Short stories and poetry
“Vienna Woods” skips on NPR, to which I danced with my stick pony and begged for graham crackers- a long time ago. Past ply-wooded Victorian mansions -abandoned car graveyard. Past “The “Villages At Lincoln” a cheap facade of human frustration and drug addiction. Crow’s wing plastered to warm pavement dangles brazenly behind a Toyota Forerunner. …
Took all the kitchen knives
took them away.
waiting for help.
The days mesh together- my fury grows…. knit unibrow. My days booked up by the needs of another. Probation Officer, Counseling, Psychiatrist, McDonalds. Tumbled Stones- 5.99 a pound- Walmart. next to the fake flowers. A bag is broken- I reach in and choose one- dark luscious brown as liver. My pulse throbs against its density …
Depression breathes down my back and spills onto the keyboard. Happy People, Bitching People, Intoxicated People, Facebook. Spouting anecdotal wisdom. Pronouncing achievements anthropomorphizing fuzzy things and spilling fairy dust their achievements their alleged concern about the world.
Two years. make a bologna sandwich and celebrate. The broken garbage poker stick, train cars filled with smashed furniture and banana peels, abandoned black cemetery stones fenced against Orange Avenue. cases of Miller at the Sheetz, where people wear pajamas and crowd the counter for lottery tickets and Newports. ,
I remember when whiskey on our breath was the norm Soles bruised and cracked, running through the neighborhood to Lake Michigan. Your Keds. Waves loud enough to knock out pain, man-placed boulders to contain lunging black water, dirty with sunscreen and unfound dead bodies. Jean bottoms wet. 14 and 16.
Manes shiver in the whipped air nickering vibrates the dull ground yards of disconnected wire grass where septic is dug up, in drying mud, pieces of house, that lay uneven, rocky, and mad. Back hoe man reverses and spits tobacco juice. black fingers and white skin swollen over the years to double their size.
