happens

The pair hat been sitting somewhat motionless., somewhat austere. It may have been that the windows, ordinarily blacked out, had suffered both internal and external trauma during the storm. Now a fragmentary light filtered in, not lazily, but not precisely judging either.
The girl was somewhat still except for one finger striking the table like an agitated piano player. The man too moved, also only a finger, but his in a circle, the same circle, clockwise then counter clockwise, on her thigh.
“Shit happens, sometimes.”
“In storms.” She didn't add 'apparently' and perhaps it was unnecessary. His statement had been generalized commentary on the far side of the room with the upturned tables, the thirteen broken spikes of high heels sticking up from the one table rightly standing. The stage stretched between them and the wreckage, inserting a silence. His gloss, then, was intended in the excellent style of all glosses, as a blurring of that which they studied, but didn't see. But she had brought it back to hours and circumstance and un-abstracted smells.
The shit had come just when the wind howled less, after Candy had climbed monkey-like, wiry limbs scaling framed pictures of past beauties, to the window where she lost a nail but succeeded in peeling back the black paint. There had been a shrieking round of giggles, and Candy's head turned back, nearly three-quarters, grinning at her audience, when the glass shattered and the pile knocked her cold.
“Pig shit,” said one patron holed up to last out the hurricane, and while he was hardly more farmer than the rest of them, no one argued.

Exploring

            "I'm going exploring, " I said to the woman behind the desk.

            "That's nice," she said.

            "It is nice," I said, "and true. Nice and true."

            "Goodbye," she said.

            Later, I told a clerk that soon I would be in the jungle, deep, exploring the undergrowth.

            He said, "Don't get malaria."

            "I don't want malaria, " I said.

            "Better not catch it then," he said.

            I was speaking to a girl in the library.

            "Are you familiar with the ocean? " I said.

            "The sea?" she said.

            "The ocean, the sea, yes. Do you know it?"

            "I think so. Why?" she asked.

            "I’m going there, to the sea. Soon. Tomorrow. Maybe, I hope."

            "Are you asking me?"

            "Asking you what?"

            "To go? To go to the sea, the ocean?"

            I shook my head, "No, I don't think I was. Did I? ask?"

            "No," she said sullenly. "But you spoke, you spoke to me and I thought we were supposed to go to the sea."

            "Together? or separately?"

            She shrugged. "Is there a difference?"

            I looked at her, working up my nerve. "Do you want to not go with me, then?"

            "Yes," she said, "I will be happy to not accompany you wherever you like."

            I walked away, so happy. I stepped outside and saw the same city skyline I had seen so many, many times on so many different days. Days in rain, half-rain, sun and half-sun. The light was low, downcast and made me feel sad. I wish I had not lied. I wasn't going to the sea or the jungle. I wasn't even going across the street. I would go back to my box of a room. I would close the windows and shut the blinds, I would close my eyes and mouth and mouth the words, an incantation, the lyrics to some long ago song not heard for 15 years. Somewhere in the center of that song, there is a safe place. I can go back there if I try, if I try...

            "I’m going exploring," I said aloud but no one was listening.

What terrible grief did I uncover there, in that long-deserted wreckage?

It was you, after all, reaching out an empty hand. With the wisdom of long years and many failed expeditions, I observed silently your wounded smile, your careful laugh. I found you beneath an avalanche of folly and plans long ago gone awry and forgotten.

I glimpsed then, your true self, unmirrored and sure. How quickly you unfolded for me stories of midnight suns and crinolines ripped in a darkened cloakroom, your lips smeared dark.

You insisted I had found you, had rediscovered you, the cascade of bright longing and secret lusts springing forth from a heart stoppered for all the world like a champagne bottle.

I braved the tundra, the rocks and ice. I felt for the path beneath the terrible will of the fog, then grew parched beneath a venomous sun. I waited for morning, licking dew from a few ragged leaves, and by nightfall was lost beneath a terrible seething jungle.

Now I only curse the path, look for signs and symbols in the sun and the burning green grass.

Without destination, I turn inward like a broken compass, wait in a willful silence for the phone to ring, for your voice, your key in the door.

Delhi New Year

Delhi New Year

It was about noon on New Year’s Day when the elephant walked up to me. I was sitting on a tiny side street in Karol Bargh, a collection of tenements and tangerine stalls that sprawled just west of Delhi proper, a place where any tourist worth his salt wouldn’t know about—but should. I was flying out later that night, leaving India after a three-month stay. But for just these few minutes I was sunning myself on the steps of my hotel, recuperating from my New Year’s Eve overindulgence. I had spent the previous evening packed into a tiny nightclub called The Qasbah watching the frantic revelry of secular Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and probably a few atheists all squashed together in a room the size of a typical American laundry-room. The scene had all the color, smell, and drama of The Death of Sardanapalus, without the blood and horses. As a child I remembering hearing my older cousins dramatically intone the phrase Take me to your kasbah. We all knew that it referred to that point in their play when the man swept them off their feet and took them to the mysterious region that existed behind closed doors. As a teenager the word “kasbah” conjured up scenes of smoky rooms draped with saffron-colored silk redolent of cinnamon and myrrh where gypsy violinists played the opening strains of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. But since I was raised in a subculture peopled mostly by Conservative Fundamental Independent Pre-Millennial Baptists, what went on behind the doors of the kasbah remained very much a mystery until my honeymoon. Twenty years later as a middle-aged divorcee with grown children, I was still intrigued by the word.
But the literal Qasbah turned out to be somewhat less than expected. Everyone was attempting to have fun, attempting to drink, attempting to dance while attempting to avoid the pools of vomit--offerings from people unfamiliar with large amounts of alcohol. There was a frantic quality to their celebration, as if the idea was new and not altogether wholesome, and therefore had to be done quickly. It was unclear whether fun was being had. At one point I found myself waiting outside the women’s restroom. Instead of signs (what language would it be?) there were roughly carved wooden sculptures hanging on the doors denoting male and female. As the minutes ticked by and the women’s loo remained occupied, I took the female off the door and began to study it. Small and stylized, a bust not more than eight inches tall with large Buddha ears, coiled hair, and bare breasts partially covered with a bead necklace. A crude copy of some rustic East-Indian tribal art. A friend once told me that the best souvenir is the one you don’t buy and I had yet to find a suitable symbol for my three-month stay in India. I don’t know what puckish spirit possessed me at that moment. It may have had something to do with the reckless abandon that everyone around me was trying so hard to achieve. I had never stolen anything in my life. Okay, there was the one time in first grade when I lusted after Bobby Wilson’s ballpoint pen. So I waited until recess and pretended to tie my shoe, etc. But that was it. I had never shoplifted as a sulky teen thumbing my nose at the establishment. But for some reason, as the door to the restroom opened, I slipped the object into my purse. Back in the U.S.A. when I showed it to my grown children they were shocked to think of their middle-aged middle-class mother stealing something from a shady nightclub on New Year’s Eve halfway around the world. But even stranger than my stealing it, is the fact that I have never experienced the tiniest tremor of guilt over the incident.
The next day I sat on the steps watching the little minutes of daily life whirl around the street in hot dusty puffs. When I first arrived in Delhi this street with its glare and noise and swarming pockets of humanity had looked to me like the wrong side of Bagdad on a bad day. I crept into my hotel room and pushed a table against the door to ensure that India stayed well outside. But after three months I had fallen in love with India and the neighborhood felt like home. Across the street I could see the telephone stall where I had made frantic long distance calls back to the USA. Inside the three-sided cubicle sat a wrinkled old woman in a dingy silk sari who spoke no English but still managed to convey an incredible amount of sympathy as I cried into the mouthpiece at those times when India threatened to overwhelm me. Next door was the grocery stall hung with bags of chips and candy bars well past their sell-by date. There was the fruit stand where I bought my daily measure of tangerines. And then there was the elephant. A creature larger than my hotel room had appeared and was just standing there looking at me. He had more intelligence in his eyes than most people I knew. He seemed huge and spiritual, more event than animal. I lifted my hand hesitantly. He lifted his trunk. Our separate appendages hung there in the air. Not touching. I felt like Adam hanging from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel watching God’s finger as it reaches out into space, hanging forever in suspended animation. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the paint and plaster had not dried so quickly; if time had not stopped at that particular moment with those two fingers so close, but forever never touching. I guess that’s why we have lightening.
I’m unsure who made the first move, but suddenly my hand was touching the hairy gray roughness and his trunk was next to my cheek. He felt like old leather, safe and familiar. The sun was hot and there was this mammalian smell about him—clean and dusty like rain out on the desert of the Deccaan Plateau. The noise of the street disappeared and in its place was a silence that sort of sat down beside us. We made a comfortable trio. Somehow this act, this sitting beside the quiet and the elephant, seemed a summation of all that I had experienced in my short stay. It was the reason, formed in matter rather than words, for this longing I had to stay in this country for another three months, ten years. A lifetime would not be enough, I knew, to fill up the empty space I felt inside. Not empty as in existential angst, but empty as in the lack of the unnecessary.
We stayed like that until the owner appeared asking money for his services. Want a ride? How much you give me for a ride? The elephant’s big liquid god-eye held me and I wondered if climbing up onto that huge expanse of rug-covered wrinkles would be to commit some sort of sacrilege. I shook my head at the owner just as a father and his small son came to buy a ride. The owner said some words and tapped with his stick. The gray bulk knelt. The going down was slow and awkward, unhurried and the child after much encouragement climbed up. But the standing up again was like a displacement of space, an earthmover shuddering into action. The elephant stood in the hot street swaying back and forth. The little boy squealed in mid-air terror that turned to delight as the whole miracle moved off down the street. Hours later as my plane lumbered down the runway and lifted heavily off the tarmac the miracle of flight seemed somehow a lesser thing.

strange ravens

"Newton believed that bodies attract each other with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."

The room is narrow and long with a high ceiling, furnished only with an old mahogany sleigh bed and ten foot gilded mirrors on opposite walls, their silver spotted and stained with age. The mirrors reflect light from the window, reflect each other, and then a parallel universe that backs up into infinity. In one corner, the outside corner closest to the porch, gray wallpaper peels away in ragged strips. He sits on the bed leaning back, his legs stretched out in front of him. In his right hand he’s holding a bag of rubber bands—different sizes, some short and fat, some long and skinny, all flesh colored, at least the color of his flesh. With his left hand he reaches into the bag without looking. Taking the first band his fingers touch, he draws it out, slipping his thumb and forefinger inside the rubber, stretching it out to form an ellipsis in one smooth motion. Sometimes he closes his eyes as he points and pulls the trigger, flexing his thumb as the band shoots away into the space of the room. When he opens his eyes he can see his multiple selves reflected in the two mirrors.

In one mirror he can see the reflection of the woman standing at the door. In his bag there are no rubber bands the color of her flesh, whatever that color might be. Café au Lait? Caramel? Cinnamon? Burnt almonds? All edible quantities, like her skin. He watches her in the mirror as she watches him on the bed, their separate positions creating a triangulation of sorts that anchors him in space, as she’s always anchored him. He can see that her belly has grown a little larger since the last time. He begins to aim the few remaining rubber bands at her reflection, one after the other.

If she meets my eyes in the mirror before the bag is empty, then she’s really there. Not one of my changelings. But if I reach in and shoot the last rubber band and she continues to look at me on the bed, not meeting my eyes in the mirror, if she doesn’t meet my eyes…

The dark woman stands in the doorway watching the man play his game of predestination. The floor is littered with limp rubber bands surrounding the bed like small pale penises. She knows, by the almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes that he is willing her to look in the mirror, to look away from his real self on the bed and look at his reflection. She isn’t afraid—or is she? If she does his bidding and bends her will to his own, actually looks away from the flesh and blood man on the bed—looks instead at the man in the mirror—will she see his reflection? But what if she looks in the mirror and the bed is empty?

To begin, again, is like eating
Renewing our selves
A transformation of senses to energy
Subsistence.
The musky smell of cumin
Savory garlic
Strengthening my bones
Steadying my gaze
It was the spice of the cayenne
That rattled my lethargy
The texture of the meat that reminded me I had teeth
The aromas wafting
That led me to drift
And then run
Feeling the stickiness dribble down my chin

A Feast at the End of the World

Pour le premier homme

What madness comes to those who fall too long towards the horizon? I learned quickly to stop fighting the rushing water, realized I had slipped too far into a biting undertow to ever see the surface again. It was a shock then, to wake beside you, your laughter picking out the sun from the sky.

You smile, I recoil; this dream had better last, or start to fade soon.

You lift the slice of green dappled pear to your lips and your eyes widen at the burst of juicy sweetness.

"I have made this, here, it's for you."

It has been a long, dry time and I am grateful for your generous hands. I taste a tiny morsel of what you've laid out; I blanch and turn, it's too sweet after such a long hunger. Give me water, not sweet wine. I'll die of privation even in the land of milk and honey, retching in the sand. But you laugh, and pile my arms with fruits too strange too name. I blink, and am wreathed in a bower of berry. I mouth my small words of thanks, but you still the sound with your hands. And so I fall prey to your sugared sweets. You wipe honey and liquor from my chin with gentle fingers.

"A feast at the end of the world" you whisper and lean closer.

How you have found me here, at the end of the world, I cannot think to ask. I hoped only for silence, for distance.

I lean in and your lips meet mine, but you turn your face. In an instant I think to grasp the falling fruits, and I am alone and I am beneath the surface of the water.

Revision 2

eat. revised.

Kelly had crossed the street several times already, crisscrossing her way down Lex into the lower 40s and finally 30s. Had she been tailed by police or private eyes, the follower would have suspected she knew: the erratic movement, the stop at every corner even with no light, the jerk of her head.

She was not followed. There was no one to observe the furtive glances shot at certain shop windows, or the awkward shuffle she would make when she half turned in the doorway and then quickly walked away. At each entrance a new deterrent stood behemoth in her head. The jingle from the door opening. The sudden turn of all the patrons of a bakery to look at her, standing—
She mumbled and left.

Close to 14th street, she got trapped. The door was not flush with the side of the building but instead was recessed. She had seen, perhaps absurdly, that there was no bell attached to the door. The door was glassed, and as the inside was hot from ovens, steamed just slightly. She stepped away from the bustling of the street into the enclave. The smell of the bakery was indiscernible through the transparent panes, but the heat came off in waves. The mist on the door clung to the middle, and at her height she could see in, could see the golden tops of buns, brightly decorated cupcakes and napoleons. She leaned in on the warmth of the door, almost pressing her face to the glass, when a man, a few inches shorter and several years older, moved abruptly into the condensed space of the enclave with such sudden force that she was barreled past the door and inside.

The warmth within was somewhere between the tropics and a return to the womb. A window cracked open and the swinging door to the kitchen did little to alleviate the heat, but instead kept the the thick air moving in wafts. The walls perspired. The man peered at her. He had apologized effusively and with a strong accent, but dazed by the sudden rush of being in, she said nothing in response. Her gaze did not even remain on his face in a pretense of politeness, but wandered over the abundance, absorbing each little baked soldier in its row, and the crusted empire as a whole facing off against her from behind display glass of the shop. Which reminded her so suddenly and so completely of not a bakery but a butcher shop, that the sheen off bread menaced her from the sidelines of her vision.

The counter girl's smile was genuine, but growing thin with being ignored. Kelly realized the man was trying –and failing—to allow her to order first. The girl too with her absurdly round curls and bubbly cheeks and volley-ball eyes, paused as if each singular swollen roundness of cheek or curl might pop if not spoken to and taken out of the tension of waiting. Kelly flushed and pointed to a lemony looking tart with gleaming gelatinous fruit dying across the top. She didn't bother to try and say the name on the card and purposely did not reflect on the calorie content newly insisted upon by the city, or the probably acid reflux response from the sugar crust.

The girl asked how many and she found her mouth affirming 5 no 6. The man, finger tips lost in his bushy mustache didn't seem to notice. He was looking at the thin Italian wafers on the top shelf. Kelly strained to keep her face from grimacing and watched as the bubble girl selected the tarts, arranging them in a pink cardboard box.

“Party,” Kelly volunteered.

“Oh,” the girl trilled politely.

“Do you think I should get something else?” She could feel the desperation, the drive to convince becoming a frenzied necessity. The bubble conglomerate cooed that tarts were always a hit.

“But is it enough—I don't want to have to cut them, they're so pretty just like that.” Little self-contained monstrosities of denaturalized fruit and color.

“Oh well how many people?” Kelly felt her hands thick, enormous, swollen, traveling to her bag, she kept her gaze on the girl, unsure if she willed herself, or was unable to avert her eyes. “I'm not sure—you can never tell, who actually will show up, who might bring someone—”

The bubbles blinked. “But you must have some idea.”

“Seven.”

“Well, then,” the bubble conglomerate bounced/rolled it's way back to the remaining tart, this one with a burst side, oozing lemon-flavored cream out from between the sugar-crust and on to the bottom of the display case.

“Thirteen.” The bubbles jiggled, poised with the confusion of arthritic.

“Carnation,” the man grumbled.

“No, no,” Kelly tried to sound definitive, “I have flowers, or someone might bring them.”

“For the guests.” She realized he meant the carnation shaped creations on the bottom rack of the display case, the shape carved lovingly from pure confectionery sugar. She could envision a thousand lain upon a field of green jello, which reached indefinitely on all sides, and the carnations placed with mathematical certainty the same distance from one another.

“They're smaller than the tarts,” trilled the counter girl and Kelly thought she heard a vague southern twang.

“Six then.” she rushed out with the second part of her request.

“You still have one left over.”

“What?”

“You have but 12.” Kelly could feel a screaming, not hers but only heard by her and felt the vertigo of standing beneath racks of carved flesh—but really it was baskets swinging above her head.

There was a pause as the girl scraped the carnations from the metal, and then the door burst, with several chattering middle aged women filling the small space of the bakery.

“She has party—“

And she was gone, leaving change, leaving dumb startled faces, breaking into a trot, down the steps to the subway, legs bowed wide in that hurrying-in-heels manner. And it seemed there was nothing thought, a pure agitated waiting for the train, and then the silence on the train.

She slid down, finally in the apartment, against the door, slid till she was sitting, and her knees up too high until she kicked off the obtrusive heels. She wrestled with the bag for all of three seconds before tearing the plastic and cardboard, releasing a shower of sugar-crusted flakes and the colored crumbles of carnation edges. She popped two in her mouth, knowing without a mirror that she looked fully rodent. Something to watch. She fumbled forward for the remote control, crushing the pink cardboard box and squishing a loose tart into the carpet. She managed CSPAN and then a comedy and finally something an indecipherable drama with looming and extreme close-ups. She found, fingers moving with their own purpose, a tart, first the one crushed into the carpet, and then an entire one. Round. She dug her nails into the former fruit entities, smearing the kiwi into the strawberry. She didn't look, but kept focusing on the screen.

Here's my food for thought:

when will the elusive crystal post?

A Feast at the End of the World

Your smile is steady as you lift the slice of green dappled pear, and your eyes widen as you taste the sudden burst of juicy sweetness. "I have made this, here, it's for you."

It has been a long, dry time and I am grateful for your generous hands. I bring a morsel to my lips. I blanch and turn, it's too rich after such a long hunger. Give me water, not sweet wine. But you laugh and pile my arms with fruits too strange to name. I blink, and am wreathed in a bower of berry. I mouth words of thanks, but you still the sound with your hands. And so I fall prey to your sugared sweets, you wipe honey from my chin with gentle fingers. "A feast at the end of the world" you whisper as I lean in for a kiss.

How you have found me here, at the end of the world, I cannot think to ask. I came for silence, for distance.

Your lips meet mine but you turn your face. In an instant I think to grasp the falling fruits, and I am alone and am beneath the surface of the water.

dinner for two by moonlight

Dinner for two by moonlight

 

The lion loves the gazelle

he’s eating

more than life itself.

There is no life

without that love.

What gift could he give

more than claws

rushing through hide

to underbelly soft-as-love insides?

The moment of surrender

when the gazelle

gives up the fight

must surely be like a sweet coming

on a soft mattress

enclosed and absorbed

into the maw

of the beloved.

eat

Kelly had crossed the street several times already, crisscrossing her way down lex into the lower 40s and finally 30s. Had she been tailed by police or private eyes, the follower would have suspected she knew: the erratic movement, the stop at every corner even with no light, the jerk of her head.
she was not followed. there was no one to observe the furtive glances shot at certain shop windows, or the akward shuffle she would make when she would half turn in the doorway and then quickly walk away. At each entrance a new deterrent blocked her. The jingle from the door opening. The sudden turn of all the patrons of a bakery to look at her, standing-
she mumbled and left.
Close to 14th street, she got trapped. The door was not flush with the side of the building but instead was recessed. She had seen, perhaps absurdly, the that there was no bell attached to the door. The door was glassed, andas the inside was hot from ovens, steamed just slightly. She stepped away from the bustling of the street into the enclave. The smell of the bakery was indecernible, but the heat came off in waves. The mist on the door clung to the middle, and at her height she could see in, could see the golden tops of buns, brightly decorated cupcakes and napoleons. She leaned in on the warmth of the door, almost pressing her face to the glass, when a man, a few inches shorter and several years older moved into the condensed space of the enclave with such sudden force that she was barreled past the door and inside.

The warmth within was between tropical and womb-like. A window cracked open and the swinging door to the kitchen kept the heat moving in wafts. The walls perspired. The man peered at her. He had apologized effusively and with a strong accent, but dazed by the sudden rush of being in, she said nothing in response. Her gaze did not even remain on his face in a pretense of politeness, but wandered around the shop. Which reminded her suddenly, and so completely of not a bakery but a butchershop.

The counter girl's smile was genuine, but growing thin with being ignored. Kelly realized the man was trying –and failing—to allow her to order first. The girl too with her absurdly round curls and round cheeks and round eyes, was paused and waiting. Kelly flushed and pointed to a lemony looking tart with gelatanous looking fruit dying across the top. She didn't bother to try and say the name on the card and purposely did not reflect on the calorie content, the fact that the sugary crust around the side would turn her stomach.

To her horror girl asked how many and she said 6 no 5. The man, finger tips lost in his bushy mustache didn't seem to notice. He was looking at the thin italian wafers on the top shelf. Kelly strained to keep her face from grimacing and watched as the bubbly girl selected the tarts, arranging them in a pink cardboard box.

“It's –they're-- for a party,” Kelly volunteered.

“Oh,” the girl trilled politely.

“Do you think I should get something else?” She could feel the desperation, the drive to convince this counter girl of her sociality scaling her as necessity. The girl cooed that the tarts would be a hit.

“I'm just not sure it's enough—I don't want to have to cut them, their so pretty just like that.”

“Oh well how many people?” Kelly felt her hands thick, enormous, swollen, traveling to her bag, she kept her gaze on the girl, unsure if she willed herself, or was unable to avert her eyes. “I'm not sure—you can never tell, who actually will show up, who might bring someone--”

“carnation” the man recommended.

“No, no,” Kelly tried to sound definitive, “I have flowers, or someone might bring them”

“For the guests.” And she realized he meant little carnation shaped entities on the bottom rack of the display case, the shape created out of pure confectionary sugar.

“They're smaller than the tarts,” trilled the counter girl and Kelly thought she heard a vague southern twang.

“Six then. People can have two,” she rushed out with the second part of her request. There was a pause as the girl scraped the carnations from the metal, and then the door burst,with several chattering middle aged women filling the small space of the bakery.