The Little Prince

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the day of the forty-four sunsets

Revenge of Jail

Revenge of Jail

A jail knocks on the first window it sees and wants to know if there is a room available. The foreman says Scram, Jail, this is an important project we’re trying to complete, and you take up too much space. The jail takes a step backwards, grabs the first child it sees, and puts the child into itself. Ha! They may never understand me but at least I have their child in myself, so they will always need me, he thinks.

I Used To Be Young

I Used To Be Young

I used to be young. When I was young I stood there with her in the maybe green grass, but I don’t remember where the maybe green grass was. I used to want to be there forever, but now that I think of it, I don’t know if any of it was ever really there at all, my memory, the grass, the possibility of her body. Her feet, her hands. All of the places she lifted me to.

I’m sure I went farther than I should have today. It occurred to me: I never saw her, really, did I? I never saw her the way my memory sees her. Everything now is just memories of memories. The grass is just a memory of grass, the maybe green is just a memory, maybe, of green. Her potential body, a memory that I may or may not have.

If this is true, what happens to me now?

Yesterday, beneath the weight of this question, I tried valiantly. I took a step back, but it was too far back. I saw her from the back of time: Her back was made of skin covered in linen, then covered in leather. Her legs, straight and wide, were made of skin, then jean. Her hands were naked, holding apples near her thighs. The back of her head was indistinguishable from an apple, then she faded. All that was left was grass. Yesterday I tried but I couldn’t find the right place, the place where she really was. I couldn’t get to the front of her. Finally, I couldn’t even find any grass.

So, this morning, I returned from yesterday. This morning I felt it couldn’t be true that I was ever there; it also couldn’t be true that I was never there. My memory was fragments of original memories, remembered and remembered so many times that they no longer touch their origin. I couldn’t be there, in the grass with her, with her apples. Is it true, can I only be behind, as in yesterday, or nowhere, as in now? This morning the origin of the memory felt so intangible, there is hardly enough of it left for me to even put my hand through it. It used to all be a solid block in my chest; her, yes, with an apple, with a face; did she have a face? She must have had a face. I am sure she had an apple in the maybe green grass, I am sure she had legs, a back. It used to be that I could find this solid block, and now I can’t even put my hand through an idea of it.

Since going backwards yesterday didn’t work, this afternoon, after considering all my options, I tried going forwards and still couldn’t find it. In fact, I lost more of it—I went too far. I forgot about the grass. I forgot that I had ever remembered the apple or the potential face. I forgot what she had looked like from the back of time. Now, from the front of time, she is completely gone.

How much more proof do I need? For now, forever, it seems she will remain, it will all remain, just out of my reach like an unripe apple at the top of a tree. My entire life I have had dreams about reaching. Reaching for things in the cupboard, reaching for salt shakers, reaching for children. Oh, there it is—the apple orchard from when I was little. Tonight I dream of it. The green hill and unshaved grass like a face, all in sleep. All of the trees with knobby arms. Back then, I couldn’t reach. Tonight, she lifts me up. A mother on an apple orchard.

It must have been real, then. I couldn’t see her feet back then because of the unshaven grass, but I always knew about her sandals and toes. In dreams, I remember knowing; I remember that I used to remember and know her sandals and toes. Tonight I see all of it. I see the large rock at the bottom of a hill, large enough to sit on. She helps me climb on top of it, stands behind me while I stand on the rock with my arms triumphant, skyward, like a queen. Oh, how wonderful, the memory of remembering, the dream of a life. I remember how everyone else seemed so far away and how it was okay for us to exist alone, together, on the orchard, holding apples, inhabiting rocks like queens, and how she taught me all that.

And then, like a flash, like an apple rotating around the sun and back into night, it is gone. It is today again, and I am awake, without any way to save dreams within my body.

I used to be young. I suppose all I can do now is move forward. There is no other remaining direction. This is just a line, this small tight thing in front of me. The back of it burns under my feet with each step, so there is no choice. I used to have choices but now nothing happens if I step off the line. Nothing happens if I turn around. I just get propped back up by an invisible thing, propped back up, forward-facing, on the small tight line.

Phantom Marie, Man, and Girl Marie On A Path

Phantom Marie, Man, and Girl Marie On A Path

On the path, near the river, there’s a phantom named Marie. She rides her bike up and down and up and down the path. Her feet are small, just bigger than the pedals. Her lips make a funny smile— her teeth never show yet her mouth opens wide, and on clear display inside the cavity, there is a tongue and pink flesh. She rides up and down and up and down the path, sometimes beside the water where the path curves before the thin rusty bridge, sometimes over the water, smiling without revealing her teeth.

When she gets to the final curve around the river and transfers to the bridge, she puts her smile away, hides her teeth even more deeply. Formerly smooth, with a splotch of dry skin here or there, her forehead transforms. It now has several wrinkles. Her face, usually so forward and alert, looks down at the gliding tires as she navigates the old train tracks that make up the rusty bridge. She pushes a little harder against the pedals, and sweat starts to form around the corners of her face. But she arrives at the other side of the bridge, and the wrinkles disappear, and her wide smile, without teeth, reemerges. She turns around, rides back onto the bridge, back over the river, back into the curves of the path.

There is a man next to her who runs fast, as fast as he needs to. He just wants to stay by her side. He calls out, “Marie, Marie!” but she never looks at him. He is tall and his body is hard, a statue marching, reaching far past its own limits with each pump of his fist. He seems like a stone carving, hardly built for this type of movement, but for Marie he molds himself anew, step by frantic step. Though his torso tilts forward in seeming pain, his mouth open with hardly enough breath, he never lets his feet stop. He manages to keep up with Marie and her swift bike. His head cocks towards her as he runs, perhaps to catch a glimpse of her teeth. “Marie! Marie!” He kicks stones and sticks out of his way. When she reaches the end of the bridge, he turns around, follows her back, with eyes like round sad rocks.

There’s a girl behind them who is also named Marie. She walks quite slow, and eats the strawberries that she keeps in her pocket one by one. Her chewing makes no sound. Her teeth show; they are often stained with red juice and spotted with tiny strawberry seeds. She watches the strawberries carefully, notes their inconsistent sizes, examines their random white spots. She plops them in her mouth whole and her cheeks bulge. Sometimes she sticks her fingers into the strawberries first, watches with wide eyes as the squishy hole is formed. She wipes the red juice on her palm. She even eats the tough green stems. She pops them under her tongue, raises her eyes upwards. She chews and swallows the stems, which takes more effort than chewing and swallowing the red flesh. Her footsteps continue all the while, each one slow and full. It takes her a long time to reach the path’s curve around the river, even longer to reach the bridge.

Sometimes Marie the girl appears to notice the man and the phantom in front of her. It seems obvious, even to Marie the girl, that the man is trying desperately to catch the phantom’s toothless attention. Marie the girl never catches up with either of them. By the time she has gotten to the end of the bridge once, the phantom and the man have already passed her three or four times, up and down, up and down the path. When they pass her, they glide to the right like two pieces of a unit, as if attached by invisible strings. Marie the girl hears the man: “Marie! Marie!” She notices them in the same way she might detect wind or a bird. She is always moving forward, so slowly, looking at her feet in between each chunk of strawberry and stem.

Sometimes she picks up a foot to look at the dirty bottom of her canvas shoe. There is a hole she likes to pick in her left shoe’s bottom. This is always followed by a particular movement of her mouth, her teeth showing, her lips pulling above them in a funny smile. Without fail, there are blotches of soft strawberry meat on her teeth. She leaves the blotches alone, closes her lips, puts down her foot, continues walking as slowly as she must in order to eat the strawberries. She finds more and more in her pockets, and eats and eats them. Just when she thinks she has eaten the last one, she digs deeper and finds another, and keeps walking, forever with her strawberries.

winter untitled

winter untitled

There’s no light coming through. I slept again.

I played music and tried to write but nothing arrived so I slept again. My spine curled into it without asking me.

There was no light coming through so I slept again. The blanket of winter has become an imprisoning hassle. There are squirrels hiding under the snow. I see them sometimes, hoarding slices of bread.

I heard the song that I wrote, over and over in my mind. It is for my friend who returns soon. I have not seen her in nine months. That is enough time to have a baby, I think to myself. There’s no light coming through so I played this song and then I slept again, when I woke up it was still in my head and it was even darker out. I must let myself fail. I must also let myself win, I think to myself. What kind of world is this? It is a snow one, with darkness. My friend comes home soon. Perhaps then I will be awake.

There’s no light coming through. A somewhat lover sleeps on the other side of town. I cannot stop thinking of him. I look in his direction and then I sleep. We are never aware of what we are doing to each other. Our bodies are not reconciled. Our hearts are sad but still I look in his direction and then I sleep.

I often wonder if I exist. I hear songs in my head and I think what is a head, do I exist. What is a lover, do I exist. And if I edit. If I erase. If I am a notebook. A machine—what then? Which delineations can I trust.

It is hard to write sometimes, do I exist. Etc.

It is hard to hear, to see sometimes, even my window has stopped working, do I exist. There’s no light coming through. All neutral tones, all whites, all browns and grays. Do I exist. A red candy wrapper on the ground. A defiant green twig. A yellow street sign. If colors exist, do I exist. If colors exist, can I go outside. What does it mean to go outside. Should I try to reconcile my body with winter’s body. Should I jump in it, naked and unashamed. Since there is no light coming through, I curl over and I sleep. Winter is not my lover.

What kind of world is this? It is a snow one. A cold one. I can’t see anything. I sleep again. Words hold me. Words are holding me. Words held me. Words will hold me again. There’s a squirrel outside hoarding bread.

3 case histories

CASE HISTORY #1: COURTNEY

“I can’t wait to ask god where he got those sweet shorts.”

For years, I have been used to the way her head only reaches my shoulder. Maybe it doesn’t even reach that high; she is approximately eight inches shorter than me. She is always asking me to grab cups and plates, candles and cake, from the top shelf because she can’t reach them.

She cuts the sleeves off her shirts when it is humid, never thinking about what she will do for shirts come winter. She is the personification of the color blue. Her eyes, hair, teeth, and skin are blue. She sleeps with only a thin screen separating her from a family of blue raccoons who try, every night, to destroy her air conditioner. Her goldfish floats upside down due to a digestive problem and her cat has twenty-four toes. She forever mourns the death of her hermit crab; she did not mean to fall in love with him. She dreams of wearing leggings, of moving to Seattle, of saving things.

Her spurts of creativity come at the most inopportune times—in the middle of the night, she calls out to the world for adventures, wants to read poems to the universe, paint pictures onto an eternity she can’t find; at three in the morning she wants to bulldoze the Cape Cod cranberry bogs, jump in front of the bulldozer, make soup out of all of the roots and vines and dirt she recovers from it.

It’s a humid July afternoon when we ask god to have iced tea with us. We boil the water and put it in a big pot because we can’t find a proper pitcher. We fill the pot up with Lipton’s tea bags and watch the sienna clouds melt into the hot water. We put the tea in the refrigerator, let it cool for about an hour, fill it up with ice cubes and a few lemon slices. We leave the sugar out; we figure we should let god decide whether or not he wants his iced tea sweetened. We decorate the table with dead flowers in empty wine bottles.

We are in a stadium, which is actually the universe. It’s god’s birthday. He is sixty-five trillion years old.

“I wonder what day it was when he created the pencil sharpener? Pavement?”

The owl tattooed on her shoulder winks at me as we talk about sex, about collaborative art, about other peoples’ relationships. On her hip, which she doesn’t always know is a wonderful hip, three tattooed stars remind us of dead friends.

I was with her the day the Mooninites took over Boston. 1/31/07: Never forget.

As we wait for god, we roll joints, wondering whether or not we should give one to him as a birthday present, but decide against it. We sew punk rock patches on our skirts. We ask the universe-waiter for band aids. We take pictures of ourselves showing our teeth, then hiding our teeth. God was supposed to be here at five-thirty. It’s almost nine.

“I don’t think he’s coming. He’s probably really busy today.”

We are a finished puzzle. We swallow our Prozac with coffee and red wine. We are only sometimes ashamed.

CASE HISTORY #2: ASHEVILLE

In Asheville I am drinking a beer in the back of a record store. A friend cries as he plays the guitar.

We meet a woman we call Georgia Peach. She is sixty years old and has been coloring her own hair since she was sixteen. She doesn’t want to think about how many years have gone by. “I’d dance if my foot wasn’t so bad off,” she announces to the banjo player on the sidewalk.

Yesterday in Virginia, the Astrovan broke down. On Interstate 81 a country band in a veggie oil bus picked us up and brought us here. After rescuing vegetable oil and bagels from a dumpster, we drove the bus up a mountain and almost tipped over into a creek. I stayed up all night in the house on the mountain, talking to you about Buddhism, non-violence theory, monogamy, sweat, and creeks.

I’m in charge of watching Georgia Peach’s belongings while she limps up the street to buy Eddie Bauer jeans for a dollar and refill her prescriptions.

On the side of the road, under a bridge, I cry because I have no money. I imagine the following things

-What it would be like to walk in front of a car

-Calling you even though you won’t answer

-The profile of your ghost in front of me

and then I scold myself. I want to see you from this angle. I want you to be vulnerable.

Let it go… let it go. Fly. On Route 81, the lights turn on by themselves. I think that will make you happy, if you are ever here. Let’s drive over small bridges and dizzy mountains. Let’s listen to Johnny Cash and The Boss. Let’s try to get through Dutch Country tonight. I have a tent if you have a field.

CASE HISTORY # 3: CATIE

“I want to make things with other things. I want to make rocks into spaceships with hammers for wings.”

She is taking careful notes on how to melt record albums in the oven. She read somewhere that if you do it at the perfect temperature, for just the right amount of time, you can get them to a malleable consistency. She wants to turn them into bowls and sell them in the park.

“Okay? We have to go clean off some records. After that we make a chandelier out of recycled jars.”

She wants me to use my hands. She tries to teach me how to engage with physical materials. Her mind works through her skin.

“You can make coffee tables out of anything. Not just flat things. I’m talking, like, old computers. Dried up teabags. Batteries. Guitars.”

There are so many things hanging on her walls: broken skateboard decks; a plastic gorilla bank; guitars; frisbees; in the corner near the top of the closet, there is a paintbrush stuck to the wall, thick with neon pink.

A drawing of a girl with no face. A Buddha, backwards. Self-portraits in charcoal. A flimsy tapestry that I bought for her in Bihar.

She drinks Kombucha. She writes country songs even though she is from a city in the North. She takes photographs of invisible things. She can’t believe I haven’t seen E.T. She loves avocado. She has one dreadlock.

We have the same initials; we carve them into the wooden pole at the rest stop in the mountains. We spend weeks perfecting our recipe for vegan fudge. We cry when we say goodbye to the harmless dog. We stare at the redwoods. We give granola bars, juice, and mixed nuts to the homeless man. We swim naked in the lake and hide underwater when hikers pass. We write songs that we don’t tell anyone about. We get stoned and make the ugliest faces possible. At the cleanest river we’ve ever seen, we find god rippling. We take pictures of our bruises. We spray paint sidewalks at night. We drink whole bottles of red wine while watching game shows.

We show each other our bodies and, for the first time in our lives, we aren’t scared. This is a secret.

She looks at me as I stand in the mirror. She tells me to make my own world. To crash and burn. She teaches me to never be afraid of rust.

shrap: what do the dead dream

On the evening that I shot Corey in the face, there were lots of people running around outside. Most of them were kids. Their parents worked at the government industrial complex where we lived. Some older ones were carrying around some younger ones on their backs. They were all laughing, playing a game in the street that looked like baseball, and when the cars came they all wanted to be the first to yell “Game off!” And then the car would drive past and someone else would cry “Game on!” and they’d all stumble back into the road. Anyways, when I saw what he was about to do, there was no more time to think. I had already spent so much time in my mind. I pulled the gun up and shot it, right in his face.

A beautiful woman asks me, what do the dead dream? I’m not sure if I have an answer. They dream of life, I tell her. She says that’s too vague. She really wants to know. Fine, I say. They dream of fields and forests filled with fast and slow things. They dream of ambulatory beings who are so complete that they don’t have shadows. They dream of caverns, of canyons, of cracks. And then they dream of the megaliths that dictate subconscious architectural problems, like a priest from a pulpit, holding prayers written on paper. Then come the displaced shadows, shadows in the shape of men which loom over foggy beams and holes of light. The dead dream of lots and lots of holes.

When his body crashed, I threw the gun down and pulled him by his arms across the room. After some serious labor on my behalf, I got him near the book case and pushed my foot down on the floor. It took me a second to find the correct panel. But finally I got the hidden door to pop up beneath me, and I was able to heave Corey’s dead body, with its new half-face, into the chamber. It was then that I began to call myself Sheardon Apple, or Shrap for short, which in actuality had always been my name. I think I was twenty-five years old.

She wasn’t satisfied. I told her, I really don’t have many answers, I’m just a child. I think the dead dream of death, of bombs and accidents that lead to deep sadness. I think they dead dream of pumpkins and root vegetables, potatoes, yams, yucca. Maybe they dream of plantains, of fruits with hidden seeds. They do not know they are dead they just believe that they are dreaming.

cage 2

A person who can look at the table and see the universe is a person who can see the way. That’s what they tell me whenever I am in the hidden room. They have the luxury to speak about the way because they are able to see. I am not able to see. I am not even sure if I have eyes. As in the closet, in the hidden room there is no light. Not when I am in there. Perhaps when I am away from the hidden room, it is illuminated.

There is a window, maybe, but there is also a real chance that that window exists only in some corner of my mind. I have never known what or who my mind is, so I don’t know whether or not the window is consequential. What I’m trying to tell you is that my mind is indistinguishable from the hidden room. My self is a cave which may or may not have an opening. My opening, which may or may not exist, is never lit. They are able to find it because they are the ones who made it, dug it out, chipped away at whatever exterior there was, if exteriors ever existed. They like to say things that sound important and real. They talk about the way but what do they know about the way? Their selves are solid. My ego has either died or was never born. Perhaps that is why they love me—I am empty, so they can put themselves inside of me so as to have one more surface, one more container from which to love and store their own reflections.

Or perhaps they want access to my version of the hidden room and they know they can never have it. Perhaps that is why they subdue me, because they cannot be me. No; that can’t be right. I am always wrong when I am in the hidden room. The darkness, the shade of the air—it isn’t real. The voices—I can’t touch them, so how can I know what they mean? The only thing that is real is the cage; I can feel the wires. I can feel them, but don’t let me fool you—the wires have no names. Being able to feel the wires on the cage doesn’t mean I have any awareness as to whether or not I am touching them from the inside or outside. There is someone in the cage, and someone outside of it, but I’m not sure who is where. And perhaps the cage itself is a self. And it always ends like that, language’s lines of escape.

cage 1

I go to my cage and look in it. There is nothing in the cage. I am lying. There is a lot in the cage. What story am I attempting to tell you? I am attempting to tell you a story. Let me start again. I go to the cage and look into it. What I am trying to tell you is that I am touching myself. I touch my own arm with my own hand. My leg. My finger with my finger. My body—my body? I touch my body with my body. What do you see when you look? And you? Do you see a cage? I might be alone. I might go into the cage alone. I might open the door. No—let me start again. I might open it alone, myself, with no one watching. The door is on the cage. It might be metal. It might be stone. The same goes for my body. Everything that I say about the cage and the door is actually something I am saying about my body. A story that I am telling. It does not matter whether or not I go on. Whether or not I go in. I went to my cage and looked in it. I wasn’t sure what I saw or didn’t. I wasn’t sure that I had eyes on my face. I wasn’t sure if there was a cage or if there was looking.

The True Story of the Body of my Excavation

The True Story of the Body of My Excavation

While hitch-hiking two-thousand miles to what, unbeknownst to me, would be the site of the future body of my excavation, I toppled into a cement ditch which was also a grave and, briefly, a bed. Consequently, I broke. But neither I nor the body of my excavation are troubled by this descent, for it is currently by choice that my bodies and their inverse arrangements are dis- and re- placed. It wasn’t always this way—I used to be much hungrier—but the body of my excavation made it so.

The body of my excavation is fierce. She has legs that are bent around a dead stump, arms that are curled over a bark brain. Her stick wrists are engorged with cottonwood, displaying muscle well beyond symmetry and sense. She remembers each ditch; while I eat cement, she carries grand canyons. While I lose my left hand, she cradles a red rock in her right, watching it disintegrate to dust. The body of my excavation is pre- and post- and partial- earth; she is in-between clay. I know this about her because I made her, then I found her. I made her because I needed to learn what occupied the other side of the mirror; I found her after I became manic with the desire to fill her. Now she is a tangible container; I am assured that she exists, even in the space of ghosts and wombs. I have come to her with one good thumb and a torn cereal box, upon the back of which I’ve questioned the movement of the highway with thick marker: Going west? I-70? I had to rise from my ditch, for the body of my excavation needed an agent. I could hear her even though I didn’t know her song, for her song is the same as a painting, and I first saw it on a wall. All she asked was that I make time and joy out of her.

Obligingly, I construct the heart of the body of my excavation from four dandelions, anarchist flowers who refuse to be imprisoned. Like the body of my excavation, they infiltrate, determined to dance their way beyond the authority of lawns and fences, laughing in the face of the accusation you are taking up too much of your own space. This is how the body of my excavation finally becomes her own verb.

Having finally found and filled her, I sit to eat bread beside the body of my excavation. Briefly wondering whether she wants to be alone, I conclude that it seems not to matter; she’s calm, like ether or a cemetery. I place a corner of bread beneath her dandelions, even though she is not hungry. It is impossible for the body of my excavation to experience hunger; she is that complete. She knows all about the human fascination with emptiness—that we become dictated, delineated by metaphors of starvation. The body of my excavation points me to the millions who are actually hungry so I can understand the difference between the symbol and the thing. As I bury within her a corner of bread, she will bury within me a lifetime of bread.