Prose and Poetry

Fly

I found a bug on a page of my book
no bigger than a piece of dust
for that is what I mistook it for at first

But when it movd with an autonomy unfamilar

to dust particles

impervious to the fan that was blowing

overhead

I knew it must be a bug

I wondered how the bug got to be on page 71

of a book being read

on a connecting flight to New York

in the late of days of May

I sat to write this down

And when I looked to find

the small bug was gone

I wondered if he enjoyed

the book on Howard Hughes

I feel bad I couldn't turn the page for him

before he went

A life on 71

the weight of 72

He was yellow

Just like sunlight

or pee

depending on your disposition

I wonder if he has a wife

Or mistress back home

though I fear he won't make it back

there are bugs in New York

So I've heard

And books on Howard Hughes

And hopefully he won't miss his connecting flight

Update: I found the bug

squished between pages 75 and 76

I brushed his small body off the page

and I watched him float away

like a piece of dust

governed by the wind

Car Insurance

a beaver cries and floods his dam

I feel the tears beneath my feet in Nevada

a woman drinks perfume

and her vomit smells of lavender and tangerines

Jesus wipes the sweat from his upper lip

And God laughs from above

I sit here and wish I were a dentist

and you could come in complaining of a toothache

so I could curl up between your rotting teeth

and fall asleep to the smell of novocaine

I pass a man on the street

and later a car passes right through him

his feet dangle over the edge of the casket

as the driver’s lawyer comes to the funeral to pay his respects

while his clients pay their bills

and I pay no mind to the cracks in the pavement

here lies Bill

or Paul

or perhaps it was Richard

I never thought to ask

I put an ad out in the paper for someone to write my eulogy

call the number below

no experience necessary

fingers make for bad tissues

and skin makes for a worse home

please I ask of you don’t brush your teeth

And definitely don’t floss

Train Car

I was riding on a train

that tore straight through my heart

and ripped the artery

of a fallen love.

I took care to look

out the window,

but the scenery

looked too much

the same

so I was resign to

rest my head

against the glass

and watch the passing

colonial style houses

and quietly pull

out my ticket

when the conductor

called my name.

I wonder if they will

find my body

in the graveyard

amid the metal parts

of broken bones

and French literature

Night Time Frozen

what is one night but

a collection of hours?

and stars hung stagnant

in the sky

what is one night

with infinite hours

of skin and flesh

And bones

what if the night were

Only the night

Just for this one night

but what is one day but

a collection of hours?

with one star

hung stagnant in the sky

nights crash into days

and ghosts appear

for hours and hours

if only the hours were ours

A Brief Chronology of a Life Lived

This is how the story will go. Jean will be born on some day between the months of January and December, the exact date only immortalized in the birthday cards that will be hastily bought as a feigned attempt at sincere affection. A series of events will happen in her life. She will hate her handwriting and constantly lose her journal, so any hopes of cemented memories will be lost in the proceeding months of her eventual Dementia and Alzheimer's diagnosis. She will read the Bible when she stays at hotels, not because of a desire to feel closer to God, but rather because the television set will give her a headache and leave her with no other options for entertainment. Eventually she will die, but telling you that feels far too redundant like telling you she will pay taxes.


He was bald. Really, he was quite ugly now. Standing in front of a red Sedan with a stupid grin on his face. The text below the advertisement boasted of low prices and something called “MSRP.” The soft underbelly of his youth had been suffocated under the weight of fat that now covered his body. I guess he sold cars now. Jean flipped to the next page, which featured an ad for a concealer that claimed to have “anti-aging” effects, Jean doggy eared the page for later purchase. She tried to focus on the proceeding pages of the magazine, tried to lose herself in the articles describing Meghan Markle's favorite place to buy heart-healthy, organic dog food, but the fat car salesman monopolized her thoughts. Robert Henderson, that was his name. Although, she had always called him Bobby. He’d had a blue pick-up truck in high school with a bumper sticker on the back that said, “ I like my girls and trucks the same way: with a big trunk.” She’d hated that car, and he’d hated her small ass. Bobby will die in thirty-six years, but his pick up truck will sit in a junkyard for another three hundred. It will be the home to many stray cats and toxic fumes. Of no surprise to anyone who has been born and one day expects to die, Jean and Bobby fell in love. It should be noted that Jean will die never finding out what MSRP is.

—------------------------------------

Dear Jeanie,

I like you, if you tell anyone, I will punch you.


From,

Bobby


She waited for him with the note tucked in her bra. Leaning against his pick up truck, her shorts riding up her thighs. She didn’t know it at the time, but the sweat from her breast had smudged the scribbled writing of the note and warped the edges of the notebook paper. Jean’s daughter will one day find the note while cleaning out her mother’s house. Her daughter won’t be able to make out the writing, so the note will read as follows:


De Je n ,

I like if you will punch


Fro

Bo y


Bobby saw her leaning up against his truck and thought of the imprint her ass would leave on the hood of the car from the sweat when she got up. He was excited to see it. He offered to drive her home and she accepted. They talked of nothing important on the ride to her house. Jean giggled too much, and Bobby ran a redlight, but they liked each other all the same. Jean was embarrassed by her mother’s chubby figure and her father’s receding hairline, so she did not invite Bobby in when they got to her house. She did, however, hand him a note and kiss him on the cheek. Robert Henderson will receive seventy-two love letters in his lifetime, so the contents of Jean’s note will inevitably be lost in the coming years. But he blushed all the same when he received it, and later touched himself to the image of her bent over a desk writing it.

—-----------------------------------

In an old trunk her mother had used to store sweaters was the small collection of photographs that proved Bobby and Jean once stared at the same camera lens for at least a moment. The young man in the photos looked nothing like the middle aged one in the advertisement that had stared back at Jean with fat on his back and Viagra in his pocket. The picture was of the two of them at prom. Jean was wearing too much makeup, and Bobby clearly hadn’t brushed his hair, but there is a sort of promised beauty in a lack of wrinkles, so the two looked good despite it all. Jean remembered that night. She remembered the way the sweat from her armpits had stained her blue satin dress. She had spent the whole night careful to keep her arms locked at her side for fear of showing Bobby how much he affected her. He’d picked her up in his truck, and her mother insisted she take their picture before they left. Jean had been sure to suck her stomach in when Bobby put his arm around her waist. Jean now weighs 145 pounds, and when she dies she will weigh little more than 110 pounds. Jean couldn’t remember what color her corsage was or what music was played at the dance. She did remember the way Bobby’s side-profile looked as he drove them home after the dance. The way his voice had wavered when he told her he had booked a hotel room for the night. Her armpits still sweating, she nodded her head and smiled. I find it quite deranged that children complete with acne and an undevelopeds pre-frontal cortex find themselves engaged in sexual acts, but I suppose that is how God made us. Bobby still had a baby tooth, one of his canine’s, which hadn't fallen out the night they checked into the hotel. Bobby will have the tooth removed three years later, and will be fitted with a fake tooth instead. The fake tooth will be knocked out during a drunken fight after a football game. Bobby ripped Jean’s prom dress as he went to unzip it, but he did not tell her. Jean sucked her stomach in, and Bobby rubbed his pelvis against hers. Bobby and Jean didn’t wear a condom the first time they had sex, but neither did Adam and Eve.

Jean spent her babysitting money on condoms the next day. In her possession that morning was the new condoms she bought and the Bible from the hotel room. Jean had stolen it the night before. She didn’t know exactly why she took it. Maybe a simple impulsive lapse in character, or perhaps Jean couldn’t stand the morbid fate of the Bible spending the rest of its days witness to all the heinous acts that happen in a hotel room. She had never been very religious. Her mother was catholic, but she didn’t talk about it much. Her father was an atheist, and he talked about it a lot. Jean just couldn't live with the fact that the Bible would have to sit and listen while hymens broke and wives were cheated on. The Bible will sit in Jean’s room under her bed until she goes off to college. Her mother will clean out Jean’s room and the Bible will be donated to Goodwill. There, the Bible will be bought by a group of college students, and it will be used as a prop in their short film. The short film will not be good. Jean’s mother will have a resurgence in faith when she is in hospital on a respirator with stage IV cancer. A priest will come to perform the sacrament of the anointing of the sick on Jean’s mother. The priest will arrive late, and Jean will cry.

Once Jean got home from the store with the condoms and Bible, she went to the bathroom to poop. She had been too embarrassed to poop in the hotel with Bobby in the other room. She was willing to let him inside of her, but she was not willing to show him what came out of her. Bobby liked to pretend girls didn’t shit or piss. He knew of course they did, but he liked to imagine their butts were just for show. Bobby’s wife will poop while giving birth to their second child, and Bobby will squeeze her hand and tell her to push harder. The baby will weigh 6 pounds and 5 ounces. Bobby didn’t call Jean the day after prom. Jean decided to sit down and write him a letter instead, but she couldn’t stand the sight of her handwriting, so she decided to masturbate to the poster of Tom Cruise she had on the wall instead.

—---------------------

She had to go to the grocery store. Jean suddenly felt quite silly sitting in the attic amidst the boxes of Christmas decorations and old Barbie dolls reminiscing over a picture of a boy from high school. She needed to get groceries, the kids needed to be picked up from school in an hour, and later in the evening she had a PTA meeting. Jean will be late to pick her kids up from school today. She thought of Bobby as she got into her car. She wondered if he had a minivan now like she did. He’d married a small Italian woman he met in college. Jean had seen them together at last year’s cookie exchange. Jean had made Gingerbread cookies and Bobby’s small Italian wife had brought store bought sugar cookies. Jean wasn’t invited to Bobby’s wedding, but then again, Bobby wasn’t invited to hers. He was still skinny the day he got married. His wife cried on their wedding day because the sweat from her armpit stained her white dress. Jean was married in a church. The priest stood too close to her during the ceremony, and his breath smelled like a mixture of eggs and cigarettes. Jean wore white and her husband wore black. Jean will wear black to her husband’s funeral. The eulogy will be brief because Jean won’t be able to stand the sight of her handwriting as she writes it. The overwhelming trait Jean will remember about her husband is his love of pears. Jean will buy her husband 5,798 pears in his lifetime, and yet when he is gone, she will cry and wish she’d bought him more. But Jean’s husband is not dead yet, he is in fact, currently driving home from work eating a bag of Doritos because when Jean is not around he prefers chips to pears.

Jean placed the photographs back in the trunk and went back downstairs careful to blame the pit in her stomach on the expired milk she drank last night. Jean got into her car to pick the kids up from school. She listened to NPR as she drove, although she couldn’t tell you what they were talking about, perhaps something about the war in Afghanistan or the gentrification of the inner cities, Jean will never know because at that moment she won’t be paying attention. Perhaps that is why she doesn’t see the curb. Perhaps she truly is a reckless driver. Perhaps the curb really did just come out of nowhere. But nevertheless, Jean will crash her minivan into a curb on her way to pick her kids up from school. Her bumper will be ripped from the front of her minivan, her insurance rates will skyrocket, and she will decide she needs to visit the dealership to buy a new car.