PROJECTS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY

Fresh tracksnot unlike paths of breadcrumbs leading back to the broken-legged hiker.
I'll be right back. I'm going for help. I'll be right back.

Anthony runs his fingerprints along the trail, hoping to find the injured climber,
instead finding
dirty needle sticking out of
a spoiled vein imbedded
in composting tissue
instead finding
irises rotted years ago
after first hit after first
trick, when they rolled
up and back to see skull's inside
instead of
heavy breath of heavy man
perspiration fogging optical illusion
of a mom and a me, her
heavy beaded wedding dress
a glorious sleeping bag for a
tremulous seven year old.

Some premonition:

white-out behind

eye-whites

heavy

flakes


the size of infant's palms



swirling

around

the snowglobe

of her sunken sockets.

Baby Jane's


hands

not waving but



fists

fighting

mid-January

Manitoba



storm

screeching

obscenities
to a new mother before

whispering

fuck it



and wrapping up in yards



and yards


of snow.


Anthony puts the Narcan back in the lunchbox of lifesavers and shouts to the bus driver out the open apartment door. That true, what they say? How no two snowflakes ever the same?

Undercarriage

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*
*
Wes soaked dried blood on my forehead and said I wanted to be Anna but I just ended up Vronsky. This may be funny someday. When I no longer have bandages around my wrists, my skin is wholly pale instead of polka-dotted with purples and blacks with edges of greens and yellows.

This may in fact never be funny.

I once heard a joke that Tolstoy told a joke. That was the joke. People laughed. And by people, I mean Wes and his fellow doctors of Russian literature. You and me, we did not laugh at the joke. You, as I, laughed at the tears running down Borisov’s face. And laughed wondering if Borisov was a real name, or if he’s actually a Smith from Detroit, his father a lawyer and his mother wearing pearls as she organized local charity events. He’s got a Midwestern accent and no one really knows anything about him other than his work in St. Petersburg and his fistfight with Erofeyev in a La Guardia terminal. I hope that story comes up soon. It is so unbelievable that sometimes I want to learn Russian to find out what untranslated scenes he stole the brawl from. Borisov and Erofeyev. In La Guardia. Apparently over a translation of “wish.”

“Wish” could be misinterpreted easily. Did Erofeyev mean desire? Want? A sexual context? I’ve never read Erofeyev or any -ev, but I imagine that such textual nuances are difficult to maintain even for Detroit’s own Smith-Borisov.

All is beside the point.

I was only Vronsky in so much as I survived what was meant to kill. I was only Anna in so much as I found myself between the tracks and the train. I did not jump; my volition was still on the platform, stuck on the left sole of a pair of black boots between two suitcases.

It is something to look into the eyes of the one you love best and think you know. One weekend in the country, then this can end. We will end it like the adults we’ve forgotten we are. I am married and you practice statistics. I’ve spent fifteen years with him qualifying my emotions by a language I do not speak; I cannot spend another quantified by a new language. Why will no American man speak to me in American terms? You understand, yes?

His eyes read yes, this is it. His eyes said yes, this is it. Get it Borisov?

When it is funny like Tolstoy, maybe I can ask Wes. If he is still, still here. Instead of thinking his changing the bandages is my punishment, look what you got yourself into, maybe he is saying I love you this much. Instead of silence as torture, it is silence as forgiveness.
*
*
*

8:02

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Tell me I'm not beautiful because you don't understand, that when he crushed his fist against my jaw and the socket popped and the bones broke, the angels sang and the rain stopped, I fell to my knees and fell on my palms, and smiled a crooked, slack-jawed smile to the saving grace of hot summer tar on the hot summer street because in falling, I felt.

In 12-18 month intervals he was a number in an unsuited uniform in a yard. During the first, I felt too much. After the second, the third, the forth, I felt nothing at all. The burns healed, the cuts healed, the fractured bones bonded. During the second, the third, the fourth, since no one else would, I ran my own fingers along the scars from my sternum to my breast, from my breast to my belly, across my belly, hip to hip, marking the space where only one grew and no more would grow.

No more. Not one.

No one but the creator would love such a mess, could let his hands graze the collection of scar tissue which became my home.

Welcome home.

12 months.

He created me and I am his. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the trinity of Drop-out, Pusher and Corner Shop Lord.

Oh Lord.

Welcome home.

Create me anew, touch my soul. Through my jaw with your fist, through my chest with your steel, to inner chambers of my heart, the inner folds of my mind. Where you are sixteen and I am fifteen, and when I play-fight and push you, set my soles to run away, you set me on a stoop, align our eyes and say: Stop, for real; I just want to hold you.

Stop.

Then you left again, 12-18 months. I was stopped.

You came back and I hadn't moved and you had been moved, so there this life began. You held me. You made me. My nose, my jaw, my womb, my toes, my tongue, my teeth, my voice, my sound. Everything re-formed.

Today I repent, for wondering if it could have been any other way, wondering if me naked could now look any other way, my heart full could now beat any other way, if I could have been created, crafted and sculpted, painted and perfected by hand, any other hand.

Tell me I'm a pity because you don't follow. Tell me my shame because you don't see. Tell me I'm not beautiful, because you don't understand. Tell me I don't count because you don't comprehend. That you created him, with your hands. Lashed his back, tore his tongue, boxed his ears. Filled his mind with sediment which settled exactly as you planned. Don't shake your heads and your self-righteous fingers at me, I stopped and I stayed and I tried and I gave.

12 months. Welcome home.

Because at 8:02 on a Tuesday night a college boy put his hand up my 17-year-old skirt and at 8:02 he turned the college black and red of his soon-alma-mater, and at 8:03 he grabbed my wrist as yours were in cuffs and he pulled me away as you were driven away for 12 months.

12 months at 18 is like 9 months from conception, life taking form. 12 months at 17 is like 11 months from birth, sounds taking form.

I tell him he is beautiful, as my split lip drips drops of my hot bloody words on your porcelain hands, because I understand. I was made to understand: that you gave him no choice, so you gave me no chance. I understand.
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Stabbing at Poetry

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adam withheld the apple when he heard my stomach growl


fear is the basis for
all human emotion,
which is why thao says she
has never seen romance;
which is why dr. stewart asks
how have you
never been in love;
which is why i say
i am not enough afraid.

i have
two feet
and they
are enough.

if i had
four would
we be
a dog dizzying ourself
with our own tail?

i have
two arms
and they
are enough.

if i had
more, would our
branches hang and tangle,
trip passersby?

fear grounds men
in the kingdom.
men who give me
blue pills for voices
red pills for visions
white pills to get
out of bed today.
men who
walked me to
the garden gate
with prayers of
be not afraid
as they
locked the
world behind me.
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Gutter

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Love stories. Bad. Stumbled steps on unsteady feet, I’ve walked these feet before. Oh imagine that sudden step down.

Men made these roads with these drops and men made these shoes with these heels. You men and your hands. Big hands, strong hands, and the silly things they make.

But how long and lean my legs look when I stand with my elbow on the bar casually propping me up. Not bad, not too damn bad. Except when I walk or when I forget the step down. Very bad, very fucking bad. There is no beauty in a four inch heel covered in mud when I forget the step down. Down to the gutter. A lovely old gal on the side of the road. In the gutter. The gutter? A gutter! I am in the gutter with the trash and the rats and the leafy mash.

Gutter. What a word. Gutter. Gtttt’rr. Guuuutterrrrr. Guttermouth.

Shhhhh, people live in these houses on these streets and I will not swear and I will not speak loudly. And you should be less loud too. Bite your tongue, sir. Or better, bite mine. Come here. Help me, I have scratched my porcelain knees and scratched the leather arches. How funny. Gutter.

You are beautiful in the shadows and beautiful in the street-lamp light.
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Ten steps for old brownstones built before 1940, twelve for the new.
I have lived in this bild’n my enter lffff. Enter, inter, ent, ent, ent-i, entire life.

Shhhhh.

Ten steps, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up…oh, yes, round key not square, in the top lock, right there, up, in.

Hello. You are beautiful in the bright and the hallway light.

The best, worst kind of love story. No names, no faces, only shadows, hands and arms and legs and sheets and sweat and hair and grunts and moans and sighs. The only tolerable kind of love story. Sigh.

Hello. You are beautiful in the morning and the cumulus-filtered light. I haven’t a thing in the kitchen, I need to be uptown by nine, but thanks for last night.

The kind of story remembered fondly, with no bit of expectation or disappointment or jealousy. What other love can boast that?

Childhood love? He pulled your hair, left you with a three centimeter scar near your left temple after he pushed you down the steel slide face-first.

High school? An episiotomy and the stillborn who didn’t take his name because you couldn’t find him after you didn’t abort seven months earlier because he was a man at fifteen and said he loved you, he loved you, he loved, love. Baby Jane at two, at seven, at ten, at fifteen. April 21st, every 21st. Happy birthday, cheers to true love.

College? The worst of all. Palpitations and syncope, prescriptions for blue and purple pills to take at blue and purple hours. Foolish access to post-doc men and PhD students who will spout Wilde and drive you home and look directly into the soul they’ve awakened as they shake your hand and reply, my girlfriend might not like if you come inside. No, no, no broken skin, no faded luster, just a simple test the following week and the healthy glow to make the girls wish they hadn’t pressed against the post-doc in his car, hadn’t kept the baby in her arms in the hospital, hadn’t pulled him down the slide after her to give him the matching wound.

You remember you must be uptown by nine.
You leave him in the bed for a shower.
You walk out with only a billowing cloud of steam and a green towel soaking up the excess water from your thinning thick auburn curls.
You walk out experimenting with where your breasts once were and where they fall now, or massaging your memory and your somehow-bruised hip to find him at one end of the table similarly undressed and reading the Chicago Tribune, a cup of coffee next to a plate of scrambled eggs and toast at the other end. And all you can think is whether or not he already got the Arts section and why the hell you ever bought eggs. Or bread.
What else is in those cupboards?
Do you have a bruise on you back too?
Does gravity take a little break in your 40s?

And you think it every morning when you come out of the bathroom with the green towel after the shower and are still somehow surprised he stayed.

He stays and he stays and he stays.

He finds the fixings and he saves the Arts section and puts a little pack of ice on the bruises. He tells the gutter story too loudly to people you don’t know, but he never lets you get that close to the drop again. He stays and you don’t ask why. It is a question that leads to expectation and disappointment and jealousy. He is too beautiful in the dark and the shade and the light and you are too delicate from the academics and the drop-outs and the boys. The chaos of the beginning found stability in the night. From sex to love? Maybe it is no love story at all.


Down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down with the baby’s stroller bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, with a little giggle before each drop and a little whee as he takes the air.


And because the meeting isn’t for another hour and you could catch a taxi or the next bus, you bump him back up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, round key, not square, in the top lock, right there, up, in. Just to say hello, you are beautiful in the midday light. Kiss his graying temple, wipe his freshly shaven face with the green towel around his neck as the baby speaks his language in the stroller in the hall.

Then bounce back down, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle.

By the bottom step to the sidewalk, even the baby knows.

So two-by-two you again run up on mudless, leafless, gutterless four-inch heels, up, up, up, up, round key, not square, in the top lock, right there, open the door with a shout, a thank you for staying, and an I love you, now the baby and I are going out.
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Flashy

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Joel Brouwer apparently coined the flash fiction subsect of the century, a story of exactly 100 words. I find this a most wonderful little exercise. At some point in time, I may perhaps challenge myself to one one-hundred a day, or maybe a week. I could start with a week. Guenette gave us an assignment of some centuries. Kindergarten Studies was one. Here is another:


Conception

On the 21st of September, 1991, as the 94-year-old William ‘Westy’ Brunkow exhaled his last breath in Stigler, Oklahoma’s Haskell County Hospital, AC/DC started their show at the Hippodrome de Vincennes with Brian Johnson whining ‘I was caught in the middle of a railroad track’ to a rousing Parisian chorus of ‘THUNDER,’ followed by Shoot to Thrill, followed by Back in Black, which happened to be the song playing on 100.7 WHUD in Carl Wright’s blue 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo somewhere in Westchester County as Carmen Fuedo conceived her first child on this the third fucking of her second boyfriend.
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And two and a half centuries. This was one of those surprising writings that it wasn't until a coworker asked me about its roots that I realized it was entirely about a true experience of my own, once I got down to the substance. The bold actions metaphorical for something so much more subdued.


Eyes Behind the Blindfold


‘Make sure you get all the blood off.’

Deanne glared at him over her shoulder. She turned off the water, threw the soap into the basin, faced him and wiped her hands on her jeans.

‘Your pouting won’t help. I’m starting to think you didn’t want this.’

Jack was good at that, making her think there was a time when she did want to break into his sister’s home, bind his twin seven-year-old nieces, their mother and father, in the barn and execute them.

‘The hard part is over. Now we just drive. Like when we were kids. Anywhere you want.’

His hands on her waist, he gently turned her toward the sink and began washing her hands. He was so fucking good at that. The sacrifices, always for her.

‘You’ll feel better once you are cleaned up, once we are on the road.’

She watched the blood swirl down the drain, she watched his hands massage the red out of her skin, watched him pat them dry with a rag. Just minutes before it had been tied around the now dead eyes of his sister.

‘There you go. See? Everything is working out exactly how we planned. Finally, Deanne, now it will all begin for us.’

It calmed her to hear him speak like that. He was so good. His voice made it easy. She took the pistol from the countertop, fired twice and went out the backdoor.
There was not a trace of blood on her this time.
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Kindergarten Studies

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A man sits on the stone stairs of a downtown corporate building.
In his three-piece suit, this man sits with his head in his hands.
If he were to crane his neck upward, he’d see a sky the very blue of his cufflinks.
If he were to turn his head left he’d see school children with uniforms the plaid of his tie.

Why is his head in his hands?
Why will he not dive up to the blue?
Why will he not scramble in line with the classmates?
Does he need help?
Will someone ask him?
Will it be you?

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3rd Person Point of View

I am currently taking a class at MATC with the almost ridiculously wonderful Matt Guenette. A recent assignment was to turn a first person story into a third person account. I took the '101 Ways....' and ended up with this. I was really disappointed with it, but got some pretty encouraging feedback from my peers.




His White Teacup

Unlike mornings or afternoons, in the evenings the kitchen lights illuminated the table, the chairs, the two figures, so irresistibly that passersby shamelessly stopped to stare, as if the picture window were a screen and the images were frames reeling through a projector. The window was built for this kind of drama. Perhaps the players were too. Seemingly unaware of the street audiences, the actor and actress never broke character, never turned away or shut the drapes as men with dogs and women with strollers circled the block three, four, five times too many just to see one more exchange, to imagine one more phrase.

She has not been in the picture since last fall. That following winter was so dreary, every evening wandering past only to find the lights dimmed or the boy alone at the table. Once, one night, the teacup sat on the counter. It never got to the table. He never brought it to the table.

Spring was spring and summer was summer, each season with enough beauty and drama steaming from the city sidewalks and streets to keep eyes from stealing strangers' indoor moments.

But today, today anyone willing to look up from the brown leaves crackling beneath his feet can see him prepare for her.

From a top cupboard shelf he takes out the white teacup, his white teacup for her. He washes, dries, and sets it next to the cleaned coffeemaker on the cleaned countertop.

He checks his watch.
He rehearses his gestures.
What was this high and that wide?
He paces.
Or was it that high and this wide?
He checks his watch. Maybe it was collapsed, then expanded, mashed and then folded.
He pauses.
He pours tap water into the coffeemaker, adds grinds from a tin to the filter.
He checks his watch.
He paces.
He gets to the front door by the second rap.

"Hey Andy." The sigh of his name rustles what leaves are left on the sidewalk's trees. "How have you b-"

The door closes as quickly as it opened.

Places are taken. He brings his white teacup with his coffee for her. The scene begins.
She keeps her gaze down into the contents of the teacup.
He leaves the table, leaves the kitchen.

She keeps at the coffee.

He returns with a book, a title that makes her smile to her coffee. She taps the inside of her left arm without looking up.
He holds that left arm.
He begins his monologue.
It appears that it was this wide and that high, then there might have been rain or sparkles or magic or fireflies, followed by a pow! bam! or a crash! He smiles wide, looking at her, one hand around the arm and one hand reinforcing his words.

She keeps at the coffee.

The audience begins to circle, to stare. Sharp inhales at what looks like a frown, a scowl, silent laughs at his smile, held breaths waiting for her to look, just one look up into the eyes fixed so firmly on her frown, her scowl, her lowered lids.

What could she possibly find in the cup that is not in him? She takes no sugar, takes no cream.
Are there words floating in the liquid?
Intellect?
Memories?
Breaking news?
Rain or sparkles or magic or fireflies?
Certainly there are not hands or arms.
Not lips.
Not skin or blood or lungs or heart.
Only hot caffeinated water that begins to make her knee bounce. Or maybe that is him too.

Does she read the grinds at the bottom of the cup? Is there fortune or prophecy left after the last sip? Translucent stains of truth, if she is searching for truth? How much can one contemplate coffee? A teacup?

He takes the cup from her hands, places it back between her hands after refilling it.

She keeps at it.

He takes her hand from the rim of the cup.

Will she smile?
Will she pull back?
Will she cry or speak or scream?

He holds the hand between his. Not a word exchanged.

Is there anything left in that cup? Any more distractions, any more theories? Will the crowd carry on down sidewalks with broken hearts?




Finally, she looks up.
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101 Ways to Brew the Perfect Cup, Or How to Break My Heart With Discourse

He asks how I am doing and I shrug. Partly because he despises the gesture, partly because I'm not ready to talk, partly because I don't know yet. How I am.

I stare into the ivory spirals floating atop the muddy coffee. Maybe the liquid could solidify into rationalization, evaporate into reason.

I stare harder.
Nothing.

I would now like to argue with him that my stare is in fact not icy. Objective evidence to trump his subjective experience. But I'm not willing to argue.

If the cup does not contain the rationality and reason I seek, doubtful it will hold the new language I need. I cannot argue. I've spoken the same words over and over and over until 'sorry' and 'change' and 'try' become purrs devoid of meaning.

I'm sorry, I didn't know.
I can change.
I will try harder.
I'm sorry, I didn't know.
I can change.
I will try harder.
I'm sorry, I didn't know.
I can change.
I will try harder.

Instead of looking at him, I consider the coffee. Black gold.

I lost my phone at the movie theatre where five or so of us baristas made up the majority of the audience of maybe nine in the 1700-capacity room on the fall night of its screening. Black Gold. All I remember is the disgust we expressed at the pride of the newly crowned manager of the original Starbucks store. Such snobs, small-city café elite. Purveyors of Midwestern premium grind, tamp and pour. We thought we were artists.

Then the hard, red chair ate my phone.

If a chair could swallow a cell, couldn't the half and half swirls form a circle, couldn't two lips jut forth from the black caffeinated water, and couldn't the contents of the dirty white teacup tell me what to say? Say it for me? Nothing?

I was in this kitchen with this teacup so many mornings and afternoons and nights, discussing Foucaultian theory and the absence of words being just as important as their presence. Silence as a form of discourse, not its opposite. He didn't much like Foucault. Sartre, yes. Heidegger, Camus. He liked to wrap his fingers around the Ibsen on my inner arm. Existentialism doesn't give us much to put our hands on. I thought it was the Ibsen, the ink, the words he wanted to touch. The arm was extraneous.

The coffee was always ready when I arrived. I usually sat to his right. I used to think my left side was somewhat pretty, my right side not pretty at all. I knew I wasn't beautiful, so I just hoped he'd think one facet of me was somewhat pretty. Now I sit to his left because he's seen every kind of my ugly.

I'm not trying to hold out, to make him speak first. I just don't know what to say. He was always the one with the words.

He made coffee like Grandma. Folgers from a can, pre-ground, with tap water running through the second-hand Krups. Strong, but not necessarily bitter. He could be Norwegian making coffee like that. Grandma would adore him, his blue eyes, his soft voice, his patient hands. He could make coffee better than I could, better than the most perfect 25-second shot from fresh, freshly roasted, freshly ground, organic Ethiopian fair-trade beans through a Synesso. Maybe because it was for me. Maybe because there was not one drop of pretension, not one ground of pride. My humility as a barista depended entirely on the mouth it would feed. Cell-phone talkers were either sent to the back of the line or charged $4.50 for a small latte with whole milk and two eleven-second shots. I would not serve that to the homeless men across the street. The care I lacked then was put toward the care I'd take turning the wand to steam Donal's one-shot medium two percent latte with extra foam. The steaming of the milk was the key. No bubbles. Silk.

I guess I've never been constant.

When I look up, I see him seeing me and start to cry. How many cups have I taken with room for cream and tears? It is too cold to cry. He thinks I am too cold to cry, which makes me cry more.

I apologize because I mean it. I watched him break himself upon me once and did nothing. When he told me and I was ready and aware, my eyes open and my senses heightened, I pushed until the jagged edges of my broken glass fingers and toes and elbows and knees cut the skin housing the heart I was trying to preserve. And I broke him anyway. I could break anything without trying.

I was sorry.
I am sorry.
I will always be sorry.

He smiles his porcelain smile. He doesn't drink coffee because he thinks those teeth will stain faster than the enamel ones.

I think about the girl he deserves. She is not in the coffee, not in the cup.

I think about when coffee was coffee.

Not intellectualism.
Not competition.
Not cause to catch up.
Not cause to stay up.
Not reason to reminisce.
Not necessity.
Not magic.
Not foreplay.
Not midnight kisses.
Not hands in hair.
Not sex.
Not reason to stay in the morning.

I was so young.

She doesn't drink coffee, that girl. She doesn't break hearts. She is beautiful from left and right and straight on, but doesn't even think about it. She has a menagerie in the hallway of her glass house, and English, French, German and Spanish dictionaries on her tongue. I wish I could find her for him. Make her for him. Be her for him.

When he takes my hand, I take in every last crack of the cold, ugly kitchen. Take in every callous and crevice of his warm, strong fingers and palms. I don't have the words.

I have a burn on my wrist from the brewer.
I have a burn on my forearm from the steam.
I have a callous at the base of my fingers from the tamper.
I have a blister of my palm from the portafilter.

He holds my hand. I drink his coffee. Silence is our most imperfect discourse.

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I am an artist. You probably are too.

In the beginning of Andrea Kreuzhauge's documentary of the project 1000 Journals, instigator Some Guy cites a rather likely unscientific fact that if you were to ask a classroom of kindergarteners who was an artist, all hands would fly into the air. Pose the same question to high schoolers and perhaps one or two would identify.

I might doubt the scientific validity, but the point is nothing if not staggering: where have our artists gone?

Prior to seeing Kreuzhauge's film, if you were to ask me, I would deny being a writer. When I think of the word, I think the New Yorker, I think Hemingway, publishing and working and writing and being read.

But, really, I write almost obsessively. Not much of it creative, profound, legible or fit to be read. But it is true. Sooner or later that counts for something, truth. Truth in action, words in action. If I am what I do, then I am, in fact, part writer.

I think a lot about a lot of words. Words I say, I write, I hear, I read. I always thought words were real. I've recently become brightly aware that often times words are just letters, just symbols, and can be very empty strokes and tones, words as words, oaths or actions.

I am going to make my first confession: I think I am a writer, I am an artist. By saying it, I want to back it up by being it. I am no Hemingway, I am no New Yorker, but maybe I can bring back a bit of my kindergarten shameless and be proud of my stories like I was of stick figure drawings of family and friends. I hope you will too. And I hope you will share it with me.
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