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."