New

“A new decade.”

“I suppose.”

“No resolutions, I take it?”

“People don’t change. Not really.”

“We’ve changed.”

“Not at the core. What changes over the years is awareness. We become more aware of our patterns, our flaws, our relationship dynamics. But fundamentally? I’m the same person I was at twenty. I just know too much now.”

“Isn’t that pretty fatalistic? Like we’re just computers recycling the same basic program. Ghosts in our machines.”

“We’re human enough to recognize that, at a certain point in life, we are largely powerless. Again, that terrible awareness. Of being boxed in. But our wants will remain our wants. Our compulsions laugh at all that mighty understanding.”

“Funny. My compulsions are all telling me to kiss you.”

“Yeah?”

“Bleakness just so happens to be an aphrodisiac for me."

“You’re pretty messed up.”

“I’m aware.”

“Ha.”

“No, what I’m actually doing is demonstrating free will. My free will wants to kiss you.”

“Does that line work on all the guys?”

“Pretty much.”

“But a midnight kiss is clichéd, expected. You’re just following someone else’s—”




“Sorry.”

“What for?”

“You’ve got lipstick right—”

“Here?”

“Mm hmm.”

“It was worth it.”

“I’m glad.”

“Sorry if I bummed you out before. I can be a morose drunk.”

“You’re not drunk.”

“Even worse.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I love you.”

“Why?”

“It’s my destiny.”

“Heady word . . . destiny.”

“Same thing you were talking about earlier. Just wrapped in a prettier package. But I’ll own these thoughts and feelings. I can’t escape them, yet they can’t be taken from me, either. I’m free to hold them. It’s like Goethe said. ‘If I love you, what business is it of yours?’”

“Hmm.”

“For instance. This conversation. It’s all in my mind.”

“True.”

“That kiss you wiped away? It never really happened.”

“No. It didn’t.”

“But in some sense, it did. Electrons brushed electrons. They relayed a story. I heard it. I felt it.”

“Those ghosts . . .”

“Chained to their machines . . . ”

“Will haunt.”

“And play.”

“My brain is starting to hurt.”

“Drink some more.”

“That’s the smartest thing you haven’t really said all night.”

“Ha.”

“I was wrong. You have changed. This is, hands down, the most depressing fantasy ever.”

“It’s not a fantasy.”

“No?”

“It’s a conversation.”

“Ah.”

“Happy New Year, darling.”

“Yes.”

-----

I've written a "New" story for

the last 3 years now.  Here are

the 2008 and 2009 versions.

Merry Christmas

A diamond day

kisses

the long skin

of night

with silent lips

of pear-shaped cut,

birthing the blood

of resurrection

in that most

sacred stone,

the human heart

------

Merry Christmas and

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Hug your loved ones tight,

and your kids (if you got 'em)

tighter.  I hope the warmth of

the season embraces you all.

Under the Pine

She waited for the moment.

No footsteps in the hallway. Her parents’ voices a muffled wave on the other side of the wall. The clock glowing 11:08 on her night stand.

It was time.

She grabbed Snoopy. Cracking the door, she scuttled down the hall, her shadow a silent leap ahead of her heart. Through the sheer curtains in the living room, she could see snow sink through the wonderlight. Swirling snow, tossed by an invisible hand.

It didn’t worry her. Rudolph’s nose was bright. He wouldn’t have any trouble.

He couldn’t.

The tree’s lights reflected rainbows in her eyes. She smiled with a candy-cane mouth. Excitement fizzed from some sleepy center up to dancing lips, and she clutched Snoopy tighter to squelch the squeal inside her chest. Her feet rocked from heel, to tiptoe, and back.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered. “Oh, boy.”

A crackling noise ran from her parents’ room, and up her spine. She scurried past the manger scene, and the piano bench, which still held a plate with two cookies. And the glass of milk to wash down a red star, a blue angel.

Dear Santa, I hope you have time to eat these. You must be very tired.

She crept toward the space she’d picked out. At the back of the tree, in the corner of the room. Where a tangled bow of light cords hid.  But if she hugged her knees, she’d fit just so.
 
Picking her way through the stack of presents, she thought of the Grinch, slithering his way around the other Whos’ houses, leaving crumbs much too small for the other Whos’ mouses. Her bottom knocked down an ornament, or two, but she didn’t bother putting them back up. Not now.

She couldn’t.

Almost time.  It must be. The sharpness of pine tickled her nose. Looking up, she inhaled the carnival of lights with eyes thrown open wide. Up, up, up they shot. Her head fell back on Snoopy’s tummy. Her fingers reached to touch fresh sap.

Sticky. Her dad told her that bugs could get stuck in it. Forever.

A door creaked. Footsteps pattered. She held her breath, but her heart was a drum.

Pa ra pa pum pum.

“Who’s eating the cookies?”

“My turn.”

“You did it last year!”

“All right. One for each of us. Claire was generous.”

“I’ll take the angel.”

“Fine. But I’m telling Santa you’re the greedy one.”

She saw them. Eating Santa’s cookies. She saw them. Something like sap squeezed up the tube of her throat. And burned.

Her mouth opened.

“I wish we'd gotten one more thing for each of the stockings.”

“Stuff more candy in. They won’t notice.”

“I just don’t want them to be disappointed.”

She pressed her lips together. Hard. Tried to make herself even smaller. Crumb-like.

Daddy’s glasses glowed gold through the branches. Very close now. Her breath whistled as he set the stockings upright against the presents. He adjusted the candy canes to hook just so at the top. His face softened into creases.

She could see a bit of grey in the stubble of his chin.

The hot stuff in her throat sank lower. Into the tender part of her chest. Daddy. It warmed her. The Christmas lights—a kaleidoscope of red, blue, yellow, purple—all blurred into gold.

“There. Perfect.”

She had to sneeze.

She was going to sneeze.   

“This will probably be the last year for Claire and Santa.”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t asked already.”

“She wants to believe. She always has.”

Snoopy’s ear tasted like dirty cotton balls. But biting down worked. She didn’t sneeze.

Instead, she would stay still and silent. As a mouse. Until her parents finished. And when tomorrow came, her smile wouldn’t waver, or break.

It couldn’t.

POP!

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Pierced by a needle,
cranberry kissed,
big belly laughs
spacing hearts
too tart
to pop
by mouth

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Bursting from its skin,
warm butter bath,
the movie man
scooping heaps
into
a striped
red bag

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Slathered by a scent,
holiday puffed,
a little boy
smiles large,
pressing
Mom’s heart
to go

pop

             POP

                          POP!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

We are on a picnic.  By the lake you grew up near.   I am wearing a summer dress, a few Hail Mary’s above my ankles, while you are getting burnt behind the knees.  You are feeding me the fleshy part of a peach.  The juice dribbles down my chin and melts into my neck.  A bee thinks I’m nectar, buzzing over breasts like arched petals, but it is your tongue tasting honey some minutes later.  In that soft crescent behind my ear.

The cicadas urge us on.  The woods pulse and hum.

Your hand disappears under my skirt.  My thighs part like gloves.  The rolling pressure of your thumb is the fulcrum upon which my life sees and saws.  You take your time.  Lips full above me, the sun a halo around your head.  Your eyes two magnets for an open-mouthed gaze.  My neck cranes for you, but you understand that anticipation is the soul of desire.  You want me to reach so long and sweet for it—for you—that when we touch, time is warped and confused.  And briefly breaks up.

I bend to the winds of a thumb and cupped palm.  I suck your name from the pulp on my tongue.  A skirt conceals nothing from trees and ice water.  I am open.  Undone.  Your hand is blood sunshine.  Evolution feeds on me, base pairs flipping and cartwheeling and slipping new bonds.

The thumb, the palm, is not enough. I want more.  I need . . .

More.

I ask you for it.

Please.

Please . . .

Your lips are sweeter than the fruit.  Your tongue tastes like my neck.  Your body, moving with mine, is a leaf flowing down a river’s song.

On a Sunday afternoon.


****


I take you to the water.

A part of me wants to tell you that this was the place where I learned to be a man.  A part of me is close to telling it.  But I can’t tell you that.

Instead, we skip rocks on the water.  And hunt for salamanders beneath the wet earth.   We lay down our blanket, open a wicker basket, and talk about why people don’t take picnics anymore.  You say it’s because they’ve forgotten how.  I say it’s because people believe in irony more than sentiment anymore.   Either way, we’re both feeling good, if a little superior.  Which I don’t mind.  Because let’s face it—we are right now.

I try to imagine what my boyhood self would think of my being here.  With you.  I think he’d be scared.  And electrified.

I could touch you all day long.  Your knees, round and brown from the summer.  Your pretty ankles, uncrossing like a broken promise.  The richness of your thighs.   The spreading dampness on your

white

       cotton

 see-through

         underwear

I am restrained because I sense you want me to be.  I am not a boy any longer.

When you finally reach for me, when you finally open to me, I want to push as hard as the cicadas.   I want to fill the forest with a storm.  I want, I want—

Instead, I breathe your name.

****

I answer you.


----

This is another excerpt from the new novel, since that's what I'm focused on right now.  I figured we could use some warmth, too, now that winter is setting in!

Note to Self . . .

 . . . this feels good. 

This may or may not be the final cover from Medallion Press, pending a request of mine regarding the font.  Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out!  The setting, including the background clock in the Musée d'Orsay, comes from an important scene in the novel.  And the cover artist was inspired by Matisse's "Plum Blossoms" painting in a lovely fashion:  

My favorite touch, however, has gotta be those crossing spoons.  Love 'em. 

The book's up on Medallion's site now, too.  You can even rotate it!  Which I've now done 3170 times.  Ahem.

I'm also hot in Canada.  

The book's not coming out until August 1st, 2010.  Yep, eight more months (it's been a year since I signed the contract).  But this certainly helped to make it feel more real.  Most of all, I was happy to think about Daisy and Mathieu again.  In my mind, they're as much a part of that museum as any painting.

Our characters do live on. 

Black Friday

A bird sits in

the palm of

my hand,

collecting an energy,

its hollow bones a

precious persuasion

to turn

out,

and not

in

And I was going to

pen a plea

about the collective

hunger of countries,

from Appalachia

to somewhere other

in Africa,

on this black

market day

of fast-food,

faster-mouthed,

cowboy

consumption

But that

faithless bird

collected itself

right into nothingness,

fooled by a

false clarity

of clouds on panes,

and my eyes

recede

(I let them leave),

rolling to

seek the

smudge of truth

at the back

of my id

So here I am again,

masturbating

with the ink

of my words

on an organ of rain,

feeling for

the perfect exposition

to rub resolutions

that can wring

from Freud

a nod of epiphany,

as he strokes

the leather

and beard

But there are

few arrivals

among the fallen,

only more pains,

more windows,

more flights

and departures

to get lost in

and hungry,

if also

and blessedly

corralled and

dazzled,

fucked and

humbled

And certainty is

a black and white

straitjacket

I’d love to try on,

buy

and burrow in,

hibernating

all winter long

in a reflectionless

room

that plays

our song,

over and over

and over

again

Instead,

I’ll sing something

brokenly,

like a small child

afraid of an
echo's betrayal,

my tune changing

on a dime

or your quicker nickel,

wheels spinning for

the weightlessness

of air

in that doubtful country

between take-off and

landing

Until my bones are

hollowed of

all their finite ego,

this cheap longing

Homecoming

To the Ojibwe, she was known as the Foolish Girl. For she refused the comfort and warmth of the wigwam, preferring a tent of stars instead. Even in the winter, her family could not pull her away from the sky long enough to sleep with them.  Yet her sister was surprised to find a warm hand when she pressed it to her heart as a plea. As if the girl’s bones were wood that held a hidden fire.

They called her the Foolish Girl. Because they could not see.

On this night, deep in winter’s darkness, she gazed upon a red star winking like an eye on the eastern horizon. Her lips formed words without thought. An owl answered her, but she did not hear.

She wished to marry that star. She wished for the star’s light to enter her. To pour from her hair, her skin, her mouth when she sang. She wished for the star’s love to keep her warm, far away from the cold and darkness of this place her people called Turtle Island.

She fell into the sleep of silence with ice on her tongue.  Her eyes looked up. 

When she awoke, she was in the star world. It was very different, and very beautiful. Light prevailed. The red star was there, transformed into a man with red hair. He loved her well, as it was effortless to love in this world. She was as happy as she hoped to be. Time passed on the crest of a wave. Unmarked by seasons, hunger, or cold.

An old woman lived in the star world, too. She sat upon a hole in the sky. One day, while the old lady stretched her legs, the girl approached the hole. She could hear a sound travel up from the forgotten world below.

It was the flute of her people. Carried to her on a wind spirit’s back.

In its song was the crickets’ collective memory, an owl’s ghostly call, the breath of her sister’s unborn baby against a soft, wheat breast. It was the beating of snow from the cardinal’s wings. It was a lone wolf’s baying, and a mother’s lullaby swaddling her in sleep.

It was the gravity of home.

The wave of time broke. The flute’s song was drowned under a torrent of rain falling from the sky. The Foolish Girl thought of ceremonies she would miss, harvests she could not meet, a family’s river of grief. The longing to see them manifested itself as lightning, while regret pounded its black fist against the terrible brightness. And the rain poured harder from its hole.

When the old woman returned, she saw straight into the girl’s heart. The light in her soul had turned blue.

“I sit here for good reason,” she chastised the girl.

But gravity was already stretching the hole in her heart. Pulling her down. And the old woman was fonder of the foolish girl than any other of her star children. So she turned her back on the hole in the sky, as the girl leaped from a womb.

A cord of light swung across the night sky. Another falling star.

And before morning dawned, the broken cries of an infant answered the owl’s imperfect call. The breast was offered. She drank its warm milk.

They would come to name her: "Who Lightens the Whole Place."  Because there were stars in her eyes when she looked at the people, and the home, she so loved.

This they could see.

--------

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

While the kernel of this story does come from an Ojibwe  (also

known as Chippewa) legend, I took many, many liberties

to make it my own.  "Who Lightens the Whole Place"

is an authentic Anishinabe name, however.  

The painting is "Indian Camp" by Carl Henry von Ahrens.  He

befriended the Ojibwe in Ontario and was given the name,

"Cluster of Stars."

I hope that all of you who celebrate this holiday

will enjoy the day with loved ones.  And if you can't

be home, then I hope you still feel the light of

love in that warmest of houses inside our hearts.

I am grateful for you all. 

Suspension

Pulled for submisison

-----

This photo captured my attention a week ago,

and hasn't left me since. The rest of the series,

taken as part of a university project,

is here.

Excavation

I don’t know, I don’t know.  I never know.

This is what I know.

I remember finding an old tortoise shell in our backyard.  Near the woods at the bottom of the hill.   I slipped my hand into its domed cave, where a small head once brooded itself.  My fingers peeked out to form a Hydra tail.  It was strange, if also perfect.  For the rest of the afternoon, I wore the shell as a bracelet.  I was some kind of mythological creature, or maybe the tortoise from Aesop’s fable (though, in truth, I was always the hare).  I don’t remember the details, just the feeling.  I felt the peculiar, singular joy of a child living without constructed stages.  I was uncontained.

I could tell that my mother was disturbed by the thing.  And I see why now.  This hollowed token of death, swallowing up her daughter’s arm.  My mother had a tender heart, you see.  But children are fascinated by death, and endings.  An ending is the limit of imagination.  The farthest crawl.  To make an ending a beginning?  This is the beginning of a child testing infinity, of being God.

My father made me remove the shell when it was time for practice.   I’m sure I made some kind of scene.  And I don’t remember what happened to the shell afterward.  Perhaps it was buried, like the box you uncovered.  But years later, when we were living in Paris, he bought me a tortoiseshell bracelet.  I pretended to like it.  Because he’d remembered.  And some part of him felt guilty for what was taken from me.

Because of you, I remember this.

And this image in my mind has been played.  Over and over again.  Of sliding my grown hand through that narrow window, and watching my fingers, my palm, my wrist just . . .

Disappear.