Speak for Those Who Have No Voice

Hey, please help this house resolution become a bill and then the law of the land.

Animal abusers and murderers often get off scot-free.

And these same people are very likely to turn their hands on humans later.

I already called my senators and representative.

It will only take five minutes of your time.



Help pass a national animal cruelty law.

The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act will make it a federal crime to commit malicious cruelty to an animal on federal property or otherwise in interstate commerce.

Federal law already prohibits animal fighting, as well as the trade in obscene video depictions of animals being crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled or subjected to other forms of heinous cruelty. But while the trade in video depictions of cruelty is banned, the underlying cruelty itself is not. The PACT Act will create a federal anti-cruelty statute that complements the cruelty laws in the 50 states.

TAKE ACTION
Please make a brief, polite phone call now to your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators. Look up your federal lawmakers' phone numbers. You can say, "As a constituent who cares about animals, I urge you to co-sponsor H.R. 1494/S. 654, the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act. If you're already co-sponsoring the bill, thank you and please do all that you can to get it enacted quickly."

--source: The Human Society of the United States

In the Mail Today

In my mail today: the last two Burning Deck titles: Elke Erb's The Up and Down of Feet  and Paol Keineg's Triste Tristan, and a letter hand-signed by Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop explaining that even the nonpareil thing must come to an end.

"Begun in 1961, Burning Deck has had a long and, at least to us, interesting life. Now after 56 years, our own  high-end birthdays and illnesses make us end the press."

I think one could easily make a strong argument that Burning Deck was the most important American publisher of avant-garde poetry in the half century it operated, and it certainly built strong bridges between the European (particularly, the French and German) and American vanguards. 

Here's a by-no-means-comprehensive list of notable titles the press published (from Burning Deck's Wiki article):

99: The New Meaning, by Walter Abish

A Geometry by Anne-Marie Albiach

Why Write? by Paul Auster

The Heat Bird, by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Utterances, by William Bronk

The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell), by Robert Coover

Striking Resemblance by Tina Darragh

Species of Intoxication: Extracts from the Leaves of the Doctor Ordinaire by Michael Gizzi

Artificial Heart, by Peter Gizzi

The Countess from Minneapolis, by Barbara Guest

Innocence in extremis by John Hawkes

My Life, by Lyn Hejinian

A Test of Solitude by Emmanuel Hocquard

Some Other Kind of Mission by Lisa Jarnot

Trial Impressions by Harry Mathews

i.e. by Claude Royet-Journoud

Numen, by Cole Swensen

The Windows Flew Open, by Marjorie Welish

Turneresque, by Elizabeth Willis

The Heat Bird is just a fantastic book. It's impossible not to see how that book influenced Rosmarie Waldrop's own evolution as a poet. I would recommend readers enjoy the Berssenbrugge title alongside Rosmarie's equally stellar The Reproduction of Profiles (New Directions). Both of these books hold up wonderfully.

There are so many more titles worth recommending in their back catalog. For example, the authors of the two final books published by the press have both been published by Burning Deck before, and I would recommend both of those earlier books. (I reviewed Keineg's earlier title for the American Book Review, back in the old papery, pre-internet days.)

I hope this means Keith and Rosmarie will be able to concentrate on their own poetry without distraction now. They've more than earned that. And I also have this (perhaps quixotic?) hope and wish that the powers-that-be might grant either deserving poet a MacArthur so we can set a new record, age-wise. I have no doubt the funds would not go to waste. And both poets are "fully empowered" now, to speak in the Nerudesque idiom. Age be damned.

Library Amnesty Day

One rainy spring afternoon in Baltimore, a young man walked into one of the city’s smaller libraries. He drew a little attention to himself since he was wearing a burnouse. It was Library Amnesty Day, which meant that patrons could return overdue library books and have the fines for those books waived. He explained that he wanted to take advantage of this amnesty. “This book is wonderful and everything in it is true. I am living proof of that,” he half whispered and smiled. “But I think I have been wrong to keep the book so very long.” The librarian asked him for his library card . He replied, “I have none.” She tried to get more information but he fled. He was in and out of the library in under three minutes. The librarian tried to place his accent but she couldn’t. At first, she thought it must be a prank since he left no book. He did leave a plastic tube on the counter of the librarian’s station. This tube was discovered to contain an ancient papyrus. Obviously, this had not been borrowed from the small library in Baltimore. It was forwarded to one local university and thence onward to several others. Eventually, it was determined that the origin of the papyrus scroll was the Library at Alexandria, burned when Caesar himself strategically set fire to his own ships during the siege of that city. The fire spread from the ships to the docks and then reached the vaunted library and consumed much of it, Plutarch informs us. Other historians insist the fire (or multiple fires) happened earlier or later. But all agree that the library and its precious volumes perished by fire. Had the Library at Alexandria ever collected such penalties, the overdue fee the mystery man was seeking to have discharged would have been astronomical. Even a modern robber baron would have difficulty paying such a fine. The scroll the mysterious man dropped off contained text in ancient Greek and hieroglyphics. The title of the work, when translated, was revealed to be How to Live Forever.

(science fiction)

A NEW BLITZKRIEG



American Airlines’ Flight AA2497 departed Atlanta in the early evening, just after six, bound for Dallas-Forth Worth. It took off into a warm July sky. No storms waited in its flight path. The passengers felt mostly relaxed. It had been expected to touch down on earth again at 8:33 pm. local time. But it didn’t happen.

At 8:33 p.m. the flight was still circling, refused permission to land or continue on to any other airport. The United States Air Force had scrambled an E-3 Sentry alongside two F-22s. These interceptors waited to see what word would come down from on high. They were fully prepared to destroy civilian aircraft and snuff out American lives.

This is because Flight AA2497 had become two Flights AA2497. As the flight approached DFW, it had morphed into a set of mirror image twins. Both flights contained the exact same crew and passengers. And both craft were in a panic, as visual contact had been made between the two planes in mid-air. That is, passengers had seen their doppelgangers looking out the windows of the plane flying next to them. Transmissions from the pilots and co-pilots of these dual cockpits were nearly identical. Nobody was sure which plane was the “real McCoy” or whether such logic could even be applied to what had happened. The air traffic controllers were bewitched into stunned silence when they heard the same pilot transmitting from two different planes, his voice overlapping his voice.

The secretary of defense and the president were conferring. Since a state of war existed between the United States of America and that nameless species which had lately announced its existence as interdimensional beings living with us, able to travel right through us, interpenetrating us like photons, the decision was not an easy matter. They had already attacked our infrastructure and information technologies. There had been human casualties. Nobody really knew what “they” were. We had found ways to block them, we had used the best code we could finesse. But increasingly they made new incursions. They were able to interfere with the natural progression of time. They were able to use backdoors in space. We were at war. And yet nobody had ever even seen the enemy.

Everyone knew this anomaly of Flight AA2497 had been caused by them. But nobody knew the meaning of it. The President and the Secretary had to make the judgment call. The flight was running out of fuel and refueling mid-air was not an option. It was ultimately decided to let both planes land. The military was evacuating the airport of civilians and all other flights were diverted elsewhere.

The planes taxied down separate runways only moments apart. The passengers and crews on both airplanes were told they could not deboard. They were to be quarantined for an indeterminate amount of time — until the matter could be resolved. This was depressing news, but the passengers on both aircraft were genuinely relieved that they had managed to finally touch down, reach the ground alive. They had seen the armed interceptors tailing their planes. They knew they had survived a close call.

The president breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was apprised that no earth-shattering disaster had occurred when the planes landed.

“We just have no idea what to do with all the extra humans,” one general joked. “And which ones are the originals and who are the copies?”

They were still laughing about this when the call came through from the military brass on the ground at DFW. It was a panicked voice that relayed the information: “Sir, it’s the worst possible scenario. Nuclear option tenable. We no longer have two identical planes. We had two….then we had four identicals..then eight…sixteen…you get the picture. They’re just materializing and destroying the airport. It appears to be some sort of virus…some sort of spatial virus! There are hundreds of them if not thousands already. I have to evacuate because….”

There was a huge crashing sound of twisting metal and a scream. Many screams. Then silence.

And the mitosis of planes went on through the landscape, that warm summer night in Texas. Flight AA2497 went on duplicating, horizontally, city to city, and vertically, jets piled atop jets up into the clouds, even to the asscrack of doom.

And the passengers wondered and wondered and wondered as they watched and sometimes caught a glimpse of themselves through the wreckage, looking back at themselves in terror and hoping, hoping to get off the plane as soon as possible.

Fiction, Fiction, Fiction

An editor with "a startup seeking to bring short fiction to modern readers" contacted me about one of the short stories I'd published on Medium. He wanted that for his new journal. So that will be appearing in that new mag and I'll share more info when it debuts.

Here's one from tonight.

HELPING HANDS DAYCARE


I can’t remember Jake. I mean I can, but I won’t. Because Em and I have two other children now. And we want them to have a normal life. They don’t even know they might have an older brother somewhere. But since you asked, I’ll tell you. I can’t talk at length about this, so I’m going to be very brief. Just the basic facts. We don’t know any more than those few “basic facts.” Probably we never will.

I told Em from very nearly the beginning there was something different about that daycare. Helping Hands Daycare. Well, you know it’s gone now. The building burnt to the ground. There’s a Goodwill store in that lot. You’d never guess there had been anything else there. There’s no trace of it left.

When we first encountered it? Well, sure, it looked fine if you took a quick glance. Fingerpaintings hung proudly on the walls. There was up-to-date and safe playground equipment and stringent supervision at boisterous playtime. A current license. Healthy food. A strict sick-child policy to protect everyone. The staff was friendly and, most importantly, they interacted beautifully with the kids. Perhaps too beautifully. I just felt something was off with “Miss Marsha.” It was her business. You know they never found her. That was some other woman’s body in the fire. They said there had been an attempt to make it appear that it was Miss Marsha’s body. Well, DNA testing put that to rest.

How it began? Jake began coming home with dirt under his fingernails. I would ask him to explain and he used to shrug me off. He’d get that nervous look. I told him it was okay, tried to turn it into a joke. So eventually he said that disturbing thing, he just came out and said, “We have to feed them.”

My wife thought it was nothing at first. She said it was typical fantasy, a story sprung up between Jake and his playmates at Helping Hands. When he told us that the things lived under the daycare, in a sort of tunnel, that Miss Marsha would take them down there and they would feed these creatures, she laughed. She just snorted and whinnied and told her friends. She thought it was hilarious. “The monsters that live under Helping Hands Daycare.” I heard her mother and her laughing on the phone about it. I distinctly remember that. They hooted.

Em actually liked to hear Jake tell the stories. She’d encourage him. Even at the dinner table. Then she would correct him, but oh so nicely. She would say that she liked to hear him tell stories, that it was good he had an imagination.That someday he could write books and tell others these stories and they would enjoy them as much as his mother did. She said imagination was something about which Jake should be proud. He would nod at her and finish combining his mashed potatoes and peas. But I saw in his eyes that he thought she was crazy.

It all happened very quickly after that. The fire at the daycare. Miss Marsha presumed dead. Everyone wondered at the time why she would have been at the daycare in the middle of the night anyway, which is when the fire broke out. They still haven’t identified that young woman whose body was found in the fire. Maybe they never will. They did determine she died by a gunshot to the head and not from the fire itself.

Obviously, no children perished in that middle of the night blaze. But four of the children, the oldest enrollees, did disappear shortly after that fire.

“Abducted” is what the media report. In a sense, that’s true. But in another sense it isn’t.

I began waking suddenly at night in the period immediately after the fire. I’d often find Jake awake and creeping around the house. At three or four in the morning. Often, I’d catch him at the windows peering out into the night. My wife thought he had become a sleepwalker because of the trauma from the fire. We didn’t enroll him in a new daycare. It was all too disturbing and we wanted to keep him close to us. Em’s sister would watch him in the daytime. In our house.

I’d always ask Jake what he was doing up and what he was looking for out the window. He told me he missed his “special friend.” I was terrified there might have been sexual abuse going on and that Jake was turning it all into some sort of surreal fantasy narrative. I really only thought this after the fire. That’s what made me think the conflagration was used as a cover-up for some serious shit at Helping Hands. But, thinking back, I remember the strange fur we would find on his clothes. We knew animals, even pets, were not allowed in the daycare. We’d drop him off there and pick him up. He didn’t go anywhere else. So where was he getting that? And what sort of animal was it? My God, when I think back at how I just shook off so many anomalies, I want to go back in time and shake the shit out of myself, and that “normalcy narrative” to which I kept clinging.

Anyway, you know the end of the story. Or what I told the police. There is no real end to the story. I say I don’t remember, but I do. In the middle of the night, when I’m lying in bed, I think of Jake. And I listen. I leave the windows open in spring, summer, even late into autumn. I listen for the sound of that…beast. If it came once, it might come again. Jake might ride it back here. The way I saw him riding it that night.

My only consolation is knowing this: that beast would not harm Jake. Even with its incredible size (where does a creature like that even hide on earth? under the earth, of course, they must be under the earth!) and even with its monstrous tusks and that barbed tail, I could see it was tame to him. I saw him run to it in the backyard. It had been patiently waiting for him. I saw the beast lay its head to the earth, in submission. I watched as Jake scrambled up its back and took its reins in hand. And then the thing let out a weird guttural cry and they were off. I chased it. I chased them in my bare feet, in my underwear. But they were swallowed up by the forest behind our house. I heard Jake calling out commands to the thing.

The police didn’t know what to make of the tracks. They said I had been hallucinating. Ambien is known to have that effect. And I had been taking that drug at the time. I won’t deny that. The wouldn’t even put that in the police report. About the tracks. The only way it got in later was when I accused the police of covering it up, of trying to make me look crazier and more like a suspect.

But then, in their hearts, the cops knew I hadn’t done anything to harm Jake. Because he was one fourth of the “Ravenswood Four,” the kids who disappeared that night. All Jake’s age. And all former enrollees of Helping Hands daycare.

Who knows who Miss Marsha really was. And who knows where those four kids are now. I think Jake still has his mount. And I think he’s still riding that beast even as he becomes a young man. If I tell you I think he’s down there, under our feet, you’ll think I’m crazy. Far, far under our feet. But I know it’s true.

I Was Afraid I Would Have to Learn 20,000 or More

The number cited below is actually not that bad.

And then as you learn the radicals, you can start intuiting the meanings of kanji you might not have encountered before. Or not. Some are pretty idiosyncratic rather than intuitive.

"In Japan, there are only 2,136 Jōyō kanji (lit. commonly-used kanji), which are the ones taught in school, though literate people usually know more."

"Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy"

On my morning walk today, begun before dawn and finished shortly after it, I heard a bird calling "Jeremy! Jeremy! Jeremy!" from a tree in front of the tallest apartment complex in town.

It's great that Google can give you answers to natural conundra like this.

The ornithologically-inclined seem to come together in a consensus that what I heard was a Carolina wren.

But when I listen to this recording of a Carolina wren, it's not quite there. I don't think the consensus was correct.  I found a site where someone was asking for help with identifying what must be this exact species of bird. Because this person specifies that the articulation of the name "Jeremy" is almost perfect, very human-like. And you really have to imagine hearing "Jeremy" in that recording of the Carolina wren. It's not that close. So I don't think that's the right species of bird. Also, the person who posted the same query which I had wanted to pose specified that he only hears the bird between six and seven in the morning. And this would have been exactly the time I heard this bird, just after six a.m.

Other suggestions were that the bird might be the Eastern towhee or the common yellowthroat, but when I listened to song recordings of these birds online they did not seem to match up. I did learn one of the species of wrens can be heard chattering "teakettle, teakettle, teakettle." Why are these bird calls so often in the form of trinities?

The bird made me think of a childhood friend. Funny how memories are summoned.

Here is a fun page of Mnemonic Bird Songs.

The Kanji in Basho's Most Widely-Circulated Poem

The New Yorker

Strange how we run into people. I was on social media and saw the name of one of my Flickr contacts in a tease for a New Yorker article that was floating down the screen, clicked on it, and it turned out to be authored by Pulitzer-winner Gregory Pardlo.

Congrats Jack!

Yasss

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

How timely are these?

I love #4. Truth.

Kubrick's Factotum

This documentary should please Kubrick fans, who are always eager for more insight into the working process of the director, arguably one of the greatest filmmakers in living memory.

It’s an anecdotal documentary, a series of tales told by Kubrick’s longtime factotum, Emilio D’Alessandro.

It’s such a treat to see inside Kubrick’s mind, his daily struggles with detail and exactitude, both in art and in life. He maintained large estates and these were filled with animals Kubrick had charitably taken in (even a donkey that was going to be put down). The animals were clearly loved and treated well.

There was a note (one of thousands Kubrick had scrawled to Emilio over many years) that hit a nerve. It was a note worrying about the possibility of fire at the director’s estate. Should such a tragedy occur, Kubrick explained, Emilio was to put the cats in one car and the dogs in another and to transport them to the neighboring estate. If you’re the owner of several cats, you’ve doubtless had this nightmare play out in your head and probably come to the same conclusion and makeshift solution. I’ve had this same “cats in the car” nightmare before.

About those notes: Emilio has apparently preserved every single note Kubrick ever scrawled or typed on the back of an envelope or piece of scrap paper. These notes are featured throughout the documentary. Kubrick was apparently a very demanding but very kind and generous employer, and one senses that the respect Emilio held for Kubrick was reciprocated. Clearly, a friendship arose from this close working relationship. When Emilio’s son was gravely injured, Kubrick offered to pay for his child to see one of the best doctors in London at the time.

Emilio’s devotion to Stanley strains credulity at times. It was a 24/7 job. Like Kubrick himself, the man was a workhorse and a marvel of efficiency. He really sacrificed his own family life for Kubrick. Doubtless, this helped Kubrick focus on his art. So arguably Stanley helped improve Kubrick’s art. And he gave three years notice when he did finally decide it was time to get back to family life. Three. Year’s. Notice. Imagine.

James Dickey

      THE GAME

In the world, or behind the world,
my child nearby is concealed:
Among the high, free-ranging plants
At the edge of the bluff,
Or, on the red stone-crop below,
Dead, immortally hidden from view.
A cloud comes over;
Seeking a child within leaves

Or a child whose home is the cloud,
I feel the sun strongly divide
Into life and death.
Lightly, at the change, someone laughs.
More charged than this wind not to speak,
Lest he fall from his life on the sound
Of my voice, I come,
Drawn into his waiting game.



(Poetry, July 1959)

Dai Fujikura

Cocteau Twins

Pets

Pets are P.O.W.s. But then so are many lovers.

Doesn't

Doesn't, possibly, every living creature have the right not to feel like a ghost?

(that night, that morning, that night)

Notation/Choreography/Simultaneities

I Wrote This Short Piece of Fiction (I Swear) While I Was Asleep

I was really typing while asleep. I remember thinking when I woke up that it would probably have all sorts of trippy leaps that made no sense. But it seemed to read okay. It's louche prose, sure. But I wanted louche.

I think it might qualify as "exciting porn" in Japan. Not sure.

Adjusted

I often wonder, when asked to give one's number of friends, whether one is to adjust for those friends whose interest in one is "merely clinical?"

(Hopefully, the adjusted count will not zero out.)

(From a Dream Conversation with Kafka)

"Inasmuch, as such an ancient concept from the planet's childhood as 'sin' might warrant even two or three short, annoyingly complicated breaths:

"Are there not some sins in which the preparation for the sin itself is the true and great--if disguised--joy? And isn't it strange that some sins are pleasurable and some sins are nothing more than self-inflicted pain? There seems to be  no 'philosophy of gain' in sin. Rather, it seems the process of loss is the real seduction. Something is given away, some sort of moral defense, and that feeling, a childish joy of transgression, an inhuman feeling of lightness, a giddiness, is the real origin of the misery.The misery that follows pleasure and the misery that follows pain. In other words, the usual fun.

"We still don't know how to situate sin, such an ancient and complicated concept, anywhere near childhood. Although adult sinners may be seen as childlike in their destructive naivete, we don't feel a legitimate permission to exonerate the behavior by resorting to the model of some ideal childhood of which the committer of sin was deprived, so mitigating any ensuing or preceding evil wrought by his or her hands. Yet, in the real world, monsters sometimes beget monsters. So we feel the culpability snaking back through generations. We know the real culprit has sometimes lived his life out and died. And we are dealing with carnage created by a ghost of a human being walking around like an automaton doing the bidding of the vengeful muse of his volcanic, subconscious injuries."

(childhood memory trigger)

People often tell me I am “this way” because I spent my childhood almost exclusively in moonlight. I was never allowed to leave the family home while the sun was shining. I rarely believe them. Maybe they are correct. They’ve also said that it was my extreme poverty or my ridiculous silver spoon wealth. Depending on which story they have been told, which story they have believed. They blame either poverty or filthy lucre. But fiction can stunt one’s growth. This is true. Other people’s fictions, their beliefs, can stunt your growth. In this sense, one can understand the rationale of the recluses of this world. Why not hide away from everyone, to discover who it is that you really are, or should be?


When I was young, I sought the companionship of the very old. They alone seemed to have the time to contemplate the things which interested me. Oh, not just any old person. I mean the ones who had studied life, those who were now uselessly wise. My family needed answers. We were blue children, we were sometimes ashamed, we gave our first set of furniture away. But we ate such interesting meals, read such interesting books, captured such interesting animals: baby storks, alligators.


Other children said that we were not from the same planet as them. And this was true. We were extraterrestrials, in a sense. And we did spend much of our childhood in the trees, climbing barefoot. When I met another child, by accident, in the woods, say, I would run as fast as I could, to hide in my bedroom. My wild breathing could only be calmed by looking at the book with the life-size, hand-painted illustrations of birds. The one which my ancestor made with his one good hand (the other severed by court order on a sunny afternoon in a public square).

Bones, Issue 12

The twelfth issue of the haiku journal Bones is out.

I'm very proud to be a part of this issue and I really love the poetry the editors selected for this issue.

Why not visit and see if you agree?

These haiku are the sort of writing I use to spark drawings when I'm in the mood to draw abstractly. They also color my photography.

I think it's interesting that the art the editors use is so often asemic, minimalistic, calligraphic, so that the line between drawing and writing becomes a dream line.

I was asked to be featured artist in an upcoming issue of the mag and, of course, I said, "heck yes, thanks!"

So Here Are Two Great Sensible Ideas. I Hope the Future is Listening.

I would love to see the implementation of two symbols in food merchandising to help consumers make ethical choices.

I would love to see an A and a P employed to indicate that the food so marked includes, respectively, animal-derived ingredients or animal products. It would be much easier to use these symbols only in a negative sense, to indicate absence of animals or animal products. Or you could design it as a positive/negative system where the symbols show the varied makeup: animal product but no animal, animal but no animal products, animal and animal products both, neither animal nor animal products. This information could be easily communicated by printing an A and P in red circles on the packaging of the product.  A diagonal strike-through would mean absence of that category of ingredient. So a simple binary system with that. This could help vegetarians and vegans find products quickly, without having to read tiny ingredients lists.

It takes so much time to scrutinize ingredients and find those "hidden" animal components like lecithin. Is it animal-derived lecithin or soy(a) lecithin? Ugh.

And here's an idea to make you super-rich if you are enterprising and tech-savvy. Design a phone app which reads ingredients lists in stores to assist shoppers in this process. Have a database which instantly scans all ingredients for safety, healthiness and vegetarian/vegan evaluation. So the consumer could just pick up the product in the grocery store, swipe the phone over it and then instantly get a spoken feedback letting them know the issues of concern for that particular product. In other words, cut out the laborious reading/Googling/reading that food evaluation requires.

Postscript: Oh. I see apps actually do exist that do most of what I describe above. Maybe the "UPC Food Scanner"  app is closest to the one I'm imagining. It does scan the products and you can get it to check those ingredients lists for allergies. I'm not sure it does all the other particularizing with the "A" and the "P" I mention above, or whether it scans those lists for "controversial" ingredients.  I wonder if the UPC only works with better known product lines? I was thinking more along the lines of optical recognition technology of the ingredients list itself. "Fooditive" and "Open Label" also look like interesting food apps.

So There's Been an Avalanche

So there's been an avalanche of death. I, myself, am a pupa in a chrysalis at the moment. It seems okay to ask the universe a favor at times like this. So I'm making a request for the Cocteau Twins to start writing/recording again this year. Please. While there is still time. Before night falls. You're all very grown up now. It's time.

Joanne Kyger

I return to this book often. If it's not in your library, today's a good day to fix that.

These are (for me, anyway) clarifying poems.



NIGHT PALACE


'The best thing about the past

is that it's over'

when you die.

you wake up

from the dream

that's your life.


Then you grow up

and get to be post human

in a past that keeps happening

ahead of you

Some Haiku Forthcoming in Bones: A Haiku Journal

I'm thrilled to be included in a journal of contemporary haiku that I admire quite a bit.

You can check out Bones online. There is a great archive available there, so you can go through the back issues.

I want to say something in print in the near future about this journal and why I think it's such a sea change for contemporary haiku.

Also, they publish some really great visual art in the issues. It complements the work beautifully. There's a real concinnity. I find the magazine inspiring and challenging in the best way.  And it's deliciously weird. That's the real cachet for this reader. It reminds me I am in the Floating World.

Ren Hang

The guardian said No
You cannot eat the creator body
It is dead and on the highway
It died of fever
It pullulates in the night sky with stars
You cannot see astral bodies do that swarm
But they do
Right under the highway of your eyes
As the boiling blood of the animal
Cools down at last
Becomes temperature of a morning green leaf
An hour     a soft bending green sword
But waits to flare in another
Rash enough to insert a tongue
Keep your mouth      the torture clear
Or it will turn leathern
As this angel's        the one still punting
With something   a mockery of desire
A disease
And I look at the supine creature
It made me hungry    I locked
My lips      held tiny stars
I cleared the barter up

Atlantic City Postcard

The stars are stranded over the highs.
Someone tied a mylar balloon to a cactus.
It dances like the eighties.
The green is dead,

but the green is not immured.
The bride is alive, skipping.
Animals pee on your skull.
I pee on your skull.

His mother thinks he is still "dang handsome."

In Las Vegas a bit too long.

He asked me what I thought.

All I could say: "piggishly smooth."

"You have a nice chin."

Someone's Birthday

Rob was getting shin splints after less than forty minutes on the road. He had only resumed his daily running a few weeks back. It had been many years since his cross-country days in high school, more years than he cared to admit. So he babied himself a little. He reverted to walking instead of jogging. He was nursing the shin splints. He planned to get some ice on them as soon as he got home.


It was a sunny July afternoon, so he was enjoying his stroll down a pleasant little street in a neighborhood he knew only vaguely, though it was less than a mile from the apartment he shared with his fiancee. Rosebushes were in bloom before picture windows. Sprinklers spattered abstract art on sidewalks. Little dogs yapped at the happy stranger from behind fences as he passed.



Rob reached a part of the street where the houses became sparser, with more distance between each dwelling. There were even a few vacant lots overgrown with summer weeds and wildflowers. Rob lamented the wasted real estate. As he was approaching a strange old house that wouldn't be out of place in one of Edward Hopper's Gothic paintings, he noticed a cardboard box sitting out in the street, just past its driveway. The house had to be abandoned. The grass had grown knee-high and yes, sure enough, there was a white piece of paper with large black lettering tacked to the front door.

Rob figured the box was just a leftover from the move out. Kids had probably kicked it into the street.


But as he drew alongside the box, he saw there was a big red bow on a side of the box which had been hidden from him. And there were strange symbols drawn in magic marker all over the box. Goth kid? Rob was sure he had seen those symbols, or some very much like them, in books and movies. On the box's top, on the cardboard flaps which were only loosely closed, someone had written (in what seemed to Rob a feminine hand) "Happy Birthday, Sister!"


Curiosity got the better of him. After a quick look up and down the street, Rob reached down and pulled back the flaps to see if there truly was a birthday present inside there. He suspected the writing was just a red herring on an old, repurposed box.


As soon as he turned the flaps back, a warm cluster of flies flew into Rob's face. Some even entered his nostrils. Disgusted, he snorted them out. The scent coming from the box was strangely pleasant for something so horrible. For at the bottom of the cardboard box lay a heart. It was not even desiccated. It looked moist, juicy. Rob had watched enough medical documentaries and e.r. themed shows to know it had all the appearances of a humanheart. He felt his stomach pitching. The worst part was that he didn't have his phone on him. He knew he needed to dial 911 as soon as possible. Should he stop at the nearest house, knock on a stranger's door? No. This was too weird to inflict on a stranger. He would be home in a half hour or less. Probably less. Because Rob was running again, splints be damned.


Rob could not imagine any possible explanation for what he had just seen. After only a few blocks of running, after his shin splints had kicked back in, he returned to meditative walking and began telling himself that he must have erred. It had to have been an animal's heart. Some other animal's heart. Not a human's. It was some sort of sick prank. What does a pig's heart look like? Does it look anything like a human's? He thought it might. Where was his phone, his Google, when he needed a vital question like this answered? Maybe he had just run too long. Maybe he was dehydrated. Dehydration can make you hallucinate.


Rob was now taking a shortcut road that ran somewhat rural. There were fields on one side that were sometimes planted, but sometimes left fallow. This year they were fallow. Sporadic, modest split levels with much space between their yards lined the other side of the road. Rob saw something out of the corner of his right eye. He turned and looked directly into the field and saw the shadow of a human figure on a haystack about forty feet from where he was standing. The shadow started moving towards him. Rob waited until the distance between them had closed a little further and then he ran. He must be dehydrated, he thought again. Or he had eaten something bad. Something foul. Maybe it was much hotter than he realized. Maybe he had heatstroke.


Still running, Rob swiveled around and began to jog backwards. He was looking for the shadow. But it was gone. It never appeared in the street.


The road took a big dip down towards an area where there were patches of forest on either side of it. Rob often saw deer crossing there, when he was out running, or in his headlights when he was driving through there. The deer would often cross the road in full daylight, unabashed, unafraid. They had grown less timid through interactions with humans. Rob had often seen them noshing on birdseed fallen from backyard feeders.


But it wasn't a deer that came out of the forest and started walking towards him on the other side of the road. This time it was a beautiful young woman with long black hair. She was wearing a white dress, a sort of lace sheath that nearly touched the asphalt of the street as she walked. She carried in her dainty right hand a white parasol that shielded her from the sun. She smiled at Rob and he nearly forgot about the horror he had just experienced. It was like seeing a woman walk out of a Monet painting and into the world.


"Good afternoon," the beautiful stranger chimed from the other side of the street as she passed him, going the opposite direction.


"Good afternoon." Rob felt how dry his tongue had become.


And that was the extent of their exchange.


Rob stole glances at the beautiful stranger over his shoulder several times as he ascended one side of that dip in the road while she ascended the other. Then she was gone around the street corner at the top, lost to view. Rob wondered what sort of get-up that had been. Was she attending a wedding? A lady's high tea? It was not everyday apparel. And why had she stepped out of the woods, anyway? What had she been doing in there dressed like that? Hadn't she heard about Lyme disease? The deer ticks were everywhere. It was a crazy day all around.


Rob was only a few blocks from home when he saw a shadow on a white wall. It was drawn plain as day. There was no figure there to cast the shadow. It was the white wall of a small garage which had gone out of business. He realized the shadow was that of a woman with a shapely figure holding a parasol. He watched as the shadow "walked" across the wall of the garage and vanished into the unsupporting air.


After that, Rob wondered if he should seriously entertain the possibility that someone might have slipped him L.S.D. earlier in the day. What else could so tidily explain away all this madness?


By the time Rob reached his front door, he felt like a basket case and seriously wondered if he was one. He trotted up a short flight of steps and opened the front door of his apartment and nearly jumped out of his skin. His fiancee Lisa was unexpectedly standing there in the doorway. It gave him a jolt.


"You look like you've seen a ghost," she laughed.


"You have no idea. I need to make a call."


The police went immediately to the address Rob had given them. Some fifteen minutes after that, an officer had called Rob to ask him a few more questions and get some particulars he could add to his report. They had located the empty house. They explained to him that there had been no box in the street before the house. In fact, they had searched all around the house. Nothing. He could hear the skepticism in the officer's voice.


"Sir, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. But are youalright?"


Rob had thanked the officer for doing his job and then hung up before the officer had a chance to ask even more condescending or insulting questions.


Lisa had seemed strangely nonchalant about the whole story. He wondered whether she believed him. Though they would be husband and wife in a matter of months, she was still largely a mystery to him. He knew so little about her, really. He liked women like that. He liked the idea that he knew so little of her past or even the sorts of things she did when she was out of his sight.


"Listen, I have to go out, hon. There's a roast for you in the slow cooker."


"Where are you going?"


"One of the girls has a birthday today. We're celebrating. It's girls' night out. I may be out a bit late. I know I'm just terrible. Forgive me?"


"How come I never meet your friends. You're like a guy with that. You know all my friends. Are you ashamed of me or something?"

"You're ridiculous. Maybe I'm worried you'll marry one of them instead of me. Don't worry. I have a special date planned for you to meet everybody. Kiss me, I'm already late. I'm so sorry you had that crazy experience. We can talk more about it when I get home, if you'd like. It sounds freaking traumatic!"


Because Lisa was so beautiful and strange, he kissed her and let her have her way.


Minutes later, she was out the front door and warming up her car in the driveway. It seemed that whenever an argument might be possibly brewing, Lisa would uncannily head it off at the pass by leaving.


The roast smelled good. He went to give it a stir and have a little taste.


And that's when his life changed.


He had gathered up all the personal possessions he could fit into his SUV and was several states away by the time Lisa was to have been home that evening.


In fact, he never spoke to her again. He prayed he never would. He never even called the police. Why not? Well, it wasn't because he thought they wouldn't believe him. Oh no, he was sure they would have believed him. This time. But he knew that somehow he would have ended up dead. There might have been prison in there somewhere before death. But he just knew death was what waited for him. If he told on her. And he knew, somehow, that everything which had happened to him that day on his run had been connected to her. To Lisa. He just couldn't say how.


He knew all this mere seconds after he had lifted the crock-pot lid.

He knew after he had given that cabbagey liquid in there a good couple of stirs with the big plastic spoon, and had seen something he was sure Lisa had never intended him to see.


There are so many different types of roast you can buy in the meat department at the grocery store. So many. But none of them you find there will ever be quite like the roast Lisa had so thoughtfully left simmering for Rob that day.

None of them you find there will have a Guns N' Roses tattoo.

Oh Gawsh, I Love This CNN Counter

So good.

Warm

Jim was hunting with his two older brothers on what the locals called Jawdrop Mountain. Though he was only sixteen, he had convinced his brothers to let him go it alone, at least for a few hours at a stretch. The guys had gotten a late start that day, so it was around one o’clock when the three brothers set out hunting in different directions. This was to have been a separation of two hours before a final rendezvous at a marker tree on the path which the three young men had used to ascend the mountain. And then the brothers would head back down, deer or no deer.

It was a severely overcast day in midwinter. Several inches of snow lay on the ground from recent storms. No significant snowfall had been predicted for that day. But the weatherman had been wrong and a surprise storm brewed up on the mountain. It began as a squall, near white-out conditions. Jim panicked and stumbled around until he realized he could walk right off a precipice. This thought scared him so badly he froze in place under a sheltering stand of trees until the squall degenerated into a normal snowfall.

Then the boy realized he was lost. He had sprinted and walked much further than he had realized in his panic.

He looked at his cell phone, but without hope. He knew there would be no reception. Ridiculous even to look. He cursed himself for having wandered so far in his initial panic. He had lost all his “mental markers” in the landscape. He was calling out to his brothers, to anyone really, at the top of his voice. But no one replied. And the terrain already looked totally unfamiliar. All the trees looked the same in any direction. The snow continued to fall.

Just as it was getting dark, the boy saw a form in the woods which gave him hope. There was a cabin in its own little clearing deep in these woods of the tallest trees. He raced to it, realizing it was his salvation.

As soon as he arrived at the front door and knocked, he knew it was empty. It just felt that way. He looked in the windows, which were actually very dusty, and knew then that the cabin had probably been empty for a long time. He did a cursory inspection walking around the small structure, and saw it was intact. This was a secure place to hole up until help arrived. Though he had his rifle, he did not want to be out in the night. He realized it was hypothermia he should fear, but a primal part of him feared the other things too.

He couldn’t believe his luck in finding an unlocked window in the rear of the cabin and squeezed his svelte body through. He actually ended up falling to the floor and that was the scariest moment, when he felt most vulnerable. Lying there on the floor in the dark cabin. He froze and waited for whatever horror lay hidden in the cabin to fall upon him. He breathed a sigh of relief, right there on the floor, when he realized it was silent throughout the rooms. He could actually hear the sound of the snow falling outside through the still open window. But he wouldn’t close his exit behind him. Not before he really saw the whole cabin and knew he was safe.

“Hello?” he called out. “If you can hear me, I’m not an intruder. I’m a hunter. I’ve gotten separated from my brothers and I’m lost. Don’t be afraid.”

No fearing soul answered him or came forward to greet him.

Jim ran to the front door and undid the locks. He threw open the door and this let in a little more light. It was the wan light of snowfall which was cast into the living room of the cabin. Jim discovered that there were two other bedrooms and a small bathroom. These bedrooms were the scariest rooms to enter, since they were the darkest rooms, windowless. His eyes adjusted, but he could not be sure that he was seeing everything in those rooms. He saw enough to realize no one could be in those rooms. Not unless they were hiding under one of the beds. This was just a little too much of a risk to check right now. He could smell the dust in the cabin. Jim took it on faith that he was the only occupant of the cabin. It had surely been empty a few years, at least.

He ran out the front door and couldn’t believe his luck in finding a woodpile under an old, wind-torn blue tarp. He loaded up the fireplace and had never been so happy to be a smoker in his life. His Bic served him nicely. He prayed the chimney wasn’t blocked or sooted up beyond use. But the fire roared up and he slammed the front door shut and locked it again.

He felt terribly guilty when he thought that his brothers might be risking their own lives looking for him. He worried about them. But he figured they would descend the mountain and return with a search party. They sure would be pissed though. What more could he do but sit and wait until the morning. At dawn, he would try to find his way back to the path and maybe even be able to meet any searchers on their way up the mountain.

He decided to keep the window by which he had entered cracked open just a little bit, in case he could hear his brothers’ voices. He wondered if he should listen for search helicopters flying overhead. Or was that unrealistic? If only he could tell everybody he was alright, sitting now in front of a toasty fire as the sun died off the mountain.

Jim made a bed on the floor in front of the crackling fire. He had taken the pillows and blankets off the rather ramshackle couch that occupied the center of the room. In no time, the exhausted boy had fallen deeply asleep, grateful for the fire and the roof over his head.

When he was suddenly awakened, he had no idea at first where he was, what time of day or night it was, or what the sound that had awakened him had actually been. He thought it had been a knocking. A hard, insistent, series of fast knocks. Had he been dreaming?

Then he remembered his circumstances and he called out his brothers’s names, each one in turn. Had they miraculously found him? He sprang up and ran to the front door. But something in him told him not to open it. Not just yet.

“Hello? Who’s there?” he asked hopefully.

No answer. Only the sound of the wind. The storm had grown emboldened after night fell. He could hear its shrieking on the other side of the door.

“Okay, no one then,” Jim laughed to himself. “Of course, it’s no one. I was dreaming.”

Jim turned to return to his bed. This was just as more knocks sounded on the door: three times more. But this time, they were loud beyond belief. They sounded like the worst type of threat. It couldn’t have been a fist that had done that. It had to be some sort of board or log or….

Jim looked at the open window at the rear of the dwelling. It was still cracked open a few inches. The boy ran to it and slammed it shut. He was grateful there was a swivel lock on the sash. He shot it clockwise tight. He let the thick curtains close on the window, hiding it. But he knew that was only a thin pane of glass separating him from whoever or whatever was out there in the night. And there were two other windows in the cabin.

Panicked, he searched for a weapon. He was so grateful to realize the fireplace’s poker was there. He approached the front door again, weapon in hand, and listened.

His mind began to play tricks on him. What if that was one of his brothers, half-frozen to death, on the other side of that door, unable to speak, trying to let Jim know that he was a human icicle. It seemed improbable. But it was not impossible. He had to know.

Jim counted to three, but silently, in his mind. And then he threw open the door.

No one.

Only the snow innocently falling.

But looking down, Jim saw there was a line of tracks in the snow leading to the front door! Bipedal tracks. The snow had gotten rather deep and the wind was blowing, so there was no way to tell what sort of boots or shoes the visitor was wearing. Yet the weirdest thing was that these tracks stopped right there at the door. Jim looked left, right. No one. The snow was its own light source, so it was easy to see into the night. But there was no one, nothing there to be seen.

“Where in the hell did you go?” Jim whispered under his breath.

And that’s when he heard the sounds above him. Someone was walking on the goddamn roof!

This freaked the boy out. His thoughts ran madly. How did the visitor climb up there. Was it his brother, after all, hallucinating while freezing to death?

Jim couldn’t take the wondering anymore and stepped through the open door, ran out into the deepening snow. He looked up onto the roof, but there was no one. There was a tall pine tree, however, that grew close by the roof. It dangled branches down over it. He saw little miniature avalanches of glittery snow come sparkling down from the tall tree’s branches. Because something was stirring in those branches. He couldn’t see it in the darkness of the tree, but he could see it was climbing. Then the tree grew still.

“Who in the hell are you?” Jim screamed up at the tree.

He waited in a terror he felt was skinning his heart.

Now there was only the sound of the snow, the gusts of the wind picking up and then dying off.

Just as he was ready to run back into the house, feeling all his danger sensors shrilling alarms, he heard a voice come from the darkness of the tree.

“Waaaarm,” the voice hissed out at him. The boy was shocked at how well this loud whisper (for it was a sort of creepy whisper) carried.

“You want to get warm?” Jim asked.

“Waaaarm…..” the voice sighed again ten seconds later.

Before Jim could respond, a black form flew out of the tree, and it was larger than any man, whatever it was, and came sailing down right over Jim’s head, and something touched him there, on the top of his head, as the boy screamed.

But the thing had sailed past and up into another tall tree behind Jim.

So Jim bolted inside the cabin and locked the door in triplicate.

Mere seconds later another knock came on the door. This one sounded much more polite. It sounded almost like a human knocking. Almost. But it was a dragging sort of knock.

“What are you?” Jim couldn’t stop himself asking.

“Waaaarm?” the voice hissed beseechingly.

“What do you want?”

“Waaaarm!”

“You want to be warm?” Jim asked, shaking now.

“Waaaarm meeeeal,” the voice whispered loudly.

“Listen. To. Me. Now. I have a poker and I’m going to beat your brains in if you don’t go away. I’m going to beat your brains in, and then I’m going to eat you. I don’t care what you are. I’m going to skin you and eat you and cook you in this fire. Then tomorrow I’ll shit you out and flush you down a toilet. So consider that before you ask for anything again.”

There came the sound of claws scratching on the other side of the door. This was a very angry sound.

Then Jim was sure he heard wings flapping, flapping away.

He returned to his makeshift bed and he stared at all parts of the cabin over and over, all night long. He paid particular attention to the windows.

Morning came. Morning finally came after that endless night of snow and winds and the unspeakable. Jim looked out the dusty windows. He saw a beautiful sunny morning.

He stared out several of the windows for another hour and then he finally decided it was time to head back out and find the path home.

He held the poker tight in his fist and his breath tight in his chest as he opened the front door.

Four raw scratch marks had gouged the wood. There was a claw stuck in the fourth raking. It was no claw or talon that Jim could recognize. It looked like the sort of claw you saw on dinosaurs in the museum reproductions of those creatures.

Three hours later, Jim heard a member of the search party calling his name. He was reunited with his brothers an hour after that.

He couldn’t say why he never showed the claw to anyone, not even his brothers. Maybe the shame of having gotten lost, of causing so much worry for everyone, was enough embarrassment to shoulder. The story he had to tell would have made it even worse.

But he kept the claw in a drawer in his bedroom for many years, right next to a pistol that he always kept with him anytime he found himself having to enter the woods, whether it was hunting season or not.

Stand Up for Ugliness

A great and easy way that you can help to better the planet is by signing the various petitions floating around which urge large grocery retailers like Walmart and Albertsons to retain and sell "ugly produce."

It's even better if you can make personal contact in the form of a phone call or (best) an email.

So much food is wasted and it's really criminal.

Anyway, this food is often so much more photogenic! You will want to Instagram that apple with two large butts. You know it's true.

Ugly food is better at starting conversations than fine literature. 

Toys for Nightmares

This might not be the greatest quality conversion, but it's still worth watching.

The automata featured are out of this world.

I really like the narration too. Great documentary.

Yashica, Kyocera, Contax

Yashica, Kyocera, Contax all went dark, began their journey towards extinction, in 2005. 

But millions of these cameras are still floating around. 

Kyocera took over Yashica back in the day and issued Contax cameras and used Contax lens in many of the other cameras. (Yay!)

I knew I really loved the glass in my one tiny Yashica Kyocera film camera. But it arrived with a seriously defective date function that could not be turned off. (Boo!) So I just sighed and put the camera aside.

But I recently realized I really want this camera back. And I found one on EBAY just now which is alleged to be fully functional.

This little camera is a surprisingly good grain grabber. I was really shocked how the photos held up to scrutiny and didn't really look like typical lomography.

This Song

came on the radio when I was in the car right before sunset, as if on spooky cue when I was thinking about Ren Hang's passing.

Grace knew the right words to sing the moment.

So I worked it up into a simple tribute video.

Sorry about image resolution on some of these. Obviously, online grabs aren't all going to be high-res. But it might encourage you to check out the artist's work further and pick up, say, his Taschen book.

Ren Hang Speaks about Repression

Repression and depression were two battles this young artist had to face.

It's amazing to see how simple his working process was.

My mind was blown that he was shooting in such a dark little room with the flash cranked up to heaven.

And these are the photos seen around the world.

Ren Hang Has Died

I wake up and learn from a friend that one of our greatest contemporary photographers has killed himself.

At twenty-nine.

Someone please tell The New York Times. They seem not to know

This is such a depressing period. I think about George Michael's genius and the loss every day and now this near-kid.

Michael, too, might have been a suicide. (He might have been murdered; we just don't know yet.)

Ren Hang's reputation is assured. He must have known that. I hope he knew that. Maybe he didn't care. Depression is awful. I wonder to what degree politics played a part in this tragedy. Chinese government officials consistently attacked and removed his work.

There's your next Francesca, world. Sadly.

I wonder if his Flickr account is still up. He was a cynosure on Flickr for years.

Artists who suffer from depression, please get help and choose life. We need you. Now more than ever.

Eulogy and memory at The British Journal of Photography.

It's Nice That

It's nice that you can order giclee prints of your work these days for such an affordable price.

That's really convenient, because you can do print editions in very small numbers for next to no money. Not to have deal with all the quiddities of printing is heaven. And the results these days are sort of impressive. You pick the dimensions, borders, quality paper. You benefit from all the competition in the printing field out there. It brings the prices right down. And you get a show-worthy or sellable product.

I Don't Think

I don't think George Michael ever recorded a bad song, but that's personal hagiography. Well, he's an angel now, so even songs that used to grate a tad on me (say "Monkey") are beloved.

Here's a great comprehensive list of Michael's recordings, which includes some real rarities.

The links might not all be profitable in the direct sense, but the citations can be searched on YouTube or other sites. I found many things that way.

There's a great YouTube playlist of George Michael that includes so many rarities and even some quality covers which I usually cast over to the t.v. while I'm blissing out painting or drawing. It will run for like eight hours and even includes things like obscure tracks from albums that were released only in certain countries (like Japan).

For what it's worth, here's my list of favorite songs by the master, and sorry, but no Wham tunes. I do love anything with his voice on it. Even saccharine or bippy Wham songs. It is wonderful to hear the treatment he gave Wham songs later in life, how he tenderized them and imbued them with a different soul altogether. Videos of these are floating around. This list is very heavy on songs from Patience, one of my favorite albums. I wish he had put out five more albums in that direction before he died. He was going so far past the idea of the three and a half minute pop song. He wanted long, complicated songs that could hold narrative and mature emotion. It makes sense he was covering artists like Joni Mitchell by then. It's criminal we were deprived of that future work. But why be ungrateful? There is such a well-provisioned trove. The man didn't waste much time at all, really. And it's the sort of voice that comes along only a few times in each generation.

(No order)

Mother's Pride
Faith
Jesus to a Child
Fastlove.
A Different Corner
Cars and Trains
Cowboys and Angels
Desafinado
Star People
John and Elvis are Dead
Kissing a Fool
Older
Precious Box
Praying for Time
Round Here
Strangest Thing
Something to Save
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 
Through
Understand
You Have Been Loved

Gil Ott's Pact (2002)

I was reading in an old issue of the venerable, Philly-based TO magazine yesterday and today. This particular issue's focus was fiction, and featured almost exclusively non-normative narrative writing and hybrid forms of writing.

I remember being impressed with Gil Ott's fiction in this issue. This was way back in the nineties. I wondered how these pages would hold up, all these years later.

They held up admirably. The three short pieces by Ott included in this issue are stellar. Two of the stories are decidedly creepy. One is supernaturally skewed. All are rife with pathos.

I wondered if Ott's fiction had been published in book form and found these stories had been packaged as "prose poems" and included in Pact.

I suppose one could go with that designation. Labels are superfluous things.

In any case, I'll order this book in the near future. I'm happy that it exists.

Oh Goodness Gracious, Thank You

Funny thing.

I haven't been on the Cheezburger site in many years, but I received an email notification that one of my memes made the front page today.

Heh.

Thank you, Cheezburger peeps!

I do think that's one of the sweetest series of websites (they are legion, really) you'll ever encounter, and the people who power the site with so much creativity (it's ninety-nine percent user-generated material) are really some of the nicest and funniest people on earth. I have such fond memories of the time I spent there.

So it was a blast from the pleasant past hearing from them.

Single

1.

Julia had begun taking long walks in the evening. She would take a turn through a sprawling, attractive cemetery near the apartment complex where she had recently taken up temporary residence for work. The large acreage of this necropolis probably exceeded a mile square. There was no way to see the entirety of the burial grounds at once, since the terrain was so varied, unless one cheated and counted aerial views. A surprisingly large number of narrow roads crisscrossed the graveyard’s hills and dales. The little avenues and culs-de-sac all had their own names and weathered street signs. Julia found it a charming place to walk, this city of the quietest citizens.

She had once joked with a co-worker that cemeteries were her Prozac. She liked the way the wild birds serenaded the peaceful dead, even if they did, immediately afterwards, despoil the dignity of their monuments with those paint-bombs dropped from beneath their tail feathers.

One spring evening, Julia was out on one of her regular roundabouts, walking in that zone between the newer burials and the truly old parts of the cemetery that included some rough-hewn settler graves. She found herself drawn, for some indiscernible reason, to the grave of a dead youth. Julia would occasionally read some of the tombstones closest to the path. She realized how little could be gleaned of the lives of those that lay hidden beneath six feet of worm’s playground, a full fathom of earth. 

His was a low, brown stone. Nothing ornate or special. He had died just over a century ago. That was the period when the town had just begun finding its way, industrializing and coming to national prominence (a position which it had later lost through the vagaries of economy and history). This poor unfortunate had died at the age of fifteen or sixteen, depending on whether he had reached his birthday before his death day in that long ago year. The tombstone didn’t specify.

Julia felt a twinge for him. To have died without having known any of the major joys of life! Had he loved? Or, rather, had he thought he had loved? And why was his grave isolated? Usually, when a child dies, the parents later join him or her. Perhaps they had moved away to another city or another state? It just made the young man’s grave seem all the more forlorn.

Julia felt herself standing there beaming love at the poor waif. She stood there alone on a spring evening in a cemetery on the outskirts of a town largely new to her (she had relocated as a high-level trainer in the banking industry) and pined for a boy who had been dead for over a century. She giggled at herself. How could she not laugh at her own silly pathos. But she did try to speak to the dead boy. She did not speak aloud. She spoke in her mind the name she had read on the tombstone, asked Reginald if he could hear her. She “told” him a few facts about herself and wondered at what sort of person he might have been. What were his likes, dislikes? Would he care to tell her?

Then she shook her head at herself and moved on.

2.

Julia had not expected her initial attempt at “conversation” with the dead youth to turn into any sort of ritual.

But she surprised herself by making a regular stop at his tombstone every time she took a turn through the cemetery. And this was at least five times a week, sometimes six.

She found herself looking forward to telling the lost boy about her day at work, the particulars of her life and history. She didn’t spend long at his grave, maybe five or sometimes ten minutes. And she would still ask him questions about his own life. She had new questions every time.

“I have been single too long,” she said aloud one day as she walked away from the young man’s grave, after giving the stone a caress.

She had caressed the tombstone as if it had been a young man’s cheek.

3.

It was in the third week of Julia’s visits to Reginald’s grave that the young woman had her first shock.

As she sauntered towards his modest monument one unseasonably warm evening in mid-spring, she saw the flower. A purple iris! It was tall and perfectly formed. Right there on the boy’s grave. Alive as anything.

“I must be seeing things.” Julia found herself speaking aloud, although she was the only one in the cemetery, as far as she knew or could see.

She sped up and dropped to her knees on the young man’s grave. She wanted to examine the colorful flags of the gorgeous flower more closely. Such a display of purples! Tyrian and wine petals and some lighter lavendar blushes all composed a flower so splendid she thought of stealing it. She really wanted to take the thing home. But she would not harm its growing. You don’t rip magic out at the root.

“Surely someone planted this here?” she thought. But the weird thing about it was, she noted, that the ground had not been disturbed. The iris had not been transplanted. The flower had not been growing there the previous evening. About that shocking fact, Julia had no doubt.

Julia had seen no other irises blooming yet, purple or otherwise. And she walked for miles each evening. Don’t they not appear later in spring or, more properly, in early summer? She tried to remember.

But had she not told Reginald last week that it was her favorite flower?

The purple iris.

Yes.

A good partner listens.

3.

It was in the fourth week that Julia told Reginald the saddest stories of her life. It was their month anniversary, so she figured it was safe to broach those things now, the poisons of life which had made the flower wilt.

He seemed to take it well. Certainly, he did not run away.

As Julia was talking to him, sometimes in her mind, but more and more now aloud, she noticed a shape in the grass before the grave.

She could see there was the shape of a body that had lain there. On the bed of the grave. The grass, now long and luxuriant from the rampant growth of spring rains, appeared to have been pressed down. Julia stared and realized it looked like the figure of a young man.

Maybe the wind did this, she thought.

The wind must have done this, she reassured herself.

But she went to the form and lay down within it. Like an embrace.

It was so warm and comfortable that she wanted to fall asleep there.

4.

In the second month, Julia began to feel the first stirrings of fear.

She had begun seeing a figure in the distance when she was on her evening walks. It was clearly a young man who was stalking her. She changed the direction of her walks but he always appeared. He kept back many blocks when she was in the city and sometimes she would see him behind trees when she was walking in the suburbs. Julia carried mace and a screech alarm and often held her cell phone tightly in her hand, at the ready. She could never make out his features. But she knew it was no coincidence. It was always the same figure. He had to be stalking her.

All she knew is that he had dark hair and was not very tall. Maybe five feet six or seven at most. Slender. He always seemed to be dressed in grey clothing. She thought it appeared to be professional attire, perhaps even a suit. (So strange on a teenager! For he did appear to be a teenager.) But her shadower was always so far away and dodgy. He was always so quick to hide. She didn’t feel that he was physically all that intimidating, for she knew how to defend herself. And he seemed more of a boy than a man, her shadower. But it was disquieting and disturbing to her. One read and heard more and more of savage attacks on adults by children. 

Oddly enough, she did not report her stalker to the police or anyone else. She felt she would sound like a madwoman. Surely, she would have to wait for some sort of true interaction. So she didn’t tell anyone. Who was there to tell, anyway? Julia led a solitary existence and had drifted away from virtually everyone who was not a professional contact. Her parents were dead and she had no siblings. Her friends had married and moved on. She didn’t even have a pet. The apartment complex where she lived didn’t allow them. Her work kept her very busy. She was as disciplined as any general in an overseas war zone. And perhaps as lonely.

5.

One evening in early summer, Julia found herself trapped in a teaching seminar because some of the company’s newest employees had arrived a few hours late due to a missed connection on the East Coast.

She decided not to take her evening walk. Though the days were growing longer, she did not want to risk being outside when darkness fell. And by the time she reached her apartment, the sun was sinking fast.

After arriving home, she went into her bedroom to change out of her stiff business suit and saw immediately that her bedclothes had been disturbed. She fumbled for her phone and made the 911 call within seconds of the observation. The operator stayed on the line with her while Julia checked her entire dwelling, against the advice of the dispatcher actually, who had wanted her to vacate the apartment immediately and wait for police to arrive. But she searched her dwelling, mace in hand. And there was no intruder.

While she had been on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, she had  pulled back the covers of her bed and saw what appeared to be a retained impression, the outline of a body which had recently lain there. Julia reached out, almost reluctantly, and touched it. It was still warm. She said nothing of this to the dispatcher. She couldn't quite explain to herself in her head why she had remained silent on this discovery.

Nothing had been stolen or moved about. The windows and doors were locked. Still, Julia did not feel abashed. Her key had turned in the lock. She hadn’t left open any window or door, any means of entrance to the dwelling. Someone had been there. There was the distinct possibility an employee of the apartment complex who held a key had entered the dwelling. There could be a stalker in the employ of the complex, she thought. A maintenance man or someone who was showing the apartments to prospective renters. 

She called the apartment manager’s office, but it was after hours. Nevertheless, her alarmed voice mail resulted in a callback within the half hour. Mrs. Garrity assured Julia that she would check the surveillance system the next day, as soon as she got into the office, and let her know immediately whether anyone could be seen on the recording entering her apartment. The older woman was grave, respectful, and to the degree she could manage, reassuring.

Julia did not sleep well that night. She had a chair propped against the front door of the apartment and her cell phone lying under the palm of her hand below her pillow.

Mrs Garrity, true to her word, called Julia even before the worried young woman had left for work the next morning. The apartment manager had come into work early to review the surveillance recordings. She confirmed that no one could possibly have entered Julia’s apartment by the front door. While she didn’t have a camera watching Julia’s front door, she did have one trained on the stairwells which any intruder would have needed to access to reach Julia’s hallway. And a window breach was clearly impossible since all the windows were locked when Julia arrived home. Julia’s balcony faced the front of the building and a ridiculously tall ladder would have been required to enter the apartment in that manner, in plain sight of countless people. There was no other means of access to Julia’s apartment.

The only conclusion was that no one had entered Julia’s apartment.

She was perfectly safe.

“Thank you,” Julia had said.

And had stared at her bed.

6.

Julia was standing on an old iron truss bridge that dated to Reginald’s day.

The dark river below was so pretty. Was it always this pretty in the middle of the night?

“But why am I barefoot?” Julia wondered. She was staring at her naked feet. Where had her shoes gone?

She had started taking night walks. She realized, by now, that it was easier for him to follow her at night. In the daytime, it was only fleeting glimpses.

In the middle of the night, he would sometimes stand for a long time under a streetlight, letting her stare right at him. She could get close enough now to see that he had a beautiful face. Seraphic. Pale skin and the nobility of an aquiline nose. She thought his eyes might be blue or green, but that was pure fantasy at this point. She had never gotten close enough to know that. At least not yet.

She stood on the bridge and looked down into the moving blackness. She found the sound of the tiny river waves comforting. That odd sort of little chuckling they do.

Night river sounds. Darkness telling other darkness little jokes.

If she climbed over this little bit of barrier, so easy to do, she would have more choices. Once there, if she stepped forward only one foot more, into the unsupporting air, it might all be easier. The distance might close just like that.

It was possible, after all. Wasn’t it?

She looked back towards where the bridge met the land. He was standing there. Smiling now.

“But what about the age difference?” she beamed at him.

He smiled even brighter.

“We are all the same age here,” was the answer he had beamed back.