About two years ago I lost the ability to fly. Not like Superman, nothing so impressive. Just a loose kind of upright hovering, as though my heart were suspended from a cloud passing high overhead. The onsets came unannounced: Electricity warmed my spine and I simply inhaled, drifting upward, dangling until I could push off a nearby wall or streetlight.
It unnerved passersby. Spontaneously flying people were unsafe or at least untrustworthy. Continue reading →
I stole the man’s tongue, but I didn’t know he was crazy.
I’ve got to get it back to him before I start believing what it’s telling me.
The tongue, I mean —
It sits there on the back of the toilet next to the Kleenex box
and judges me.
It tells me that if I don’t floss every single day,
the love of my life will NOT reach for the same book as I do
and we won’t meet at the library, or anywhere else.
When I wake up in the morning,
there is a wet spot on my pillow,
a slug-like saliva trail.
Yet the tongue is still perched on the toilet.
It comments on my choice of clothing,
flopping around, spattering spit.
It says I must not think much of myself
to dress the way I do.
When I get back from work,
I find the keyboard and mouse covered in a pasty white film.
My in-box is full of outraged responses.
I’ve got to give it back,
but I know the man it going to slit my throat if he finds out
where his tongue has been!
No, I better just keep it.
I better…no, no it’s too awful.
But I must.
I better eat it.
Cathy and I sell the house and I see her for the last time.
I get my nipple pierced.
The world is changed. Everyone is dimmer.
I walked outside just in time to see the world ending.
My spirit clawed past my teeth to have a look around,
but I sucked it back in with a clatter of ribcage.
The parking lot desaturated, turning ashen as
a field of cottony nothing obscured the sky.
A new mountain range to the west lit up with last light
as Old Mother pulled down the shade and the horizon went out.
Near me
tin cans and good intentions danced on an invisible roulette wheel
before spilling out into the street
where the nervous cars shoved.
I thought of the things I had forgotten to do:
Write a poem, do the laundry,
tell someone that I loved her.
Just another storm over Albuquerque.
I visit Dave in Seattle with Ryan and Laura.
I win the Alibi’s Short Short Fiction contest with the story “The Numbers Game.”
Maybe if you rub those tickets together, you’ll excite the numbers. But listen to me, friend, you don’t ever want to let them rub off on you. Don’t even look at them too much or you might get Marked. You think you’re gambling now, but you don’t know the half of it. Before the numbers catch up with you, I better tell you about Dave. Continue reading →
Cathy leaves me.
I buy an SUV, a black 1998 Isuzu Rodeo.
I move to an apartment (3320 Wyoming NE, Apt 4307, 87111) and begin dealing with the divorce.
Cathy and I have a huge falling out at the Attorney Locate company Christmas party.
My grandmother, Pearl Hjerpe, dies. She was 93. This is my first experience with a close family member dying. All of my other grandparents were dead before I was born.