The jogger, an ultra-fit man in his fifties, dressed expensively in body-tight black Spandex and color-shock pink-and-yellow Nikes, swept down North Lombard, keeping to its straight center line as if his life depended on it. Eyes trained forward, he no more saw the couple and their dog, the woman picking up her paper or the waiting schoolkids, than they saw him, not really, not until he dropped.
You see, the cranes have
visions in their eyes, where chills no longer attack
joint capsules, inflame no more they trill
My mother’s voice calls out just as I take a seat on the edge of the bed. I’m lightheaded as my breasts surge with milk, suddenly soaking my sweatshirt. I hear the car door slam. Before she steps into the RV, I grab a blanket from behind me and toss it to the floor, covering as much of the blood as I can.
“My God,” she says, staring at the stained sheets, at the bloody paw prints that stop at her feet.
I pick it up and see that he chose a dinosaur book for tonight’s bedtime reading. Sweet. I love dinosaurs. I pick up the hardcover book. It’s an A-Z dinosaur book. A is for Ankylosaurus. B is for Brachiosaurus. Everything is going just fine until F.
I ventured out of my cabin to find the captain. I needed to know who else was on the ship. When I opened my cabin door I froze in the frame. The hallway was consumed by darkness. The electrical problems must extend to the whole floor rather than just my cabin. I grabbed the half-used candlestick from my desk and stepped into the hall.
The scary thing about the process of medicating yourself is that one day you’re switching medications because something isn’t doing the job correctly, and the next thing you know six months have passed, and you’ve been existing in a zombie-like state, completely unknowingly.
There was a knock at the door. Owen already knew it would be those two fresh-faced missionaries out to convert Amelia. She was too tender-hearted to tell them no, so they kept trying. If they could offer some tangible proof of God, maybe a free month’s rent or an occasional Sunday off, she could be more easily convinced.
break my bones into fragments
and mosaic them into mountains
of granite and coal to build
into steel for cities
make me into marble floors
of foreign manors
you don’t need to be
quick
there is plenty more
time
to catch these horrors
in your ribs
I dialed the Figure in the Sky long distance, saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, not even a dial tone. Sensing I was coming under increasing strain, Pastor Bingea inquired gently of my progress, but all circuits were busy. “No such number. If you want to make a call, please hang up and dial again.”
When the glass from the car moves past us
And into our father
We will watch in the fading light
Our future rise towards us.
Brothers with broken hands
And a father’s arm wound around our chests.
I move out onto the field and take in what should be fresh air. It’s as putrid out here as it was inside. I see them in each end zone. Big ones. Roaches the size of Smartcars. Their rust-colored shells sheath them in a thicker skin than I’m used to seeing. Have they come this far this fast?
Well, says Rob, I guess so, like he’s reluctant but they’ve convinced him. He starts typing. Okay. The Adventures of Sophia and Thomas. His voice does not betray his guilt at being a manipulative dick. Forgetting them all that time. Using them now. But they are his characters, right?
The issue is, according to her, my lack of restraint. She had not wanted to go to the police and oddly, neither had the editor. My wife showed me many pictures, making sure I knew what I had done, during that moment of what she calls blind rage. I don’t tell her that I remember it all.
My feet beg for soil, long to dig toes
into cool dirt, pray to the gravity that pins
me to the surface. I call it grounding.
But those clouds.
After Valentina,
I remember, she visited my dream,
and we sat at a different table. Was it tea?
I think we had tea. And Jim, we sometimes
feast in open air. A carafe of water. Lemons.
“Can you please lift your arms?” the brace fitter asks, as if this is a choice, and not a fundamental, immovable line that I must cross. This moment marks another line, before and after. It demands my compliance, my acceptance, my submission. It is a first, one more piece of this beginning.
Jim opened and close his mouth several times in quick succession. “I'm sorry. Did you just say you peak in peoples houses?”
Tawny nodded. “Yeah, it's not like I can just pop into the library or something.”
The whiskey section is in the back. Everything is priced much higher here. Five-to-ten-dollar markups on any bottle I recognize and know the usual price. I tend to shop at the Big Store by the highway. My gut stirs as my attention returns to the curious taste that stains my tongue.