Penduline Press

The walls were particularly dirty today. They got all speckled with grease and cranberries during Thanksgiving and then no one really bothered to clean them up. Fly sighed, scraping a piece of lurid orange paint off of his foot. The owners of the paint were having an equally lurid conversation – someone’s mother had stolen someone’s sister’s boyfriend, or was it someone’s sister’s friend had pretended to be someone’s boyfriend?

When I stare off into space I notice that it never stares back and this is upsetting because there should be some basic interaction even a snake will rear back its head and rhinoceros beetles will make evasive moves on the forest floor like the woman who thought my name was “Spike” but you never know how these interactions will go and whether the thick Hawaiian air will wash back like a tsunami and suck you out to sky and if you make believe you are swimming you will float to the top as long as your eyes are even with the top deck of the cruise ship and your feet are pointed in the right direction

       December 1st
       Sitting naked on the bed of a man whose face isn’t familiar enough for me to describe, I’m an early Christmas present.
       He’s skinny, a bit of a ginger. That’s all I know for sure.

The pretzel-tongued fragments burst into applause
while all around me a voice kept repeating
You comma you comma you

Afterwards, we pizza-walked across the twice-filtered boulevard,
wondering if we would ever recapture that unconquerable sense of snapdragon futility

It’s difficult to do well in this world without a conventional name and a well-balanced disposition. It’s almost impossible to succeed when you’re not interested in television. When you don’t have a cell phone. When you like to spend time by yourself. A lot of time by yourself. Too much time by yourself. When you like to read. Old books. Ones written a long time ago.

       “This is just like New Year’s,” Glenn said loudly.
       Tina turned from the boxes. The mascara running down her cheeks reminded Glenn of spider webs, only thicker.
       “This is nothing like New Year’s. It’s the beginning of summer, nimrod.”
       “No, I mean, remember how you guys came here last New Year’s Eve? Playing Monopoly all night. And after the sun came up, we made pancakes and then you guys went home. But now you’re living here instead of going back home.”
       “We can’t go back home because I blew up our house with an atomic bomb,” Vincent called out.

       My high-pitched screams ring in my ears, but not loud enough that I don’t notice I’m peeing myself as I fall backwards over the rug my feet tangle in, and Meemaw lurches out of the chair, flapping her hands around in front of her like bony bird wings. These weird hoots burst out of her drooping mouth.
       She’s going to take off and peck my face off.
       “What in the merciful heavens is wrong with ya, Georgie?” She’s so loud, and I’m crying and trying to keep the snot out of my mouth, pushing at the stupid carpet.
       “Your teeth, Meemaw, your teeth!”

I didn’t discover that the ocean was dead until months after it died.  Refugees from the pages of banned books ask directions to the future.  All the things that might help should be indexed somewhere.  I have begun a list in my head:  plantain for colds, raspberry for stomachaches, red clover for nerves.

Loneliness and confusion are less formidable than they used to be. I like fresh eggs in the morning and learning the names of trees. It’s hard to remember how self-annihilation ever looked fetching against the joy of a gooey cheddar omelet or a row of mountain aspens twitching silvery in the wind. Somehow it did.

He reached into the dark, fumbling until his hands closed around the sad, broken thing. The branch was harder than he thought it would be, thinner and quite smooth, and some of the fear faded as he carefully slotted the broken halves back together. It was all a game; just a game. His mother would come soon, and they would laugh together at little Tobias Johnson’s talent for trouble.

Until then, he had always been good at puzzles.

It was all in his eyes—the power to heal, but it was a dark sort of healing, the kind that left you wanting more, that cured one ill but created a new one you never even knew you wanted. My head was full of arcane idioms I didn’t understand, concerning sow’s ears and pearls before swine. I imagined my open hand as the arabesque vessel awaiting the press of a single lucky doubloon. He dropped in it a tangle of grey string.

As you can imagine, my position as the Stew Custodian, a position I have held for quite some time now, means I have a great deal of influence and power within the group. But it also makes me feel very vulnerable and nervous. Bacteria can run riot anytime. So, anyone could accuse me of poisoning them. In a week of thin stew, when hunger gnaws away like saw teeth at the tensing bonds of our mutuality, many tempers can flare simultaneously. A catastrophic riot is not an unlikely event. This, by the way, is how I came to be guardian of the stew. Hunger is the great catalyst in human affairs. I am not sure anyone but me remembers the previous Guard, the awful grimace which was his last contribution when I skewered him. This group is not given to remembering.

4:10 pm   He is shaving for the second time today. A gray beard, more than anything else, says to the world, “This fellow is a patriarch who is to be replaced.”

5:28 pm   At the side of the altar of the church, the groom looms, tall, square-jawed. He directs his gaze, tentative at first, then stalwart, towards the procession of grandparents and mothers.

5:29 pm   The cloth of the celebrant’s garment is exceptionally busy, like the décor of the church, which dissolves Byzantine severity into excessive ornament and flourish.

5:29:30 pm   In the garish oil paintings of the Stations of the Cross, the scourged Christ is radiantly woebegone and aggressively pale, as if the painter had instructed his model to ape the symptoms of morning sickness.

5:30 pm   Each of the bridesmaids’ bouquets resembles a crown of tongues that have been severed, cloroxed, stiffened, and affixed to stems.

—-All lies are dirty. All people are liars. So, all people are dirty. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. The moon is made of cheese. Cheese is good to eat. Therefore, the moon is good to eat. Fahrenheit is not Celsius. Kelvin is not Fahrenheit. Therefore, Fahrenheit is not Kelvin.

–You’re an asshole. I hate assholes. Therefore, I hate you, pisshead!

Aunt Winnie’s green bean casserole was at best an acquired taste, certainly not for the faint of heart. If Mr. Hanh tried to be mindful of every bite….
       His peaceful words came back to haunt me as I raced my car up the drive. How important it was to “recognize” each item of food, really concentrate…how one must tune out the rest of the world and focus all one’s attention on each chew.
       “Good God!” I exclaimed, bursting in through the front door. “Get that plate away from him!”

Though fancying myself a keen observer of the human condition, I have failed utterly in my attempts to discern whether or not others are aware of this sad fact. I know my dearest wife does not share my opinion for what mother could look at the fruit of her own womb with anything other than maternal joy? It would be an affront to Nature for her to feel any other way.

Yet, of darling Millicent’s own beauty, I can say only this: she is the most pious woman I know. I have come to feel with increasing certainty that the child is the unique recipient of those repellent qualities springing forth from her side of the family.

       “What the hell did this?” Joshua was incredulous. He had moved a few feet away from the murder scene and had taken off his shoe, attempting to smear the fecal matter onto a nearby tree. “Shitshitshit.” I wasn’t sure if he was turning this experience into a crackpot mantra or simply cursing.
       I was doing my best not to scream. Not in a weak woman sort of way. I mean, sure it was disgusting, disturbing, sad. It’s more that I was frustrated by this distraction. I had finally mustered up the courage to confront Joshua about ending our union, and now we had to deal with, what…a bear or something? And why the hell was there a pig in the Tillamook anyways? This was just too much to even remotely want to deal with.

       If writing were the equivalent of a back rub, well, then, I suppose sheets of paper would line up in reams for their turn. But does anybody really think having ink swirls of pathos smeared all over your face and backside is a pleasure? Something to line up for?

I mean, the guy’s loco, bloody trophy heads or not. Everyone in our semi-affluent neighborhood has a multiple acre lot, we’ve all got lawns and gardens. We’re civilized people. Our trees are protected with wire or net, Irish Spring soap hung at deer-eye level. We don’t grab a 30.06 from under our bed and start pumping rounds into defenseless creatures as casually as clipping toenails. And then skewering those heads in barbaric fashion? Such behavior is the mark of a psychopath.

A constant stream of seaweed and trout travels between each body of water. They mingle with seahorses that offer the children rides on their backs. But the children stay put. They know their place; content to cuddle with starfish. No one knows about the lakes or ocean. No one knows about the children. They disappeared long ago. But parents stopped searching. Chalked up their loss to unknown wonders of the world. Hands turned into fins, but no one ever taught them how to use them. Sometimes the children get nostalgic. Long for man-made memories, the permanence of land.

Slumped on his recliner, he fiddled with the remote. On came his favorite show, Winslow Pete, Marshall.
The episode began with Winslow Pete kissing his wife, Stacy Ann, farewell before leaving for the Marshall’s office.
The show was like any other TV Western—yet Stanley liked it better than the rest. Fact was, he liked it better than anything, including the wife he neglected and family he despised.

I followed the van to a big-box home improvement store, then followed her in and to the aisle full of glues, putties, scrapers, pastes, solder, and grout. I hid behind an endcap of buckets and trashcans and watched her unfold her parts: that man who gave her an arm and hand; an elderly woman who was the other hand; two young, virginal women who each gave her a perky breast; a male model mostly photographed in sepia provided her abs; two runners, one of each gender, bestowed beneath her torso a leg each. The handle of one bucket was caught on the buckle of my watchband, and a plastic stack of them bounced and scudded across the floor as I ran.

       The man in the wheelchair still holds his trash bag tightly in his fist. It’s green. Standard Glad tall kitchen bag sort of bag. Arnie needs to know what’s in it. He nods toward the bag. “Valuables?”
       The man’s fist loosens, and the skin in his hand pinks up. Arnie sees all the colors now. The trash bag slides from the man’s lap onto the elevator floor. Whatever was valuable on the first floor or the ninth floor, isn’t now. The priest sinks down beside the man, takes his hand, and lays his cheek against the top of his head. Arnie doesn’t think of lab mice this time.

It looks as though the warmer weather has finally hit and with it
why content is still king when it comes to lead generation
Column: the dumbest idea of the decade
A poverty solution that starts with a hug
Safety ads not a sign of a nanny state, just one that cares

In the beastly belly, where hips knock into one another morsels tender to tongue infused with liquid of insane desire steeped in blue blood and clear membranes of the sucking souls of dried whoring voices in their smoky laughter swirling to a dance of mad music all, where muffled footsteps and grinding joints of artistic hunger in dusty rooms above city streets slippery with fluids of animal wishes, where jointed floors meet solid ceilings of rat runs and sewage of meat ground inspirations and the screaming hair pulled from bare skulls of camel hair coated alabaster skins,

When I caught him I tried to prove to him that I meant no harm. But even when I took his head off, he didn’t understand. Even now, sitting beside me, he refuses to talk. His face has gone a funny colour, though I put his head back on, the way he always did mine.

The lone hair was long and black and ugly. Plus it itched. When Chet couldn’t get a firm grip on it, he found the tweezers and tried to yank it out. He tugged, winced from the pinch, and nada. After trying and failing a few times he managed to make some headway. But it wasn’t coming out by its roots like a normal nose hair. He yanked and it would give a millimeter. A bit more. Thick and black and nasty looking like a black mamba snake seen on shrooms.

The car accident played over in their minds, I’m sure. I couldn’t do anything about it though, and it killed me inside; I didn’t want it to end like this. What I wanted, however, hadn’t mattered for years, so I expected my death to be something like this.

       You see, I was in that car. I was in that car when the truck crossed my path. I was in that car when my parents drove by.

       They stood there, holding each other, sobbing quietly. It happened so fast, too. First, I’m driving home from another bad day at school. I drove home with the thought of my boyfriend breaking up with me in front of the entire lunchroom. I drove home with the dread of my father yelling at me for failing yet another one of my classes.

I want to tell you that Hercules’ poor aim is what puts you there, his future and equally unfortunate misfiring landing on a less than sympathetic recipient mistaken as tree stump, where feet and Pekinese dogs are sent flying. Understandably, this gets you into a bit of a lather, sends you spiraling as you pummel Hercules’ perpetrator, marking your last cardio workout in weeks, hence your ballooning waistline, your unkempt nature.

       The front door wouldn’t open no matter how hard I tried, so I concluded that it was locked. I unlocked it and went inside. I didn’t want to enter necessarily, but I had forgotten my key inside. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I had forgotten a key inside. It was my duty to retrieve it from an open safe in the master bedroom. I opened the front door with an expired Discovery credit card I had found inside an old ostrich leather wallet in a bar I used to frequent called Australia, or perhaps the bar was called Austria.

a. Stay out of hallways.
b. Never head for the elevator. They are always in it.
c. Never expect to make it all the way down the stairway. They are coming up it.
     i. But I’m down already. I’m in the lobby.

I’ve played gigs as a drummer since I was fourteen, and I still love it. I also love writing/recording original music. The last few years I’ve been performing more solo acoustic gigs, just vocals and guitar, and now I’m involved in a new experimental band called Thirst that I’m pretty excited about. I guess the gigs are the more social side of writing. You know, you can’t just stay locked up in a room by yourself all the time or you’ll end up writing weird little stories about your cat.

I think “truth can be stranger than fiction” applies to photography just as it does to writing. I like to find things that other people may have missed seeing.