I Am A Terrible Driver
“Hey, man. I just think I should tell you, I’m a terrible driver,” I say.
Tim shuts the passenger door and says, “That’s ok. My girlfriend’s a bad driver, too. I’m still alive.”
“Fucking bitches,” I say as I put the car in first and nose into traffic. I drive east on Central toward the mountains. “You know, sometimes I think the phrase ‘castrating bitches’ just isn’t descriptive enough, you know,” I say. “It’s like, yeah. The Erinyes were wicked bitches, but—” I pause to beep the horn in three long bleats.
Thoreau and Pierrot
Thoreau walks along the edge of the rails and ties drinking from several types of drinks he finds during his walk mixed together in a one gallon windshield fluid jug washed in the river and dried in the sun some days ago when he started the practice. There is nothing wrong with it. The sun is out and it is windy going through the steep grades carved through the hills for the intermittent, regular trains to run in. During the day’s walk he found the remaining contents of several cola type off brand soda cans, none of which had any ashes; the spit infused bottom of a malt liquor bottle’s dirty amber; and the bottom third of a tequila bottle filled with no amount of urine, he’s sure because he checked twice sniffing actively with his flaring, cratered nose. The body does need any solid nourishment for weeks on end notwithstanding detritus and gum.
“The Great Jane Fox”
The Great Jane Fox leaps over the
moon. Contemplates the past tense,
and did it again. But every time the
Great Jane Fox leaps over the
moon, she always wished that she
leapt over the moon. The Great
Fox is leaping over the moon continually,
paused, thinks, and each time finds
herself having leapt over the moon. Never
“leaps over the moon,” she thought.
The Great Jane Fox leaps over
the moon right now, but never,
“leaps over the moon,” to her.
Leaps still. And always leapt.
The Good Old Days
The students of the college roughly fell into ranks and files on a sunny, bright April day. The frats and sororities were nearly finished with their rush events, marking the end of some intense discomfort. And the comfort level of rush corresponded directly (though perhaps unintentionally) with the New England weather cycle. There were the typical foot-in-the-door events—parties, mixers, and real orgies of fun—that resembled ancient harvest time festivals. A total abandonment of care to prepare the spirit for the harsh winter forthcoming. Then midterms would mount; “In a word, ‘rush’ means recruitment.” Bids come like early Christmas presents, and as the pledge period begins in the cold winter months, many a pledge finds himself swaddled—quite literally, toga party?—like a baby Jesus or Moses hoping to persist to the promised land of the Greeks. Unspeakable tasks, humiliating requests and downright Brechtian performances: all are solicited with expectation and brotherly malice starting with the onset of winter and hailing down through its subzero nadir (which incidentally is the worse period for the pledges); they finish finally as the snow melts and the flotsam is scrubbed clean off the sidewalks by underpaid buildings and grounds officers weilding hoses and rakes like nature gods giving good tidings to heathens of the past. The correspondence between pagan ceremonies and Greek rush wouldn’t fail to suggest itself to a cultural anthropologist, perhaps. The connection would at least describe coherently the emerging popularity of lacrosse.
Revelation of John, Chapter X, vv. 1-7
I heard about this guy who thought he was real hot shit. He had a nice third-floor walk-up (as nice as you could expect) from which he came one day. He was dress nattily, healthy tanned, wearing some exotic sneakers that seemed Japanese in origin. He set down his right foot on the sidewalk and left his left foot on his stoop. He stood there, and lifted up to the sky his hand, and he cursed out loud. Loud. And then he asked, Is this it? He put his iPhone earbuds in his ears tapping to the seventh track of the most recent Yeasayer album. Life is weird, sometimes.
