i like the sound of that

"The man next to me, Tony, who said he lives in a tent by the railroad tracks put hot sauce in his coffee and handed me a lottery scratcher. I won three bucks, he won nothing. He stared down into his coffee cup that had “what the fuck happened last night” printed on the side and said, “Ive never been much of a winner.” and it was obvious that he was talking about more than the lottery. “hey, at least you’re still playing.” I said. “Yep, I AM still playing and as long as I got a tent, a good sleeping bag, a little food, a little talk and these goddamn beautiful ass mountains, I’ll keep on playing.” He looked a little sad when he stopped talking and I thought about giving him the winning scratcher but he seemed like the kind of man that would be insulted by that so I looked down into my coffee cup instead trying to think of something good to say to him when I remembered something I’d read, “All great things are simple, any idiot can make things complicated, but it takes a real genius to make things simple.” He smiled and said “If there’s one thing my life is, it’s simple and if what you just said is true, I must be the smartest mother fucker in this room.” I held up my cup and said, “I’ll drink to that.” He clanged his cup against mine and said, “To the genius in the room!” “To the genius in the room!” I said a little louder as he began to gather up his things. When he was ready to go, he shook my hand and I thanked him for the scratcher. He held the handshake and thanked me in return. I asked him what for, and he said, “Well, when I walked in here I was just a guy living in a tent by the railroad tracks, now I’m a god damn genius and I like the sound of that.”

savage

is the morning, tearing us apart from dreams

hey remember that time that we found a human tooth (down on Delancy)

It’s the bad parts that make you realize how good the great parts are?

…Later, a cold plastic cup of beer sweats condensation in your hand. You sit on your friend’s bed, watching his fish as it swims back and forth only on the left wall of its enormous aquarium. The story goes, and you have no idea if it’s true, that your friend dropped a hit of liquid acid in the tank once and the fish freaked out for days—swimming at three and four times its normal speed—and now has settled into an aquatic psychosis where it would never venture to the right side of the tank where the drug had been dropped. As far as the fish seems to be concerned, the right side of the tank is where VERY BAD SHIT once happened, and there isn’t anything that is going to get him to go BACK there. If this is true, that fish, that brainless cartilage-knuckle full of prehistoric DNA flip-flopping a slow glide on the left side of the tank is, in its way, smarter than you, who returns and returns and returns and keeps returning in various ways to where the very bad shit will happen for the next 20 years of your life.

You sit drunk and tripping, thinking about that little fish, and your girlfriend Jane, having changed her plans for some reason unknown to you, walks into your friend’s bedroom. Except for the party noise swelling and receding with the opening and the closing of the bedroom door, her entrance to the room is lost on you.

She is screaming your name.

It’s the first time you’ve heard your name, but she’s saying it with the intensity and annoyance of someone who has had to repeat herself several times, so logic dictates that you missed her first few attempts at her communicating.

She grabs your head and forces you to look up at her and screams your name again.

Her beautiful face is full-mooned into your line of vision so that all you can see are her probing eyes that look (as you have already sadly seen and will sadly later see again and, more sadly, have to see a few more times) much like loved ones and paramedics and doctors look into your eyes when you overdose.

“Hey,” you say.

“What’s wrong with you?” she says.

A valid question, to be sure. But one you are not really capable of taking on.

“I thought you were in Rhode Island?” you say.

“What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?” she says.

“I think my eyes are ok,” you say, then start to get scared. You feel for your eyes, half expecting them to be gone or bloodied and dangling, but they feel normal. You blink fast a few times. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“You are so fucked up,” she says.

You point to the aquarium. “That fish can only swim on one side of the tank.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’ve been studying it.”

She shakes her head. There is no way you can articulate it or explain your desperate desire to not let her down or hurt her again, but it seems, whether you can talk or not, that her disappointment is on a train that has already pulled out of the station and no matter how much you chase it, it’s beyond your reach. You want to say to her “don’t leave.” Or, “I’m surprised and happy to see you.” Or, even, of course, “I love you.” But these may as well be phrases from a foreign language phrase book, for all the access you have to them at the time. She is beautiful, smart, funny and talented. She is, in short, everything you think you are not and will go on thinking you’re not for over twenty years. The only thing you can find wrong with Jane is her taste—that she loves you is a blot on her otherwise spotless record in your mind, but you are soon to fix that problem.

There are few worse feelings than watching someone you love, who loves you, deeply, come to the realization that she or he can no longer love you for fear of their own survival. This is a lesson, like many others, you will have to learn a couple hundred times before it sinks in that it is not at all cool or good to be the drowning man who made others, repeatedly, decide to go down with him, or leave him to whatever the world might have for him.

by Rob Roberge

Open Letters to the Ones Who Got Away

To the men who got away: Hey, let’s talk about it now that I have a fresh perspective.

To the man who asked me if I would like to spend the day with him while I was on the bus to work (and to the other man who used an identical pickup line at Starbucks like two years later): I was taken aback by your invitation; it was 8 a.m. on a workday. Now I appreciate your candor because it takes a real man to immediately admit he is unemployed.

To the man who asked me to dinner while I was walking down the street in a parka with a scarf wrapped around my head during a Chicago snowstorm: I used to think you were proof that some dudes will hit on anyone. Now I know that you just really like surprises. I’m guessing you play a lot of scratch ‘n win lotto. And I assume you spend all your quarters at those toy machines that dispense plastic eggs with prizes inside. You never know what you’re going to find under that parka or beneath that silver gunk that gets under your fingernails or inside that plastic egg. You’re adventurous. I admire that about you.

To the men who tell me that despite my choice of profession, I don’t look like a lawyer: I know. I’m pretty enough to be a struggling actress. What am I doing with my life? I bet you can advise me.

To the jolly, middle-aged Dutch man who ran after me, arms outstretched, while I was trying to find the Van Gogh Museum: I didn’t know you were interested. You tried to help me interpret your mating dance by chanting “I like! I like!” after you had chased me for two blocks. I was too slow on the uptake and too quick on my feet. Now I’ll never know what I missed.

To the two dozen men who have informed me over the years that–like me–their ex-girlfriend is Filipino:I shouldn’t have accused you of being a racist. Maybe there was more to you.

To the men who find faux-autism a turn-on because they sawGarden Statein college: When you told me that I was different than the other girls in the bar, I accused you of being a racist and walked out the door. But it was just an excuse to go home and alphabetize my record collection. I bet you would have enjoyed watching that.

To the stranger who yelled “I love you” to me from his moving car while I was jogging: I was just about to yell “Nietzche once said that there is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness,” but you slipped through my fingers at 45 miles per hour.

To the men who are so busy checking their iPhones while hitting on me that they don’t notice that I now wear a wedding band: One day, some lucky single girl will replace that unlucky iPhone as the object of your affection. Until then, I’ll keep refreshing Instagram.
And to the men who haven’t hit on me yet: What are you waiting for?

by Maria Angela Johnson, via The Rumpus

The point: some people are meant to get away.

Karen Finneyfrock

What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said

(If she wasn’t a pillar of salt)

Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?

When our first daughter was born
on the River Jordan, when our second
cracked her pink head from my body
like a promise, did we worry
what our friends might be
doing with their tongues?

What new crevices they found
to lick love into or strange flesh
to push pleasure from, when we
called them Sodomites then,
all we meant by it
was neighbor.

When the angels told us to run
from the city, I went with you,
but even the angels knew
that women always look back.
Let me describe for you, Lot,
what your city looked like burning
since you never turned around to see it.

Sulfur ran its sticky fingers over the skin
of our countrymen. It smelled like burning hair
and rancid eggs. I watched as our friends pulled
chunks of brimstone from their faces. Is any form
of loving this indecent?

Cover your eyes tight,
husband, until you see stars, convince
yourself you are looking at Heaven.

Because any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighbors
are punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god.

I would say these things to you now, Lot,
but an ocean has dried itself on my tongue.
So instead I will stand here, while my body blows itself
grain by grain back over the Land of Canaan.
I will stand here
and I will watch you
run.

how it is sometimes

“That’s how it is sometimes—
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.”

— From Dust by Dorianne Laux

for Eli

…

and I know I don’t know but I say, “I know”
cause Eli’s only twenty-four and I’ve never seen eyes
further away from childhood than his
eyes old with a wisdom
he knows I’d rather not have

Eli’s mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm
and says, “not all casualties come home in body bags”
and I swear
I’d spend the rest of my life writing nothing
but the word light at the end of this tunnel
if I could find the fucking tunnel
I’d write nothing but white flags

-

excerpt from “For Eli” by Andrea Gibson