#5 sea glass city

            Anahata’s streets are slushed with crystalline frostings as if the whole city was built of the tiers and icing of a winter wedding cake. She is not so much ruled by her whiteness but rather by her aquamarine. The interlace of Anahata’s hill-town streets appear fishbowled, as seen through a sea glass green; and she is a city that is often mistaken for a town. But relative to the other rural centers of the region, she is among the most urbane. Here there is always the soft melody of plash and plink, of ice liquefying into glacial drool. Here there are harbors of boats bobbing in wait for the thaw that never quite warms her shores. Here is a hilltop of memorials and markers of men who once walked to the tops of her peaks. Ordained steeples and legislative spires reach up in adornment of her overcast skies. In the farther north, where tundra rolls into the far edges to meet with salt, the sun will push the stars further and further west until the last drop of midnight blue is poured beyond the horizon, and the lemon baby blues will rule for several unseen moons. But here in Anahata, tucked beneath ridges of white and harbored among pools of slate bluegreen, the sun is seldom seen on any day.

            Anahata’s women and men sometimes forget how to get along, sometimes hurl moods and memories across kitchens and bedrooms in platters and drawers spilling fragments and remnants of dreams. Her children are found in the snow, in wet trousers and soggy mittens, in rubber boots and with noses that run. Dinner is always meatloaf and gravy and milk. When the meal is over, there is enough time for two hours of T.V. before bed, and there are enough channels for everyone to have a favorite show. This is the time when the small green glow still appears in the black at the end of the broadcast day right after the anthem, the test pattern, and the static. At bed time routine washings, brushings, kisses and prayers prepare each inhabitant for slumber; and each one dreams of the yellowest orb in the most azure air above the most emerald plains.  

            In the morning on days when the sun is seen no one knows what to do. Offices are closed, mills are shut down, and the fishermen all come home. Children remember they have bicycles, and the slush pulls back into drains. On this day, too, forests remember themselves as trees parading long cascades of lichens and tendrils of moss. Insects of all kinds coalesce in a cacophony of manic choreographies and buzzings of songs alerting in their own unwitting demise hoodlums likes robin, raven, wren and finch. Barbecues are dragged from garages and sheds, and, instead of meatloaf, there are burgers and dogs, chips and soda for dinner. Afterward kids ride bikes through the dusk, rush in with red cheeks and fall to sleep without remembering their prayers or their shows. The nights after these days offer sleep without dreams until somewhere in the middle, a downy pall hems in and by morning Anahata’s colors turn cold. As pale light fills each room, dreams trouble and creep. Heavy skies let go the tiniest grains, until Anahata’s rooftops and roads are resalted and sheltered with sea. 

Topophilia (Writing Exercise 5)

Cigar smoke and the crushing of aluminum cans, strophes and antistrophes of static, the silhouettes through the color-warping windows clock-handing antennas to find the old voices; the rocking of weathered chairs, and long, white haired cats, not looking back in their capers toward the steps where the bending women place bowls of milk before stepping methodically, in beige, Velcro shoes, back up the steps to stand lean against the thresholds, arms folded across their aprons, behind the screen doors to watch the cats lap. Kids come out of Figlio's with large candy bars, wrappers half peeled like bananas, chomping and laughing, marbles falling out of their pockets, rolling down the hill, tinking on the edges of the sewer grates' squares and plopping in the rushing water.

Paper boys standing around fires of their unsold stock on the corners, shop owners sweeping debris into the flames. Prowling min-vans slow to the stop signs banking Main Street and drive up the hill into the façade of the church, built so that the steeple will pierce the sun during the summer months. The Red Sox have lost the pennant. The Red Sox have won the pennant. The Dodgers have pulled it off in the 9th, sealed it in the 5th, and blew it in the 8th. Chevelles slow to the stop signs banking Main Street and drive up the hill into the façade of the church. Johns and Stevies, Jennys and Dawns, manifest in the racket of slammed door frames and skirt behind the climbing cars into the alley ways. Aluminum cans crinkle. A smote cigar usurps the burn of paper. The cats come toward you and line up and sit, serried and fuzzy across the street, licking their lips, swaying their tails across the pavement, the orange reddening behind them, their eyes getting lost. Static interjected joyously'…have won the pennant.'

The untouchables of Topophilia wear suede vests and thick knickerbockers, the boys, and the girls, shin length skirts. They gather round the slow cyclone of newspaper flakes and swat them away like mosquitoes. The blonde hair girls will have streaks of ash in their hair when they stroll under the lamps, the boys will have streaks on their faces. The patrolmen blows his whistle and his watch chain jingles against his thigh when he pivots and stamps out the thin embers. He swivels with his flashlight and Lady Washington dumps a bucket of water on him from her window. 'Quiet down!' she yells and the patrolmen shuts off his flashlight and disappears around the corner as the pick-up trucks poke their noses out and drive up the hill into the façade of the church, built so that the steeple will pierce the full moon during the autumn months.

Caramel corn, the shop windows blanked by carnival flyers. The kids shaking coins in their loose, sweating fists, nickels rolling down the hill, chiming against the edges of the sewer grates' squares and plopping in the rushing water. Motes of pink and blue cotton candy mixing with the blossoms of cottonwoods, sticking to the white cats. The vibrant shits of windows, quelling the static, the voices. Bags of flattened aluminum cans tossed in yards, the hiss of cats and burst of fur onto fences. Weeping women in beige, Velcro shoes and long floral skirts, wound in afghans weep quietly and quicken into the alleys. Shadows slam fedoras on skulls and walk up the hill into the façade of the church. Lights turn on in upstairs windows and the top rung of ladders poke into the horizon: excited gasps of surprise are rushed to whispers. The lights go out. The ladders fall back into the black of the houses and fences. Whistling young men, hands in their knickerbockers, hats tilted, come whistling out the alleyways. Bedroom lights turn back on. The shopkeepers nod resting on their broom sticks in the spare grapefruit still emitted from just beneath the crouching newspaper boys' knees. The patrol cars poke their noses out and drive up the hill into the façade of the church, built so that the stars give it hair.

The bureaucrats of Topophilia wear sunglasses at night so they can, so they can…Hair gel and manila. Whisky and cologne, grains of salt shattered. They shake hands with the shopkeepers, the newspaper boys. The newspaper boys run down the alley ways. The fedoras come back down the hill. The bureaucrats turn the corner and Cadillacs pull up to the stop signs and idle. The weeping women wound in afghans walk back up the hill, no longer weeping. The fedoras open the front doors and can tabs hiss. The wives walk methodically up the front steps and creak the planks. The bedroom light flicks on and off again. The voices. The static. The scratching of bristles, sulfur, cigars. Marbles rolling into sewers, the rushing water plopping, candy bars being opened, the pink and blue motes streaked in ashes.

You can't leave the gazebo in Topophilia. You must stand amid the octagonal structure and smoke a long cigarette out of a porcelain holder. If you leave the gazebo only the swirling ash and the cats remain. I learned this the hard way, strolling up the cobblestone, cats sprawled in mid-air, on their backs, purring to have their bellies rubbed, milk dripping from their caws and dried and rank little streams on the pavement, Cyclones of contained ashes, twirling on the corners, the emptiness which steals from these things reason so bold in its invisibility. The acrobatic cats and gray flakes.

Exercise 3/24/2011 Our City; A Crumbling Wall

I’m trying to figure out what to do, how to fix myself. After all I’m broken, I’m lost in the folds of an invisible city. I’m grasping for familiarity and finding a blank face, a hand pulled away or a turned back. I’m supposed to get on a plane in one week, fly to see you. Over mountains and cascading dripping rivers of snow. Over rain and plains lush and green or brown and lucid. Over cities, slums, orchards, people living there everyday live, people flying over people, or waiting. At each stop ill have to wait, alone, silent hearing teeth and tongue gliding across each other in a smooth motion. I’ll sit on many planes in order to see you.

But now I’m broken and I’ve broken us. I feel my toes twitch in the night, as I lay awake. I can only pretend to sleep. I drink coffee and stare at the open window realizing I’d like to jump out of it, but alas it is about four feet to the ground. Jumping out of a first floor window means everything would be fine. You say I’m never happy and folds of fabric tears drip down continuously trying to recycle themselves. You say when I figure things out I can contact you cause your waiting for me.

I feel abandon, left in the invisible city like you left me in the city that you said was ours. Beyond the city lays quiet lush green olive trees and to the city limits. I haven’t seen a soul yet. The shutters push air back and forth. The clothes are bleached and the markets are bare. I don’t talk. I don’t see. I sit in an abandon café holding an empty coffee cup I left to mouth every few seconds.

It’ll be exactly as it is to sit on the plane lifeless, a body in transit—to transition. Inside, spilling over and frightened. I haven’t eaten in weeks. What will happen? I’ve been left in a city that doesn’t exist, alone drinking coffee that never appears.

You are supposed to be here for me, but you walked away. There’s only so much fight before you just decided there’s no use and sleep. Then I’m told to figure stuff out and to get a hold of you. In the background I see you passing your office. Apparently I’m not a complete person. I’m not my mother who did everything on her own. I no longer understand how you feel or I’m no longer allowed the ability to catch your sarcasm, confront your body with mine, or please you. I’m continually miss stepping in this city you left me in. I am bruised, but I no longer cry. I no longer feel worth of food, sleep or friends. So I deprive myself nothing because I have no understanding of how to bring you back. At night I sleeping an empty bed that was left in the middle of the street. The middle of the bed has a crack, so I sleep only on the left side shivering alone.

This word alone is what we enter this world as, and what we leave this world as. We form relationships to touch happiness and love—an ability to understand someone other than ourselves. We accept and we deny. There are those in transit, as I am. They lack an acceptance or denial.. They wait in their invisible city sleeping on beds in empty houses or streets, like me.

I write on buildings and sidewalks, trying to make something for you that you will want. I feel like I can no longer express my fears, my silence stands growing louder. I want you to hold me and construct the city with me. Place people in it that allows life to form and buildings to grow. I want to build something together curled in the crack of the bed and form something.

But I don’t know how to hold you anymore. I don’t know how to build something alone. The sky lacks stars here. I don’t know why this is our city. I don’t know what that means, but I fear that I will never complete fit into your world. I can’t speak the language nor do I know the costumes. You don’t understand that scares me, because words and worlds don’t glue themselves to me. I am with out words, the one thing I might still have left. Again I pass a night laying, staring at the black sky.

I have always been in love with you,. I have always waited—but some how it feels worse that you’re waiting for me. You told me to figure it out. I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to get on a plane in a week, but maybe my plane will be t no where cause I cant fix myself so you’ll like me. I’m to damage to deal with. I’ll be stuck alone in out city with soft rolling grass providing friends, in a city, with an invisible person…

I miss you and as I climb the spire to the bell tower of the city I try to figure out a way to fix myself so you will come back. I’m trying, but I find it hard to let someone in. you have the key and I’, willing, but I want to be your equal. Not someone who is scolded for doing one thing or another. I feel like I’ve lost the ability to make you smile. The sun has gone away for weeks in the town. The invisible flowers mold and my eyes grow rings under them. I want this to be our city; I want you here. The bed snapped in half the other night. I sleep on the left side now waiting for you, who is waiting for me.

#5 (Liz)

Jason sat in Union Station waiting for the bus that would take him to the airport. He’d read about Union Station online and the picture were pretty but here in the station it was mostly busy and dirty and it all felt way too chaotic to enjoy – Jason was stressed. He thought he’d enjoy Union Station. He didn’t. The brass roud-top benches and chairs, the ones in the historic room, the high-roofed domed hall where they shot the TV shows, it was crowded and there were crazy people and people who looked unhappy and wouldn’t meet his eyes – Jason didn’t really want to go home but he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go back to his apartment, his routine.
Jason had My Antonia open in his lap. He had it open to the wolf scene, the two Russians – he was punishing himself by reading it; he’d already read it, a bunch, he couldn’t remember – he’d read it first when he was a little kid. His mom had started it on audiobook during a car trip, it was summer and the air conditioner broke on the first day and they had 13 days to go – they didn’t finish My Antonia, they only made it through to northern Idaho and then his mom didn’t put it in anymore, they just listened to the radio – but when they got back from their road trip (they made it as far as Minneapolis) – when they got back at 4 in the morning and they’d driven all night, they’d been camping each night, just the two of them, and no showers because they were lazy for five days, Jason thought, remembering; it might’ve been five but that was give or take – they’d gotten home to their mossy little house and it was wet on the plants and just starting to be dawn and clear-skied, no more stars and the sky still not like day - Jason’s mom had lugged in a couple bags alongside Jason, a couple shaky, happy trips back and forth to the car, back and forth through the familiar, dark steps between the house and the garage, happy because they were home, and then she’d gone up to bed. Jason couldn’t sleep, though, and he’d gone to get the My Antonia book from the bookshelf next to the TV – his mom liked to read and there were a lot of books. Jason liked walking around the kitchen, holding the book, when it was just almost dark and getting lighter and his mom was sleeping – poking in cupboards just to see that the food was there, the actual sturdy glass cups, the things – 8-year-old Jason on the road trip had really missed things. Jason tried remember, sitting in Union Station, in the kind of creepy brass dome-backed chair, drawn, grumpy-looking man in a suit beside him, if as an 8-year-old home from that road trip he’d made himself some food. He guessed not. Jason liked to graze when he got home. Enjoying everything – marshmallows, little rice crackers, some very stale popcorn balls that his mom had made before the trip and they’d forgotten to eat them all or take them but maybe Jason ate them when he got home because his mom always put M&Ms in.
And then Jason had taken the book up to the loft – old wood ladder propped up against the living room wall to get there, Jason was going to be glad to see that, going home again, now, for just a visit – the 8-year-old Jason had taken My Antonia up the ladder to the loft with house all quiet, dawn getting brighter through the little loft window, and he’d read through words, flipping pages, phrases that sounded familiar from a week and a half ago, a roadtrip ago, the illustrations looking familiar and then not-familiar but he couldn’t really remember, and he’d found the picture of the wolves chasing the sled and the bride half-off, pushed off to the wolves – and so he’d focused then, quit flipping, and read –
It had been cool the first time. Jason had read it and then more awake and jittery than before and he didn’t know what next, maybe comic books, maybe searching through the drawers, familiarizing himself, his mother’s household stuff in the kitchen –
Jason, adult Jason, opened his copy and looked at the picture. Same picture, different book – Jason shut the book and looked around – Union Station, going home.

Caveeno by Jen (Writing Exercise#5)

On market days, the stalls are lined with the very fresh items. Fish freshly caught in the morning’s run, vegetables plucked with the sunrise dew sweating on their skin, and meat butchered at dawn. Loona was helping her parents set the stall for the day. Their merchandise did not consists of the normal items that one would think was sold at the market. Loona’s family had long been in the business of selling elixirs. The lines at their stall usually begin the night before and by dawn the line would have reached the gate to the city.

Loona’s ancestors arrived from the moon centuries ago. They bought with them the many secrets of life that ancient philosophers have spent their lives seeking. For every question that humanity conjured up, Loona’s ancestors gave them the answers. Along with their knowledge, they bought with them the formulas for the elixirs. From the moment of her birth, Loona could not wait to create these elixirs that were embedded within her mind and her DNA which were handed down from her ancestors.

Unlike the many stalls in the market, where the owners believed that magnificent stalls with decorations and signs are means to attract the customers, Loona’s family stall was simple. The awning was made from the damito fabric created by Loona’s ancestors. The fabric protected its inhabitants from the rain, snow, sun, and floruunal weather. Loona loved it when it floruun. The sky would fill itself with colors of pink, yellow, green, magenta and when the weeping sounds would come through, the petal-like showers would flutter the buildings and the streets. Many would seek refuge when it floruuns. For as beautiful as those petal-like showers drifted and fluttered, anyone who was caught out in the open would feel the gash and burn from its touch. The damito awning provided such protection not only for the inhabitants but also for the precious elixirs.

In the city of Caveeno, the market is the most essential element that provides the sustenance and economic means. The clay covered streets pave way for its inhabitants to roam around the city. Buildings made of aubergine bricks stood erect and welcomed those who inhabit the city, and turn away those who emulate a bad being. It would not be a strange thing when a visitor attempts to enter a building and finds that the door refuses to allow them in. The owner of the building and the business that it provides considered this to be a good omen to turn any unwanted others away. While the buildings naturally turn away the unwanteds, Loona’s family market stall does not. Visitors from Lugana, Zeemba, and even as far as Briosais would travel just so they can stand in line for the elixirs.

There are many to choose from. One of Loona’s favorite elixirs and one that she has become the connoisseur for was called Cheveuxais. An elixir quite popular among the young women and the much older men. Cheveuxais makes sure that the cheveux does not grow. For the young unmarried women, it was quite essential that their cheveux’s growth is stunned until they become wives. It was quite unattractive for a young unmarried girl to have cheveux growth. Some mature much faster than others and any sign of growth would delay the potential matchmaking. Once a match has been made and the young woman becomes the wife, she is allowed to grow her cheveux as long as she desired. In fact, she must allow the growth of her cheveux. Long cheveux shows the city people that she is doing her duty as the wife. For the much older men, Cheveuxais was used to maintain baldness. All men in the city of Caveeno must maintain no cheveux growth. Baldness represents their masculinity and fertility, any man who decided to grow such atrocity was deemed inadequate and an unwanted.

Perhaps the most coveted and expensive elixir that Loona’s family sold was the Hetleven. This elixir can only be created by the men in the Loona’s family. Its secret formula was embedded in the genetic make-up of the men in her family. Her father has known of this formula before he entered the world and so did his father and the many fathers that came before him in their family. Hetleven is the elixir that made Caveeno the city that it has become. The aubergine brick buildings built themselves whenever a batch of hetleven was being concocted. Its fragrant fog permeates Caveeno’s air in the evening and in the morning a new building has risen and a line of Caveeno people have been formed. The new building will choose its owner and whisper to the owner of the business it must create.

But, the true purpose of Hetleven is not to create a new building, this elixir gives those who consume its aubergine liquid substance another life. There is no such thing as immortality, but with Hetleven, it was pretty close. Those consume this elixir found that should they meet their untimely death, they are given another chance at life. Those who choose to consume Hetleven continue for years to take the elixir. There are others, however, whose heart cannot bear the idea of losing a loved one, takes it upon themselves to secretly infuse their loved ones drink with the powerful elixir.

Loona looked up to the skies to see the familiar colors of floruun. She told her parents that the damito awning needs to be expanded. But before her parents can inform the other market stall owners, she noticed that Caveeno’s aubergine buildings have already manifested the damito awnings covering all those who stood in line.

Lines that expanded and extended way out to the Caveeno’s city gate.

#5

The day I was born, my father hopped into his purple Cougar, the plush, velvet interior giving under the weight of his beer belly. Oil dripping onto the driveway. The car hadn’t been washed in about a month. He put his key into the ignition and headed off towards Rainier. The traffic was bad, but not as bad would be ten years from now, when the influx of Californians would make Seattle’s freeways swell with road rage and a general lack of courtesy waves. He smoked a cigarette and listened to the oldies station on the radio. The Temptations were playing as he drove by the Kingdome. The sun coming out of the east hitting the top of the dome and skipping off into the sound.

It was September, but autumn had yet to hit. There was still a tepidness in the morning dew and the smell of wood-burning fireplaces had yet to cross his mind. Nonetheless, there were two cords of wood in the garage and the oil company would have to find money from someone else.

My father scratched his stomach as he pulled up to a small building that stood alone in a little lot with a sign that read Kim’s Teriyaki; it was across the street from a strip of building containing a cake shop and a beef jerky factory. He would often barter lunches for cakes and beef jerky. As he pulled around the back, a couple of homeless people got up from the restaurant wall on which they were leaning. They started to walk away, but as my father got out of the car, he called to them.

“Hey,” he said, “are you two hungry?”

The two men looked suspiciously at him and confusedly at each other.

“Yeah, what of it,” one of them said.

“Wait here,” said my father.

He found the restaurant key and walked into the restaurant. It was a small restaurant, a small kitchen and enough seating for fifteen people. Red, plastic gingham sheets on the tables and metal chairs with black padding on the seats and backs. He walked into a small closet to the right, right next to the circuit breakers. When he walked back outside, he was carrying two brooms.

“Sweep the parking lot and I’ll give you guys some food,” my father said.

“Really?” one of them said.

“Yeah,” said my father and walked back into the restaurant, closing the door behind him.

About thirty minutes later, my father came back out with two Styrofoam boxes of teriyaki and some plastic forks. He set them on the bolted down picnic tables and pulled a couple of sodas from his pockets.

“Here you go,” he said.

He grabbed the brooms and started walking back to the restaurant.

“Hey!” one of the homeless men said.

My father turned.

“You got any cigarettes?” the homeless man said.

“Yeah, sure,” my father said. He pulled out his pack of Vantages and handed them each a smoke. He pulled out a third for himself, lit the smokes and sat on the picnic table.

“Thanks,” both men said.

“Thank you,” said my father.

He handed the two men two more cigarettes.

“For after you eat,” he said.

The phone in the restaurant started ringing. My father put out his smoke and went to answer the phone. He was wearing white, Reebok sneakers, khakis and a yellow polo t-shirt.

My mother had slept in, or, at least, she tried to. With my head pushing on her bladder, she kept having to get up to urinate. She was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed to make anything. Her husband was not the most considerate of types and had left without seeing if she needed anything. After staring at the ceiling for several minutes, she finally got up to make herself some breakfast. Some scrambled eggs and toast. About a month later it would be discovered I was allergic to eggs, and allergy that would leave along with my infancy.

She ate breakfast at the kitchen table. Tucked in the corner across from the mustard yellow fridge, scraping off small bits of burnt toast with a butter knife. There were leaves imprinted on the handle. It was a quiet morning and my aunt would be coming over any minute now to keep her company and check up on her. After breakfast, my mother put her dishes away and sat on the funky looking green and brown couch. She picked up a book and looked at the cover, thinking about reading.

My aunt walked in without knocking. She walked to the couch and sat down next to my mother.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Fine,” my mother said, “either I wet myself or my water just broke.”

“Oh!” said my aunt.

My aunt grabbed the phone and called my father.

At the hospital I started crowning.

Exercise #5 (Christie)

It’s hard not to notice, riding home on the bus, how unconcerned they all are. A woman sitting two rows back is holding up a compact mirror, putting on mascara. Her reflection in the wide, smeared windows blurs with the stuttering brakes, and she says “shit,” in a quiet, cheerful way. An elderly man snores into the collar of his coat, the newspaper slipping from his limp hands and starting to slide into the next seat. I can hear Black Sabbath roaring faintly into the ears of the greasy head in front of me, and the conversation of a Hispanic lady at the back of the bus. All of them—not curious not worried. Not guilty.

There is a woman returning from work. Her white Oxford is wrinkled at the waist where she has been bent over, shuffling papers in her lap while squinting, at intervals, into a computer screen, which explains the puffy, myopic eyes. Her purse is not real leather and she doesn’t seem to care that the flopping belt of her polyester khaki raincoat is lying in the aisle, being slowly blackened by cheap sneakers and the wet street outside. Her roots and her slip are showing. Careless, the looks on the passenger’s faces say, as they shake their heads. Or worse, they don’t think about her at all.

But ensuring that people not think about her is exactly what she wants right now. What she need. If they don’t notice her, they won’t think to question her, question her honesty or ability to do the job. They won’t check her numbers at the end of the week, just to make sure everything adds up. They’ll just assume, without taking the time to think about her – what kind of person she is or who she does or doesn’t relate to in the office – that everything is as it should be. She does what we pay her to do, no more and no less.

It is a payroll company. The whole purpose of the business is to pay people—to pay the employees of employers that pay her to pay them. Who can say who is whose employee, or how one employee is paid and another is not. He put her in charge of direct deposits—when they pay the employees directly into their bank accounts instead of forcing them to stand in a bank line for an hour on payday, that’s the selling point. They needed a reliable point man for electronic banking, Terry told her, not even making the fact that she is not a man a joke, that’s how sexist he is, and dropped the software manual in her lap. As if saying to himself, this one doesn’t have it in her, she wouldn’t dream of it, cannot even conceive of such a thing, a little girl with Daddy-pleaser written all over her. Well fuck you Terry, and Daddy, wherever he is.

She doesn’t even spend the money in a way that would be suspicious, buying new clothes, say, or getting those acrylic, filed-square French tips. There’s no reason to worry or be afraid, no reason to envy strangers for their peace of mind and evening plans. When she thinks about it like this, she finds it brilliant, actually. Completely untraceable. Unless Terry paid attention for longer than three minutes at a time, in between AA meetings and antiquing with the woman everyone knows is not his wife. If he actually looked at the statements, tracked each dollar, isolated the individual withdrawals, made in random order, did the math. She must have screwed it up, he’d say to himself, the one with the small tits and bad teeth. Figures. And even then, if he could pull himself away from golf with another asshole client, or flirting with the eighteen year old receptionist, and actually ask her, on his way out the door for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, “Hey Diana, could you check the direct deposit balances for last month, I can’t make the numbers work,” it wouldn’t be a problem. She would have a plan for that too, a spreadsheet with just enough columns to bore him. He’d wave it aside, not even bothering to thank her

So, she doesn’t need to be concerned. She can just sit here and enjoy the bus ride. Maybe she’ll stop at the grocery store on the corner of her street, make an ATM withdrawal—they only let you take out $300 per day—and buy a frozen pizza, the fancy kind with basil and three kinds of cheese and a bottle of Riesling. She’ll put the remaining $294 in a suitcase beneath her bed with the rest of it, and watch her shows on TV. “Such a quiet girl,” her neighbors will say, when she’s gone. “So reliable and trustworthy. Whenever anyone in the building took a trip, she’d feed their cats. Wouldn’t charge a dime, either. Poor thing was shy, never really had any friends, at least not that came around. No boyfriends, dear me. But still, a real nice neighbor.”

5.

Sometimes, every time, as I put the tip in or cup your breasts and say to you, the weather’s been beautiful lately; a cloudy day is good for the mind; the mind loves grayness, that the gray is a penumbral solution through which thoughts spread their filaments and feelers. As I say these things, a few loose strands of your hair catch on my lips and stick to my tongue, and your ear lobe is warm and pink against the gray abandonment of hours and minutes, when the coursing blood which makes our bodies animate subdues the will to evaporate, our skins, dry and calcitrant, oh the abandonment of ourselves. As my lips grip your ear lobe like two wet fingers, and I breathe, I think of Europa’s abduction, her pale skin and the adamantwhite bull she straddles. From here they are, together, a gleaming speck on the dark windtossing Aegean. The gray sky above and brackish sea below must, at times, offer Europa the puzzles she needs to feel whole. The bull’s wreathe of golden bells entwined with laurel boughs, a dirge of lightening in the distance, no sight of land, no sounds or merriment or homecoming celebrations.

Here Europa builds futures for herself and from within those mercurial and half absent vestiges of being, she feels the wet gown on her thighs and is charmed by the appearance of her breasts under linen. Mixing her perception of these beauties with that of the bull’s golden bells, the greatest explosion of joy flickers in her light blue eyes and settles her mood. She is like Venus now, fingering the laurels, decorating a fantastic chapel or two, or many, for herself as they appear singularly or in golden labyrinths. Ignorant of the Aegean’s homogeny, she cannot remove her eyes from the warm glow which her solemnity has manifested in her soul. From that place no particular thoughts come but those that wrought the tenderness and satisfaction of her open heart, without love, just convalescence.

She draws nearer to her warmth. It mingles with the strong bull between her legs and the briny waters pregnant with themselves between her toes. She imagines her ambivalent, honest beast is a god. Together they are upright, even holy, among the waters. The great concentrism of meaning she subtly feels most often but can never clearly see coalesces with the bull’s laurel boughs and taught musculature, and these things, arranged in her mind, compose a greater understanding of the globe, the human condition, of motherhood. She watches the holy empathy that connects every soul to every other rush in a great pictographic caravan through her mind’s eye and breathes with relief at having concluded, for a time, the search which drives her brain to the precipice of thought. The battered children, the housedrunk wives – suffering without end – are acceptable in this moment. A great needle pops her inflated hopes and sincerity, revealing, under a membrane of charitable fantasy, the tangible ellipses of wisdom as strong as tempered steal, as weighty and meaningful as the chains which crucified her lord, and around these, she builds her cathedral.

A city emerges like a great fish from the water, stanchions of gold and ivory, walls built of glass forged by lightening on the beaches of her distant memories. No more forgetting. Fountains that rise and rise and never arch. The bronze forms of sleeping infants swaddled in crystalline robes of pure benevolence who never age or die. The gods give her all. She strokes the bull’s neck as he pushes through the waves and sea foam. She leans close to whisper the cathedrals of her dreams into his ear. Her breasts brush against his strong neck. The bull stops and listens. Below the water, his hooves churn the salty sea; his penis emerges and grows erect. What a perfect angel, he thinks. She will be immortal hereafter, and as I take your hair from my mouth, placing my hand gently on your throat, I remember, lost among all these meaningful strands, the price dear Europa paid for eternity.

4.

Well I didn’t, well maybe. Jonesy sayin the look on my face. Mouth all hangin open. That ole puddin eatin mouth. I didn’t see nothin. Heard a ratchet of the leg, like thump thump thump like momma yon comin down the stairs and that ole train just a bellowin coal and bellowin. Sonny! Sonny! Come get you some. Somethin tossin me off and a light bouncin off the windows or the chug chug chug hoot hoot, ratchetin like crankin, crankin yon cross that ole hard floor. Sonny! Sonny! Where you at? I was thinkin of that leg chug chug and Jonesy sayin real loud back there sayin crunch crunch crunch like ice they given us chillins play with Easter bellowin, Lordy! Crunchin chewin.

It was maybe three o’clock and that ole sunlight just ate up all the windows, ate up them folks sittin in the cars, just crunch crunch chug chug. Just lookin at the glass and them shadows ole three o’ clock cast.

Yeah, I saw that pretty little white woman chugga chugga bump. This wind blowin in her hair. East wind carryin off the smoke from the chugga chugga crunchin ice and Easter. Windows and blue east wind. Church bells ringin in her ears and the last hymn them white folks yon singin far off, yonder hill where the East move in the trees and whistle and crunch and bump the bright, Lordy! Leaves. Hot bright cool breeze hard hard hard.

She was holdin down her dress all full up on East and smoke and burn and burn and my eyes was lookin at her all full up on smoke like lookin in on the sun in the windows and them folks sittin in the cars till bunch bunch bunch of people start up hollerin in the wind in the East and the trees asp asp and Jonesy throwin his hat on the ground and it just sittin there all crumpled up and quiet like grass on the hill when the crunch crunch crunch hush hush yon bellowed off the tracks and everybody runnin like them chickens in the yard, ole chillins runnin to catch them. String their necks out, goose them good old Jimmy said me goose them strong now or they wake up fightin. All that white girl in the windows, she was gone. All I saw the bump and bump and grind and hush. The wind out rumblin through the station, and the train stop. Dead train on the tracks. Just hush hush and push and crunch.

First I thought she fallen but them ole white girls ain’t fallin lessin someone comin pick them up at the waist. Jonesy sayin she was goin to walk on the water like all them bugs at the branch just floatin on rumble rumble on downstream till the train push her on into the rocks. She wasn’t even there. I was studyin my hands on the ground howlin howlin nothin but them moony nights in the branch, on the hill after we stop drowin us. Jonesy run up and look in sayin ain’t but the stringy grindy grindy pieces that old white girl white red dress.

Up the hill that old East just blowin gurglin gushin gushin till all them chicken necks all rung out all hollowblurriedeyed deadlike faces pushin on the bright hot windows and the bells singin what all the white folks yawnin debt debt.

Exercise 4 (Anna)

Maybe when they bake the donuts one of them says to the other one, Hey, Mike, Time to make the donuts! Or maybe one of them is a Pakistani or some other kind of Arab and he keeps to himself, keeps his head down, keeps some kind of Sikh turban on his head the whole time. Then he says, is it the hour to make the donuts? And he doesn’t get the lingo right and the other guy can tell (even without the turban) that he’s a foreigner. The other guy might ask him (if he’s a racist) why he doesn’t work at a Seven Eleven like all the other Arabs. And then the guy might get offended and he wouldn’t turn the deep fryer thing on the right temperature. Maybe they have a dial and everything is pre-set so you can’t screw it up—there’s a little sticker by the dial that says “turn to position 3, wait 30 seconds.” Maybe the guy would turn it up really high and not say anything. He would smile this polite stoic face smile because he is actually an out of work university professor, and he would turn up the heat on the fryer, and then he would go get the sticky mop that the teenage kid on the late night shift didn’t rinse out from the sugary coffee spill he mopped up at the end of the night and he would soak the mop in a high concentration of soap and mop the area around the fryer. And then the racist guy would maybe slip, not a lot, because he walks the same five steps every single morning from the big refrigerator with its wax covered trays of pre-rolled donuts to the deep fryer, but he might slip just enough for the donuts to slide in faster than usual and the oil might splatter on the counter. And even if it didn’t splatter on him, possibly maybe it might cause him to reach over to wipe it up and that’s when the other guy can mop into his legs and interfere with his balance.

Then they would have to call in the teenage kid to fill in and he would be wasted. They make the donuts at five am and they only pay $4.75 an hour. It would probably make a former university professor extremely depressed to work in those conditions. While the teenage kid was out front making the coffee (everything is labeled out there too, the coffee already pre-measured and wrapped up with a filter in an individually wrapped foil bag—nothing to think about—the kid can keep his Ween on high and his sweaty eyes on the floor away from reflective surfaces) he could lean against the back counter where they unload the packets of pre-assembled ham-and-cheese croissants and the crème filler machine and while he was squirting synthetic vanilla bean flavored custard into one of the greasy thin-skinned donut pouches he could let himself depress the lever for a little bit too long. Not so much too long that the donut would explode but just enough that some of the crème would come out of the hole. And then maybe he would let the crème slide onto his index finger that he was using to depress the lever. And when he put the donut down on the wax-paper-covered tray he would use just a little too much force, whacking it down, so that some more cream would squirt out. And then he would hold it in and do all the other ones perfect, lining them up in rows with the intervals offset so they don’t touch. And then when it was time to blade on the waxy chocolate frosting he would slap some of them harder than others, and feel them deflate just a little bit under his blade.

And then when all of them were done he would turn the blade over and with the handle he would punch a hole in the center of each one. A sticky, plastic-handle waxy-chocolate vanilla-custard hole. He’s a former university professor, but he’s not a refugee. He doesn’t even speak Arabic. He’s from Tallahassee.

Exercise 3 (Anna)

I would like … No, wait, what about that? String! … Yum! That’s moving! I wonder what that would taste like? Would it feel nice in my mouth? Is she using that? … Wow! It’s snowing! … Yum! That tea was scrumptious. I wonder where my ball went. Did it go in the place where it went before? What was that place? Yum! … What is she saying? She is always looking at me when I am on the stairs. She is always sitting in the same place. Why doesn’t she go outside? She could go outside at any time! She could eat anything, at any time! Why doesn’t she? … Yum! I love this rug. I love to claw this rug. I love to chew this rug. Oh, yum! … I miss the outside… Is that a bird? Is that a sound? Where is that sound coming from? Oh, I know, it’s that warm air place. Oh, I wish I knew where my ball was. It was… Oh wait, here she comes. She is on her stomach. I tried that. I couldn’t reach it. But she is so much bigger than me. Oh here it comes, that’s my ball. Wow. It’s amazing how quickly it gets stuck somewhere new. … Oh she is putting on her hat. This is the terrible part of my day. She turns the light out and I have to stay here in the dark! And it takes so long for things to happen in the dark! You don’t see anything until it’s actually touching you. Sometimes I can go to sleep on the couch for most of the time she is away. Usually the food doesn’t last long enough to entertain me. … She left once and I finally had enough energy and focus to attack all the window plastic and shred it to shreds! … She was surprised. Now there’s not much left to destroy. … Yum! I forgot about this feeling. Oh, this warm feeling. Every time I brush against her leg I feel warm. And then I jump on her lap. I can tell what she’s thinking. I can tell when she is thinking about me. Sometimes she talks to me. Sometimes she just touches me, over and over, and I know she’s thinking about me. … Yum! What a great feeling! Now is a good time for that. … Oh wait, I feel that other little itching in my groin area. I better get in my sandy cave. It’s ridiculously dark in my sandy cave. Sometimes I pee on myself. I have to rub my legs in the sand and kick it around to dry off. When I am done, sometimes I forget why I’m there. I can stand in the sandy cave and look through the flap and everything looks strange. In that position sometimes I remember things. … Mornings when she is sleeping are my favorite times. She smells warm and moist. Her hair is all over the pillow. It looks like another cat, a very thin cat who gets to sleep so close to her. When I get that close to her she brushes me away with her hand. I get very anxious at that time unless I am making some kind of noise. She has a wall hanging with a tinkly bell attached to it that makes a perfect companion for me. … I want her to wake up but also I don’t, because when she wakes up usually she leaves me shortly thereafter. I would prefer to be able to sleep as long as she sleeps, without interruption. Imagine how blissful that would be: not to stir, not to wonder, not to have to check on anything.

Check Writing #4

Check

She's at a yellow table. Yellow. Inevitably. It's four o'clock. The time of rolling out carpets for storms. Kansas. Yes. Kansas. Wichita. The brown and yellow canopied gyro shop. She asks for her sauce on the side, the cucumber sauce, because she knows I'll take the other rather than pay the quarter for an extra cup. She's ready for me. The gyro will be cold. The roll soggy. She doesn't know the check finally came. This check. Right here in my hands. This check. I told her it was coming. I've been telling her for a long time.

She's not even out of her running clothes; shirt still tied around her waist, grey tang top--- tight---yellow too, like the beige table. A tress of hair swooped and static across her face reaching just below her lip. Nicoli comes to take her order, striding over to with his little white towel, thin and creased. Black mustache. Yellowed. He's talking with her---I know he is---talking to her long time, how he'll say it---long time. A glass...ah..(blushing) vino (laughing) wine, wine on house? A glass of wine on the house. Long time.

I can see her switch the leg she crosses over the other, the shadows, or sweat, the sweat blackening her dryer faded spandex up her thighs---laughing, laughing. Down into herself. Looking at her wrist. Laughing. The tress of hair unlooses from the electricity of her lip---swung back---laughing--- and lingers in the air a little when she levels her chin again. A little foolishly. Girlish.

The sun has moved off of her. She's pale. The window pane is silhouetted on the blood-wood wall. Plywood. Swirls. Dark and rippling. It's the heat. Nicoli's wiping the bar. There's a woman slopped over herself at the far end of the bar. The sun light caroms off the blood-wood and blondes her thin mustache. Her eyes are droopy. She wears thick blue corduroys. Why? Yes. Why? That's what she wears and they are rolled, light blue cuffs at the bottom climbing up her faded black socks. White, Velcro shoes. She lifts her empty high ball and wavers it, sloppily, slowly. The floating glass in a limp hand.

She's disgusted by this. She checks her watch. I'm supposed to be there. I'm on my way. She doesn't know I have the check. She's ready to sigh at me. Ready to push out her lower lip and blow the tress of hair out of her face. A little foolishly. Girlish. Her sweat has dried and she's cold. She's up, gazing at her own lower body before unknotting the North Face around her waist. Sciatica. The seam in her tank-top, down her ribs, following it to where all is. Skin. A few light hairs stand. A tiny mole, barely visible as its pushed into the valley of her spine while she twists. Nicoli watches her. I watch her. I punch Nicoli. I will walk some more and walk in happy, waving my check, waving my check.

The cook pushes through the rodeo door from the kitchen. He's fat. Perhaps he's diabetic. He's fat. He lights a cigarette. Comedians look like him, stubby, sauce dappled fingers, a broken nail, what's left, half of it, black. He bites it off. Spits it at Nicoli. Nicoli the pansy he says: punta the cook says, viciously, sternly---punta. I like the cook and buy him a drink. He says: I take care you--- friend? Buena---punta----Nico…

We get along just fine. He's watching her stretch, her right arm reaching into the sunlight, the expanding square that swells on its way to the wall---wooompf---suffuses. Lake. Her arms in the lake. The light blue veins of her wrist that revolves beneath her unmoving watch band. She checks it again. She finishes putting her tight North Face fleece on, stretching through it. Navel. The woman's glass is still in the air. She's out. One Velcro shoe dangling. Light blue cuff. Her illumed leg. The black stubble. One last, nasty, long drag by the greasy cook. Nicoli folding his towel. Punta.

She's going to leave. She's going to leave. I will not see her. She will not walk this way. I am coming from somewhere else. I am coming from where men with money come from. From….from….her best friend's house. I practice the coy smirk. The eager secret. My check is rumpled and wet in my hand. I let it alone in my pocket so the ink doesn't run. She's getting her water filled. Laughing again. Guzzling it down. Its dripping out the sides of her mouth. Nicoli stands by with the glass pitcher like a manikin. She chugs down her third glass and stands up, pulled up by the gulp of the small lump of her esophagus. She's taller than Nicoli---face to face with him---vino? the house---for you---punta.

I burst in. Casually. It is my steps that burst, burst puntas, tremble the rodeo door to the kitchen. Creak. Creak. It’s a saloon now. The woman is shook awake. Her glass falls. High ball. Heavy. It doesn't shatter. It lands and then cracks. Like a flower. Like the earth. Yum. The pitcher falls. There's glass everywhere. Puddles. Wedges of lemons shriveled by the intense sun yellow on the floor. Dimmed lemons and spectral glass shards. Beach. My shoes are off. Bruce Willis Die Hard. The first.

The cook comes out with a plate of steamed calamari, dazzling tentacles, wreathing four oysters, a nipple of Tabasco sauce on each one---wet lemons, kept in the dark, shining like they wanted to. She has sat back down. Her fleece is off. She's hot. The water has wet her tang top. A rivulet is yet dried. Remnants of an estuary on her sternum. My fingers are moving through her sweaty hair. Moist. Moist. Sticky I smell her armpits and slip my hand in the wet pits. I kiss her forehead. The cook is standing beside the table, bowing, on one knee on the broken glass holding out two steaming plates. The one with oysters and a paella. Fat prawns. Archipelagoes of prawns.

I've slid the shoulders down on her tank top. She's feeding me calamari. Moaning. Ice and glass crunch beneath my feet. The cook walks past the window like a cloud. I'm eating whole prawns and spitting the shells ten feet at Nicoli, sweeping up glass with a little pail and hand broom while her tongue is hard, stuck out, tracing the bones right above my ribs. There's a little blood---vermillion on her shins. She's on her knees. Hey---

Hey---The cook. You need?…who?...who? Eyes widening. Anxious. Sweaty. Fat. The restaurant is empty. You need job? My guy ….he go.

#4 Glass Slipper

            As soon as I get the glass, I look for lipstick. If there are traces of waxed prints on the rim I will leave. Lemons in glasses of water seem nice but are suspect. Let me taste for myself how clean a place is. There is no lemon and no ice. The scuffed, red plastic tumbler is still wet and slightly warm from the washer. It smells faintly of bleach. I don’t care if the water is cold; I’m not going to drink it. The man who has left the glass is tall and lumbering, and his midsection rounds through a white dress shirt over the top of  black khakis. The ill fitting pants are pleated and taper down just short of his ankles revealing socks that do not match: one is navy and the other black. I sip at the water. Tap. Cool. Clean enough. I find something on the menu that is well cooked. Black khaki Brad comes back.

            “Do you want garlic bread with that. Anything else to drink sir. Salad. Italian, Ranch, Blue Cheese, Raspberry Vinaigrette. Yes, we do. Balsamic. Thank you.”

            There is no inflection in his voice. I know his name is Brad because occasionally a woman’s vapid call summons him to the kitchen. Nail-bitten fingers work the ballpoint across his ticket book. He takes my menu. There is no one else seated in what they call Kelly’s Bistro, but occasionally someone will rush in to pick up a pizza or a sandwich. It’s early. Not even five yet. If I don’t eat before six I can’t get to sleep before nine. I hear Brad fumbling around with dishes in the back. He slides a small serving plate across a counter, opens a fridge. Goes through the bland process of tossing lettuce and tomato with balsamic. I try to imagine what he does at the end of his shift. After tallying his tickets, tipping out the cook, wiping down the coffeemaker, and punching out, he walks home. Smokes one cigarette. He wishes he were meeting up with some gang at the bar. But there is no gang for Brad. His cramped apartment warrants escape.

            There are probably fluorescent tubes flickering to life above the well-worn, brown shag carpet where Brad hangs his coat in the narrow closet. Piles of grayed sneakers, a few mateless mittens and plastic bags clutter the floor below the tangle of wire hangers and scarves. With the toe of one shoe tugging at the heel of the other, Brad secures a hangnail between his teeth and rips it off. He takes his reddened pointer to the sink and rinses the minor wound cooling the sting in the stream of the faucet.

            “Would you like fresh ground pepper.”

            Brad’s thumb trespasses annoyingly close to the lettuce before releasing my salad onto the vinyl tablecloth. He turns to retrieve the mill and I hear a repulsive lick—the extra balsamic. He dries the licked thumb on the pocket of the short black apron that snuggly wraps his waist below the paunch. He can’t actually prefer the vinegar to something such as Ranch. When he shops it must be at his convenience. Not a box store kind of convenience, more the corner store. Cheezits and Dr. Pepper. When he does venture the grocer’s market, his shuffling against the cart blocks aisles and aggravates other customers. The wheeled basket is always diagonally parked as if he has had to veer in toward the products and make a protected space for his selection of Chef Boyardee. A young mother with a car seat in her cart has to leave her infant to drag his mess out of the way. He doesn't notice and feels irritated when he returns to find his cart cramping him up against the shelves of canned goods. I’ve had to push past this ignorance many times.

            I am crunching through my romaine and tomato slices (avoiding the ones at the edge where his thumb was) when I hear the brand ringtone of a Nokia. Most likely his mother or the video store with news of an overdue DVD. Jurassic Park or some such bullshit. Brad sounds surprised. There are expletives. He takes the call further into the recesses of the kitchen. Maybe he missed an opportunity for a career change. Who would be fulfilled in schlepping plates of mediocre foodstuffs around all day? A sharp but muffled kind of bark comes out of the kitchen. The cook and Brad exchange staccato sounds but I can’t make out the conversation. Is he quitting? Brad rushes from the kitchen with a steaming dish of pasta. His gait is suddenly made furious by a leaning of his head into a top heavy, compressed stomp. The black khakis produce a quickly swishing sound of friction. He lets the plate down at a hurried angle that shifts the pile of sauce and lasagne nearly into my lap. Then, remembering his place, Brad struggles to compose the insipid waiter look he is used to, but his sensibilities won’t obey. A terrifying milky sadness lines the edge of his lower lids, his right cheek trembles just beyond the corner of his mouth. Our eyes meet and he feels the weight of my knowing. He pulls at the ticket book from his apron, but it is stuck in the folds. When he finally wrenches it free, he takes my ticket and slaps it next to the plate. Looks at it. Picks it up, flips it over.

            “Will there be anything else.”

            

Exercise #4

We are sitting in the back of a crowded bus. It's hot. The air conditioner is broken and the windows are open and we don't catch the breeze. Other people's hair and clothing move in the breeze, but the draft gets swallowed up by the large man in front of us and you can only catch a whisper of wind that bounces off his shoulder if you lean your head close to mine. Our daughter lays curled, sticking to my chest, the space between us wet with sweat. We are on the way to your mother's house.

The last time you were there, I was home, pregnant. My sister came over and I sipped on lemonade in the sunlight outside our beach house in Florida while you stepped out of the plane and took a taxi to the apartment in Minneapolis your mother now lives in alone. That was before I'd realized how hard it is to have a child.

You told me when you got back that she was doing better, that your father was healthy, that they were looking forward to meeting the baby. You said your brother had moved to St. Paul but was still visiting often and you got to meet his finance. Beyond that, you didn't say anything. I didn't question. You are often quiet after trips.

I know that you lied.

You get off the plane at 9:30 pm, groggy, at first, since you normally go to bed early. The cool autumn air wakes you up once you got out of the airport and stared out at the confusion of cars, buses, taxis. It's easy to get a taxi driver to take you into the heart of the city – past houses, restaurants, and night clubs – to her apartment above the taco shop downtown.

“Downgrading,” she told me once on the phone.

You find the building stuffy and covered in dust. It smells like taco grease and Tabasco. When you knock, she looks through the peephole before opening the door, three separate locks sliding open before the door swings in.

She is wearing a pink sweatsuit. Her hair, half brown, half gray, is shoved into a sloppy ponytail.

“What are you doing here?” You'd told me she was expecting you. She has drool down her cheek.

“Mom.” You feel chilled. You're not used to the cold anymore and there is no heat in the hallway here but what radiates from the walls of the three small apartments.

“Yes? What?” she asks, sounding annoyed. She has deep wrinkles and she is not smiling.

“I just needed to talk to you.”

She doesn't know what this means.

“You could have called,” she says. “What do you have that fancy phone for anyway?”

You had called. You'd gotten a busy signal for days. You'd booked the soonest plane you could get. When you told me you were going, you'd acted like you thought you'd told me before. You acted like you'd booked the tickets ages ago.

You're just standing there in the doorway, your bag in your hand.

“Well?” she asks. “Are you going to come in?”

The apartment has four rooms: bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen. You place your bag by the couch, the one covered in floral patterns from the 70s we tried to get rid of but she refused to replace. She says it's still the most comfortable couch there is. You hate sleeping on it. It's lumpy.

She goes into the kitchen, puts a kettle on the stove. She turns the knob for the gas and it click, click, clicks. She turns it off, opens the cupboard above the stove, pulls out a lighter, turns the knob again, flicks on the lighter, the blue flames flare, she puts the lighter back in the cupboard and shuts the door.

“Your father says the Twins don't stand a chance this year.” She says it as she riffles through a basket of tea packets.

Your father ran off to Canada with another woman. They talk on the phone every Sunday. She doesn't tell him he is living in sin. She doesn't think about it that way anymore. Her first son is married and having a child. Her second son is engaged. She does yoga every Friday with members of her church.

“How long are you planning on staying?” she asks.

You shrug. You have not bought a return ticket. You could not decide what date. I have just begun my third trimester. You have told me you will be gone for a week.

Ex. 4 Janell Zimmerer "A star's loss"

She imagined the sky set in blue flame, like ice sprinting across the vagrant nothingness that would extend till eternity. She could no longer see the stars that she had stared at every morning since her father had disappeared. The skylight above here bed now flashed in blues, in greens, lapping at the soft patches that slowly hid over come the stars and now, like the aurora, set down an ocean of light. They wouldn’t notice of course, the blues, the greens, the soft purples—no they wouldn’t see the ocean of light that floods over the sky nightly now.

She imagined that she had been watching this war between the stars and the blue fire slowly over taking everything until it too was stars, moons, cars, dogs, people, solar systems, and all that it touch. But still the people around her went on going to the store, talking on their phones, eating frozen dinners in front of reality t.v. Yes she knew this is what would happen. It is hard to say the moment it would hit the moment the world would start to end, but it would be a slow decline into blueness. What happened after that she had no idea? The stars had lost one night as she lay in her bed.

There had been a boy she saw at the store that day. His hair was jet black and she dreamt of making love to him under the blue flicking sky. The soft lights licking at the sky mirror his tongue licking at her insides. The world was aflame burning slowing to the majestic light that appeared above them. His hands fell against her shoulders and legs twirled around legs, binding them. It was a slow thrusting then short burst that filled her while above she scratched at the world she loved dying.

She would find a new world in him the spots of freckles on his back, the thin lips that parted and met hers as they kissed and pressed flesh against flesh. He had small feet and big smooth hands that grappled with her bra. She had never had sex, she did not know what that first penetration of what appeared to her like a black hole. Sucking all that is around it into it. She had never even seen one before in a magazine or book but she thought it would be dark and vast like a black hole diving into her.

It left her puzzled as she stared up at the stars disappearing as the season changed. How would the stars, and the dead shine have lost? How would blue fire slowly consume the sky with its blinding daylight and stark night light. Wrapped in his arms, after she would notice the sly smile that crept in the corner of his mouth.

4

I could feel my phone vibrating between the seams of my jeans. I hoped nobody in class could hear the vibration created between cloth and skin, the collateral jingle of my keys. I’ve never recalled my phone ever ringing so long before. Why do I have so many keys? The class went on as I fidgeted as if to pee. The teacher looked at me quizzically.

“Do you have something you want to add?” the teacher asked.

“No. No,” I said.

The class continued talking about – what I couldn’t remember. I could only think about the vibration in my pants. Who was calling? Was it Matt? Was it Evan? What day was it? Wednesday? They’d be at the CIP; it was unofficial international night. People from various different countries out to experience a different country. And I was in class talking about – what was it again? I thought I heard someone say something about surrealism, or was it colonialism? It was some kind of ism.

What was Matt and Evan doing? Knowing them, knowing unofficial international night at the CIP, they were playing pool with some foreign ladies. Ladies that aren’t interested in me, but Matt and Evan will be chatting them up while I try to take the pool game perhaps a bit more seriously than I should. Nobody seems to notice the pool game. Maybe it’s just as well that I’m in class? The chatter blends into clashes between billiard balls and a ringing register.

“Well, that’s a good point, but…” someone said.

I try ordering another drink, or is it Matt’s round to buy? He jumps in ahead, fine by me. The carpet’s matted down, flat as linoleum, but I could still hear the sound of fiber sticking to the soles of feet. The rumble of a propane fire near the entrance melts the chatter. Is it cold enough there for a fire? I think I smell the faint scent of cigarette smoke clinging on plaster from before the smoking ban. Is it a whisky night? No, Matt’s buying, that means tequila with wheels, no salt. Cazadores. The smell of Pub Nachos waft throughout the bar, or was it pizza bread? This many drinks in, it’s difficult to tell.

“The problems concerning that particular ism is that…” someone said.

Evan’s telling that story about getting sucker punched again, and the girl from Ghana is eating it up. All she can see are his tattoos and large beard, a six-foot frame sturdy for fucking. He smiles rather meekly for someone his size, but his body moves closer to hers. The girl from Ghana, let’s say her name is Abena, leans toward him to hear better. It’s international night, and it’s loud. The CIP is a rathskeller and the sound doesn’t know where to run. It bounces off the upside down martini glasses and into a bucket of bleach water full of rags.

Mary must be here somewhere. She’s always down for a game of pool. Matt and Evan, at this point, are too busy talking to women.

Matt’s talking to some girl from Finland and he’s probably telling her a story from his time in the Navy, the time he spent stationed in Iceland. She’ll forget that she’s Finnish, or maybe she just doesn’t understand what he’s saying. He does have a tendency to slur when he’s drunk.

I’m drunk on hypotheticals.

Mary comes down from a smoke in the alley, probably not just cigarettes. I offer to buy her a drink if she plays a game of pool with me.

Bench is working the bar and it’s Evan’s turn to buy. I imagine he’ll order what he always orders, a round of shitty beer and even shittier whisky. A tallboy of Rainier and Beam’s Eight Star. The orange darkness lighting the bar makes the whisky look darker than it actually is. I think it might make it taste better. The smell of stale cigarettes cutting the bitter cheapness of the booze.

Matt and Evan are sitting at the booth sandwiched between the pinball machines and the jukebox. One of them gets up, either one, and walks behind the group of grad students playing darts so he can put money in the juke. The dartboard is frayed and could use replacing. Same for the darts. The Adam’s Family pinball machine is tilted.

Likely, the jukebox is “out of order,” which means that Bench has heard Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt one too many times and decided that unplugging the juke for the rest of the night was in the best interest of his next customer. Either Matt or Evan stands in front of the jukebox trying to shove money into a dead machine. They’re tired of listening to metal. Metal, they might be thinking, isn’t the best music with which to woo women… from any country.

It’s possible that I hear the sound of spilt beer and breaking glasses are getting in the way of conversation, but I think I’m just getting drunk at this point. They continue talking and talking and talking. Now that the music is out of their hands, who cares? It’s as if being misunderstood gives them a free pass.

There’s a vibration, but nobody feels it.

Exercise #4 (Christie)

Gary looks up when the door chimes and slides open. He recognizes the coat - a long black affair tightly cinched at the waist - though the woman's hair is drawn up into a messy bun today. Last week it had been loose and slightly damp, as if she'd been caught in the rain. The smell of her shampoo (maybe she had just showered) had flustered him. She is as small and dark as he is large and ruddy. When she had turned to study the tanks that day, he had been able to bend over her head without being noticed. Sandlewood and vanilla. It had lingered for a while after she left, almost covering the weedy tang of the fish station.

He busies himself with arranging plastic bags and rubber bands on the counter, watching as the woman explains herself to the assistant manager who holds a small brown paper bag she's handed him with thumb and forefinger. Gary tries to remember which fish she had chosen on the previous visit. It had taken her nearly an hour. She wanted to know where the fish were hatched, how compatible one species was with another, hardiness, growth potential, the ideal tank environment. He was used to such questions and answered them with the aplomb of a marine biologist, though he is little more than a glorified pool cleaner, waging a constant battle against marine scum in the fifty-four tanks he monitors. What he does remember is that the top lip of her ear, behind which she has smoothed her dark hair, is pierced with a tiny silver hoop.

As the woman studies her receipt and waits for the assistant manager to take a phone call at the customer service desk, Gary pinches out a few pellets for the Beta tank, smiling lovingly into the swarm of blue and red fish that flash toward the food, just in case she looks over. And when he raises his head again, he catches her eye. She gives him a small, tight smile and looks back down at her hands. A Blueface Angel, he remembers. She had finally decided when he had told her that Angels liked their space, that they flourished in cool dark places. They were cave fish. He'd read that in one of the brochures on the huge literature rack that no one bothers to reference.

As he pours wormy flakes into the huge goldfish tank, he wonders if she'd brought a water sample as mandated by the fish return policy. She'd read it closely, asking questions about the "properly established system," that is required to ensure the 15 day guarantee. He looks up again to see her browsing through the pet-themed greeting cards near the cashier stands, still waiting for the assistant manager to finish on the phone. She doesn't seem like the pet-owning type. In rare cases, a fish technician is sent to the customer's home to test the PH levels of the home tank. Gary smooths his red smock and straightens his employee badge, ready to volunteer for this mission if necessary. He'd follow her to her apartment in one of the high rises built along the river. In the elevator, she'd admit that she may not have correctly assembled the filter, and give him a glassy wink. She would close the door behind him and stand with her back against the frame, unbelting her black coat slowly, slowly. Before anything else, he would pull the clip out of her hair, letting if fall softly down onto her shoulders. Sandlewood. Vanilla. Grey eyes under a dark fringe. Her ears are as soft and delicate as they look, veined with a pulsing network of bluish vessels, covered in pale down. The little silver hoop, hooked through the paper-thin cartilage is cool, tasting sharp and distinct in his mouth against the warm leather of her lobe. With his teeth, he releases the unseen clasp and lets is slide smoothly from the tiny hole and onto his tongue.

When he looks up again, she is gone.