post-procedure,” groove on Ani after the “appointment.” Buy a new iPod docking station or some weed and forget about it, kiddo! Hip hip Hurray! Pink is back! Glitter and marabou are back—heels and pointy toes are back, but now we wear them not just to balls, but to work! YES! You can get lumps inserted into your humps. You can get lumps taken out of your humps. You can- truly- have it, ALL: big tits, perfect teeth, voluptuous lips, wide eyes, unlined skin, thick hair, no hair, all these. Woman’s bodies are more beautiful and powerful than ever—slitted and sewn-tight faces, stitched and tightened vaginas, fat suctioned out, ribs cracked off and removed, broken and re-molded jaws, cheekbones and noses, metal and glue and ceramic and silicone inserts under her skin.
This is the dream of the New Woman. Corsets are back, but it’s because we like them now! Nipped-in waists and missile-tits are more popular than ever! Now we get to dress like the 50’s, not have to dress like the 50’s! We’ve come a long way, baby. The New Woman, she is verily—A Superwoman. Isn’t it so much better than the dumb old days, you know: reclining nude in moist brothels, or posing up on that pedestals. . . so much better than the rule of thumb, the barefoot and pregnant days, when they called us the weaker sex?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Your new gray flannel suit
It is green, moist and very late in the afternoon. A hot springtime in your far youth-- a day like that. You actually hear a cicada hissing nearby. You can actually hear that cicada and the kiss of your tires rippling against the hot, black asphalt, simultaneously. A genuine, very bright green magnolia coalesces next to a mailbox. Best to park here. The car shudders off and there is instantly, a smell of cut grass or horse feed permeating everything.
Coming up on the long, long treelined driveway you see the typical strewn hazard of entitled suburban childhood. Skip rope. Dollies. Chalk and questionable drawings and scribbled out messages. A sound like bells, and one of the little darlings is upon you, a clean white dress like an orange blossom, like frosting. A rolling cherry red tricycle. It's like something out of Norman Rockwell for fuck's sake. She stops abruptly and looks at you. You feel your blood sugar spike as you realize this assignment, your assignment, will really be a piece of cake. Like a piece of diner cake perspiring under glass. Your mouth waters a bit.
"Is your mother home little girl?" Try to sound not like Paul Lynde. You want Garrison Keillor.
"Ye-eesss."
But just as you breathe easily and feel gently the paperwork inside your raincoat there is a shimmer of white from either side and these two flickers of something and it's snapping the meat on your jaw, the hot, black asphalt, somehow you are against the ground, face down, your eyes can't hardly open from the pressure and the soft snap shock of hitting the ground, dear God!
Suddenly and as you feel someone taking your wallet, the asphalt hardens against your face and knees-- all you see is blurred, fractional. Mary janes, and farther off a dollie and your hat, distorted by distance against the hot, smooth street. Shaken, shaking and trying to break free now like a jumping bean. And what the fuck is going to happen now?
Surprised and outraged somehow they got the jump on you, you're hitched, you're down, it's been a full ten seconds or so and you can't beat them-- you don't know what the hell happened. Another moment passes and several small sticky hands have palpated your wallet and confiscated your paperwork.
It's been a long time since you've been in this position, and frankly your knees have had it. Just as you begin a long slow sigh and start to muscle against your bonds, you close your eyes and begin the sigh of someone about to address their captor, it's all over. You are unroped and kicked over gently so quickly you don't realize it. The shock is like that when you are about to fall asleep-- the moment in between sleep and waking when you inevitably dream that you are falling down stairs and when you jump and hit the bottom, you awaken and you are alone. There is no one. No little girl, no mary janes. Nothing but the hiss of a cicada and sidewalk chalk taking on moisture in the heat.
There is a gentle wave to the branches framing a break in the woods. Is that receding sound laughter or the cry of a hound? Did I just get robbed by invisible little girls?
But you don't have your wallet.
And you certainly didn't serve anyone with any very important paperwork.
But you certainly don't have it anymore.
And you have a very, very uncomfortable split on the right side of your face from the almost sickening-sweet thud of your head against the deep black driveway.
Everything is purpling up with the advancing dusk. Everything is very through the looking glass.
You shuffle back to the car where everything is just as you left it. You put the car in gear and motor away as fast as you can manage. After a minutes you pull out your mobile phone and dial a call. It was a terrific day to be a junior g-man.
Coming up on the long, long treelined driveway you see the typical strewn hazard of entitled suburban childhood. Skip rope. Dollies. Chalk and questionable drawings and scribbled out messages. A sound like bells, and one of the little darlings is upon you, a clean white dress like an orange blossom, like frosting. A rolling cherry red tricycle. It's like something out of Norman Rockwell for fuck's sake. She stops abruptly and looks at you. You feel your blood sugar spike as you realize this assignment, your assignment, will really be a piece of cake. Like a piece of diner cake perspiring under glass. Your mouth waters a bit.
"Is your mother home little girl?" Try to sound not like Paul Lynde. You want Garrison Keillor.
"Ye-eesss."
But just as you breathe easily and feel gently the paperwork inside your raincoat there is a shimmer of white from either side and these two flickers of something and it's snapping the meat on your jaw, the hot, black asphalt, somehow you are against the ground, face down, your eyes can't hardly open from the pressure and the soft snap shock of hitting the ground, dear God!
Suddenly and as you feel someone taking your wallet, the asphalt hardens against your face and knees-- all you see is blurred, fractional. Mary janes, and farther off a dollie and your hat, distorted by distance against the hot, smooth street. Shaken, shaking and trying to break free now like a jumping bean. And what the fuck is going to happen now?
Surprised and outraged somehow they got the jump on you, you're hitched, you're down, it's been a full ten seconds or so and you can't beat them-- you don't know what the hell happened. Another moment passes and several small sticky hands have palpated your wallet and confiscated your paperwork.
It's been a long time since you've been in this position, and frankly your knees have had it. Just as you begin a long slow sigh and start to muscle against your bonds, you close your eyes and begin the sigh of someone about to address their captor, it's all over. You are unroped and kicked over gently so quickly you don't realize it. The shock is like that when you are about to fall asleep-- the moment in between sleep and waking when you inevitably dream that you are falling down stairs and when you jump and hit the bottom, you awaken and you are alone. There is no one. No little girl, no mary janes. Nothing but the hiss of a cicada and sidewalk chalk taking on moisture in the heat.
There is a gentle wave to the branches framing a break in the woods. Is that receding sound laughter or the cry of a hound? Did I just get robbed by invisible little girls?
But you don't have your wallet.
And you certainly didn't serve anyone with any very important paperwork.
But you certainly don't have it anymore.
And you have a very, very uncomfortable split on the right side of your face from the almost sickening-sweet thud of your head against the deep black driveway.
Everything is purpling up with the advancing dusk. Everything is very through the looking glass.
You shuffle back to the car where everything is just as you left it. You put the car in gear and motor away as fast as you can manage. After a minutes you pull out your mobile phone and dial a call. It was a terrific day to be a junior g-man.
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