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June.
2005
Former Feature Review
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| semantikon,
summer 2005, former feature review, aralee strange, patrick
sebastian, michael crossley, nathan singer, bess rose miller,
t.m. weygand, willie smith, krista franklin, poetry, essays,
short stories, novels, fiction, cut up poems, novels, audio |
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Update:
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Willie
Smith
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| Willie
Smith's parboiled detective fiction Dada After Math is
now available as an electronic book from oneleggedcowpress. His
work is now also online at bloodcookies, myfavoritebullet, thievesjargon,
litvision, zygoteinmycoffee He is a regular contributor to the
print magazine American Drivel Review and
Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite
Corpse. |
New
Works:
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Snakes
Bites Tails
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This
Is A test
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Snake
Bites Tail
Right into your soul he can trumpet. A little guy – five-two,
hundred-ten. But when he’s on – not too high, not too sober – he
rushes genie-outta-the-bottle through the bell of his horn. Trumpet like a strumpet.
Spit hot licks at your groin.
On the other side of the avenue he hobbles – a
moonman with the crabs. I cross over; interrupt his squint at the sun to say, “Oscar – what’s
up? Haven’t seen you in months. Playing around? Say… you don’t
look so good.”
“Ah, my wife just whacked me in the balls.
Trying to walk it off.”
“Accident or punishment?”
“Little bitta both.”
“C’mon inside. I wanna show you something
about ballet.” I lead Oscar to the branch library directly behind him,
where I was headed anyway.
“I hate ballet,” he mutters, shuffling
bowlegged through the glass and metal swingdoor.
“You hafta look at it artistically.”
“I have a cousin is autistic. He invents
dirges without words. Stands in a corner groaning chromatically. Wags his head
at the wallpaper… hey, slow down – the balls are connected to the
legs, OK?”
Halfway through the biographies, parallel to H.
L. Mencken, I slack the pace. Overhead a fluorescent buzzes, flutters; creates
the feel of an eye tic.
Oscar catches up, wheezes in my ear, “He
calls it swinging. Only got a three word vocabulary. Other two: more,
damn.”
I whisper over a shoulder, “Groovy. Just
so he’s careful to swing in the right circles.”
Oscar grunts, as if the sour pun caused him to
step once again into the crap of an assiduously ignored hangover.
I’ve never owned, never driven a car. But
my earliest memories are all of automotive interiors. Now, breezing past the
chemistry shelf, recall Mom or one of my sisters crying, “Pew! Pew! Pew!” Behind
the wheel Dad snorting, “Skunk,” speculating how far off; allowing
up to a mile.
One roadkilled skunk filling the valley with personal
remembrance. While I lolled in the dark, in the back, as the Kaiser cruised the
asphalt – a fondly inhaling toddler, in touch with his inner turd; palping
the exotica disgust so often veils. That’s what’s needed here for
Oscar – pedestrian in agony, battered husband, casually employed artiste
trapped in a wretched morning.
I gesture us down the sports aisle. We step aside
to let a little old lady totter past, hugging in breadstick arms Introductory
Lacrosse. A hint of mothball floats.
“I was trying to blow myself,” Oscar
whispers up into my ear.
“Something you read about in Yoga Journal?” I
quip, just to be saying something bookish, till I’m sure the horsetoothed
dowager’s hump is out of earshot.
“I don’t read that woo-woo shit!” he
hisses. Suffers a liquid belch. Swallows. Grimaces horribly. Recovers power of
speech. “I didn’t even have my pants off. Just kinda rolling back
on my shoulders on the bathroom floor. Threw the legs up over my head. Brought
knees down beside ears. Then I see my dick sitting up there. I mean, my slacks
aren’t even unzipped. But my tongue is out; my fingers are guesstimating
in millimeters the distance from crotch to tonguetip, and Betty busts in; drops
this jar of Midol on my balls.”
“She that startled?’
“She thought I was still in bed asleep. I
thought she was still out scoring cramp medicine. Where are we going? Suppose
I need to puke?”
“Just to the end of this aisle. Shelves against
the window. Tie one on last night, Oscar?”
“We played The Rainbow… The sun coming
in that window hurts my eyes. I also hate ballet. This library got a bathroom?”
I glance at his bloodshot peepers. “Sure
she dropped the Midol ?”
We halt at the window. Oscar contemplates the plastic
floor. Rubs the crown of his bald dome. “No.” Clears his throat. “It
hit hard. And she was kinda mad. Even after I explained I was just getting
loose, working out a kink before it could develop into a groin pull. She got
sorry pretty fast, though. Once she made sure the bottle was OK – nothing
broken, nothing spilled. Why don’t you pull out a thick book. I’m
gonna be sick. I’ll get sick on the shelf. You put the book back. Then
we leave, ‘K?”
“There aren’t any thick books on ballet.
They’re all tall and skinny.” I shove Ballet Without Tears under
his sniffly nose. “Open this thing – pretend you’re looking
at it. When necessary, I’ll ‘read’ over your shoulder.”
“Necessary?” He holds open the thin
book. Winces up at me – a tight-featured face sketched on an ostrich egg
fringed with mousy hair. Giving him the look – face and scalp flushed – of
a flyweight monk from hell.
Look out the window across the street, Oscar.”
“It’s too bright… too crowded.
People make me dizzy.”
“Across the street.”
“A building. Brick apartments. Knew a soprano
there once. Wanted to make her; but she
lost interest.”
“Second floor, third window from the corner.”
A fat teenager in coveralls redolent of B.O. picks
his way down the aisle, eyeing the motorcycle section, small engine repair, gun
catalogues – coming closer, as he frowns into football, basketball…
“Turn the page,” I whisper. “Look
interested in ballet.”
“Don’t tell Betty about the soprano,” he
mumbles, squinting out the window into the apartment building. “She’s
already got enough suspicions about my faux pas. Hey… is somebody in that
window naked?”
“Isn’t that a pas de deux? Tutu a divine
shade of yellow…”
“What in shit are you talking about?”
“The book. Illustration twenty-nine. Well… guess
it’s an entrechat. Isn’t ballet fascinating?”
“No. I hate it. Why am I even holding this
asshole book?”
“Because it’s necessary.”
The fatso pulls down a basketball annual. Looks
like 1998, maybe ’96. Waddles back up the aisle, selection clamped in a
fist. Thanks to the building’s ill-functioning climate control, his stink
lingers. I take short breaths:
“OK. Coast clear. Safe to get back to watching
her.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea. But she does this every
Saturday morning around eleven. Takes a shower. That’s her bathroom. She
doesn’t believe in curtains.”
“That’s…” Oscar refocuses
on what he is finally coming to understand constitutes the main attraction. “That’s
my kinda religion, too.”
Her window appears bold as a television screen
viewed from a little further back than usual; perhaps while at the refrigerator.
Although she remains invisible from any line of sight out on the street, the
library window peers directly into her stall – electrically-lit from behind,
even on this bright morning. She likes to see what she is doing.
Black hair snooded under shower cap, she soaps
her large, upturned, cocoa-nippled breasts. Washes them thoroughly, looking down
to scrutinize the work. Next her hands fall to the crotch. She scrubs vigorously.
Lotta suds, lotta motion.
“I think,” he says, lost in thought, “I
think… she’s… masturbating.”
“She’s a clean person, Oscar. Very
clean. What appears to be happening is probably not. My high school drama teacher
would call this dramatic irony. We know more about the situation than does the
character on stage. For instance, she doesn’t know she’s being watched.
And in this case it works both ways: we don’t know just how good it feels.”
“She’s not acting. We’re not
an audience. She’s masturbating. This is voyeurism.”
“Don’t confuse the issue with French.
I’ve been observing her every Saturday since around Easter. If she were
truly petting the poodle, you’d see her sigh, throw her head back; detect – even
from this distance – tell-tale shudders traversing her nude body.”
He shuffles feet, clears throat: “Shut up.
You’re making me sick. Let’s just watch.”
For the next five minutes we stand – two
spines, two penises, four testicles, four eyes. Twin monsters in a concealed
nightmare. We do, however, interrupt to pore over illustration twenty-nine, when
the odd patron wanders close, searching subjects bordering on ballet. Our eyes
secretly glad for the shift in concentration.
After the rinse, after the shut off, after one
last cranny has been toweled and both eardrums squeaked dry, she disappears through
the shower curtain into the bathroom’s back stage.
We close the book. Return Ballet Without Tears to
its proper place on the shelf. Sidle up the aisle. Exit the library into the
brilliant sun of late June.
“Feel better now?”
“No.” He stares at his stylish pink
tennis shoes. An overcrowded bus growls past, turns the corner, roars toward
the heart of downtown. “But at least now I got a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Go home. Ignore the wife. This time lock
the bathroom door.”
“Don’t forget – many other species
of irony abound!”
I think to myself, when he continues, without acknowledgement,
down the pavement toward home sweet home: Some we invent as we go along.
Then remember: Of course he hates it – Betty
caught him once after a concert in the parkinglot with a ballet student. Broke
his nose with her shoe.
Shake my head, smirking, heading toward Pike for
my bachelor dump. Content to have helped out with negativity. At least now two
people in this cattle car of a city in touch with their inner turd.
I walk faster, anxious to complete the process.
Through the back of my mind runs the Saturday morning loop.
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This is a Test
She rants and she rants at the entrance to a trance.
She waits for the craven raven to cease to rave high in the pine – flushed
off the corpse by her hurry.
Then she goes into it – to intuit a new way
out.
And in that night, inside that cave, beyond the
rot, longer than the hunger, heavier than the lust, she knows me to be, by the
nose, she – she bare, she bear, she bang, she male, she yang; she rants,
she rants at the entrance to a trance.
I walk down the street. I feel completely neat.
I don’t need to be stirred – I go into it to intuit firefly toes – because
I’m already crazy wild bugs, all but sewn into a shroud, lightning bug
caught in a web; still sending into the still humid night the remorselessness
of gut glow, of chartreuse code, of dash and dot in the riptide blood calling
rebels in the hills.
And there is no rebel she never ranted at the
entrance to a trance.
I walk down the street. I feel completely neat.
I don’t need to be mixed. I feel all meat electrically expressed, kneaded
anew from the dough of a lewd mildewed dead dude who is me – howling and
raving a new way out.
She rants, she rants at the entrance.
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