Poetry | Short Fiction | Creative Nonfiction
A short fiction of mine called Temping, is included in Crack the Spine’s Issue no. 257. Thanks to publisher Kerri Farrell Foley and her staff for selecting this piece. A synopsis might look like:
“A talkative homeless man on the bus rambles on, delivering a sort of fever-dream term paper about the burdens of a life structured by time, his philosophical insights into such a dilemma, and his effective status as an outlaw due to his contraordinary behaviors and being without means or property.”
An ice cream truck on a neighborhood street
jingles a malign rendition of the The Sting
its notes warped, tempo ill-kept
The future is out for delivery, youngsters
clamor for ice cream sandwiches and evening books
lodging for the night, rises from its sleep
There’s something of the grifter in time’s passing
the done light signals a message, with a
surreptitious touch to the side of its nose
And things will go wrong for someone, somewhere
at some point, but they savvy buy into it
craft a destiny in relief, a slant reckoning
Even though time is there, in the shadows
selecting a point between past and future, for fate
to pull a fast one on some gullible bit of luck
A stumpy old molar lives alone in the back of some mouth, like a tombstone at the grave site of all the missing teeth. He reaches up, searching for his mate above, to press against, eager for contact, ready to grind and mash together like crazy young lovers, but alas, she’s long gone. She got the rot and they came and took her.
He thinks they might as well come take him too. Lone molar, a widower with nothing much to do but keep that cheek from caving in. They give him a good flossing now and then, but really, he’s just biding his time, a mockery of function, like a gate with no fence. He can’t even go put in with the smile up there, back of the line his whole life. Front teeth were always so well cared for, weren’t they? Vain sons of bitches.
Well, at least he wasn’t a wisdom tooth. Butt of every dental joke he’d ever heard.
be calmer than an earlobe
but alert to subtle sound
quiet as a muscle twitch
as sterling as a pound
be lofty like the heavens
as consistent as a judge
unattached as fleeting clouds
be disinclined budge
reflective like a polished tile
be brighter than a flame
stoic as a VP’s portrait
valid as a claim
right like rain, and true as grit
determined as a dog
be quiet like a bell rope
and well rested as a log
be patient as a telephone
and sounder than a ring
stiller than a sheeted corpse
but proper, like a king
be ready like a boxer’s glove
for when they call it out
a name upon the intercom
it’s you, there is no doubt
.
if I possessed prescience
I’d spend my time peeking
like a Tom, at the future
while the present is leaking
into yesterday’s visions
where fortune tellers say
not much going on there
‘it got frittered away’
I thrive in distraction
body and self, up to my elbows
in it, the fleeting time of it
but today, like clouds, empty of
any urgency at all, I will push
the blue aside, on my way
to who knows where.
Peace, it doesn’t thrive on growth
it’s conflict that takes naturally to
the idea of possession and expansion.
How often the fights we have
within ourselves get out of hand and
spill out into the wider world.
Where the path to reconciliation, once
much simpler, has branched out, circled
roamed, split, and split again, until
simplicity begins to lose its memory.
Cell division looks painful, does
it not, to a peaceful frame of mind.
But looks exciting and beautiful
to the enterprise, one becoming two
grow, it says, or die.
And we look everywhere but within
when, seeing it all spin out of control
we finally become desperate, and ask why.
pyre of the moment
denies all these lingering traces
and the fireproof memories
are breaking and entering
we weep for the dead
and gone, weep for ourselves
the death certificate
rendered into thin strips, gathered
ignited, burned, lanky curled effigies
prostrate their ashen bodies
in offering, an act complete in itself
without forethought, intent
or memory, like a barfly
tossing back a shot of whiskey
at the funeral pyre of this particular
slice of longevity
paper thin bug shells
glow like Japanese lanterns
lazy morning clouds
—
banana sunshine
time sways, metronome nipping
the heels of the hour
—
turning, returning
everywhere is almost home
long shadows, evening
The bone itself, gone
a stunt double in its place
its owner’s family name recorded
on a little card behind the glass.
Maybe we think of fossils as
being all done with aging
and the ravages of time, simply done
and settled into a final rest.
Now recumbent on speckless felt
once removed, do the next million
years look forward to wearing down
that gouge made by a flint weapon?
Our bones today, somewhere between
the dust and the dust, and
maybe we can fancy ourselves
a million years removed from demise,
Our protesting bones, gone
substitutes pulling the day-shift
museum posers the lot of us, as the future
gazes curiously upon our mineralized remains.
