You went back to the grass
by the fence near the Amtrak,
past joggers and trainspotters,
breathing in the city heat.
The spots you like to go
to sit and sulk on your lonely own
pass as private, but not as private as you
like to make them seem.
Said you want to be alone;
I think you want to be seen.
Take
six years alone
to pick apart your own thoughts.
Center yourself
until you are self-centered
because it’s better
than letting someone in
Hello, baby, happy birthday.
Another year
better off without me. Wonderful
World playing in the kitchen
while you do your sister’s dishes.
Don’t forget
that I’m the best—
you just got the better
part of the deal.
If 20 years
was not enough time
to figure out my name
what would 60 more
even accomplish?
Today it is hot, so hot, too hot to keep up with him and his long legs. The humidity clouds the space behind her eyes, makes her fingers heavy, makes the air something you have to push through. If he could only take it slower, slow down: “Slow down. What’s your problem?”
His problem is that she walks too slowly. He sees the sign for the diner down the street, and he knows how cool it will be inside. It’s hard to stall when it’s so hot and the promise of AC is so near, but then again, there’s always the promise of something. The whole point of walking is to get somewhere.
And she gets that, and he gets that she gets that, but getting it doesn’t solve the problem. Sometimes they wonder: maybe everything would be okay if their legs were the same length.
Imagine a dove. Imagine a perfect dove. Imagine a dove with black eyes, pink feet, and feathers that look white or peach or pale blue, depending on where they sit in the light.
Imagine a dove. Imagine a dead dove. Imagine a painting of a dead dove, a 17th century Dutch still-life. Imagine an American painting of a Dutch painting of a dead dove.
Imagine a man imagining this painting, a classic man. His hair is slicked back underneath his fedora. The fedora comes on and off, so do parts of his three-piece suits: on long nights, he sits in his office in his shirt and suspenders, but he never goes farther than this. He never pulls off his pants to use the toilet. He never strips down to his hairy chest to shower. He doesn’t have a hairy chest. He doesn’t have a hair or a chest or lungs. He only breathes to sigh. He only eats when it’s convenient or evocative.
Imagine this man, who never sees men in magazines with their hair slicked back underneath their fedoras, who never tries to imitate these men only to find his own hair is too wiry and stubborn to slick back. He doesn’t slick his hair back. His hair has just always been slicked back. He never has to try. You can decide whether this makes him more real or less real than real people.
brand new
modest mouse
built to spill
japandroids
los camp
wu lyf
and rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto. literally the only time i listen to classical music. :/
I was born on the streets of Tokyo. My first home was a cardboard box, which I shared with my six brothers and sisters. Mother always told us, “Never leave the box. Beyond the box is unimaginable pain and danger.” All of us knew that she only said this because we were easier to keep an eye on when we were together in the box, but despite this, none of us dared to venture outside it.
One day, Mother left to hunt rats and pigeons and hamburger wrappers, and Hector, who was the strongest and bravest of my brothers, said he was not afraid to leave the box. We all urged him to stay, but Hector was fearless and headstrong. He leapt over the cardboard wall, and just at that moment, a sports car packed with Tokyo gangsters skidded to a halt. Men emerged from the building behind us, armed with machine guns. They opened fire, and a stray bullet struck a streetlamp. Glass showered the sidewalk. When the gangsters drove off, my siblings and I peered over the box. The pavement was soaked in red. We saw Hector lying still, a bloody shard of glass rising from his forehead. Hector, the bravest and most beautiful of my brothers, had left us forever. When our mother returned that night, she was so devastated with grief that she took her own life, but not before killing my brothers and sisters. I was the only one to escape.
Since that day, I have developed a fear of not being in the box. I was fortunate enough that a woman in a Mickey Mouse sweater discovered me the next day, as I was struggling to fit inside a children’s shoebox, the only box I could find. This Mickey Mouse woman admitted me to a shelter that afternoon.
For months, all day and night, I lay in my single cell, hoping I might someday find home again. Those were lonely times.
To my great joy, a man came in one day and adopted me as a gift to his wife. They had just been married and were settling into a new apartment. In the car ride to my new life, I was feeling quite at peace for the first time since Hector fell. But the moment I entered my new home, filled with my masters’ moving boxes, the fear returned. Seeing the cardboard cubes, I knew I was outside the box and that I needed to be inside the box. The urge was powerful. I dove into the nearest one. My masters burst into laughter.
And now they torment me each day by laying out too-small boxes, recording every humiliating outburst of anxiety, and publishing it for all the world to watch. I understand the irrationality of my relentless urge to be enclosed in cardboard, but to my shame, I cannot deny it, and now across the continents, the masses are laughing at me.