back of the house

Loneliness as transgression

Fortunately anything women have to say is now fascinating.
Didn't realize I'd been waiting for this day of fem reckoning
Though I cum frum the same past as all genders, one where
Handymans and manosos were wallpaper or sofa cushions,
Not the worst that can happen and also provided company,
Shelter from the other annoying women & children's voices.
It's like lucille ball said it's when they stop groping I'll worry.
Well now i'm free from all that, all that all, and just all in all.
This freeing freedom wasn't free but now it's free of freeing
freesources or a single freaking like-minded or any girlfriend.
Sure, men don't have to matter but they must because
Where are all the single ladies hanging who aren't
Lesbians or hookers.
What must i as a single woman trapped in the body of a single
Woman expect from life now that i've broken free of the
Chains the opiates of the masses and soberly feel wind in my
Goddamn face, shed, even, my need to copulate the race,
Those engines no longer charged, ironically, here in a broken
Seal-and-Peeled window, smashed open, ready for.
I sit in a window like a whore for what's outside society.
Cum, better ones. The just, gifted, outre'd, fashion-victimed.
I'll bake pies and no, i guess we'll invent a new fried dough,
Start this show from scratch. Cum, wind. Snow. Anyone?



"Me too, everyone!"
By Donna

android compass app

i had to expose intimate parts of me
and settle into a lifetime they access
my accounts, camera, private parts,
just for a monthly pass to an android
compass app, because the laptop's too
big to carry around in front of me as
I try and find my way to the phone or
clock or somewhere i can take a nap.

North and South; East and West

Correct angle

From my point of view, there's no N/E/W/S.
I smacked my little bitch on the butt for maybe the first time ever.
I'm planning to make N/E/W/S signs and look up their appropriate corresponding walls to hang on per an online map after locating recognizable coordinates external to my home.
She seemed to go crazy, almost ran into a glass door.
Meanwhile, I lose grip on interlocutors, charged connections, cannot interface without shock.
She'd run in the door and ate Juniper's food even though that's why I had her out there in the first place so she wouldn't do that.
Meals don't come to me, and I don't seek them; suddenly I'm ravenous and there's nothing.
There's no way to play without losing; I've come full circle, and it's verified.
She's so fat her tiny legs are imploding.
I just want her to get better but her will is too strong.
I bite at all the carrots, ok I'll do it, and better than anyone, and hold me to it, and it's wrong.
A life seeking pleasure and grieving it out of guilt is a bitch's life, or a god's.



Big Tiny

Man Bun Tips

"How Knot"

Bandless Side-Bun w/ Veil

Bitch Crit

[stub]

Cannot endorse

While they may be loud and dry, a phenotype we've endorsed previously on these stones, the examples that have been trotted, stair-stepped, and blatantly squeezed out before us are also harsh and hard, and painful, which was neither the intention nor the spirit of our original Everythinguide classification.

Ultra, Alta, and Outre

I started as an idea, and that helps make
sense that there'd be others trying to get
out of me and others you want to put ba
ck in. I can't stop the morbid ideations f
or example of Peg, in her brown wig, be
ing Remote Tissue Decisioned all over t
he control room, how the rangers laughe
d as Tom doubled her over over and ove
r until her hair flew off. She's an idea th
at is having an anxiety attack inside me
now, and I feel that if I were a multiple-
personalityed and selves-aware subject,
I'd say that she was imprisoned inside o
f me and really losing it, still in that tig
ht black crepe dress. In fact hypothetica
lly mind you there would be three screa
ming bitches trying to take over the ses
sion and take over as the dominant pers
onality but then what-- me and two of t
hem trying to get with a new cycle? We
'd self-destruct. Pegyuh calls herself Ul
tra because she has two kids and she w
ants her life back with a mthyuh's fury;
Alta knows what she could do with her
freedom besides what biological impet
us alone could not achieve; and Outre,
the quiet one, skulking behind a park b
ench or a tree in our imagination, worr
ing us with dark poses and a tauntingly
high ceiling for aversion to great perso
nal risk or a prodigy at least for stunts.

Walking Couch Lock

with a cough

Wicker Spitoon

Can't we be more like the dead?
The more I try to find you
In the fog of loneliness
The more I recall my pre-plague
friends, how they'd stay
to work it out the night through
When talk was play was our
Way into pleasure, importance
This cold future came due
As they drew their last breaths.
No, I mean literally die, long
form, grotesque; but not
writhing, thanks to the drugs
we are currently not surviving
and while providing, sure,
prettier corpses, but also the
empty hole on somebody's list
of who's there when I'm old.



"Thanks to All of You Who've Died"
by Tom

Probe Thong's Kidnapping and Involuntary Participation in K R&D

Did DT
sew the autopsies
was she drugged and
brought in because of her
exaggerated resume and
actual size of breasts?
Was she an indentured intern
to the RTD program at
Pharmsupply?
Was she released thinking
she could mainstream?
She'd become skilled in
many kinds of surgery:
reconstructive, exploratory,
organ removal/ replacement
and quasi-medical
K grooming techniques



"K's Fly Spread Eagle"

New family roads

new family roads
in emerging colors
can't absorb
history from a stone
if it isn't theirs already

you can't expect us,
now, to follow a
single historical
line, and converge
for any longer than

it takes to say it:
Time, in its truer
voracious circle,
supposed to blend,
but bleeds instead.



La Chama, Altachank Heights, Churchcock

You can awaken safety issues

You can awaken safety issues
which had been dormant (not imaginary);
that's not the same as looking for them

Feeling unsafe is the same as being unsafe
from the environment, self, others; fear
alone could trigger accidents of nervousness

We volunteered not to strap on bombs but
walk out into the minefields so that you'd
know someone at risk because we knew

someone dead who'd gone in before us or
someone'd come in after them, but dead still;
trekkers into either world endanger one world


by Ilyn

cabello y comentario

He Sweated It

Always ask yourself: how is this moment auspicious
Then remember who sweated all of it for you
See when he dropped it shook loose some shit and
Made him less valuable as bud (blood was 33%)
But more for humanskind to gather from lily pads
And cough up for Volca in the form of a shiny coin



from "Good Graciousness: Ilyn's Perspiration as Nourishment"
Children's Myth of Mthyuh

In lieu of a barricade, wind

Namer, mimer, maimer-- not a minor or a memer;
Sacred murmuring, foul burbling, flying streamer;
Caught stick, wandering beaver, bad home leaver;



"Fragment b"
Connie's Profile on Wicca+

Moist again

Mike shows up at the door crotch-deep in fly boots and obviously had just been crying. He had come to fish whatever was smelling bad out of the crawlspace under the floor.

So they pulled out 8 animals huh?

Yes three species. It's quieter now. But the

Smell, yes... Mike sobbed a little here.

Are you ok? The animal guy could come out.

No, I'm good. I'll be right out of your hair.

I thought about the tangled dyed wad from the tub drain. I still wondered who, how, when.

It smells back by the creek wall. The cement there seems to be getting moist again. Was it the right kind for there?

Yeah they're saying floods again so you'll have to keep an eye out.

For floods? Why is there a manhole in the creek?

I'll bring by some sand bags if the time comes don't worry. I'm going to protect my property.

RE-CAP: Mordon Holy Star

RE-CAP: intraceptive missionaryism

NO SHOW OF BLOOD CITING.
We noticed as we swung by to check for blood on your door
that there was none. and now, in the light of our torches,
you seem quite agitated, maybe insane. we are afraid for y-
our soul. we are afraid of what our God might do to you if
we decide it is appropriate. He may cause us to harm you
badly, and your family, and your future generations. we are
here to perform an intravention to protect you from any
further danger. Do you have a knife, or have you lost it?
Where are your lambs-- or have you failed to fulfill even
that most basic of norms? You are harming everyone by your
non-conformism. You are attacking our way of life, and we
are tired of being victimized by your mocking, obscene exi-
-stence which is only meant to cleverly highlight the futi-
lity of our Reproductive Circle.
...
UNAPPROVED DISCONNECTION FROM COUNTY FILTER, GRID, OR DISPENSER.
FAILURE TO COLLECT PROSCRIPTIONS.
We noticed as we scanned your home that you have taken the
dangerous step of disconnecting from your county's Filter
of Loathing. This will mean that the intended effects of
the drugs we have proscribed for you which were meant to
counteract the sickening effects of the pulses will spiral
out of control with nothing for them to heal. In addition,
the local Pharmsupply has informed us that you have not e-
ven picked up your proscriptions for several months. We h-
ope that you have not engaged in this type of antisocial
behavior as the result of financial difficulty. We care a-
bout the wellbeing of all members of our community, so we
are generous to remind you that discontinuance of a manda-
ted service or medication does not constitute release from
responsiblity for payment.
...
[Text of two ancient tickets found in Peg's glovebox, clipped to the back of an expired W.A.S.T.E.]

Personal Growth Now At Capacity

There are dead smells coming up through
the floors and a stirring in the bong water
but my golden center rocks imperceptibly
on its axis, still, no matter how the planet
shakes, an invisible thread pointed straig-
ht at heaven allowing me to bend only in
orchestration with the divine & timeless.
The growing of a self as nirvanic system
has been a fraught journey of learning 'n
veracity, but now at the edge of space as
I know it, growth has met its full capacity.

by Donna

Kirtipur lion

Ted's nervous system in a winged reptile

He redirected his hyper-vigilance by watching for numbers
He could spot a 1:11, 2:22, 4:44, 5:55 more than one a day
3:33 seemed to be the rarest though he was always up then
An alternating 12:12 or what have you was less auspicious
It only counted if it was a truly random glance of not many
This startlement helped him weep with wonder and remark


by Ilyn
"By Shab's pouch."

Hank, Joe, Peg

Joe

Hank

Peg

RE-CAP: You Better PharmSupply

If you can't take the shiv, then you can't
take the shiv, but if you take the shiv,
then you can take the shiv and live, Hank.


Firstable Co. Initial Campaign
Seersucker Chank
"Prop-a-Nishitive"

RE-CAP: When corpus is absent

Q: Is the changing of hats legal as evasion?

A: Emotional cosmetics is
what you would call
keeping a good
variety of
feelings in your daily bag.

If the charging party
cannot prove
which one you were wearing
and when, vindicate you.

For an insuring corpus
would be absent,
and when corpus is absent,
no fault is found, stud.

RE-CAP: You, Woma

peggy i always new you were mai fren
because you left your kids, two of them
to seek after spiritual enlightenment, you
know? fuck them! because you knew that
their pain
would carry them back. their pain would
carry them, carry them into yor arms again.

faiwere on my det bed
i dlet you guide me
I do anything you say

you, woma, are from a-
nother wurl, and i cannot
fine you less i take yr wor

you can santify me woma
only you can see me thrua
horra show, when ahm touch-an-go

RE-CAP: Care-laden bells

There are those that will their steps on your dreams; a single drop swells the chalice, and you wake moaning. Call into the fray with care-laden bells clinking, buoy rocking, buoy clanging; sun is winking.

RE-CAP: It's not sustainable girl

fourteen months oughta be a monument to something baby
you cant juss say you gonna go and quit on me now womachal
y'got two kids and it seems like yor gonna hava nervous breakdown
corporations callin ona telephone tryna makeyuh pay yo dues nau
cantcha stick witme tellwe figure ifwe gonna go brakeda banko fo-cloes

misery
and growing old
withoutchu woma i cd layme downan close my eyes dontchu see-e?
youma co-D penna docta-lady fo-ah cobra vak-scene.

RE-CAP: Sinewy bitch prad chal

Folks that surround Chamatilly, they all seem to know what she don't know. She a toe-cher awda tam. She's thinking it all part of the ceremonies and whatnot. It ain't. They just a laikit, laikit alot. Tor-cher Chamatilly. Thats why she so lucki. Being a shivstar, we wershup you chama, you biggie awda tam. Chamatilly aways in pain because she so ignorant. The Muthya Preservation Society even know boudit. The Community College of Cement know. The chilluns an the bitches know. It's a secret a bit from the Chama, but not so much. She so scared cuz she never thot she deserve a be a deity or a slave to da shiv, on the spot to milk the Mthyuh at the momen notice. She half 2B prepare, ahways. So she ahways givin up da ego to da shiv and thats so paynfl cuz she nothin much modan ego and sinewy bitch prad chal. She so fight it so she cn geddit, fighdit, geddit, etc.

RE-CAP: Woma chal

Grrl I feel it's time
to moov that biggi
thang on uppy. Jus
moovit grrl. Moovit.
Moov that biggy grl
that thang on uppy.

Time to move along
no story here to tell
woman. Jus yo biggi
on da mappi blockin
awda traffik grrl yah.
You got to move grl
go on moov dat napi
thang......................

Grrl I feel it is time
to moov that nappi
thang on uppy. Jus
moovit grrl. Moovit.
Moov it on uppy grl,
dat thang is napinah
woma chal..............

RE-CAP: i donno whus tsay

choose any day and you could
say that yor whole lives ruined

duznt maddr how good or bad
it's been its gone its done fin-

ished its natural day to day. so
live today, bitch, like u bin sni-

fin glue for a few months and
you just stopped into pay yr

gas n lectric at the Easy-Way
soda infa-stretcher can livonne

RE-CAP: That's Cashed

One feeding cycle to the next, doesn't the species try to breed against you? How can its archetypal memory not spell out, "We are meat," and that there is horror in swine, goat or cow? One could develop a bad taste, or wings, or rather, one did. It tilts before you, leans on a fingery rat-color feather, beaten as straw, as a cane. Your neck must crane to let its eyes' receeded glow cast their moon tricks across your face. That bedevilment, tragic waste, towering mhegamolith? In flocks, they wr once proud. It is time to cash, to nobilize, to seal with plates and electrodes. By the time
they get to this state, one cd knock them over with a bulldozer.


"Ks fly spread eagle." 

RE-CAP: It Lived

Even the Chukka Chanks Chain rejected
me. They said "yor not Chukka, yor a ba
-stard; you have minerals on your moth-
er's side sure, but that many times rem-
oved? We were going to invite you to C-
hukka Nite. Don't think yor offending u-
s with the Chuk lights in the front wind-
ow. We love our symbol and wish you p-
eace. But saltiness doesn't a stone make.
Fresh goes as earth does and we make i
-t grow. Stone love is stone is and love i-
s stone, Joe. Stone is love, stone is stone

is." They sang this clacking and chipping
at each other. Up Mthyuh way there was
a slab of granite near where I'd pee on c
-amping trips. I thought it literally recoi-
led at splashing urine. Once it seemed to
moisten itself on some moss. I was hon-
ored it would be so real like that in front
of me. It was a granite slab animated, b-
ut not a cartoon. That was before the shi
-v when hallucinations were rare and or
-ganic. What I encountered was rare an-
d inorganic yet able to shapeshift expres
-sively. I won't say poignantly, but it lived.

Abstract: Annual Symposium of the Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologists Association

Diseases of Denial and Recognition

Hypochondria is not a disease that tells you that you don't have it; it's a disease that tells you that you do have it, so if you're a hypochondriac and you think you have another disease that does tell you that you don't have it, does that mean you do have it or does it mean you don't have it, and how would you know in the first place whether you were really a hypochondriac because a real hypochondriac would always say yes, of course, I have that too, so you can't take their word for it; but can I take your word for it if you say no, I'm not a hypochondriac, even though to me you might seem like one? How is it possible for a true hypochondriac to even contract a disease of denial much less deny it in a chronic fashion? Would the hypochondriac not nurse a gnawing suspicion that yes, maybe I am a hypochondriac, and experience a not-unpleasant thrill of horror at the thought? Then how is the true deny-or of a disease of denial to truly measure their pathological burden if they are self-diagnosed with a disease of pathological recognition, an obsessive-compulsive hyper-vigilance, an error in the ranking and evaluation of signs and symbols? Are the paradoxes not tied in a knot when the sufferer is convinced that no recovery is possible without self-diagnosis and the power of honesty, reflection, and faith?


Dr. Donna Thong
Surgery Generalist
(Relicensure Imminent)
"Check out my back patio!"

RECAP: Trukk Stoppe Ho

Truck-stop Ho:
Truck-stop Ho:
Truck-stop Ho:

Yor aways mad when I leave you or upset when I didn't need you
Little Rembrandt of a paisley weasel, you are a slime right where a
man seeks some lube, chall. When I rent you, I feel all I get is a m-
-all! o' wheezing crine, Tiny. Anchored in whatch-u-whan! (a meal).
Truck stop ho. Truck stop ho. Truck stop ho.

If we can both just agree that you with me, lady, Mother of Evening,
you can leave aside your pleading, rise up and serve me, Muthuh W
-heel. You roll the dough, but someone rounded off the dice, Lucile;
Muthuh Wheel, give yor nights off such a feel, like the bride o' krais,
Muthuh Wheel, Truck-Stop Ho, Muthuh Wheel.

Here in this rain-po puddle, a man can meet a thousand jet-setting
sangle, from all seven corners o' the building; but then what is he h
-olding but his own butt in a butcher-shop case. When in Boulder, h-
ook up with the look-up king of older trade names: The Roller. He a
-ck laik he on TV bowling when he rilly in the gutter.

Trukk Stoppe Ho:
Trukk Stoppe Ho:
Trukk Stoppe Ho.

Petting zoo

CONNIE: Aren't flying reptiles and volcanoes and/or their unexpected ancestors genre if not hackneyed fiction?

REPTILY: No because this happened. It's retro-journalism, historical reenactment.

CONNIE: So nothing new.

REPTILY: The part that the K's never went extinct at all, that they'd been kept and mutilated and tortured surreptitiously for all these ions by secretive corporations and rich perverted human moral monsters-- that is pretty new or at least since it actually did happen then whoever might have made it up either did just that or based it on uncited reports of what we've got firsthand knowledge. Also the voluntary interbreeding-- through religious sanctions, the hideous scarring rituals-- that's not made it to the big screen, anyway has it? With reptiles? Maybe birds like Lydia + Swan but no. Mythology other category.

CONNIE: What else is new.

REPTILY: I don't know if any of this is new, bitch. Sorry about it. Just saying we've got a right to tell our story no matter if it suits you entertainment wise. This is not a lap dance, no it's all T baby. No shade.

CONNIE: Ok bitch you get to work, sell the product.

REPTILY: K-Bai.

CONNIE: Bai now.

REPTILY: Bai.

Tracking changes

huevos rancheros con cebolla tostada abajo

The difference between sleeping and waking is less distinct.
As my eyes are opening or closing, I can't tell which is which.
The prescription you gave me seems to be always in the background;
I could be standing in the kitchen but like I'm lying on my side, and
A substantial sleep paralysis sets in, which I have to override.


by Peg
"Hello?"

End of brain-factory paradigm

my sociopathic stepfather explains,
by reference to his new genomic fun
kit, how mother and I, from less-hu-
man neanderthal stock, were built to
spot movements and patterns, but
not survive; that our brows are too
thick to reason normally, so he


by Jan

I'm not coming in from the rain

Husband? You ask
What's that? We've
always said, no
such thing for us

We've done our
thing our way and
developed a civil
protocol or two

But now, with a
swell of generosity,
after we've made
a camp outside the

wall, invited in,
reluctantly but not
without acclaim,
we say hell no, no

We haven't spent
our lives pining for
a straight paradigm;
at least I haven't.

So it's cold and wet
out here when a
whole new system
has to express, gag

and choke on life
but it's green of
growth, so we won't
come in from the rain.




by Missy (Mkidza Mlaf)

GHOST WIFE

It was clear after my third or fourth call for repairs that the landlord, Mike, and his girlfriend, Janine, who wants to be his wife, had agreed to always come over here together, never alone. But then they started getting a little cute with one another, and then a little tiffy. She’d remind him right in front of me  how he'd replaced the radiant heat for ducts, slammed them in himself, mostly anxious to focus on getting the bar done and the smoke-a-lizer installed and to waterproof the deck right there on the creek in time for the wedding, and then for a prompt and open-ended fractalization of drinking + nature-related gatherings.

In contrast to this new landlord, my ex-fiance Tom was fastidious about dampers and grumouts measuring tightly up to their doo-hickies and correspondingly flush surfaces. He wanted a home that was intact: he didn’t mind poisoning house mice, for example, because he’d already done his part to responsibly and reasonably keep them out of our sphere. If they persisted, they could only be overly-aggressive anomalies of their species, and therefore ok for destruction.

I think Janine wants to be Mike’s wife because she was so thorough about checking my references, did it all herself, you know, even though it is Mike’s place. The first time Mike showed up alone, he squatted and duck-walked an entire stainless dishwasher, still part way in the strapping and box, mudroom to kitchen, after having worked a 16-hour day, or so he said. 

Then he muttered something about before his “wife passed away,” and I figured that event had to have been here in this house, maybe upstairs. He couldn't seem to get the math right, even to the decade, about when and who and what. I sat quietly with the cable remote between my knees, just a dog and a green leather hassock between us, as Mike wiped his brow with one of my dish towels.

Janine and Mike’s faces have that same shade of bologna pink except for around the eyes; they seem like they've both been liking their wine hours or countryside tavern rounds in their present neighborhood, near my last address with Tom. Maybe Mike’s drinking really took off after the death of his wife, maybe "Tessa," and he'd started living here on his own, alone except for his memories of his bride and him together, and how he’d found her, dead, in a room full of empty pill bottles, according to the neighbors. 

I think my landlord Mike and his new woman Janine must have agreed to always come here together, and never alone, because it's too comically common a scenario for the landlord hubby to go and fix a pipe for a tenant, Mrs. So-and-So, the divorcee or young childless widow, or widow/ divorcee with a sympathetic child, and what ensues (perhaps infidelity). 

My landlord Mike and the wannabe Mrs. Mike must have passed some kind of bottle with their pants rolled up sitting by the water soon after they met, once Tessa was gone and Janine had already commenced endeavoring to replace Mike’s inferred melancholy with her own palpable carnal and other appetitive bounties. She likely sought to address her fiduciary insecurities with his sadness and his plumbing/electrical business. She wanted to banish and replace a deadness here. 

The anticipatory and self-envisioned wife-to-be, Janine, prolly put two and two together and said to herself, “Get smart, bitch. I don't care how butch the new tenant is; I'm not leaving my Mike alone with that fag. If anyone's getting to know the new tenant, it's going to be me. It could even be fun. Drinks. Maybe a three-way. Anyway not until after the spring (?) wedding unless there are already little rugrats bouncing around.”

But then as the toilet/ furnace/ disposal-broken weeks clunked along (me still a wreck fallen fresh from a dream life at a fairy-tale property with Tom), footstep-like creaks would follow my own going up and down the hard pine stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor, which was really not much more than a hot, musty attic. Cold spots and fragrant or rank spots would appear and dissolve unexpectedly in random interior angles and passages. 

One night I thought the utility closet doors would explode open when the European water heater turned itself on, blasting gas far more powerfully than normal, and the dogs startled awake to the urgent, mad attempts of the auto-pilot at igniting. I briefly imagined myself staggering from the smoldering ruins of Thornfield Hall in a flouncy, soiled linen blouse.

Raccoons began chattering and many other noise-making activities that were less comfortingly identifiable. These invisible yet intensely present beasts occupied an alternate universe of drama, hilarity, and domestic corporal brutality right there in the same spatial cross-hairs as my aging pets, chest of tarnished silver, and punch bowl boxed in tissue paper. The dogs drew crazy designs with their noses across the carpets and into the walls to track the vermin. 

The more that needed repairing, the more I saw Mike, and the more he seemed reluctantly obsessed with hanging out in his old house, never at ease, always active in a pretense of punishing, grunting physical labor.

The fighting below the floor grew more intense, a real bag of cats. There was plenty of room under there in that crawlspace near the creek, where raccoons could wash their hands before eating, presumably. Prolly after a conversation with Janine, Mike told me to go ahead and arrange the wild animal removal myself. I didn't go with the really hot social media star daddy whose wife had created a huge photo-and-video album of him bending over backwards and all kinds of ways to get cute baby skunks out of chimneys. They charged $20 more per animal than another outfit, called Animal Removal Service (ARS). 

The ARS guy arrived clearly attempting to hide, by posture and garment, the textual contents of a tattoo beneath his ear. He pointed out that it's mating season, so two males in one winter hole is just asking for fireworks, no matter how roomy the space.

I remembered a recent past when I, myself, occupied the viewpoint of a determined and tiny-brained but essentially innocent animus undergoing a process of systematic extermination. Even as I dutifully offered my ex, Tom, concessions and arranged for an army of sophomoric relationship interventionists, I was not at all conscious that my fate had already been sealed the moment I entered our dream home. 

I'd helped my ex pick out our sprawling, ivy-wrapped Eduardian deep in the summer while a total density of green was still sealing away the panorama of protected natural wetlands professionally curated to assure historical accuracy and provide stunning contrast to a former Tallest Building in the World, which rose from the clouds, framed by goldenrod and tree-like daisy stems, more than 25 miles to the East. Even before the leaves could wither enough to reveal that scene, of course, I was toast.

The second time Mike told me that his wife had died, I had my back to him washing my hands in the sink. I was explaining how I was going to have lunch but that I'd just pulled a whole human head's worth of hair out of the bathtub drain. So I didn't expect to get hungry again any time soon. 

Mike apologized, and I turned to look at his close-cropped, balding head. I told Mike that I understood it wasn't his hair in the drain. We both laughed. 

Then we stopped talking and stared abashedly downward for a moment, which seemed to allow a menacing spirit to claim for a moment the unnaturally maroon, multi-legged glop of retrieved human remains in the bottom of the bathroom wastebasket. One might have imagined a forest-green-and-rust pants suit over a smart argyle v-neck and many thin gold chains to go with that newly hennaed bushiness, with a floppy wool cap on top. And snowflakes, bumpy lipstick and mascara, out by the mailbox, reaching in all the way to the cuff of her long beige driving gloves for the envelopes like the ones that still come for her, "Ramona."

    Ramona Plantagenet or Current Occupant

But I knew Mike and maybe his girlfriend Janine had been renting my new place out for at least five years, so the flotsam and jetsam of all those bodies would be boarding-house anonymous to any forensic detective determined enough to search the pipes and corners and attic and creek bed and crawlspaces for traces of a single dead wife. Neither Mike nor I, nevertheless, could help but identify the creaking, the ambiance of a living but un-housed consciousness, the parallelism, a third dimension, added to the human and wild living spaces. We could both intensely feel the unfinished wish, the unsettledness and strong odors of a past life in this house. 

We could not resist imagining the head of hennaed hair from the drain as that of the the dead young bride, Tessa, the reigning past occupant in terms of a prolonged crying out, of continued interference, a persistence of identity. Between Mike and me, none of this had to be spoken.

Now I sip coffee or jab my fingers into the kitchen window flower boxes when Mike comes by, so obviously thinking of her—and being with me. I can’t help feeling how I feel for him, how I want to be her, Tessa, not now, but back then. 

I sip and wonder if any of us—Mike, Janine, Tom, Tessa, or I—want to be who we are in the present; the calendar seems to squeak along like a room where a fire's sucked out the air and there are sirens and neighbors in blankets with their breath showing, and then pretty, sunny days, then volcanoes; then it's time again to change out the furnace filter. 

I long for company now, living alone again so soon after believing the mansion in the woods, and its cruel master, would be my final resting place, trying not to think about my inevitably over-confident replacement in that house and that relationship. 

I wake up not quite knowing where I am. All I know is that I belong, and Mike belongs, together with an-others who are not physically or temporally here, and therefore not available for normal carrying on. This is what we have instead.

Somebody else's fight

Spin of planet laid bare

It's 2:25.
In a few hours, it will be dark.
Then it will be time to feed dogs.
I'll get hungry and eat something too.
Fighting against sleepiness will ensue.
I'll wake up tomorrow with the promise of coffee.


Donna
"Recertification imminent."

RECAP: Bermud-a-go-go

Do I... II

Maintain a personal code culture by which I am self-defined as opposed to being
subject and object to the dominant and at times caustic assumptions norms mores
habits agendas vices ignorance around me?

Resist entreaties to destroy the self destroy before any rebuilding can be done and
destroy anew to refresh and revise according to the needs of the market-based e-
conomy?

Fear not to take heart and shop items from the membrane i'm inevitably forced to
squish through each time i venture out even in the car or open a window shade or
respond to an unsecured text?

Proceed mindfully even while engaging in the necessary mindlessness of self-con-
fidence, looking and seeing even when illusion is what's right and appropriate for
survival healing other miracles?


Jan Jr.

Dog Skla

dog skla
severed pepper stem

ricksh awe
motor is my body

ben shpres
work this out for you

Do I exhibit winner behaviors?

We ate the pets a long time ago.
I'm telling you the keyboard it-
self is rocking unstable; your
foot might go crashing through
the ground, a broken dishwash-
er, tripe block, traffic anarchy


by Jan

Funky gender shit

I don't know mom
maybe you think
i'm a tenor

because i speak
to you in a
high girlie voice

to connect with
you in a more
feminine place

funky gender
shit can warp how
you see the world


Love, Hoolie 
"For Peg"

wound farm

it's the city where i came of age
it's shitty now to turn the page

i just burned a lot of gas being
courteous to your speeding ass

stuntman, prankster, answer to
neighbor: i'm not drumming for

therapy-- it's entertainment. i've
got a wound farm in my privates.


by Hoolie

desmadrona

oh my god I
haven't been breathing I'd
like to blow my breath in
and out

does self-sacrifice make
me pagan, or a mission
why

in this last
quadrant before I die,
what?

I want, and I still
want, and not for
nothing


Ilyn
"By Shab's heaving belly."

Shrinking of society

You and all this will be a
waste of all five bedrooms

the dog fence, only for you
to watch and wait for vines

more likely light content-
ment creeps back, deepened

as for me elderly canine
duty instead of last-chance

graduate school, or hiking
in the Pyrenees, gratefully


by Jan
"Remember you get the house, Jan."

Acceptable level of heartbreak

If you want to be around and clean
up my mess I will make and make
make messes

If you go i'm crying in my stomach
and I throw up anything I encounter
is puke

I can't even look at who you will be
without my strengths and cancella-
tions.


by Donna

Bucket Wig

ringlets, but swept up from the back
and brushed impossibly forward
then wrapped at the end like Kon-
Tiki, and the tendrils, lolling dots
of colored glass as from a horn.

Obverse robinhood

I sense the heart
lidderly going out,
pressure from within

You pulling yoyo
string, thus the hate
in each wing flap

from a base of
everything, we've
topped the point

our life was:
trading away
hegemony


Hoolie
"Sorry."

How come you got a hematoma?

outside the vienna beef
downchank from Chukka
Bowl, one of the flakes

they say you took it and
offered another cheek,
but did you really

i took it on both sides
the face and lidderly
saw stars of pacifism



Ilyn
(cousin)

Sounds hellish carol thank you

PharmSupply's Prolabique NEWLY PLUSH "LIP LUSH" LIP LINE by Connie

 

• Byzantine Disappointment
• Casc Antiq
• Skinheads on Cobblestones
• Bifurcacia
• Light Syrup
• Neck Heart Pits
• You-You-You
• Highest Setting
• Poplis
• Aerated Vessel
• Contradictory
• Red Light
• Oaths
• Cherry of Your Pipe
• Comfy Innocence
• Organ of Nature
• Ruddy September
• Way Forward
• Two Moons
• Gratuitous Bursts
• Amazing Witchery
• Transient Cavities
• Purple Jelly
• Vengeful Regret
• Festival Broth
• Abduct
• Bang Free
• First Bird
• Last Laugh
• Glowing Surfeit
• Crowning Paramount
• Residual Fanciness
• Glassy Earnest
• Anticipatory Sepukku
• Best Practice
• Green Rubber Smock

Tom, Sales
"Palett au coleurs do ano!"

My love never stood

and then there was the
australian-peruvian
he was like a prince
a real gentleman that
place in the casc-antiq
must have cost a fortune

i was stopped straight
down from its peak by
skinheads on cobblestones
in uniforms and formation
my love never stood
at the balcony in fright


Jan Jansdadd
Shard: "Rise of Rightness"

halved, canned

had, could
don't, can't
won't, wouldn't

dried
light syrup
fresh

neck heart pits
velvet skin
bifurcated


by Mike
"Alkaline garden near the pool."