"Untitled" Spring 2013 Poetry

Untitled

Black plastic hands

            sweep with a slow

                        cadenced grace.

     And why are you not here,

To hear

the ticks

tear through 

my own

heart beats? 

"You Dick" Summer 2013 Fiction (Rough Draft)

This is a very very rough draft of a short story I have been working on.

You Dick

 

             I’m sitting here, at my desk, in my claustrophobic cubicle, hyped up on my tenth coffee for the day, thinking of you. It’s five past eight at night. I’m sitting here five past eight at night, hyped up on coffee, printing some report, for God only knows what, because of you, you Dick.

            The clock on the opposite side of the office ticks with a slavish, grotesque hesitancy and I can’t stand it. Each second, that small hand slows itself, as if refusing to push forward. Maybe it doesn’t want to be here, at five past eight. Maybe it’s too tired to deal with overachievers, like me, never allowing it to just fall off the wall, crawl under a desk and hug itself for the evening. I want to relax too you know. This clock and I should go out for drinks, just forget about work and reports and you. It would be easier that way. Maybe I should replace the photo of you on my desk with one of the clock; maybe he’d at least be grateful. Because this clock and I, tired as we may seem, could have some real fun, go dancing, go shopping, sit by the river at night and talk, hype up on coffee together instead of alone.

            And isn’t sad, you Dick, that I find a clock more attractive than you right now? It’s slow, small hand, a chubby black, smacking, every second, against those sixty dashes. I bet they’re happy to be smacked. Maybe you could smack me again, like we used to. How about after work you slip off my heels, rip my shirt and we jump in the shower? I could be your dash again. I would beg to be your dash again.

            You’re always so tired though. Shouldn’t I be the one that’s tired? No, you say, I’m the one home all day doing the real work. Really? Is cooking really your work, you Dick? Because I would love to cook, I would love you to teach me to cook. But, there’s no time, never any time. Yet, even the small hand finds a second each day to smack around his sixty dashes. We don’t even have time to get pregnant, not that I’d want to bring one into this world anyway. What use would it be? I’d be forced to squeeze that baby out on my chair mat, right beneath me, hide it between my paper shredder and coat rack until lunch hour. And wouldn’t Miss Patty Sweets just love that.

            You know Patty Sweets, remember? The woman with bright dyed orange hair and those cankles. Well, you work next to her one day and then tell me my job isn’t the real work. Heinous, that’s what she is. Every morning I hear the air pulse through her too large, bleached white Keds. Her mullet hair reflects the fluorescent light into my eyes and half the day I duck beneath the walls of my cubicle with sunglasses on. Her voice is graveled from cigarettes; even her plastic hoop earrings carry the smoky scent. And Patty’s tights are always getting nicked by the desk, the chair, the filing cabinets, the copier. Do you know who she asks for nail polish, to stabilize those ever growing holes, in panic mode? Me. Because she saw me once doing the same to my tights and knows that I keep a bottle hidden in my bottom drawer, under the files of denied clients. She also knows I lock that drawer because I know that she knows that I have that special clear nail polish bottle. I also know that Patty Sweets is a raving kleptomaniac. She likes to steal donuts from Margery Hunt every Wednesday on “Over the Hump Donut Day.” But her cubicle has packed more than a few employees’ donuts and I’ve seen it all. There’s no way she’s getting my clear nail polish too.

            So don’t tell me that my work isn’t real work, since I’m here, and you’re not. Where are you anyway? You haven’t called, haven’t texted, haven’t emailed. Have you re-tapped into that “entrepreneurial” mind set of yours again and flown to, driven to, walked to, skipped to, hopped to, some random mountain that sits atop some random state, that I would never think you to be? By perfect, unique, unlooked for happenstance that random location has no 3G, 4G, 5G, 6G cell service. And so, for the following forty-eight hours, you will be unable to call me, unable to reach me at all, no matter how desperate you are. Please, don’t try that on me when you get home, you’ll stutter. We both know you stutter when you lie.      

            I know you’re not with “Sandra Bullock,” that’s for sure. Oh, you didn’t think I realized you were seeing another woman on the side? That makes you an ignorant dick. You named her that on your phone’s contacts. Did you think I’d believe you knew THE Sandra Bullock? You barely know Kermit the Frog. Next time you use my laptop, sign out of the private email account you created for secret “Sandra” purposes. But “Sandra’s” emails were entertaining. I guess she’s not a fan of no sex either. Even the adulteress is smarter than me, whoever she is, because after one year, four months, six days and eleven hours (quoted from her email of course) she chose to dump you, you Dick.

            But me, I’m still here. Still waiting for the man, who noticed me walking up concrete stairs eight years ago, to be what he never will be. You noticed how I juggled a box filled with a radio, pencil sharpener, and picture frames with my leopard sequined purse and bright purple lunch bag. You offered to carry the box and then insisted after I declined. You brought me to my first cubicle at the business and helped me decorate. Your whale decorated tie and navy blue suspenders turned me on. You then asked me out by pretending to be my first customer call. You quit your job so that we “could be together” and not break company policy. You were not my knight in shining armor, but my co-worker man friend with an abundance of staple supplies. And after never finding another job, after owing thousands of dollars in bank loans you cannot pay back, after crashing my Vespa into a field of cows (I’ll never forget this one), I’ll never lose faith in the man that once noticed me eight years ago.

            That is why I’m still here. Still sitting in this cubicle at quarter past eight, sexually stimulated by inanimate objects and wishing you’d touch me again. Still working at this business, because it’s the last shred of your dignity, the last bit of your white collar masculinity. When you quit, you made it appear as if you were doing it for us, to be what Romeo and Juliet could never be. But instead of a tag-team suicide for the premise of love, we settled for a studio apartment, a pull out couch, mumbled words in the morning over coffee and stale cereal, your hushed sobs in the shower, my holey underpants. Would death or at least separation not be more appealing?

            You quit eight years ago because I was an easy excuse, a “get out of jail free” card, a savior from the toilet of lost souls to the horrors of capitalist sewage. And now? What excuse do we have to relinquish our duties from each other? My excuse can be that you are a dick, a very pesky, tricky, unlikeable dick.

            But I still love you.

            That is my excuse to stay and the reason why you will never read this email. The reason I will delete it the second I complete typing the last word. The reason you will never know that when I awake at five in the morning, I stare at your eyes as they flutter under their lids until the alarm rings for six. The reason you will never know how I used to love tracing that one deep blue vein from the front of your neck to the arch of your back. The reason you will never know how I wanted to buy a shotgun and blow “Sandra’s” head off. Not because she was with you, but because she thought she was better than you. The reason you will never know that I flinch crawling into bed with you, with your sweaty toes, with your pimply arms, with your unnatural soft legs, but I could never sleep an entire night without you beside me. The reason that I know you don’t care and the reason why I’m so afraid to tell you the truth, you Dick.             

"Library" Spring 2013 Poetry

Library

She sat in the library staring

through the tinted glass windows, tarrying.

Rain raged upon the roof and the

acoustic clangs against metal drew her attention.

Neglecting to notice any others, a sly hand

grasped her arm, greedily and

eager for her exotic, earthy flesh. The

raw, rough skin fell to her wrist and squeezed.  

"Lecture on Loss" Spring 2013 Poetry

Lecture on Loss

Maybe I missed it hiding under his

folds of skin. Or perhaps the phlegm-ish

chuckle in his throat rebuffed my anguish

and the ever present stench of his

 

death. But when the pale fluorescent lights

illuminated the bruised colored veins underneath

his white paper thin membranes and the lungs beneath

his chest heaved and spat dark mucus reflected in the light,

 

I had to recognize that mortal pain.

He was no longer my grandfather,

as if never in human history was anyone a grandfather.

He was just pain; ominous and unknowable pain.

Crusty, lopsided lips gaped open. My own

freckled face wet with the brackish tears of loss.

Because it was only then that I realized, loss

can be described as nothing more than one’s own

recognition that there is no love when facing the end of life.   

 

"The Lifeguard" Spring 2013 Poetry

The Lifeguard  

I.

A reflective sun sparkled

in the happiness of the heat

and the thick, humid air drowsed

me on top of my perch.

Only tiny Eddy, his bright

orange floaters glued to his skin

with water and sweat, broke

the calm of the chemical blue. 

 

Under the shade of the umbrella

my eyes closed while the cicadas sang

their alluring ballads.

II.

With shrill screams like rapid dogs

I awoke as chubby pre-pubescent girls

crashed into the pool.

 

In the midst of their mayhem

one of these female leviathans

raised Eddy’s floater above her head.

 

The other laid, half-deflated

upon the soaked concrete,

its moist droplets slowly

evaporating into the dry air.