Hatred Season

I knew a man who was a brother to another man. As brothers they were known for the dry soup they carried in their pockets. They were known for the anxieties of their parents.

This brother bore a birthmark on his neck in the shape of a hammer's iron head. His walk was sparrowlike and his thoughts swirled like paper beads under his breeze-filled hair. I touched his ear while he slept, once. It was warm, hairless.

I spent time with him in a humid dormitory where we shared deli meats and paperback books. On sunday mornings, he left me voice mails distorted by the volume of his screaming. Upon learning of the recklessness with which I tended to my laundry, he scolded me softly, explained the importance of garment care, and asked if I would allow him to take it upon himself. I answered no, and he asked if he might teach me. I answered no, but said I might allow him to be the steward of my clothing in exchange for me dispatching one of his own chores. This was how I came to transcribe his dictated letters to his family at home.

When I saw him last, he was wearing his suit, on the roof.

Our People Swallow This

This place is a city and it is made of streets for the use of our vehicles. The people here accept standards of conduct and the lives we live are enriched by the convenience of vehicles and our lives are whole. Men and women we trust have created unattractive white vehicles. We all them ambulances. I mention this because I see one now. Crammed in this ambulance, the heat of bodies bind people together and their pulses are quiet but true. The immobile occupants fill themselves with the voice of the siren which heralds their coming. The voice is the medium for the song of alarm.

Skull Fist

This is an aluminum can a quarter full of paperclips and ball bearings. When you are scared, shake it. I will come to you and I will vanquish the source of your fear. If it is a person, I will command that they apologize, depart and not return. If they resist or refuse, I will engage in an act of cruel physical force; for instance, I might clutch their face in both of my hands until pain and aversion to facial damage forces them to beg for mercy. Or I may use my legs and feet to deliver blows to their torso, back, and head. I cannot predict all methods I may use as their bodily movements, whether offensively or defensively undertaken, will require split-second decisions. In any case, you will watch me subdue the individual who has caused you such distress, and you will understand my power.

 

If you are scared by an animal, I will use similar tactics, though perhaps I will not act cruelly; it is not necessary when dealing with animals because they do not act with malice. They are stupid and more than likely act out of their own fear. I do not believe that an animal would have one such as I who on their behalf would come to their aid or defense. It is not the animal's way. However, if such a circumstance arose, I would take on that protector and vanquish it in the proper fashion.

 

There is a chance that the source of your fear is imaginary. For instance, you may be frightened by an inanimate object or philosophical concept. I will attempt to eliminate your fears with reasonable counsel delivered in a calm and soothing manner. If fear persists, I would more than likely refer you to an institution specializing in such issues. Really, it would be out of my league.

Today We Haven't Woven Anything

Last night, we bought magazines and removed expired foods from the pantries. We held crystal trinkets to our eyes and stared at hundreds of candles. Then there was a single candle and with its reservoir of liquid wax we gave ourselves new fingertips.

 

"Now we can touch everything we're not allowed to," you said, and I said that I would do it. This time, I would do it. There was the closet with the heirloom ear muffs and the coat with an unpronouncable name. There was the porcelain whale and the porcelain wolf's head and the porcelain owl and the porcelain chilld wearing a tee shirt, carrying a lunch box, smiling with imaginings of the thrill of driving an automobile on roads of dirt under a round sun in the sky. And there were things not made of porcelain, there was the box of dog's teeth and under it a vintage magazine of radio stars.

 

Finally we had touched every forbidden object in the house and still there was not enough touching but there was nothing to be done about it, so what was there to do butwhat we did? We saw the quiet, cold television and we sat on the floor with crossed legs, we turned it on, we allowed ourselves to be brought to a comfortable stupor, eventual hunger, and a final buttered slice of bread before sleeping.

Shaven, I Purchase More Garments

As I stood in my home with my body oriented away from the 37-year-old man in my kitchen whose presence I wished to unconjure, I tensed all muscles and felt all of the interacting forces that served me. There was water pressure and rivers of electrons and gravity and the opposing strivings of wood and screw. I felt like an intruder and a weak pimple and a decomposing gourd.

When the 37-year-old man had been been unconjured and his face was a whispered description of a historical event I felt like something no one had ever thought of, like a person imagined by a writer or sketched by a teenage girl in a the margin of a notebook and lost.

Thus began the Quiet Months.

Help the One Under You

The 37-year-old man stood at my sink in my kitchen which held my shoes full of their diminishing suds. He was wanting more of my gruel but I did not feel comfortable feeding him more. He was never an invited presence. The day he was first present, it was due to an unlawful climbing over my fence and though I felt urges to care and comfort him in the darkness and uncertainty he bore, my feelings of charity were now faded and ratty like bad socks.

There was an incident in which the 37-year-old man sleeping in my chair was abductied by a creature-like woman with no face and incomprehensible strength in her body which had an appearance of weakness. In the morning I woke from an ugly sleep to find that her feet left a glittering trail, and my perceived duty in the life I would live that day was to follow her to ensure that the 37-year-old man who had been my ward was safe in a comfortable place.

Had he not been safe, had his comfort been eroded, had he been in danger of bodily harm or mental anguish, it would have been my somber task to pull him from the situation by whatever means necessary using the intellectual tools and physical prowess I had accumulated in life to that point, either by effort of will or chance and unchosen circumstance. The spectrum of possible outcomes I pondered was without boundary, and I thought of houses in trees, roofs of public high schools, and other places more unsavory and now a burden to conjure.

What I felt was that it was a greater confusion to come to terms with when I discovered that the glittering footprints took me to my own home, where the 37-year-old man was lounging in the same chair from which he was abducted the night before, perusing the classified ads for free pets.

Though the result of the day's searching was indeed that the 37-year-old man was safe and in comfort, his unwillingness or inability to account for his whereabouts, to divulge specific details about his day spent with the creature-like woman, struck me unable to feel a sense of relief and satisfaction.

So I did not want to give him more of my precious gruel, which was a source of sustenance and warmth in the soul's dark moments when thoughts of the inevitable erased the nuances of a life enjoyed and connected to a web of other lives. In such moments, all existence seems to be a useless parade circling a block of condemned buildings and never concluding; the ingestion of my self-concocted slurry of grains and the exotic blend of spices integrated into it is a renewed connection to the secret physical world and its sensations and pleasures I hide from the dark hand looming.

So I did not want to give him more, and I frowned with a hard chin and I turned from him hoping that his presence would cease and the impression of the light reflected from his body would fade from my eyes, my hardening eyes.

The Source of Ambulance Voices

I sat on the small blue stool facing the chair in which the 37-year-old man sat with the newspaper, perusing the classified advertisements, and pulled off the shoes. My feet felt relieved and cooled by the air and the day's worth of sweat, heat, and pressure resulted in a funky odor. The odor was tucked into the shoes I wore, the sneakers, but with no prompting it brought itself into the room and immediately it offended the 37-year-old man who lowered his newspaper slowly for comic effect. With his face, he displayed a lopsided frown and furrowed brows and I felt bashfulness on my skin and I apologized silently.

"Where were you today?" I asked him.

"You'll see," he said. He rose from his chair, took my shoes gently like puppies or bunnies, and put them in the sink and sprayed water in them and squeezed a big dollop of dish-washing liquid into them and stood over the sink staring at the foam pouring out. He looked up at me, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and with a rakish smile asked if I had any more of the pasty grain concoction I recently fed him.