The Bicycle Review
Issue # 11
7 April, 2011
Photography by Tess Lotta and Giuliana Maresca
Original Artworks by Joe Eugene McLendon
All images copyright 2011 by Lotta, Maresca, McLendon
# 11
Well, maybe if you
were worried about me getting lynched you were almost right. I think my days in
Tucson are
numbered. Aren’t all of the days numbered, anyhow?
Depends whose Calendar you believe in.
We welcome two new and exciting People to our Editorial Staff. Lynne Hayes is doing a wonderful Job helping us to construct our free Edifice for public viewing with minimal Waste. Jeff Kappel is kind enough to throw some Pictures our way from his Ivory Tower in Minneapolis.
We thank Steven for all his wonderful help. He has been kinder in principle than even he would like to admit; a true Patron of the Arts.
It would be amiss not to thank our Associate Editor, John Domini, for all he has done for us.
It has been an amazing time, between Issues. There have been plenty of ups and downs, but at least I am drinking less and seeing more.
Now we decide what comes next. For now, as always, Art for Art’s sake.
Share the Road,
J de Salvo
Depends whose Calendar you believe in.
We welcome two new and exciting People to our Editorial Staff. Lynne Hayes is doing a wonderful Job helping us to construct our free Edifice for public viewing with minimal Waste. Jeff Kappel is kind enough to throw some Pictures our way from his Ivory Tower in Minneapolis.
We thank Steven for all his wonderful help. He has been kinder in principle than even he would like to admit; a true Patron of the Arts.
It would be amiss not to thank our Associate Editor, John Domini, for all he has done for us.
It has been an amazing time, between Issues. There have been plenty of ups and downs, but at least I am drinking less and seeing more.
Now we decide what comes next. For now, as always, Art for Art’s sake.
Share the Road,
J de Salvo
Tony the Mustache
Tony didn't have a mustache. Tony was the mustache, so I hope you don't think the title of this story needs correction. Tony was a thick, bristly, sparkling black mustache, and he was connected to the upper lip of a man named Anthony. Anthony was always called Anthony by his friends and others, so Tony chose the name for himself---first to establish his own identity and individuality; at the same time Tony didn't want to insult his master, even though Anthony had no idea that Tony had given himself a name. Tony simply would have felt guilty not to identify with his master in some way. After all, if it weren't for Anthony, Tony could just as well have been a bunch of small black bristles clinging to the sides of the sink every morning, only to have Anthony's wife smothering Tony's bristles with her hand, screaming, “Will you wash out the goddamn sink after you finish shaving, Anthony!” And her voice would fade to nothing as parts of Tony fell down the drain.
Tony shivered at the thought of being shaven, and each time he shivered, Anthony would touch him, sometimes scratch him, up and down, up and down. “Stupid mustache itches like hell,” he'd say, and scratch and scratch as Tony, in agony, would writhe and shift, and Anthony would scratch even more. And when it was all over, Tony would sit quietly, exhausted, not daring to make another move.
Tony lived in constant apprehension. As a result, he was a very nervous mustache. He had horrible nightmares a few times a week, sometimes more. One nightmare in particular was a recurring one: while Anthony was shaving the rest of his face, the razor would be grinning at him between the double blades, repeating over and over, “Whoops, slipped, got the mustache. Whoops...” And then the razor would laugh diabolically. Tony would usually awaken in excruciating pain as Anthony, half asleep, would be scratching at him.
Tony could be described as a nervous wreck of a mustache, though his master would only refer to him as “this stupid mustache,” which would leave Tony depressed sometimes for days on end.
The other mustaches Tony encountered all seemed to be more at ease. He'd pass them on the street as Anthony strolled to and from his office and the subway. “How ya doin',” most of the mustaches would ask as they passed one another. Tony wondered why most of them were so cheerful. Some were very religious, he knew. One mustache on a shopping line had tried to tell Tony about the Lord, that He saves mustaches as well as sinners.
“What about sinful mustaches?” Tony asked sardonically. The other mustache, flustered, told Tony he'd go to hell and be scratched for eternity. Tony told him to get lost. Stupid, blonde mustaches, he thought, but he half believed what it had told him about an eternal scratching.
Other mustaches he knew were just plain idiotic. They'd be so happy just sitting there on their masters' upper lips, not even realizing, Tony thought, that they'd be shaved out of existence some day, that it could happen at any time.
One mustache in particular caused Tony to convulse into a fit of anger. It happened inside an elevator in the building where Anthony worked. Two other mustaches were there. One of the mustaches said to the other, “My master's going to shave me off later.”
“Really?” the second mustache said.
“His girlfriend's been on his case about shaving me off, so he agreed.”
“Oh well,” said the second.
“We all have to go sometime,” the first said, and the two mustaches chuckled.
Tony was fuming. He screamed. “Don't you care at all, you idiots? You just accept it, just like that?”
“What do you want me to do?” the first mustache said. “I can't do anything about it. We all have to get shaved off sometimes, so you might as well accept it, or else you'll turn gray earlier than you think.”
“Who cares?” Tony said.
The two mustaches got off with their masters as another mustache got on. It was Ray, Tony's best friend. Anthony talked with Ray's master, Clay, every day. “You look a little down in the bristles, Tone,” Ray said.
“I am.”
“Thinking about being shaved again?”
“What else?”
“Look, I told you. Stop reading that Sartre.”
“I can't help it. Anthony's reading Being and Nothingness.”
“You don't have to read it. Curl your hairs.”
They both stopped their conversation when overhearing Ray's master Clay say to Anthony. “Hey, you're really letting that mustache of yours go. Why don't you trim it?”
“I don't know. It's getting to be a pain. It was a good idea to start with...but, I don't know. I think I'm going to get rid of it---shave it off.”
Tony gasped and shivered and Anthony scratched him.
“See?” Anthony said. “It's itchy as hell. Michelle says I look like Hitler with it.”
“Hitler?” Clay said.
“Yeah. It's definitely got to go soon.”
“Ray!” Tony exclaimed. “It's over! It's over!”
“Take it easy, pal,” Ray said.
“Damn, and I'm getting a cold, too,” Anthony said as he sniffed twice and let out a hard sneeze. The elevator had stopped, and Anthony and Clay got out. Mucus had spurted out of Anthony's nose all over Tony. As Clay and Anthony parted, Tony looked helplessly at Ray through the curtain, like a veil of death, which had fallen from the very roof under which Tony lived. The very stuffings of Anthony's nose had coated Tony with the seal of his fate, death from him upon whom he lived. And though Anthony wiped the mucus off with his sleeve, Tony still felt sticky with it. The smell of mucus and death was in the air, and Tony settled into a profound despair which lasted the rest of the day.
That night when Anthony kissed his wife hello, she said, “Anthony, that mustache itches. I hate it more every day.”
“You're not so hot yourself, Toots,” Tony said, although of course she couldn't hear him.
“You look just like Hitler,” she said.
“Hitler? Then I'd better shave it.”
“Good.”
Stupid woman, Tony thought. If it weren't for you he wouldn't shave me off. It's your fault, all your fault. Hitler's mustache was a dwarf anyway. I'm no dwarf. How blind can you be?
“I'll shave it in the morning,” Anthony sighed.
Tony didn't sleep all that night. He philosophized, contemplated, even settled into a sort of calm resignation as the approach of his death neared.
Mustaches are sort of helpless, Tony thought.. There's nothing we can do about our existence. We start as nubs, unaware of ourselves, though the experts say our personalities are shaped during the nub period. Then we grow into awkward, confused bristles, separate, not knowing what to do with all our stiff, stubby hairs. Then we mature---we get our hairs together, unifying into a whole, fully-grown mustache. We are given life, and we either live it to the fullest, day by day, throughout all the anguish and the pain, growing old and gray and, if we are lucky, dying with our masters; or else we die early, always much too young. And it's always by those guys who just want to see how we look on them, and who murder us soon after, the butchers! We are completely helpless, unable to control the ways of fate.
But, thought Tony, I've learned only now that, though helpless, a mustache can enjoy his life to the fullest. I think back and wonder why I didn't enjoy that last shower more, and why so many times I slept, saying, “The hell with this,” while Anthony was making love to his wife, when I could have hung around and observed or laughed at the stupid things they said. And why didn't I enjoy all that spaghetti sauce that always splashed on me whenever Anthony ate spaghetti? Why? Because I was too self-centered, too narcissistic a mustache to enjoy any of those things. Oh, if only a mustache could write a book, could tell the story of a mustache as told by a mustache, then the world would see. But now all that is lost.
The day broke, and by this time Tony was fully prepared and calm. Anthony rose and walked to the bathroom, contemplating his reflection in the mirror. Tony tried to be brave, as brave as mustache could be. Anthony took out the razor. He started to wet Tony and Tony closed his eyes.
Silence. Then, “I can't do it,” Anthony said. “For some crazy reason I like this stupid mustache. I'll keep it.” He shaved the rest of his face and then put the razor away.
Tony could not contain himself. He gleamed. He kicked up his follicles. “Whoopee! Ya hoo!”
As Anthony came out of the subway and walked down the street, Tony screamed, “Ya hoo! I'm alive! I'm alive! However painful it all is, however miserable and helpless we all are, we are still alive!”
One mustache looked at Tony and cursed him out, and Tony saw a reflection of his former self in that mustache. He'll learn, he thought, if he doesn't get shaved off first.
When Anthony entered the office building, Tony heard Ray screaming, and he looked across the corridor to see Clay drinking, wetting Ray with boiling hot coffee. Tony laughed and called out, “Ray! Ray!” not able to wait to give his friend the news.
Copyright 2011 by Lou Gaglia
Paddy Wagon
Patrick Inquisit us
Sat on a coin
We pledge no allegiance
To Chris the impostor
Copyright 2011 by J de Salvo
You
there is a war
a hurricane
a flood
eruptions
explosions
I am
thinking of you
Copyright 2011 by A. Molotkov
Pledging Allegiance
Of course I'm not talking to you. Why would I talk to you? Because you're standing in front of me? Did you understand a word I said? See, there you have it. I must be talking to someone else, someone off in the shadows, someone who may cut in front of you any minute now, his eyes gleaming with comprehension. This will destabilize you. You'll sense another missed opportunity. You'll feel the world is passing you by. You'll spring into action. Action is the cure for bewilderment.
You rush off down the street. Walk in the first door with a sign over it. People behind desks rise to their feet and applaud. Your eyes fill with tears.
They take you to a back room and dress you in a uniform. They strap a pistol on you and hand you a billy club and brass knuckles. They take you into a large auditorium filled with men in uniforms identical to yours. They sit you down.
March music is blaring. A man in a uniform similar to yours but much more elaborate comes out on stage, turns to face the audience, and snaps to attention. The music stops abruptly. The impact is electric. And then, in a strong, resonant voice, the man begins reciting The Pledge of Allegiance.
With gathering force, you and your new comrades come to your feet and join in. Your doubt and confusion evaporate. Your emotions whelm up.
You are given a squad of men to command and sent out to hunt me down.
Copyright 2011 John Bennett
Once Upon A Time Today
Stuck still on rails, a metallic roadside train car
filled with burger sizzle, iced tea sweat, fried sliced potatoes
and booths that only sit two,
There’s no problem for dinner for one
who stands to wash his hands for no one’s health but his own.
Down the train car no waitresses or bus boys, just radio
DJ jabber. Straightening the turtle neck tucked
behind a never-cracked black belt; ensuring his pant
cuffs are over shoe tongues. The pleats are neat.
His fingers snatch a fry before he’s gone.
Off the seat, beside the next booth as empty
as a miscarried womb; slick red booth pleather,
salt and pepper shakers stuffed with graduals,
circled stains still from lunch, silverware
mummified in napkins--
In the window by the next booth, past napkin holder landscape
lay what was once a pastoral parking lot containing veined
yellow lines containing no cars, just concrete blocks
rooted with rebar—the world moved past; the train car clacked
to the past in fast flipping pages: a history book in the breeze.
He saw turtlenecked, a congregation not of any religion
but a bus station full of Asians.
Americans headed for California.
Relocation for protection, but they could
have been blown to shadows or blasted to coal.
Next table, two steps down the train,
a couple generations back; blacks are blue
with Jump Jim Crow’s laws democratically daring the devil of progress--
The ketchup bottle glass did not knock over silently.
As the ketchup bled, it kept the mustard spots company.
Along the wall to the glass doors; outside
Apaches were chased to Mexico, then marched
back through to New Mexico sucking on cacti, redistributed
so department stores could be built up, to be shut down--
slamming the newspaper rack, text and war pictures spill over the floor.
One booth closer to the bathroom, he goes further back.
In the window, he’s nose tip to nose tip to Moses Austin.
Sharing reflections, the pioneer says, “It all starts somewhere.”
Then coughed pneumonic lung gunk against the glass.
As excretion slides down so does the diner patron--
He finds he sees Cochuila y Teja in cracked glass.
Spread in spider webs, the Spanish swear in a presidio,
and plan on escaping the heat and Indian arrows as
plunge into the window and soak into the lightning bolt cracks.
In a shuffling storm, he heads to the diner’s front doors, at the train’s side.
He finds a closed panoramic scene in the metal frame foggy with A/C moisture.
A cabal of Alamo and San Jucento in widescreen bloodshed.
Bloodloss in wild grown weed fields in Spanish-named locations
Black pellets digging into bodies white and brown.
A cannonball rolls to the door’s corner where Santa Anna surrenders.
The last stop in middle school history lesson was at the last stumble.
At the final window, King Louis, for the glory of catching up
craves gold, glory and God on an already conquered continent.
His empire misses the Mississippi by 400-miles.
Settling for what they settled on, they soon abandoned. Leaving the train car diner behind--
Behind the bathroom door, just a toilet and paper towels wait.
Nothing is revealed except for a puddle behind the toilet seat.
All he wanted to see were seconds into the future,
not generations back.
History needs an editor, he thinks.
The mind isn’t for biography, but he doesn’t mind at all
When he grabs his burger and all of history is erased.
Copyright 2011 By Tyler Malone
Mother, Child, Ghost
When the ultrasound broadcasts static,
proclaiming the keeper’s seed unbound,
she bleeds calendars, shatters to-do-lists.
Her silent howl breaks forth
A shrouded genesis
For the first time since her marriage,
she lies alone in her bed
brooding over white shoes lined against the wall,
backed into alleys, hidden in moors.
When it is over,
she leaves her aberration pulled tight into hospital corners
where it is picked up only in the politic,
whispered, secreted, truncated, historied
by tomorrow afternoon.
In the endless tomorrows, Queen Mab taps at her sleep.
But it is by day that ancient Maya goes to work
in the garden, is sprinkled into cookies,
glued into broken frames, and pounded against sidewalks and treadmills
until the sun and moon hang untouched in her closet,
starched and white on her drycleaner’s
wire hanger.
Until the phone breaks into a whispered conversation with a friend
who is not ready,
The only one she could think to call,
Could she come?
Under blue moonlight the keeper drives to the place where
white shoes are pressed against the wall,
and where her friend’s silent howl breaks forth
a shrouded genesis.
Copyright 2011 by Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk
still untitled
1
I've never fallen to my knees
and prayed to God;
tumbling on loose cobblestones
in old town squares,
I've spilled coffee over my shoes
but not often new ones.
perplexed but not quite daunted
or reversed stretching out at the frailty
and being only man among men,
poets.
2
walk with me,
though I do not walk so much as sway, pitch
or stagger.
walk with me,
though I shall be muted, scarcely
swinging my arms at the sides.
walk with me,
though hell I walk, ancient seraphim
in ash and agony.
walk with me,
though hell is too wide for eidetic
narrative.
Jhon Baker
Test Drive
Every dawn I awake a new person.
My fingerprints warped anew.
The past is lost to me,
deleted, bagged leaves. The silk screen
serves as guide. I test drive
today’s roar, the angle of my ax swing.
Then per our arrangement, my wife pretends
she knows who this man is
making her toast, anxious,
claiming to taste like poison.
I order Starbucks from a script.
Is this the flavor I like? Is this
the day I don’t love you?
Copyright 2011 by Ryan Dilbert
Eldest
Mark’s little brother Larry was alert like a dog, perched on the corner of the couch. The lights flickered once, twice, before another boom.
“Mark,” he asked, “are you afraid of thunder?”
“Of course not,” Mark said, and the boy settled. Larry’s face pressed deep between the cushions, shielding his ears and eyes. Mark thought about touching the younger boy’s back, calling a truce and singing him to sleep. Instead he walked to the window, stared for a while at the flashing light.
He told them during the Eulogy, whoever showed up. Of Larry’s three wives, only the second arrived. Mark stood straight at the podium, voice steady, hands at his sides.
He was not afraid that night, he told himself now as he had then. Fear was not in the shaking of the house, the racing of his chest, the quiet in his skull. Not for his dry skin, dry eyes. Not as he stood and turned his back, knowing Larry would make it through. Not as he eased into bed, in a room finally all to himself, lying as still as he could.
Copyright 2011 by Justis Mills
Wingbeat
If there is one thing Cassie knows it is the high ivied wall where she was last seen alive. She never went away—that would have been nice, she says, to have been gone and reappear when she reappeared in her backyard, present just before and since. She waited five hours in her backyard before she screamed because she did not know what else to do, and she had been testing the scream inside of her, had stretched it taut over her ribs, and wanted to know it was out of her, had really been there and been allowed to be there despite her captivity in a stranger’s basement—I guess—or if it was webbed there by fear, stuck forever. That should be the issue, but I feel dumb making it the issue, since all Cassie wants now is to walk without assistance. The way her legs are shaped would make for impressive wingbeats. The Auk with wings like that can fly underwater. When I wrote that in my case notes I thought she would like to hear it someday.
Outside was what disappeared, she said, and there was no room for her to look for it because it had collapsed, becoming cold and small and wet in corners. I asked her to describe it. In the living room was a chorus of pines like ladies’ waving hair, but she never got up in good weather. She did not think it was to be escaped. Blood healed there and in the hospital. She is embarrassed now. Let her be embarrassed, I think. She has the room.
Her lips were wet. She was on Art’s lawn, let go, and between her and the high ivied wall was a walk, and she did not know about that. She could not go inside again because Art was inside. He told her in the rope, she said, he was leaving so good he would not even have to go anywhere. Usually he talked more—he would try, about her, which was about him—but he was dead. She did not want to stay inside and how she did not have to came to her finger by finger like a hand across her face. Then she went to the high ivied wall and it was to her shoulders. And then she did not know anything.
To the best of my knowledge she has not described Art. No one, I think, has asked her about it. Dr. Beckert told me there was a picture of him in the Sun-Gazette and there was more—things he did to his family, how they must have known. He is particularly incensed about who knew what. I told him to concentrate on what we can control: the improved quality of Cassie’s life. He told the rest of the staff I said he needs AA again.
When she was four and before that she felt still, and wet was good. When Cassie was four, Louise Bourgeois cast her bronze Arch of Hysteria in its silver nitrate patina which has just now been purchased by the National Gallery in Canada. She felt from place to place and even in her mother’s car she was never moving. The wind was the blood in her head. Wet was good, and when she was naked she stayed in herself. There was no Art—made of fluid. When windows and dresses and air all shrank, it was easy for Art to be everything, so she did not like anything anymore. She has still not accepted that there is anything else. Her parents liked the dress for the first day of first grade, she said. She looked like frosting. Their liking of her dress grew around them like an orange sun and she liked their liking so much. Even when she did not think to wear the dress again she still thought of their liking like the sun. She did not like to get wet but that made her cry in the basement—now she knows that is where she has been. She knew she was under but her basement is not like that.
She likes the high ivied wall where she was last seen alive no matter what happened because she did not think about why, only it, pillowy and quivering and soft-looking. She tried resting against it and in her teeth she could feel it floor-hard, hurting-her hard. She misses her teeth. She broke her veneers. She broke two pairs of those, a curtain rod, six glasses, a crystal swan figurine that her parents brought her, and one of the payphones. She never breaks anything in fits. I am afraid to give her anything because around her things do not stay intact. I am more afraid to tell anyone else that, so things keep breaking. I do not think she trusts the integrity of veneers or crystal swans, whereas I know I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
She wishes the smell of the floor would go like she did, she says, and turn up on a corner in eleven years. She would not take it back. Now that she is here she sees how easy it is to go and she does not know why it will not. The world is becoming everything again, and even though there are oil lamps, smoke coming out of the grass, faces with cat eyes, rubies and eggplants, there is still the smell of the floor. She knows it is in her now—if not for her, the whole time would be nonexistent. Art is nonexistent. Only they knew. His wife never knew. His children never knew, she believes. She does not know how many he had. This came out of my inquiry but is not something about which she actively wonders. Three, I want to tell her. She wanted to know if binders with cartoon unicorns were going to survive her tenure in the dark. She is soberly accepting of the hospital for now.
At first her doctors did not share anything. They gave her tests and vitamins and even though they do not seem to mind that this was the extent of their relationship, last week she finally cried. Cassie has not cried since she has been here. She thought they did not want to give her the tests or the vitamins, and they were angry she had to have them, and so they would not speak to her. Now, one comes in every day, every few hours, and talks about himself. Dr. Stump loves any opportunity to talk about his alpacas even though he does a poor job of evoking the alpaca to someone who has never seen one. They ask her to talk about herself. She was not expecting that. It took her long enough to start talking with me. They take the papers she makes them, even though she does not have to do that, they tell her. Even with their being like this, she says, if they kept giving her tests and vitamins, and if she does not give them anything she knows what will happen. I cannot tell her she does not know. I would not say to any of them that sense might serve her well even if it is tuned a little too sharply. She thinks it is her fault because she is a child, they said, who has been beaten and raped, and I told them she thinks it is her fault because she wants a little control over it and wants some say in avoiding a recurrence of any similar situation. Beckert had something sassy to say about that, but most of the other doctors are starting to ignore him and agree that he should go back to AA for the sake of having an appropriate group with whom he can transgress.
She is afraid now of a copper wire growing in her stomach and cutting her blood, doors slamming, moving in darkness, everyone or some people or anyone she might meet and know being like Art, touching her mouth or the back of her head, and water in her mouth. She can drink glasses. The doctor said: you can’t be splashed. She did not know the word, splashed. That is it, she said.
New words for her are: splash, rape, sustained, vociferous, conifer, neural, contusion, aura and deficiency. The doctors rarely use a word they think she might not know without explaining it but they do not expect how much she does not know exactly. She can gather listening. I ask for her sometimes. A nurse, Gia, studied plants and said conifer. We were walking. Every time Cassie travels (her word) on her chair through the grounds she takes a rice-paper parasol, and a nurse at least watches. She knows there are a lot of people around, doctors and orderlies, who know there could be other people around. She has a lot of stalkers. I do not permit myself to deal with that in any way. Security is adequate. But she might not travel anymore, she says. She only travels around the hospital. It has a big backyard, she says. I know she loves it, even though she exhibits the same affect loving travelling alone as when she is describing Art shortening her breath. She does not know the phrase shortness of breath—I do not think, anyway, but she might have heard it before he snatched her. As much as it scares me to hear and to see her no different unless she is screaming and crying and ready to lose consciousness with the effort, I know even when I lacrimate, it is only orticotrophin making saran wrap of my faculties. But if I were to tell her that I would feel like I am lying. Dr. Blanc reminds me I am doing her no favors losing objectivity, but I am afraid of what happened to her. I am thirty-four and still feel I am prone to the exact same experience. What would I be locked—fixed to my bones on a wet floor—and starving blind in a stranger’s basement? The professional in me intervenes before I condescend to say: not an adult.
At first she did not cry at all. She breathes with her mouth open to feel her throat empty and wishes she could do the same with her eyes. She asked me how she would do that with her eyes. Cry, I told her without thinking, and smiled, pleased with the answer. No, she said, I cannot let anything out; I need what I have. And maybe it will rust the copper wire, I said, probably scaring her more.
*
She used to sit at the edge of her backyard, in her neighbor’s garden, and watch ghosts in a small box. She says it like she did it every day but, she knows, it may have only happened once. So many episodes reverberated so with her they overwhelm all things that populate a real day. She probably spent much of her time sitting in her room remembering watching ghosts in a small box, or whatever they might have really been, the way she does now. She is repopulating her days with more than ghosts now, or I am trying to get her to.
Her name is not short for anything, it is just Cassie. She is now in a room—it used to be two, the wall was knocked out for her—in a private clinic on the grounds of a hospital in the Appalachian Mountains. No one is permitted to give the precise location or her name. Her house is not nearby. Neither is the place where she was held captive. Cassie can spend hours making origami cranes, although only a few emerge from those hours because her fine motor skills are lacking. They hang from the cork tiles on the ceiling of her room. She told me one night she woke up and thought that amidst their swaying she saw Art hanging and was not scared or upset as she told me. Like dipping foot first into a large pool she is discovering a coolness towards things she sees are not good, now that she sees there is good and bad and not only Art. That there is no Art anymore: this did take her some time to reconcile.
She has gone into great detail about the abuse. She has gone into such detail that when the doctors observe her cervix, shredded, when they treat the sores in her mouth to which she is so prone and they refer to the abuse, I want to say: you mean the lead pipe he used when he could not perform, that he left with her in the basement for the occasion, and how he suffocated her and plugged her mouth whenever he spoke to her so she could in no capacity reciprocate? They know, but because they do not hear all about it they are keen to casually refer to the abuse, attribute this and that to it, like her flirtation with the orderly, Chad.
The high ivied wall was between school and her house. They would go by in the car, she and her mom. She was quick to reject blue plastic link-rings pilling white plastic and sweat-slick jungle gyms. She liked the periphery of the playground and the space under the stairwell she passed marching back to class. She liked to be read to and this has not lost its appeal. She liked dolls and figurines. Her mom told her on her first visit that she had just bought Cassie a doll when she was captured. Cassie asked for it and her dad enthusiastically drove all the way to their house in their rickety Dodge for it. I saw it swaddled on an upturned box next to her bed for a few days, but it disappeared. Cassie came to her appointment agitated and reported that the doll, Gisele, was gone. I did not want to ask, do you think someone took her? But I did not get anything out before Cassie explained Gisele’s whereabouts—the mulberry bush at the south end of the grounds—and asked me to send it back to her parents. I am sick keeping it, she said. Across the room or in the bed or especially under the bed, that it could not get up and go thrust her into a wind tunnel of inarticulate outrage. Milk tasted like lead. Sunshine beat sight from her. She stopped listening. Gisele is out of her sight—I am keeping her in my office at home. I am uneasy about sending it back to her parents. They did not understand when they saw her, what eleven years in a small basement could do to the development of the legs, what minerals are sacrificed to minimal exposure to sunlight—but they did not know why their daughter was abducted off a sidewalk in the first place. Why she was there: she skipped the bus in order to walk home and pass the wall. She took it in, did not try to scale it or tear the ivy off, walked along it and was about to start home when Art asked her something. Superficially they know this but there is no filing in the circumstances of one’s daughter’s abduction alongside the recipe for Shepherd’s Pie, so I should have patience with them and return the doll and readily explain. Cassie is back to normal now, with a shadow.
She cannot get over the idea that a doctor—she will not tell me which one, I think it is Bells, the cardiologist—wants to do something sexual to her. Specifically: they will be alone; he will stand there and say: so you want to—? He will not finish but let how she knows what he means well up and scald her throat. He will make her say no, admit to knowing, instead of just forcing her. If one or the other is going to happen, she tells me, I wish he would just do it. Her tears fall like small men leaping from windows, evacuating her face in a way completely uncharacteristic of tears. Before I could contemplate nauseously the kinds of incidents she drew her fears from, she brought up Art’s wife. She said: she used the same vase for flowers as she did to serve lemonade and one day, slumped fresh into this glass was a fat, slimy red heart. Of the human organ variety?—I was about to ask. That could not be what she means. Cassie is not an amalgam but layers of bemused and calm and urgent shuffling continuously to make her face a flat blur whether she says something like that or asks for toast. She did not care about my response; she understands she can say anything to me and has never baited me or told me something for any reason but to hold it out in front of her, so this is great, I think.
I asked Cassie what those are on her knees and around her collar bone, and she told me, she had the chance a few times to stop. Do you still want to die, I asked, and she said, it is not that she wants to but it is hard to lose, once it has been on you, like spider webbing, the idea to quit is small and fine and gets breathed in easily, circulates easily and finds places to rest and spray back. I agree. I may have even said it. It is in my notes, anyway.
Yesterday I went to take Gisele to the mailroom and saw the pile of mail for Cassie that has managed its way here. People find things out, the mailwoman, Grace, said. As long as there are people, like her, who know how to identify a bomb, anthrax and the like; there is no harm in all that mail that fills a third of the storage space. She let me look through it: a lot of knitting; some ancient brocade slip-thing that belonged to another little girl who vanished; shoes, especially galoshes, in arbitrary sizes; pictures of girls with a molasses-like glaze to their hair and a thick, syrupy affect about their eyes lodged in the photo, gelatinous looks—I cannot fathom having that look slimed on my conscience. I thought those, the relics of the perpetually missing, were much less frightening, not frightening at all but perfectly understandable, compared to the letters which I could not read past when you get out, if the love of a man has not been wrecked for you—but Stump thinks anything smacking of pigtails-and-patent-leather girlhood is, and I quote, creep-city. That does not belong to little girls anymore, he said. I do not believe they have the clout to take it back. They need a new shtick because men like Art have absconded with theirs. Not to mention the perverted stuff is to be expected given the tone of what has been reported and, vitally, the nature of what has been omitted.
There was so much stuff loosed from boxes and envelopes, Grace asked if I could please take it home, get it out of her sight. I said I would if she teaches me how to detect bombs. She uses a kind of special method, she said, prefaced with a sigh of spent lungs. Kind of like magic, she said. Consider weight versus size. Bombs, whether they be professional or homemade jobs, will always contain metal.
Copyright 2011 by Kari Larsen
Poor, Poor Peddling Moor
She rolls her prayer mat into a locked cabinet,
away from the hands of thieves in a busy bazaar.
Her nose, passed down generations, sticks out like a naked bulb.
Her hair and ears are bound inside a buzzard black shawl.
The sun never gets to pinch her skin:
her wares, along with her, are under a canopy
that protects commerce, consumers from elements,
so passers, buyers, may enjoy
the glass jewelry she sells, blown from Eastern sands;
glass as beautiful as Arabic algebra, isn’t sought by anyone.
She stands with hands behind her back, a servant, trying to sell
earrings, trinket necklaces that she thinks are shaped like god’s grace;
on special, 2-for-1 at her kiosk at the outlet mall, that does not allow
her to lay out her prayer rug and thank god for a sell.
Copyright 2011 by Tyler Malone
A Fine How-Do-You-Do
Why don't you pull
a sumac branch out of
your innuendo;
Sit on your own face;
And I'll fuck your god in
the heart
with a pear and pepper
chutney gunspasm.
Copyright 2011 by Brett Lars Underwood
Highway
Being straight would not make you perfect.
Sweet vista from this rise, where we have pulled off. We put our
feet on the gravel; in the grass, remains of fried chicken.
Melody is to harmony as sex is to love, true or false.
Me, I vote for the Scotty pin.
Meet me in fifteen behind the dumpster.
Greetings, Earthling. We are stardust.
Thankfully the bomb we’d imagined didn’t explode.
He’d wrecked many people’s lives using their inclination to greed, the fraud!
Forgotten towns on forgotten byways, inherited
deeds to land in the Ozarks, they might find natural gas, and then they do,
lots and lots.
Bliss, as if this were a novel by someone named for a month, April or June.
Kiss the you-know-what if you know what.
Copyright 2011 by David McAleavy
Music and Other
Each morning we awoke
in the bunker
and scrambled across
fields of broken glass
and the sidewalks littered
with last night's shell casings
Mr. Kravitz refilled our oxygen
tanks free of charge
in exchange we hauled bodies
from the spikes
on his roof
and took them to the government
depot
school started at twelve
and ended at two
enough time for our injections
and the Pledge of Allegiance
extra credit was given
for volunteering at the school
clinic
my friends and I had a good
business taking
fillings from our patients
over to the smithy
on the way home we dodged
the gangsters and their landmines
to make ready for another day
my brother and I shared
a cot in the bunker
he was bigger so most nights
I slept on the floor
and when the sirens rang
outside it sounded
faintly like what mom and dad
had once described music as
being like
Copyright 2011 by Matthew Stranach
The Heap
At foothills, resting in pieces under a BBQ restaurant’s
mesquite smog, scent of rib glaze, animals doomed to sauces,
we promise to remember what disgusts us.
We pleasantly never fall out of love with pleasant violence
by a slew of strollers holding hands, shoving baby strollers,
racing masses of elderly pilgrims who stop to examine park flora.
The nineteen-forties, derelict, deep in weeds with deep wounds,
dead before it could slide into a supermarket for gasoline,
or hear talk radio rage. This machine caught the big brake,
buried by bullets, slammed by slugs—and a smashed side
which speaks to our imagination. But how did it get there?
From assembly line to oxidizing outdoors—maybe a generation ago,
but the heap isn’t Bonnie and Clyde’s death ride.
It’s a mangled monument. Beautiful, inside the mind—how did it get there?
We conjure a driver, a father. His passengers, his family, were
mistaken for a gang wanted for burgling banks, stopped at a train crossing.
Police punctured the car doors, radiator hose, tire white walls--
and brains behind windows. The father’s corpse foot fell on the gas.
His family met a train carrying cows to the slaughter.
Because all we have are a tale’s stale, rusted remains.
Copyright 2011 by Tyler Malone
AW ‘IGHT DIN
"Shut the Fuck Up! We're trying to make some music down here! Jive-Ass Mother Fuckers."
John Zorn, August 1997...to Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, who were talking during a Bar Kohhba show at The Knitting Factory
Their encroachment sometimes welcome, sometimes haunting can send a grown man to the john, the pulpit, the confessional, the madhouse.
The same goes for all beings.
Lhaso Apsu yelp. Wolves bay. A car explodes. Little kitty cats mew.
Daddy’s got a squeezebox. Mommy cries herself to sleep.
Bob saves up for a parabolic microphone with the tips he makes washing sedan windshields with a squeegee.
Frank apes ducks from a blind, though he is deaf.
Boom boom chug chug munch munch.
No silence.
Plunging needles perhaps or popping pills to bring peace.
But no silence.
The buzz continues.
Din.
“ …and nobody knows sound like me nobody knows sound…I hate sound and wear earplugs to work to sleep to everything so I don’t have to wear that sound, Man!” said the perturbed technician.
Postal workers hum and groan delivering checks to pay for the buffering and the AC units drown out the crimes of the night. Love and happiness conquer the banal screams of youths and during the winter months even Bach and Beethoven are muffled in the roar of the heaters, blowing their suffocating breath to keep the anemic from teeth chatters and shivers. A well-placed bug captures the ensuing moans but can never take from her the past dalliances of the night and the voices for which she yearns. He’ll never say, “I love you”. He doesn’t speak English. He think she just want the bang bang.
Ashamed of her lisp, he mutters to himself as he backs away each morning, when the sickness is at its most audible. The coffee maker percolates to the ticking of the clock.
The Sawtooth Mountains invite Morricone to the piazza and the nuns beg their pupils to cease before the whack, whack, whack of the rulers on bones. The couple upstairs are pump-humpin real good now and they aren’t afraid to share.
Jimmy turns up the Wu Tang.
“…and nobody knows sound like me nobody knows sound…I hate sound and wear earplugs to work to sleep to everything so I don’t have to wear that sound, Man!” said the perturbed technician.
On the chipper side of town, the giggling and tee-heeing is enough to quell thought. Piss drips silently down the thighs of the plebes. Breezes sing through the lips of the leaves. A broken guitar string heals itself and whispers love into a salamander’s backside. The poet likes to think she is piddling her “onomatopoeia” into the porcelain late at night when the neighbors quit cheering on their children with one strop after another.
The muse wants for crisp exactitude. His hip pops with each step. The senator is not convinced by the beating of the hummingbird’s wings. Taking a sedative only muffles life’s concert according to the Luddite. Troops stomp off to war in search of the
rat-a-tat-tat of “freedom” and the squooshy blood of the brown people so you don’t have to sell your body to the pimp with the boomin’ system for another gallon of glug glug. The bass player wants more vocals in the monitor.
Wolf Eyes signs with Sub Pop.
“I’ve heard about enough of you, Mister!”
The release of the safety leaves only a click.
The killer stomps down a hall in anger.
“…and nobody knows sound like me nobody knows sound…I hate sound and wear earplugs to work to sleep to everything so I don’t have to wear that sound, Man!” said the perturbed technician.
The full moon sings its urgency in the minds of the night owls.
Later, fenders crunch into each other and a siren screams its self-importance as the doormen yell, “Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!”
Can you hear yourself think? Where is your inner voice, El Presidente’? Can you hear that jingle, jangle, jingle? The hunger pang of a nation set to the bed of you gargling Satan’s jism.
Fur shizzle.
Because there ARE rivers. Because there are breezes. Because there are trees blowing in those breezes. Nobody knows sound like sound like you do hound like you do now.
Like bats and sonar.
As a billion boots crunch broken iPods like frozen snow and skulls of those that have held the nightmares of these masses.
What?
I say sound.
Sound.
I say.
His voice cracked, but delivered most days of the summer and Grandpa listened.
…but not to “No!”
“I’ll give you what for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Brother, can you hear me?
Can you see me near you?
Brother, can you feel me?
Is that you singing? Are you the asshole who speaks about disambiguation?
Eat some pie or shut it!
Do you remember the first time you heard DEVO while John Cage hunted mushrooms and danced to the twigs’ snap? Remember?
Ilsa was thanking god that farts were audible and munching on corn chips?
Meanwhile, there was an interminable hiss in the PA and the featured speaker could not be understood as your stomach grumbled and some chump cracked his knuckles and sucked on mentholyptus when he wasn’t hacking up last-night’s phlegm.
The ball continues bouncing against the wall as the faucet drips and a dwarf in wooden shoes does French-Press-fueled wind sprints on the wooden floors of your fragile mind.
Time to jet to the zendo, Fifi!
Their encroachment sometimes welcome, sometimes haunting can send a grown man to the john, the pulpit, the confessional, the madhouse. The same goes for all beings.
Lhaso Apsu yelp. Wolves bay. A car explodes. Little kitty cats mew.
Daddy’s got a squeezebox. Mommy cries herself to sleep. Bob saves up for a parabolic microphone with the crumpled cash he makes squeegeeing sedan windows. Frank wears earplugs, though he is deaf.
The buzz continues.
The checks come in the mail to pay for the buffering and the AC units drown out the crimes of the night. Love and happiness conquer the banal screams of youths and during the winter months even Bach and Beethoven are muffled in the roar of the heaters, blowing their suffocating breath to keep the anemic from teeth chatters and shivers.
A well-placed bug captures the ensuing moans but can never take from her the past dalliances of the night and the voices for which she yearns.
He’ll never say, “I love you”.
Ashamed of her lisp, he mutters to himself as he backs away each morning, when the sickness is at it most audible.
The coffee maker percolates to the ticking of the clock.
The Sawtooth Mountains invite Morricone to the piazza and the nuns beg their pupils to cease.
On the chipper side of town, the giggling and tee-heeing is enough to quell thought. Piss drips silently down the thighs of the plebes. Breezes sing through the lips of the leaves. A broken guitar string heals itself and whispers love into a salamander’s backside.
The muse wants for crisp exactitude. The listener is not convinced by the beating of the hummingbird’s wings. Taking a sedative only parlays a concert according to the Luddite. Troops stomp off to war in search of boom boom and the squooshy blood of the brown people so you don’t have to sell your iPod.
“I’ve heard about enough of you, Mister!”
The release of the safety hardly makes a noise. The killer stomps down a hall in anger.
The full moon sings as Peter turns off the radio and locks the gates.
Copyright 2011 by Brett Lars Underwood
`
The Invisible Bicycle
Our story begins, as so many of them do, with a piece of wood. A child kneels on a Persian Rug to receive the rod. Books are thrown at his head. He learns to get out of their way, and to pick up after them.
His nanny speaks little English. There are many dogs, and one scurrying terrified cat. He goes to many different schools whose methods of teaching are all in contradiction to one another.
His Mother is always stuck in an airplane. His father is draining her bank account to get his degree. He eventually hangs his diploma on some distant wall which is too far away to see.
The only thing kept secret from him is his identity. He is given the same name as everyone else.
When given a bicycle he tries to run away from home, taking with him only jacks and marbles and a pouch full of coins.
They take his bicycle away, cut off all his hair, burn all his clothes, destroy all his images and recordings.
He knows that the Bicycle is still in the house, somewhere, behind one of many locked doors. He goes to the library, hoping to find a book on lock picking, but there aren’t any there. He takes home Oliver Twist instead, because he likes the name.
Federal agents come to his door in sedans and vans. They take his Mother away. He begins to develop distaste for automobiles.
He is left with his Mother’s second Husband. The rod is spared, but the insults are let fly.
One day the door is open. He gets on the Bicycle and rides away. He doesn’t get far. They lock him in a cell, and then send him to a rehabilitation center for disturbed children. They never give him back the Bicycle.
He escapes early one morning, cutting his hands on the barbed wire.
He falls in love and rides to Mexico with his much older companion. They get to Tijuana, where somebody pulls a gun on them and steals their Bicycles. A woman selling tamales across the street says, in perfect English: “Go Back!”
He develops distaste for guns. Many more are pulled on him, yet he lives.
They walk across the border. They hitch hike back to Los Angeles. They go to the house of a grey old man. They tell him the story and ask him what happened. He shows them a film: “The Bicycle Thief”. They all laugh and make merry.
The child and the Woman go their separate ways. The child walks, riding an invisible Bicycle. He leaves Los Angeles. He takes a train to San Francisco.
In this city he meets many people, all of whom tell him that Bicycles should be free. These people are all from different places. Holland. Japan. Places where Bicycles are free.
They form an angry mob. The child joins the mob. They cut parking meters, smash BMW’s with crowbars, set cars on fire in the middle of the street, forming a circle so that no one outside can see who lights the fire.
This time the child gets off Scot Free.
This magic grows. The fire spreads all over the world. But for some reason the child still does not know who he is. His identity is kept sacred.
One night he falls asleep in the forest with a hundred knives in his bag that he uses to cut himself.
The rangers wake him up. They put their hands into his bag and cut their hands. They take him away, leaving his bicycle in the forest.
He is extradited to Los Angeles to answer for crimes he never committed. They want to show him that he can’t escape.
When he gets back to Los Angeles, his Mother gets out of Prison. He doesn’t have her number, but she finds him.
She takes him to a little town by the sea, and buys him a Bicycle. He meets several people there, from all over the world. They make many different soups in many different kitchens; bring it to where homeless people live on their Bicycles. They decide that everything is free and all you have to do is take it. The child becomes a man. He studies philosophy for two years then drops out. He has already read all the books.
One day he is feeding homeless people, when one of them asks if they can borrow his Bicycle. He says no. She punches him in the face and rides off on it. He does not hit women. He has developed distaste for such things.
His mother buys him an other. He rents a room to a child somewhat similar to himself, but with less education. The child leaves. The child comes back with his friends and demands his money back. He knows that the man keeps money orders around the house because he likes to keep his hands clean of banks. The man is not in the house when that happens. His room mate and their friends are there. He walks in with a large man who carries a knife in his pocket. It is eerily similar to something that happened between the man and his father.
There is a long moment of silence.
“What’s going on here?” he says, in a man’s voice.
He goes and sits down in his chair. The chair no one else sits in.
The thieves lie. There are three of them. Two children and a Woman. They say he owes the child money.
He tells them it is already spent. He tells them that what they are doing is horrible.
They make no specific threats, so he says: “Or what?”
The whole situation is impossible. There are six of his not including himself, and only three of theirs. One of his has a knife in his pocket. He knows this. He sits in his chair and opens a Chocolate Stout.
He tells them that it is the second day of the current month, which means that the money orders he uses to pay his rent were spent yesterday. He tells them they could have figured this out quite easily if they had only looked at a calendar.
“Wow…this guy’s, like, really smart,” the woman says.
“You should listen to her,” he says, and walks off to his bed room and slams the door. He locks it and leans his entire wait against it. They pound on the door. He pounds right back at them. The door cannot fall. They do not know how to break down a door. They are useless villains, with no other interests than villainy.
Finally, they give up. He laughs at them through the door.
They yell back, but their voices are hidden. They cannot speak.
They give up again. He says nothing.
He lies down on his bed and listens. He knows that if the two children try to fight the six children, they will get their asses kicked. He doesn’t want any blood on his clean hands.
He hears the dark one say: “He’s calling the cops!”
His room mate’s youngest friend says: “No, the phone’s right here!”
Stupid thing to say.
“Alright!” says the light one. “What’s goin’ on with the money?”
The man listens to the sounds of the feet in the other room; hears everyone leave but the man with the knife. He goes out to the kitchen and makes some soup.
He tells the man with the knife to leave. The man with the knife leaves. He rescues a biter from the pound, in the morning, after discovering that the thieves have taken his Bicycle.
His room mate has gone to the atm and given the men all his money. The man asks the child, “Why? Are we not Men?”
****
The Man becomes a Prince amongst Thieves. He becomes himself again. He still does not know who he is. He is missing a lake from which to receive the sword.
He leaves the little town by the beach, and goes to live with his mother, who has two men on both sides of the country. She cannot make a decision, or so she says. She leaves him alone with the man she eventually intends to marry. The Prince leaves this house, finding it unfamiliar. There is also a crack in the wall, but he shushes himself.
He returns to Los Angeles where he gets a job as an invisible Bicycle. A lady passes through town. He has seen her before, but she looks better now. He steals her from his friend while he is high on Cocaine and Whiskey and Fire. Some friends of his are having a party outside.
He becomes the Prince of Thieves.
He is renting out his Garage which sits behind his garden. The men who live back there throw bottles at his friend’s head and tell his friend to hit the Prince of Thieves. They say that he deserves it.
He is listening all the time. People make reports to him. He writes down their words and keeps them in his closet until the time is ripe.
He writes a book about himself, and then burns it.
His best friend is the editor. He two keeps his hands clean.
The men in the back continue breaking bottles and they are kicked out. The Prince of Thieves has to sweep up the Broken Glass with his Broom.
They tell him that it will never work: what he’s doing. Not in a million years. He has to be more discreet about it, they say.
He says nothing.
They leave.
His friend moves to Tucson, AZ, with the Prince of Thieves’ ex-girlfriend. He is an intelligent man. He is the man who got him the job in the first place. He is a director who does not ask for any credit. They understand one another perfectly.
After this, he rents his garage out for free to another best friend who got lost on the highway.
In between days, he writes this story in that same garage. He burns it at midnight by the light of the fool moon.
He becomes extremely tired of not knowing who he is. He develops distaste for himself. He develops distaste for his face. He develops distaste for his beauty. He begins to equate them with the gun and the car and all of the other things. To him his face is useless. After all, he cannot see it, except in the mirror. He destroys a statue of Narcissus in his mind. He calls it a poem. It is. He burns this poem. It is not good enough.
He still didn’t know who he was and it started to bother him again. What was the point of all this reading and writing if he couldn’t even understand himself?
The Lady in the Lake moved to San Francisco. He had always had bad luck in that town. There were too many philosophers, not enough space; too many people asking too many others for coin. He took no quarter.
Still, he decided that he would look for the lady; especially after she sent him a few letters. He was a man of words, not of tools, this Prince of Thieves. He had another Bicycle, but by now it was invisible. He had become the Invisible Bicycle.
He went to San Francisco to seek the Lady, as she had requested his presence there. She tried to explain things to him, but no one ever could. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
He was more interested in writing Graffiti on the Bible than wasting time arguing about things that didn’t make any sense.
But it hurt. He felt like he had lost his Bicycle.
He cried. And then he started to hurt himself with knives more than he ever had before. In the past he had never practiced self-mutilation for more than four months at a time, and even then: only as a sort of experiment.
But now he had lost his Bicycle.
He kept paying the bills, doing the work, but things just weren’t quite the same after that. He stabbed himself with knives in the bathroom. He had a whore for a girl friend.
These whores were very nice people and they gave him lots of things in return for him stabbing them with knives. They were much more impressed with his talents than she had been. They never charged him anything. He gave things to them, and then they returned the favor.
They understood where he was coming from. When he was a child, he used to be a whore himself. He dressed in women’s clothing, even had a pimp who was actually a nice guy if you didn’t piss him off. He could get his mind around whoring.
But the thing about whoring is that it gets old.
He became the King.
He wanted his castle.
The only thing stopping him was that he didn’t want any servants. So of course, he found one.
He stole one, actually, from another best friend who wasn’t paying his bills. He told all his friends in Los Angeles: “Listen, I’ve been working since I was 14, and I’m getting tired, here. Do any of you know how to make any money?”
He wrote another book about it, and burned it.
His Dog Ears couldn’t hear the pages, yet.
He still didn’t know who he was, and he was already set to commit murder. The only thing stopping him was his conscience.
His family had betrayed him. They didn’t tell him the truth. They tried to fool him with bats and balls and so on. But in the end, they were the fools. They had no idea what a monster they were creating.
He married for the second time. The first time was in Mexico, and so it was not legal in the United States. This time there was a mistake on the certificate, which a crafty Black Woman typed up. His second Wife never corrected the mistake.
He didn’t really know it then, but he was saving himself for something; something more real than all these words and paper.
People were sending him messages all along: telling him who he was. He just couldn’t believe them because they didn’t know how to speak English.
Other people were sending him other messages:
“Die! Die! Die!”
People kept asking him, even though it wasn’t a question: “Oh, I thought you died already.”
In time he came to learn that most people just didn’t understand how to speak, and you couldn’t listen to them. This was almost his downfall. He began to see the page as many different pages.
And so, he became a child again.
Now he needed a mother to fuck. But he had read Shakespeare so many times that he was still nervous about shaking spears.
Obviously, he couldn’t fuck his own mother. That would be wrong, and she had never suggested it. He had dreamed about it once when he was eight, but that was a nitemare.
In the dream he had been a Gorilla with a Cape. This dream would stay in the back of his mind all his life.
He didn’t want to change. He didn’t want to become something else. He was happy with what he was. He had finally found himself.
His second wife had a deformed face. That was alright, but she never looked in the mirror. There was so much distortion you couldn’t hear a sound. It was like an echo chamber; like listening to your own voice talking to yourself on speakerphone.
***
He goes to San Francisco where he sells tamales and tells people to go back. His face is getting old. He writes a story about his face, and publishes it. He leaves his second Wife in San Francisco where she belongs. He sells his Bicycle so that he may board a Tornado instead of an Airplane. He receives a card in the mail with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on it. The fire is already there. Its source is some mysterious machine he can’t see yet.
The child becomes a Sorcerer. He moves to Oz where he becomes the Wizard. He has discovered that there is no magic. It is all a made up story. He becomes a detective and begins to investigate crimes. He steals two Bicycles to get his revenge. He doesn’t get caught.
Instead he finds the truth. The Women have invented the Prince, and the rest the Detective has found himself.
When he gets to Oz, there is a Bicycle waiting for him.
The Woman behind the desk writes the words, and there is no other God but her that we can see with our eyes. She admits to you all that it’s all wrong, but somebody has to do it.
Copyright 2011 by J de Salvo
The Invisible Bicycle
Our story begins, as so many of them do, with a piece of wood. A child kneels on a Persian Rug to receive the rod. Books are thrown at his head. He learns to get out of their way, and to pick up after them.
His nanny speaks little English. There are many dogs, and one scurrying terrified cat. He goes to many different schools whose methods of teaching are all in contradiction to one another.
His Mother is always stuck in an airplane. His father is draining her bank account to get his degree. He eventually hangs his diploma on some distant wall which is too far away to see.
The only thing kept secret from him is his identity. He is given the same name as everyone else.
When given a bicycle he tries to run away from home, taking with him only jacks and marbles and a pouch full of coins.
They take his bicycle away, cut off all his hair, burn all his clothes, destroy all his images and recordings.
He knows that the Bicycle is still in the house, somewhere, behind one of many locked doors. He goes to the library, hoping to find a book on lock picking, but there aren’t any there. He takes home Oliver Twist instead, because he likes the name.
Federal agents come to his door in sedans and vans. They take his Mother away. He begins to develop distaste for automobiles.
He is left with his Mother’s second Husband. The rod is spared, but the insults are let fly.
One day the door is open. He gets on the Bicycle and rides away. He doesn’t get far. They lock him in a cell, and then send him to a rehabilitation center for disturbed children. They never give him back the Bicycle.
He escapes early one morning, cutting his hands on the barbed wire.
He falls in love and rides to Mexico with his much older companion. They get to Tijuana, where somebody pulls a gun on them and steals their Bicycles. A woman selling tamales across the street says, in perfect English: “Go Back!”
He develops distaste for guns. Many more are pulled on him, yet he lives.
They walk across the border. They hitch hike back to Los Angeles. They go to the house of a grey old man. They tell him the story and ask him what happened. He shows them a film: “The Bicycle Thief”. They all laugh and make merry.
The child and the Woman go their separate ways. The child walks, riding an invisible Bicycle. He leaves Los Angeles. He takes a train to San Francisco.
In this city he meets many people, all of whom tell him that Bicycles should be free. These people are all from different places. Holland. Japan. Places where Bicycles are free.
They form an angry mob. The child joins the mob. They cut parking meters, smash BMW’s with crowbars, set cars on fire in the middle of the street, forming a circle so that no one outside can see who lights the fire.
This time the child gets off Scot Free.
This magic grows. The fire spreads all over the world. But for some reason the child still does not know who he is. His identity is kept sacred.
One night he falls asleep in the forest with a hundred knives in his bag that he uses to cut himself.
The rangers wake him up. They put their hands into his bag and cut their hands. They take him away, leaving his bicycle in the forest.
He is extradited to Los Angeles to answer for crimes he never committed. They want to show him that he can’t escape.
When he gets back to Los Angeles, his Mother gets out of Prison. He doesn’t have her number, but she finds him.
She takes him to a little town by the sea, and buys him a Bicycle. He meets several people there, from all over the world. They make many different soups in many different kitchens; bring it to where homeless people live on their Bicycles. They decide that everything is free and all you have to do is take it. The child becomes a man. He studies philosophy for two years then drops out. He has already read all the books.
One day he is feeding homeless people, when one of them asks if they can borrow his Bicycle. He says no. She punches him in the face and rides off on it. He does not hit women. He has developed distaste for such things.
His mother buys him an other. He rents a room to a child somewhat similar to himself, but with less education. The child leaves. The child comes back with his friends and demands his money back. He knows that the man keeps money orders around the house because he likes to keep his hands clean of banks. The man is not in the house when that happens. His room mate and their friends are there. He walks in with a large man who carries a knife in his pocket. It is eerily similar to something that happened between the man and his father.
There is a long moment of silence.
“What’s going on here?” he says, in a man’s voice.
He goes and sits down in his chair. The chair no one else sits in.
The thieves lie. There are three of them. Two children and a Woman. They say he owes the child money.
He tells them it is already spent. He tells them that what they are doing is horrible.
They make no specific threats, so he says: “Or what?”
The whole situation is impossible. There are six of his not including himself, and only three of theirs. One of his has a knife in his pocket. He knows this. He sits in his chair and opens a Chocolate Stout.
He tells them that it is the second day of the current month, which means that the money orders he uses to pay his rent were spent yesterday. He tells them they could have figured this out quite easily if they had only looked at a calendar.
“Wow…this guy’s, like, really smart,” the woman says.
“You should listen to her,” he says, and walks off to his bed room and slams the door. He locks it and leans his entire wait against it. They pound on the door. He pounds right back at them. The door cannot fall. They do not know how to break down a door. They are useless villains, with no other interests than villainy.
Finally, they give up. He laughs at them through the door.
They yell back, but their voices are hidden. They cannot speak.
They give up again. He says nothing.
He lies down on his bed and listens. He knows that if the two children try to fight the six children, they will get their asses kicked. He doesn’t want any blood on his clean hands.
He hears the dark one say: “He’s calling the cops!”
His room mate’s youngest friend says: “No, the phone’s right here!”
Stupid thing to say.
“Alright!” says the light one. “What’s goin’ on with the money?”
The man listens to the sounds of the feet in the other room; hears everyone leave but the man with the knife. He goes out to the kitchen and makes some soup.
He tells the man with the knife to leave. The man with the knife leaves. He rescues a biter from the pound, in the morning, after discovering that the thieves have taken his Bicycle.
His room mate has gone to the atm and given the men all his money. The man asks the child, “Why? Are we not Men?”
****
The Man becomes a Prince amongst Thieves. He becomes himself again. He still does not know who he is. He is missing a lake from which to receive the sword.
He leaves the little town by the beach, and goes to live with his mother, who has two men on both sides of the country. She cannot make a decision, or so she says. She leaves him alone with the man she eventually intends to marry. The Prince leaves this house, finding it unfamiliar. There is also a crack in the wall, but he shushes himself.
He returns to Los Angeles where he gets a job as an invisible Bicycle. A lady passes through town. He has seen her before, but she looks better now. He steals her from his friend while he is high on Cocaine and Whiskey and Fire. Some friends of his are having a party outside.
He becomes the Prince of Thieves.
He is renting out his Garage which sits behind his garden. The men who live back there throw bottles at his friend’s head and tell his friend to hit the Prince of Thieves. They say that he deserves it.
He is listening all the time. People make reports to him. He writes down their words and keeps them in his closet until the time is ripe.
He writes a book about himself, and then burns it.
His best friend is the editor. He two keeps his hands clean.
The men in the back continue breaking bottles and they are kicked out. The Prince of Thieves has to sweep up the Broken Glass with his Broom.
They tell him that it will never work: what he’s doing. Not in a million years. He has to be more discreet about it, they say.
He says nothing.
They leave.
His friend moves to Tucson, AZ, with the Prince of Thieves’ ex-girlfriend. He is an intelligent man. He is the man who got him the job in the first place. He is a director who does not ask for any credit. They understand one another perfectly.
After this, he rents his garage out for free to another best friend who got lost on the highway.
In between days, he writes this story in that same garage. He burns it at midnight by the light of the fool moon.
He becomes extremely tired of not knowing who he is. He develops distaste for himself. He develops distaste for his face. He develops distaste for his beauty. He begins to equate them with the gun and the car and all of the other things. To him his face is useless. After all, he cannot see it, except in the mirror. He destroys a statue of Narcissus in his mind. He calls it a poem. It is. He burns this poem. It is not good enough.
He still didn’t know who he was and it started to bother him again. What was the point of all this reading and writing if he couldn’t even understand himself?
The Lady in the Lake moved to San Francisco. He had always had bad luck in that town. There were too many philosophers, not enough space; too many people asking too many others for coin. He took no quarter.
Still, he decided that he would look for the lady; especially after she sent him a few letters. He was a man of words, not of tools, this Prince of Thieves. He had another Bicycle, but by now it was invisible. He had become the Invisible Bicycle.
He went to San Francisco to seek the Lady, as she had requested his presence there. She tried to explain things to him, but no one ever could. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
He was more interested in writing Graffiti on the Bible than wasting time arguing about things that didn’t make any sense.
But it hurt. He felt like he had lost his Bicycle.
He cried. And then he started to hurt himself with knives more than he ever had before. In the past he had never practiced self-mutilation for more than four months at a time, and even then: only as a sort of experiment.
But now he had lost his Bicycle.
He kept paying the bills, doing the work, but things just weren’t quite the same after that. He stabbed himself with knives in the bathroom. He had a whore for a girl friend.
These whores were very nice people and they gave him lots of things in return for him stabbing them with knives. They were much more impressed with his talents than she had been. They never charged him anything. He gave things to them, and then they returned the favor.
They understood where he was coming from. When he was a child, he used to be a whore himself. He dressed in women’s clothing, even had a pimp who was actually a nice guy if you didn’t piss him off. He could get his mind around whoring.
But the thing about whoring is that it gets old.
He became the King.
He wanted his castle.
The only thing stopping him was that he didn’t want any servants. So of course, he found one.
He stole one, actually, from another best friend who wasn’t paying his bills. He told all his friends in Los Angeles: “Listen, I’ve been working since I was 14, and I’m getting tired, here. Do any of you know how to make any money?”
He wrote another book about it, and burned it.
His Dog Ears couldn’t hear the pages, yet.
He still didn’t know who he was, and he was already set to commit murder. The only thing stopping him was his conscience.
His family had betrayed him. They didn’t tell him the truth. They tried to fool him with bats and balls and so on. But in the end, they were the fools. They had no idea what a monster they were creating.
He married for the second time. The first time was in Mexico, and so it was not legal in the United States. This time there was a mistake on the certificate, which a crafty Black Woman typed up. His second Wife never corrected the mistake.
He didn’t really know it then, but he was saving himself for something; something more real than all these words and paper.
People were sending him messages all along: telling him who he was. He just couldn’t believe them because they didn’t know how to speak English.
Other people were sending him other messages:
“Die! Die! Die!”
People kept asking him, even though it wasn’t a question: “Oh, I thought you died already.”
In time he came to learn that most people just didn’t understand how to speak, and you couldn’t listen to them. This was almost his downfall. He began to see the page as many different pages.
And so, he became a child again.
Now he needed a mother to fuck. But he had read Shakespeare so many times that he was still nervous about shaking spears.
Obviously, he couldn’t fuck his own mother. That would be wrong, and she had never suggested it. He had dreamed about it once when he was eight, but that was a nitemare.
In the dream he had been a Gorilla with a Cape. This dream would stay in the back of his mind all his life.
He didn’t want to change. He didn’t want to become something else. He was happy with what he was. He had finally found himself.
His second wife had a deformed face. That was alright, but she never looked in the mirror. There was so much distortion you couldn’t hear a sound. It was like an echo chamber; like listening to your own voice talking to yourself on speakerphone.
***
He goes to San Francisco where he sells tamales and tells people to go back. His face is getting old. He writes a story about his face, and publishes it. He leaves his second Wife in San Francisco where she belongs. He sells his Bicycle so that he may board a Tornado instead of an Airplane. He receives a card in the mail with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on it. The fire is already there. Its source is some mysterious machine he can’t see yet.
The child becomes a Sorcerer. He moves to Oz where he becomes the Wizard. He has discovered that there is no magic. It is all a made up story. He becomes a detective and begins to investigate crimes. He steals two Bicycles to get his revenge. He doesn’t get caught.
Instead he finds the truth. The Women have invented the Prince, and the rest the Detective has found himself.
When he gets to Oz, there is a Bicycle waiting for him.
The Woman behind the desk writes the words, and there is no other God but her that we can see with our eyes. She admits to you all that it’s all wrong, but somebody has to do it.
Copyright 2011 by J de Salvo
Edited and curated by J de Salvo, Lynne Hayes, and Jeff Kappel
Published by J de Salvo
Associate editors:
John Domini
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
