p o e t r y




Two poems
by Luke Buckham


1. someone put a grenade in my heart

your face went white as the summer clouds above your shirt
above the fountain where I dropped my clothes on the granite
you never thought that I could flee the dayjob naked as a newborn baby
but bare feet slapping concrete
may be the drumbeat for the end of the world
so don't look so ashamed of life
when I take off my shoes and let them melt into the sun
don't let the reflections on the granite and the grass obscure my smile

we hold hands over abysses that open like teenage legs
ripping the sod open in quick gasps
and the orange light at the end of the world
scorches the worms back underground
in the punctured gaze of your love

people embarassed to be outdoors
go blinking by taking pictures of themselves
dazed by the eclipse
and by the flickering of the sun

I see human voices in unbearable color
taste gravestones through car windows
like ice cream flavors
I see a new light in June
I see a campsite on the backhand of the sun
see a new light in June
feel like an infant in the bank
letting the numbers jumble like cobweb in the corners
where no rugged footstep is innocent

dark hallway where fluorescent flickers numbly highlight
gentle calves pantyhosed above the glowing floor
let the stalk bulbs burst finally like flowers
so I can go back to the backyard of my own dreams
where the room is a mess of white feathers
in the bursting of cushions
and music is the last religion

here the morning is crimson and everyone smiles like babies
the sound of water trickles through the air
a voice trembles from an intercom
and guns click like adam's apples in the hands of airport guards
at some point I stopped feeling the pain
of the boredome in waiting rooms
and the flipping of ancient magazines
like the lapping of waves in autumn

let the eyes sparkle like diamonds again
retrieving their embryonic love
let the coals glow like broken suns in the fireplace
forgetting their orbits

I have seen the nurses look ancient as cave drawings
diamond eyes examining the tender bruise that twilight leaves
I have seen the trays lit up by sunlight on the blades
I see a new light in June
and a lawn chair balanced on the sun
and my mother's hair curling like an embodied symphony
soft brown in the crude symphony of now

hitch-hiking on the tar that seems to ache with me
I see kind faces slowing engines down
to take a trembling hiker into imploded towns
where the lazy legs that drag beaten floors under barstools
have no steps left to take
and the spiders make a noise like raindrops
in the back of my mind

I did not build this particular world.

the park grass bends gently to let down their bodies
briefcases and guitars pressing into that ground
for a moment there is unity in the movement of pigeons that blurs the human rhythm
then the offices, the glass doors, the throbbing studios
take us back into our lairs
and the sun waits through afternoon
beating the benches to death with its heat
for us to sit again together in undiscriminating love

this beauty exacts a price, this sun has a maker
says my friend
and I have felt the price since my birth
to sit with eyes like scalpels in the military shade
as the marching footsteps steal me into my bunk
and I remember the drumsets ricocheting their grim little sounds
in a low house of brick
the beautiful hair sticking out in blue spikes
from some ancient culture that ended moments ago
as the shadows stretch out like lions
and the kids beat the drums
the faces on the grass grow solemn
eyes reflecting computer screens
one thousand unwritten scripts
hopeful in the hollow of the brain
to take me tender on the grass
angel with eyes like cotton
cloud that murders me with sadness
I hesitate to ask you
why I was born in this year

the mirrors run like little waterfalls
and I have been thrown out of my own life.

strange blue-eyed men at desks feel my muscles and ready me for battle.
they don't know the mind soft and flimsy as the wing of a pigeon
under my skull cap
or the eyelids that flutter like moths in the crimson dark
they don't see the clump of red hair like a bedridden lifetime
coiled in my pocket

porch lights, arguments
become one instrument

dark tar, shrouded face
forget my innocence

broken moth of my hand
warped saxophone of one thousand forgotten subways
the eyes that looked over airplane wings
fearless in the turbulence
recall machinery, the sounds like plates breaking in the distance
like a bunch of plates being pushed over the horizon
as pianos give up their last crescendos
and the girl who plays those bitten keys
in the heart of the nursing home
ages in front of me

they are rolling up the rugs
they are leaving the floor bare like the belly of a whale
and sheets flicker like sails in the hard winter wind
activities out of season
old ladies gather at glass tables
and their reflections stretch smiling
family trees fragmented in their eyes

we pass them cups as old friends chatter in my memory
we pass them napkins as car crashes snore in the snow
in the snow like television static

the ancients don't ask me anything.
I am a mop drizzling in a hallway.
I am yesterday's newspaper.
I am a classified ad.
I am a milk crate.


2. lifetimes

morning lay itself wide open once
it was a seashell scraped clean of meat
by the waves that were its troubled seasons
dried by sheets of sunlight
and left open to the intrusion of all the worlds
the sand was strewn with dark green glistening seaweed
it was the tangled hair of my lover
whimpering against gravity
the beach was carved into large swirling navels
eyes without sight
by the receding waves
and I was tormented by their unceasing beauty

a little sidewalk was carved through time
we used it for a while
then let the flowers and the weeds
split it with a slow and fertile groan
all of the walking eyes
were little blue flames
I think God let Her hands
glide across our painted bodies
for an wildly expanding minute

the earth was split into shelves
its hemispheres turned outward
and laid askew in the sky
soldiers lay on the banks of solid, sandy clouds
dying their hearts beating themselves into the ground
their bodies quieter than the rhythmic assault that trapped them
their blood ran on the distant sands
and back into my blood

I wish our flesh was louder than our machines

faces drilled into the air
flutter through coffee shops
broadcasting something excruciatingly intangible
the graceful echoes of memory
hang in our rushing blood
like jagged stones
sticking out from a mighty waterfall

we hang from water
our bodies are precarious
made mostly from water
wearing foolish garments that mute our eyes
to keep this water that we are made of
from bursting out through them
pipes surge in the walls
to fill the cracks in conversations
blue hands reach out from rows of computers
to pull in oblivious eyes
somebody sneezes and passes out in a pathway of sunlight
on sheets streaked with charcoal
in an apartment floor crowded with dirty spoons
you want to jump through the glittering window
that flickering screen of unexplored planets
far past the clinking cafe tables
you want to jump out of humanity
into the screen of suns beyond your bed
you never do

something permanent got caught in the throat of the night sky
it coughed frantically drifting through supernova
shivering its coat of black paint off
in seething flecks
that proceeded into a harsh and perfect blue
as I sank my mouth into your hair
trying to bring an animal with eyes of mushrooming ink
out from the blank checkbook of your skin

the afternoon turned around on its many sharp heels
and stumbled into eternity

all the nights were a reel of film
that we couldn't possibly keep our eyes open to watch

the hand-job under the traffic lights
giggling as the horns honked
plastic leaves fallen from park trees
rising to whirlwind above the surging chrome
orgasm swarmed by humming engines

the wine of communion
not strong enough

in a roadside hotel neon beneath the superior stars
crowded with the grey weeping of truck engines
a glowering boy makes love to a crazy girl
an angry saxophone
plays constantly in her bones

they both nurse a terrible silence

nobody on this planet
has ever spoken the right words

you want to walk into the garden of mute faces
that fidget like fresh roses in a fetid breeze
behind supermarket windows of tall waiting glass
and scream in the vacuum and abandon your body
you never do

(we all nurse a terrible silence)

a car horn honks pathetically making clustered angels laugh
beneath the immensity of the entire universe and all its orbits
election ballots are handed in
by people with very serious expressions
beneath a roof of fan blades
that hide and smooth the urgency of splintering galaxies
everything changes
light-years
nothing ever changes
you and I grab each other with ghostly hands and
whip ourselves into the woods
beside a suddenly halted highway
walls of ancient odors
cover us in their twitching blankets
our hair joins the odors of spores and moss
and grows feverishly toward infinity
outside the canned music of barbershops
bark curling on the living wood
and falling off onto the hollow ground
clean black beetles crawling with tentative legs
across our pale and fearless skin
draped in blankets of steam
that carry scents of extinct cities
above carpets of pine needles

remember how your desperate eyes ate
through post offices and restaurants
and the aching windows of airplanes
where you sat above fields of seething clouds
in the window seat
with one hundred strangers
basking in the light of your skin
that is God's skin
sewed temporarily closed
trying to shatter the impermanence
and your weeping vision soared into the hindering mountains--
I tried to bring you back to the surface of earth
with tiny hands under a gasping ceiling
rubbing the temporal powder off your face

letting out the crimson skin from underneath
as the waves of oxygen shoved their way
through chalk moons and actively evolving galaxies
just to splash their exhausted path
across your dissolving and re-emerging features.

—Luke Buckham is a poetry regular on spreadhead.net.






Brainfarts in three clusters
by Pow Tuazon


1. goddess and a screaming drunk

if to feel the numbness is bliss
then misguided direction is a miracle
while i hugged this
it poisoned me with venom
that untimely killed the soul
which is mine

for all this time you did
little as it seems, you fucking did
all things under the sea of my deathbed
flooded with the moss that i was
so enamored with all along
so fuck it and bless you

atom bomb... had a ball


2. euphoria's endearing

longing in a lifetime
follows
because this cruel joke named life's
hollowed

sweetness
a black hue of it proceeds through me
pain
my precious lifeblood
both so black that you can't even grasp the fact

no, nothing wrong here
just me to blame for my unending presence
overbearing insistence
and more of the glorious delusion of grandeur

the ghosts of your promise still amaze me
please do it again...

Hallelujah!


3. cold stares on a long thursday morning (the afterglow)

cold stares...
of what should have been...

you're impassioned, wearing your best interest
like your new evening dress
dragging my shadow down and
erasing traces of it in the process

arguing over morning brew
at no expense
flattened coffee cups on a wooden table
signify rebirth through violence

hail the new Judas!
i'm betrayed by default
give you the fucking crown
its perfection is your fault

tripped your emotions over
on waves of white crystal
that makes your soul
look more like dismal

your once black, lustrous hair
streaks of blood, yours
and my name's "Fuck You!"
i obliged, of course

mine's a cut in the eye
a slash on my wrist
a bruise on my arm
and blood on my right fist

still impassioned?
give me a fucking break!
don't say more cause
there's more that i can't take

i could hit one more homer
just for kicks if i'd want to
but i won't... i'll just
lick your wounds and taste you

all in stares, stored sickly sweet
and championing my cause's fun
spacey for mere seconds feels good
but where's my Morning Sun?

gone...






InCuntation
by Lucinda Sin

It isn't
thirst that makes
me want to
touch you but

fear of what

I do not
know, much as
you are still
a depth I

have yet to
swallow: here,
I am first
to follow,

to fall for
whatever
wakes within
this hollow

curse, to sin
before the
pale of my
skin begin----

kept inside
this borrowed
hearse, I am
my only

universe.

—Lucinda Sin describes herself as a 'young Chinese-American poet-recluse who just happens to be living in New York.' She is currently working on a collection of verse tentatively entitled Sins.



















p r o s e




[fiction]
Calamity
Wayne H.W. Wolfson


Listen.

"Look at the twilight..."

Look at the twilight.

"I, I think there’s a baby somewhere. No, we had only begun to talk about it. We’d take a vacation first. Make plans over bashful drinks (whose) gaze (is) hidden by tiny umbrellas. What did we do when we got back? Fight probably. Is it wrong to keep the umbrellas in a cigar box full of letters from someone else? Or can all fits of passion eventually be filed under heartache?"

She had a series of nick-names. Her real name was all vowels. Vowels which stuck up like sticks and rocks to trip the tongue.

Her appeal to me wasn’t my loneliness. She had been too busy scheming to notice, and that was it.

She squeezed me. One of my legs between the two of hers. If you manage to get up while the entire city is still sleeping the sound of a distant train from childhood can be heard. Sad magic.

It was with this in mind that she woke me.

Forgetting her motivation she almost immediately ruins it by talking. I get up to get a drink. On the refrigerator a calendar. No names, just times and streets. For anyone that cared, only half a life revealed.

I was very superstitious. The pope of broken mirrors and black thirteen’s. If she would break potentially boring plans for me, who knew how long I was from finding myself having drinks with an empty chair.

Something was needed. Something with which to end a scene, starting a new one.

She was sitting on the couch now. It took her great effort to appear unaware of what she was showing. Pale pink petals of a man eating flower.

I leaned forward to whisper a kiss. Her tongue darted madly around my mouth, searching for words I hadn’t used.

"I’m taking a shower."

I tried to time the opening of the medicine cabinet which creaked, with the closing of the door.

Out on the couch she shut her eyes and lazily smiled. Her finger tips tracing figure eights as she thinks of that hat she will get him to buy her.

Dead cloud of cold creme in my palm, I close my eyes and think of a story I once wrote.

—Wayne Wolfson is a California-based author. Go check out his site: www.waynewolfson.com








[excerpt from a novel]
dishpig
by Tony Nesca


there are dishes piled as high as my head on the floor spilling over the sink, i’m sweating like a pig trying to keep up with this insanity, sweating out the hangover me and my filthy rags, everyone’s screaming the orders are piling up i’m thinkin’ there’s absolutely no way i’m going to make it, then the old man’s voice, TONY WE NEED YOU FOR PIZZAS!, that italian accent pissing me off like it always has, so i run to the pizza table, the old man’s wife is right beside me, an angry filipino woman telling me to hurry like the sadness of the world isn’t enough, and it’s not enough cuz there’s always more, i start piling the toppings, pepperoni, anchovies green peppers the whole time peeking over at the dishpit seeing the pots and pans rising like bile knowing i’m the one who’s stuck with them, the restaurant is full, the food orders are madness, the old man screamin’ but happy cuz the more orders the thicker his wallet, i ain’t groovin’ with this shit, i’m not really here, i’m somewhere else there’s the waitress coming from the restaurant to the kitchen, that child-face, that golden bitterness, that’s where i am ‘tween her legs somewhere crazy and pure, tainted and holy-like, i concentrate on this ambition, i suddenly feel i’m in love, in love, in love with failure and rejection, yeah that’s me i say, kathy is her name and i love not knowing her and never having her, the old man howls so does the wife i’m dying let it happen i say, right here and now, kill me with love or hate, with black olives and anchovies.

on corydon avenue. there are beautiful people everywhere it bothers me, not cuz i’m not beautiful (which i’m not) cuz i prefer to see things burn. they sip on coffee and the mere gesture smothers me, they drink beer and the holy crusade comes to a halt, they talk to me cuz the world knows who i am, i’m polite and i hate myself for it but i remember we are all one thing and one thing only....so the pretty girls are easy to take even though the trendy clothes are offensive to the psyche i’m thinkin’ those clothes would look better in a heap on my bedroom floor and keep dreaming i say cuz they’ll never be there so i’m gone through corydon i reach confusion corner, the sun is down, the lights are up i feel my prick move and i don’t like it, i’m a dying animal with an unquenchable thirst for inactivity and liquor, what is this? i sometimes think like nothing is real, abstract thoughts for the weary i reach the zoo, the cement moves beneath me, i know why, i’m important somehow and a small killing is in order.

the zoo is a bar, always a bar, it can be nothing else i’m inside with a drink in hand and with the drink i immediately feel better, a small triumph in the face of the winners of the world it’s not about you, it’s not about your cars and your european cosmopolitans, metropolitans, neapolitans, i write lousy and flea-ridden and i would be a lucky man to keep the courage, the courage to remain a secret, but the world recognizes me and i’m essential and so are you. naked chicks on stage...this is what it means to burn i think too much so crucify me and let’s get on with it, there’s the waitress, long black hair, a country girl i conclude, yes i’ll have a scotch, thank you, no i don’t believe in tips, sorry, but, she’s rude and i don’t blame her because i wish i could be too. i want to hold her, nothing else, i want her to sit on my chest for hours, i want her to ignore me, to adore me, to squeeze my head ‘tween her thighs until i profess my love, to tell me she cannot live without me. it doesn’t happen of course. it’s her loss of course.

i’m drunk. with that comes clarity, it’s a knowledge full of doubt and wisdom cuz without doubt there ain’t no wisdom, not trying to bore you with philosophy just hooking you into the dirty injustice of living, it’s a beautiful thing, really, just like that woman over there, the blond with the big tits, or the redhead with the acne scarred face, or the fat one with the glorious smile, anyway, this woman i know from somewhere sits beside me and says, “i always wanted to have big hair and big tits, big thighs too”. “and you’ve reached your goal” i say. she laughs like the zoo was built just for her and for all i know it was. “want a beer?” i say. “sure, why not”. “i like you” i say. “that’s not so interesting” she replies. “well what the....” i would love to make love with this woman or at least have her wrestle me to the ground but instead she says, "i used to be a hooker in toronto. thought i caught the clap”. “how about another beer?” “i’m 45 years old, and yes”. “what a very strange life” i say thinkin’ of washing dishes minimum wage my old man and the philippines and pizzas and italy (i was born there) but i don’t really think of italy, i think of the zoo dreaming of a cool tall black woman from new orleans, what a dream it could be, what an accomplishment, jung would be proud, spiderman too, and my balls on her chin would be cool, i’m not a sexist, just a heterosexual with a polite mouth, cruel mind, meaning no harm to anyone, no one but the entire world, the world without flame and glory, no god no money for beer, no nothing. perfect.

this too will pass i say she’s at my apartment, it’s tiny and ugly and dirty, she doesn’t mind, the world does but she doesn’t. her legs are bare her underwear is black her toenails are painted red and kathy is fucking someone else and this is good and if nothing else this is very good, kill me i think but it ain’t happening, so instead we wrestle, we wrestle, her ass lowers on my face and there it is, it’s right there, god is this what it means to live and die? are you there you hairy bastard, my apologies for not living like i should, should i marry and father children, should i get away from the dishpit, should i move to the south of france and sip on cognac, should i shave my ass and wear an expensive suit, should i drink ‘till the payoff, should i go to puerto rico and climb a volcano, should i embrace a stranger, should i kiss a mountain goat, tell me, tell me, her big hands are around my cock, her bush in my face, she changes position, now she’s on my chest, she’s looking down at me, i like her, i like her weight and her maturity and her false dominance and i think i like her smile, her huge hair, those tits like mount olympian, zues you fuckhead the weight of the world is on me and i like it you hear me, i don’t believe in sell-outs, i don’t believe in love, i don’t believe in anything but the dream, the dream of acceptance and non-belief....so here we go with the licking our skin is hot like depression my fingers are inside her and her tongue is in my ear mine is caressing the sole of her feet first one then the other then i figure it’s all very sad and lonely just like rock and roll, just like winnipeg, we’re sweating and grinding pressed together hard and harder she’s riding me we stink we like it fucking meaningless and i get soft and hard and even that’s okay cuz she’s smiling the whole time she’s wet i’m 11 years younger than her and that’s a personal vendetta as i get real hard move in she moves closer one final grind i’m hoping i’ll live through this and i know i will cuz living is for me as her ass rotates, her juice skims down my leg, i cum on her chest meaning no insult, only beauty and tragedy one more turn of the page, we’re breathing heavy, we’re licking each other up and down, i’m kissing her ass-cheeks, she’s nibbling my cock, we finally stop i’m thinkin’ i could love her and as i think it she gets up to leave, puts her clothes on when she’s most beautiful, i’m laying here exhausted, she comes over stands on my chest for a second, yeah yeah i say, then comes that mushroom cloud, i start thinking of kathy, what a beautiful failure i truly am, what a loser, a celebration, a simple-minded monk, where are you going, i say, she smiles, she waves, she leaves the room. i think i’m happy.

so what happens next? the joint is quiet, my old man snoozin’ downstairs, his wife peeling tomatoes, the sun shaking its tits, we’re freezing down here you old prick, i finally get a pizza order, yeah yeah so what? as i stretch the dough kathy decides it’s time to chat, we got something baby, i know it but you don’t so let’s decide either way, a final beer for the lonely, it could be so sweet, you see, her sweet lips up and down she’s chewing gum i don’t have her and can you see the beauty? it ain’t really like this i think, my old man’s wife is speaking to her sister, their words are making me ill, they’re speaking filipino and they still make me ill, another sister sits quietly by the pizza oven eating pasta e fagioli, these people are full of shit, kathy moves away, everyone is full of shit, even kathy, even me, especially me, there’s a vortex hovering around my head, a horrifying rendition of despair, pink and blue, god i need a beer.

betsy’s on the phone, i’m telling her i can’t get out of here before 10. “i need to see you” she says. “yeah, yeah?” i say, but you know what that means. things die down suddenly i tell the old man i need to go somewhere, somewhere wild and pure, even boring. he’s restraining a laugh and when he does that i see the pain in his eyes my heart breaks once again, for the thousandth time it shatters into a million fragments of crystal methane, shatters, hits the ground, i collect the pieces and with string and scotch tape attempt to make sense out of this fucking mess. the old man flips me a twenty and i’m out of here.

so what of it? betsy is sitting in a pair of cut-offs her thighs are porcelain white and big the moon is out i’m drunk but not as drunk as her. her apartment is immense no cats and for that i’m glad thinkin’ of paul westerburg with his wise-ass rock and roll wisdom and huxley with that big old brain of his, just for a moment i think i’ve got it but then betsy speaks and once again the sky is falling.

we’re in her car and we’re following a black 4 wheel drive on a dirt road, the car is swerving from side to side the ditch feels like a reality, i’m screaming shit at her, she’s crying, she’s giving it back, why do i feel the need to get involved with beautiful women, why do i continue to punish myself? betsy’s hitting the danger zone we swerve to the right, the grave isn’t far behind, she’s hysterical i grab her hair tell her to let me out the car slows before it stops i decide to take a dive, my shoulder hits gravel tires roll by my head then spin, rocks and dirt in my face, i’m sure, i tell you, i’m sure she does this on purpose. then she’s gone. i’m on my back. above me is the world, i don’t like it and it’s for that reason that it decides to haunt me black and full of stars most people would see this as beautiful but i sink, i sink deep into the crevice, the faces of those gone are nibbling at my ears, there is a blackened hand with stinkin’ claws the one on the pinky like a scythe it’s deep inside my guts tearing and shredding, i’m holding the entrails in my hands, my brains are in betsy’s handbag, that’s when the worst realization of all hits...my beer is in betsy’s trunk. i hate, i truly hate.

whenever me and betsy get drunk we strip to our underwear, or i should say she orders me to strip then follows suit. there’s no sex, not in the conventional sense but maybe, just maybe, this is the greatest sex of all cuz she’s as beautiful as tropic of cancer, insane, terrifying, i ask her to wrestle she says no, i laugh pour a scotch she starts talking. “we used to fight so much...violent arguments about fuck-all, i didn’t understand it then, i understand it even less now...and i stayed with him for 5 years, 5 years of pain and misery...you know, tony, life isn’t about love, that’s the mistake everyone makes, they focus on love, they search for it, and they don’t know what it is, people have no idea what love is, we can never have it because we don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist except for in our imagination, we invented this fucking concept, animals don’t love, stars don’t love, the universe doesn’t give a shit about me or you, love is a human ideal and the funny thing is that we come up with this fucking idea and then it runs away from us, the creation outgrowing the creator, like we did with god, you see?” “i need a drink”. “pour me one too” she says. i bring her the drink as i hand it to her i kiss her lightly on the back of the neck, she smiles rubs my chest then it’s over. something about this relationship keeps me alive and coming back. “i know we’re being watched, as we speak we are being watched” she says. “yeah?” “kiss my feet”. i do, i go down there start doing it softly, i reach the calf, the knee, i find the thigh she stops me, i comply cuz i’m a gentleman, it makes me sick how kind and gentle i can be but never fight who you are, i’ve learnt that through one painful experience after the other, so we’re slow dancing in her luxurious apartment on roslyn road i feel her breasts rubbing against me my hand is on her back and this is very sad but who the hell said it was going to be easy? i find myself thinking about hitting the road but then i get thirsty i figure i need a drink, always a drink, this will kill me one day she’s got a record of james bond songs on, goldfinger, live and let die, my best friend barney is travelling the world while i subject myself to this ambiguous brand of living. travel can be a good thing, but it’s a good thing i’ve resisted, the sun is coming up, betsy’s in bed, i’m beside her, we have a bottle of scotch between us and we’re laughing and we’re sad and that’s alright.

somehow i find it tragic to see the sun early in the morning, the pink and blue streaking across the horizon, it’s like staring into the face of god and i don’t like it. i feel if i spend enough time alone i stand a good chance at figuring it all out so i call betsy and her answering machine clicks in i leave a message, “hey darling, did i do something wrong?” it’s the third message in as many weeks i’m thinkin’ she got tired of my way of living, my tired repetition who can blame her, being around me is a tragicomedy and i think of my good friend liza telling me women like arrogance and power, and that if they can’t change you they won’t stay with you, the horror of all this is too much to take in, blood and guts don’t leave me the wind in my face the clouds in the sky and i couldn’t have it if i tried. ragged jeans, i make my way down the residential streets not a soul in sight that absence gratifies me. ah fuck i say as a car approaches, they park and get out, a couple of hippies i pass quickly, i approach osborne and the festival, there are people everywhere, music, lights, the street is blocked to traffic.

a sudden gust of wind reminds me of a woman i once knew, young and foreign, erotic, you’ll never keep that moment, getting fucked doesn’t help, becoming a hermit doesn’t help, getting drunk simply delays it. the sadness never leaves, it’s the only thing that never leaves you as you order a drink and twist and shout. i’m dizzy with recollections, it makes me feel like telling memory and void to fuck itself cuz this is all arbitrary and if you tell me different them fighting words. i’m on the curb. where this will take me i have no clue, a drink in hand seems good enough but is that the right way to look at the world?

from one side to the other it’s all the same, even the smiles are deafening. but i know i’m not a real recluse and i know this is sometimes necessary, i’m tempted to drop by betsy’s but even as i think it i know i won’t do it, where is kathy, in the arms of her lover most likely, i picture him to be a perfect asshole cuz all men are, i find it hard to believe a woman can live without me yet i can’t imagine one staying with me for any long period of time, i’m thinkin’ i deserve some small praise for this thing but like betsy said, the universe doesn’t give a shit. so there are old friends everywhere and i talk, talk, talk like they’ve never heard it before, and of course they have, but they listen like i’m saying something important it’s one of my powers to engage people, always has been, they’re buying me drinks like it’s highschool, a highschool nightmare one guy’s wearing a tie and another a fedora another’s an artist another’s a school teacher and i’m a dishpig, “i make pizzas too”, then betsy shows up out of the dream. these guys are jealous of her beauty cuz suddenly i’m not just a dishpig, i’m a dishpig with a beautiful young woman, that’s all it takes to turn the minds of people, some outside symbol of your success, a nice car, a bank account, cool pants, nice hair, an elegant lover, loud and clear, the louder the better, the more obvious the more class you have, like my thoughts and my presence aren’t enough i say goodbye to this idea, concentrate on betsy.

she’s wearing a red dress, yellow blouse. her sandals are red. i see the sun in her eyes, we could burn together cuz she’s a little girl in a woman’s body. i put my hand on her ass. her perfume is all around me.

—Tony Nesca is a Canadian writer. The above excerpt comprise the first ten-pages of his self-published novel of the same title. dishpig is now available at www.xlibris.com.