Tag Archives: writing

Cupcake Windchime

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Her Cam Girl name was Cupcake Windchime, and boy, could she ever dangle. She was a dangler, because she had sex in the woods or else she could chill. She could hang, @petergriffin-studmode69 had put it. And she tells us where to put it, he nodded to his old poodle in the corner.

Her parents had looked at her screaming twisting body and named her Loretta. They thought she would take on the name like a dough, but Loretta never took. Loretta was in a fluorescent kitchen by six am, whipping a cupcake batter into shape. She did not feel like Loretta- she wanted to be the cupcake. At the first opportunity, she was cupcakelover12@hotmail.com. Then, icedcupcake86, semi-professionally. And now, she supposed, her reasons were spiritual.

She never signed off the chat before 4am. That’s when you got the real freaks. She woke up at 2pm every day, without setting any alarms. In her mornings, the soft tinkling of chimes seemed to follow her around the house. Looking down at her ankles, she’d see the circle of thread and the knot. The attached pieces doing the tinkling were just plain-old cutlery.

Cupcake shook her head, bubbling over in a big laugh. Same dick different day, she said to the coffeemaker, and it bleeped its red eye, snarling out a few more drops of decaf. She grabbed the mug, and with it in one hand, and her hairbrush in the other, Cupcake climbed the stairs to her office.

When she walked in the room, a man jumped up from the desk chair. He landed on his feet, cat-like, facing the window. Legs spread apart and tensed. His audible breaths came like popcorn popping and she couldn’t see his right arm. His black leather jacket was turned towards her. Cupcake screamed and flung the mug across the room. It missed the intruder completely, breaking into shards and splashing its contents on the wall and window. The man threw his head back and cried out. She felt his whole body clenching- the sensation rocketing through her seemed both erotic and holy- driving at last into the buried pink nerve heart of each one of her teeth. Cupcake screamed out once more, then fell silent.

The man began lowing like a cow in heat. His bald head ran into a pink folded nape, reddening steadily.

“Spread those butterfly lips for me, chica, how ’bout it?”

How did you get in here? Cupcake asked. She watched in terror as a thin ray of moisture crept up on the air, her tongue ran along her bottom lip without realizing it.

He had said it all without turning around.

“Chica, I bet you’d do it with dirt in your mouth. You wouldn’t refuse me. Even if I sat your ass in a puddle right before.” He laughed- a high aluminum whisking sound that reminded Cupcake of a deli slicer. Her mood darkened, and she pictured pushing a great tube of salami into the path of a blade.

The black leather jacket began to shake, reveling in the bloodpump pleasure of its own lewdness. The right arm was again wrenched out of sight. Before Cupcake could speak, he had zipped his fly and was making a break for it! His legs swung up over the windowsill and in a flurry of chimes he was gone.

It was a long time before Cupcake could move. When she finally did, she walked over to the desk and unplugged the computer. Unplugged the webcam. Maybe she should take the night off. Maybe it was time for a different career altogether. Loretta, her mother wrote on lunchboxes, Loretta, at the top of her papers. Cupcake looked over at the kit, lying open on the desk, and her arms and face began to itch, itch, itch.

She carried the desktop over to the window, and, ever so carefully, pushed it over the edge.

Smooth Animal

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outside my house
i see another.
it blinks with windows at me,
leans out with a face that falls apart
broken tv on the lawn
scooped like a bear carcass
new land growing over

a smooth animal curls on the lawn
its tail circles the washing pole
taut, receding
licking a furry arm the length of line
that holds my clothes.

all of my terrible clothes
my smooth animal wears them,
sneaks under the house
i look back, see him waiting
under the bed
the chair the table

inside my house
anywhere he goes
he finds clothes heaped in beautiful folds
Piles of Sweatshirts
to be marvelled at, believed in-

he is sicker
than my oldest
unmatched sneaker.

Cracked

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‘bring a lamb to school

see who is the fool’

i laughed. on a dark day

i laughed so my skull

crackahd the plate 

so sweep them 

china dust pieces 

under the grandmother rug

lick it there

leave those rough shapes

in the bulldust.

how my sideways face looks

to the girl on the corner

walk antelope talk

stockings in stock

check-pick

ground in lock-step

what a bad bad girl.

yes

i laughed. and sold my only thing.

yesss

i spun into silence

my womb was the shape of me

see under

those yellow brick lights

under the grandmudder

in a peaked silence

one that abounds. downtown girl

you rise

with fresh madness each night

you sink 

you were unlike the birds

broken thing

i think you could fly.

Real Talk

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These are real, real emotions, man, and we are on our way downtown. Downtown with our fingers on a lipstick cap inside our jean pocket to suggest a knife. Our hood, our hat is pulled low. We got this worm-lipped grimace on our face. We glide past the bus stop and see him with black, glittering eyes. Waiting at the stop, in khakis and a black raincoat and dark glasses, and he is just asking for it. Something like a fuse sparks in our head. He is pathetic. We are furious- not at him and we know it, but we can taste our own fury sitting like blood in our mouth. Our sweat is murmuring and our hand is a sweet fist- one to pump and kiss the sky. We wonder what it would be like to crush his skull under our blind boot, because our eyes have moved to swallow something small and pebbly from the part of our brain which recalls childhood. And the drama of the everyday never shakes down like this on the sidewalk- not without us slamming into it, not until we make it. And he never even saw us coming. No, he was thinking about divorce as a way out and how his whole life has been a lie and there was no way he could have seen us coming after that. No way, not from miles away.

Music Bit My Mouth Open

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The whining cars up on the hill are missing home. They beg, where is our tomb? The answer shudders underground and in my hands are flowers. And beside me is all my family standing in a Domino row.

If I combine the only witness, slump his tongue right under mine…

Afraid to feel without a thudding chest to get the blood out. And. Tastes like clockwork, works like climate change. How? Press a thumb to my lips, taste the hard-won tip of a bee-stung corn. Size of grapefruit. Lanced on my abdomen.

Come up the riverbank, my seasick carp.

A Lifetime of Milk

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Carl stood under the umbrella, looking out across the downtown square. In coveralls reeking of machine oils and sweat, made worse by the rain. On the farm, Carl remembered, nothing was ever made worse by rain.

The old man’s farm. Paved over. A lifetime of milk and red earth-tinged memories. Sprouting tall buildings now, where sweet corn and green pastures once flowered. Where an old cow giving birth kicked the daylights out of his five-year old head. He got to name that one, ol’ Milk Dud, on account of how much his head bled.

And now he was the old man. He couldn’t have told you how it happened, but it did, and the city came up all around them. Lost the farm, hired on at the factory. At least he and Barb had the kids.

A tiny spasm wracked his hand and the umbrella slid out. Carl winced. The arthritis was flaring up, more and more these days. He collapsed to his knees. Why the heck did he come back here? And in his coveralls! He stuck out like a sore thumb. And in fact his thumbs were sore, and the truth was that being here made him feel there wasn’t a thing left worth livin’ for.

-originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

The Perils of Belief According to the Meek (Tongue-in-Cheek)

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Mary wasn’t wild-
there was just man, in Joseph
who sought to prophet
from a timely
mis-conception?

Give them a wide birth, let a million stars
go blind in the stable wound
of One Sun, risen and

springing wet and screaming
from the flesh of her hips,
bred with honey and wheat
the shape of her waste
was a virgin, chased
out of veins and into vanity,
bleeding into the heir,
the one and only Hymn…

(a wise man bending to pray)
(a king bending to the scent of prey)

And do some holy theories lend themselves to
idle worship?

Allusions proceed from the altar,
in answer,
from a Book with No Reservations
and some would have them starting,
altered and ending
in a place
wholly borne of illusion-

born of Creation.

Notes

This poem is quite literally intended to be tongue-in-cheek, hence the title, but only in subject matter. It’s chock-full of homonyms/homophones; some are instantly apparent, and others may not be… When thinking about how to feature words that are similar in sound and spelling, but vary in meaning, I inclined naturally towards a biblical/religious theme (Christian scripture, simply because I’m familiar with the bible stories).

Why? As a writer, I am fascinated by the intent and function of each word in context. Equally fascinating is the fact that entire religions are based on the arbitrary interpretation of ancient scriptures. Regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof, most people would grant that the human experience is clotted with disputes over the language of scripture- one only has to open a newspaper to see how ‘inter-’ and even ‘intra-religious’ conflict has led to violence and other systemic social issues.

With regard to homonyms/homophones, I was drawn immediately to their role in misapprehension of language. As in the absence of precise context in scripture, this poem demands that the reader employ their particular context to understand it. After all, I employed mine… I made choices in the spelling of these words, intentionally, to provoke alternate meanings and alternate interpretations.

Finally, the beauty of the choice to proceed with a religious theme, revealed itself as twofold: first, the tone/language of the poem evolved organically to reflect actual scripture; and lastly, this poem (hopefully) accomplishes the goal of provoking disparate reactions in readers. And to accomplish it, according to each person’s spiritual orientation in life- the very thing which tends to figure at the core of who we are, and how we see the world.

Time

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My doctor thought of Time in terms of a green wound,
a sly, leech-lidded reservoir under the skin-

Time was his wireframe glasses and the clock I punched
when he told me the forecast of those old wounds
when my life gathered around me to hug itself through this…
and in my mind I went back as a ghost to
all my future high school reunions

and did not hear my name all night.

THE VIRILE HARVEST

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In town the dust gathers. In skins of yellow dust the people pray.

The chapel wilts all week, dips in the middle. An old host. Chestnuts hit the roof during service and belief thuds into the hearts of men, frightens the women. They fear the Harvest. They know the roots are here to stay.

Paint peels off an old barn in the sun. A new cat every day.

The farmers reach into the ground, dung clung to the heels of their boots.

The sun tips water in their mouths, and something brazen and heavy clatters down the road. A patch of dust swabbed over the elbow, scabbed over the heathen ground.

The people wait for wheat to curl.

They dig up the virile harvest.

Old Heart

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Cheung drew one long breath by the bleachers and coughed, setting his throat aflame. Nerves. Scorching his insides, without fail, year after year.

This year was special. Cheung’s promotion had followed a fierce string of bad luck- the loss of his mother, a cheating girlfriend- but now, he waited to usher in the new year as the venerable Head of the Dragon.

Cheung pushed through the crowd, taking his place at the head while his colleagues lined up behind him. The music began and the scarlet dragon sprang to life, undulating over the crowd’s heads like a silk ribbon threading a sea of black pearls. Cheung swung the pole deftly, in time with the drums and precise choreography that had taken weeks to master.

As the dance peaked, Cheung lost himself in the great smoking head of the beast. Tomorrow was a fresh start- the promise of a new year turned over like a leaf in his old heart.

-originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com