opening statement from self-published collection hiatus newsletters (September 2012) Talent is a mime on a mountaintop said he who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon. He had said previously other things but this was the first to which my mother caught me listening. She took my ear and me with it outside and shoved two cigarettes she’d been smoking in my mouth and told me to chew. When I did not she worked my jaw herself until the tip of my tongue bled enough to give her pause. Neither one of us cried and the cigarettes were salvageable. The morning speaker then joined us obviously hoping for a drag. The moment my mother hated him passed and she told him what hope was. He who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon would not often be seen by my mother. He and I were late in our waking and she’d be out gathering types of dead bird from the bases of cornstalks. I’d sit in my highchair and watch him shirtless as he prepared the tools of my art. The hairs on his back would grow before my eyes and need bitten at the follicle. He would turn and put his finger in the garbage disposal and pretend it was on. On was something he never turned it because he said a mantis lived there and what would bite his follicles. I wouldn’t be hungry then which was good for my show. He would laugh at the misery of my scooping arms and be full of it and tired and he would ask me to rub his belly while he went to the couch on his back. His belly the single most reason to keep him said mother. I’d put my ear to it to feel myself kick and never did stir him from sleep. Pretty early in this routine some of his belly hair started to grow in my ear and my dreams from then always had a banquet in their midsection. Careful with my dreams. Mother said they are kittens and one can bite too hard. It is like her being stubborn and only calling me boy when most called me boy and girl in equal measure. Sometimes when boy got the lion’s share I’d long to nurse and have to slap the sucking sound out of my teeth. For saner things I’d walk the dog with a dog in it. I had names for both and both were names I would’ve called my brother had I been born. I once found a sipped at wine glass on the roof of the pharmacy mother later burned with lit stalks. When the turkey buzzards skittered themselves nightly across the horizontal track of my looking for god I’d imagine my brother skinny enough to fit in the parched tube of his swallow. Now that I am returning to Shudderkin, the welt left by my larger than life father whipping his belt across the tailbone of Ohio, it is clear to me that what we called a dog was correct only on certain days. The mongrel keeping pace with my bike, the second name I have for my brother, is not the physical dog a city knows and not country loyal as country wants to, and so makes others, believe. It is instead more like the talking when one is sped up and words get put together and then are stuck there. Dog of Shudderkin. Its tongue does not droop or even wag outside the mouth. A pinkness has always gone on without me.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:05:59 +0000
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