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Showdown on I-5 by T. S. Hand

A little monster lives in me at all times. It has but one desire, one plan for my future. This demon wants me dead. Period. It has many ways of convincing me to take my own life, or making my life unfit to live anyway. You might have it in you, too. Maybe you call it something different. I call it The Dread.

It’s been louder and more active since my blow-out fight with my girlfriend. All day I’ve been running from The Dread and barely escaping; at least, I thought I had barely escaped. I woke up on the guys’ couch this morning in the aftermath of a party with a raging hard-on. I think my hair-raising caffeine intake is playing games with my hormones. I’ve been uncommonly jittery, capricious, moody and horny for the last few days. I’ve been over-spicing my food in hopes of singeing some component inside me that’s making me radiate like a light bulb about to exhaust itself. I feel flayed and raw, exposed to everything and dangerously absorbent. My impulses all tell me to fuck, flee, drug, force-feed these feelings out of me, this vulnerability. I feel like a child covered in smallpox, a cow succumbing to madness, confused, falling, prostrate.

But, like I said, I woke up with a hard-on and immediately everything I wanted was beyond reach…just one of those days: the girlfriend’s thousands of miles away and every fucktastic tart who’s easy is too far away, bitter, or asleep. Thus began the abusive relationship betwixt two of my most-used appendages. There had been a rash of such violence recently, though it was no longer stemming the tide of nervous energy. I thought of my girlfriend while I came, because at least this made me feel human, well-adjusted.

Then the roommates joined the world of the wakeful and rested. Our chatting made me feel like a bad friend; I just couldn’t focus. Their sentences would run up on me and knock me uncharacteristically speechless. I only knew it was my turn to speak by their facial expressions, which began to impart impatience and frustration as the conversations grew increasingly one-sided. My default response when I’m not listening or when I don’t know what to say is to just laugh and say, “No way,” although there were at least three instances in as many minutes when I did this and it was utterly uncalled for and out of context. Whoops. I scrunched up my face in concentration trying to understand them and add something to the sewing circle, but then I would notice a fly, or a stray hair, or a flickering shadow. My head felt like a vacuum cleaner with no bag attached, an Acme peanut canister housing spring-loaded cloth snakes.

I started frantically cleaning every surface in sight. I broke off conversations mid-sentence to sash to another room and collect bottlecaps, beers, matchbooks. I swept the floor with such fervor that no roommate in his right mind would dare interject. But soon the house sparkled dismally, and The Dread occupied every doorjamb, reminding me that I ain’t shit and these “friends” probably don’t even want me here, miserable fuck that I am. I thought maybe “productivity,” yes, that would help comfort me. Nothing quite like standing back from a glistening creation and saying, “I made this!” so I cooked everyone breakfast, too, in hopes that spattering grease and smoking toast would at least keep The Dread out of the four walls of the kitchen. This didn’t afford me much solace, however, because The Dread began to use its well-hewn techniques of self-pity, angst and acute ADD to have me on the verge of bloodletting or self-decapitation.

I plopped onto the couch and stared catatonically at the Duke game with my roommate and his un-amused girlfriend. “It’s beautiful outside, you know,” she kept repeating at her comatose flesh-pile of a boyfriend. The third time she barked this I took notice and peaked behind our khaki curtains. It was beautiful outside, pristine even.

By the time the notion bounced from my frontal lobe to my mouth, it had become a certainty: I would push up my plans to leave town in a week for home, and instead drive today. Work could be excused, and I had the nine-hour drive to think about the excuse on the way.

If I left quickly enough, The Dread couldn’t come, though it would probably just go to the airport and meet me in
L.A. But, hell, at least that’s nine hours with no Dread in sight. Within ten minutes I had merged onto the freeway, offered no explanation to my roommates and forgot four out of five essentials of travel, though I had somehow remembered the towel.

There was heavy traffic on the way out of town and it made me uncomfortable, not because I dislike driving, but because I could sense The Dread gaining on me. Apparently it did not jump on a plane to meet me in
L.A., but instead hang-glided over the freeway and onto the roof of a moving van. It was now probably biding its time until the United Van Lines semi-truck got close enough to me to where The Dread could do a somersault through my sunroom and into the passenger seat with me. Or it would probably do some sort of ninja move into the backseat and stretch wire cable across my Adam’s apple. I grabbed a stick of my ubiquitous chewing-gum, and shut the sunroof, unwrapping a toothpick for good measure. The summer air quickly grew fetid inside my car and I thought of The Dread even more. Once I got out of the city’s traffic and no vans or semis were encroaching upon me, I opened up the sunroof and windows once again.

—————————————

Two hours have passed. I’ve listened to the only two albums in my car and now I’m kicking myself for not owning an iPod. I’ve stopped outside of
Stockton for some gas, I think. I probably don’t need to stop here but it’s a little late for heroics or changes of heart at this point. I know The Dread’s here somewhere, I’m just not sure where. It just seems fitting to dispatch The Dread in a place that sells tamales, hot showers, and under-the-counter porno.

Hours of feeling hunted have made me defiant and bold. I’m being proactive and brave choosing this place as our O.K. Corral. It’s gutsy on my part because there are few witnesses in case anything goes wrong, no one to save me. I pump some gas and sniff out The Dread. But, I don’t notice it anymore. Perhaps it gave up, recognized an uphill battle, a dug in enemy? Perhaps this truck stop will remain a peaceful place after all.

I mosey on into the shop and head towards the bathroom. While I’m contemplating the thirty-two synonyms for pissing, a lighting-hot cattleprod jolts me from out of nowhere, my wrists are buckled with opaque snap-ties and a ball gag is shoved into my mouth and secured with black leather straps.

The short chain linking my feet manages to scrape and slither its way across the linoleum as The Dread pushes me out of the bathroom and towards the poor, hapless Hindi attendant at the counter. She’s literally the only person here besides me, the only person who could have warned me that The Dread was biding its time in that bathroom. She looks at my horrific, brutalized countenance and remains stony-faced and impassive. Apparently, she couldn’t give a shit less about what’s going to happen.

The Dread inches me towards the counter and un-straps the ball-gag. She looks at me, both of us look like we’re pleading for something. I finally ask, “Can I get the change on pump six, please?” She says sure, but she knows I’m stalling. I’ve already left a corona of condensation around my handprint on the counter. The Dread knows I’m stalling; it inflicts quick stomach cramps and a sinus headache, with the promise of more to come if its wishes are unfulfilled. I wish a meteor would blot out the one square foot of Earth I currently occupy.

As I’m waiting either for a meteor or The Dread to give up, both futile wishes, I’ve already racked up $15 in extemporaneous garbage I’ll never eat or need on this roadtrip. The clerk keeps asking, “Anything else?” because it’s her job but I want her to shut up and curse me for bringing her into this, curse me for choosing that dusty shop of all the I-5 haunts.

I quickly flash through my head what her dark lips would look like pursed in anger and desperation, telling me, “You shouldn’t have come here. Just get the fuck out. Get in your car, and don’t stop until you’re in a safe place.” Does she have some sort of foreign accent when she gets emotional? I’ll never find out, because she just keeps asking, “Anything else?” and I want to maim her for her foolishness. I want her to feel one iota of the misery I’m feeling now. Then she wouldn’t ask me anything; she’d just come around from behind the counter and give me a hug, coo in my ear, or scratch my head fondly.

But she does keep asking, and eventually I fold: “One pack of Marlboro Reds, please.”

Excerpts from a Novel by T.S. Hand 

Today was a bad day. It said so in red pen, right there between the 15^th and 17^th, which both forecasted “good” in blue ink. 

I cut myself shaving. It didn’t hurt too much so I did it again. I showed up to work with oozing little scrapes all over and circulated a story about cut power and having to shave in the dark. When I heard my boss’ feet approach on the industrial stain-resistant carpet, I picked at the little devils until fresh rivulets appeared. By 10:30 AM my boss took pity on my (somehow) worsening condition and told me to take the day off. It was an office full of social workers. They were nothing if not compassionate.

…………………….. 

“What do you do?” I ventured.

“I’m a whore.”

I had heard stranger things before from women, so I mulled it over and then offered, “You mean, like a prostitute?”

“No, honey, I’m a whore.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A prostitute has more syllables.”

I chuckled, it was the only spontaneous thing I’d done in awhile. It was unique among spontaneous things in that it felt right. Oh, yeah, today was a good day.

…………………………..

The 18^th, a bad day.

I’m hiding in a payphone alcove on 8^th Avenue and 36^th Street. It’s the nearest place to my office where I can smoke without my boss seeing me from the fourth-floor window. A disheveled young thug comes up and demands, “Yo, man, lemme get two cigarettes.” I’m so taken aback by his order that I acquiesce before I can feel offended. I mean, he didn’t even say the magic word for fuck’s sake. I don’t let it bother me too much, because something in his personality resonates with me, conspiratorially: fuck the man in the suit; take everything you can from him.

A woman comes to the phone next to me and sighs. She looks homeless, but not overly so. She asks if I have a spare nickel for a phone call. A quick check of my pockets yields a quarter. I ask if she has change. She says, “No. It’s OK. It’s just so damn American of you.”

I’m crawling out of my steel smoke cave with the dregs of my cigarette when an unseen woman brushes against me. She starts howling about the bag I just burned with my cigarette end. I look down at the damaged cigarette in my fingers and the pockmark I’ve left in her Coach bag—probably a knock-off. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. Really.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry. Look at my fucking bag, you shithead!”

“I’m sorry, Jesus! You ran into me. Fuck, lady.” I feel all pretense of remorse leaving me as she continues on with this barrage of insults and haranguing. Realizing this could go on forever, and noticing that I’ve already over-extended my lunch break to dangerous lengths, I choose a quiet time in her tirade to look squarely in her eyes as I take the still-lighted cigarette and stub it out in the sinewy back of my hand. Her countenance changes predictably. The smoldering anger she felt now turns to horror.

“Is this what you want? Do you want to see me hurt?” I asked as the pain sent flashes of light behind my eyelids. “Does this make you fucking happy, you cunt?” She turned tail and walked away, quickly. She only looked back once to see if I was real.

…………………………….

I spent more time today with Christie, the Whore. These meetings are usually on good days, although some bad days I even make time to see her. Some bad days I especially need to see her.

Even in our first moments together she was the only one who looked right at me, into me, and saw that I was all bristling hair, bared claws and stiff upper lips. She saw the flicker in there that belied my emptiness. I was equidistant from bludgeoning her for revealing it and kissing her for accepting it; my weakness, that is. She made quick calculations of emotional earnings potential, return on investment and sunk cost, followed rapidly by two blinks forceful enough to stop a bullet mid-flight. Exhaled, caught it, paused, finished exhaling.

She reached out and cupped my jaw, her fingertips tickling my ear pleasantly. “Oh, darling, you’re just so…orange,” she opined. This label was deftly original. I was defenseless. She moved in for the kill. “You know,” she assumed “nothing rhymes with you and you don’t come around all that often, but the moments you do appear people really take notice. You’re life’s solution to beige.”

Mommy Says Me by T.S. Hand 

“I fulled up!”

“Charlie, eat your peas, please. Then you’ll be full,” the mother enjoined, x-raying into the toddler’s stomach.

“Maw-mee!” the child blurted, “I dunnah like peas uhn! Muh-moh-ME!” His ejaculatory loathing dispatched all semblance of adequate language development, and he continued babbling incoherently into his dish. Perhaps because God doesn’t like peas either, Charlie’s father walked in.

“Duh-daddy?” pleadingly, “Mommy eat me peas.” Smugness spread across the boy’s face like a tattler exposing his classmates, knowing the injustice would be dealt with swiftly.

Even a tottering child knows tension in a room, knows its danger.

Her eyes darted to the sheaf of papers jutting haphazardly out of a manila file-folder on the countertop. They looked contractual, even from her cross-kitchen distance. His eyes followed hers, until he saw the subject of her attention. He took a quick, sucking breath and stammered, “Don’t. Like this?”

Charlie, taking the sudden break in silence as proof of resolution, related to his ashen father, “Daddy, I says mommy I fulled up—”

“I’ll get better, for chrissake, Sue. Give it a chance, even.”

“—but mommy says me she fed up.”

“So are you coming this year?”
“No.”
“But, why not J, everyone wants to see you. Grandma’s even coming this year.”
“You know why I’m not coming, Ma. You act like you don’t know, but you do.”
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Kitchen Cupboards & Electrodes by T.S. Hand 

On my eleventh birthday, I wanted to become a man. Feeling bold, I asked my sleepover-party friends if they’d like a drink. They looked aghast. I stood atop a chair to reach the liquor cabinet. My first sips of scotch were revolting, so I mixed it with a peach juice-box.

I awake in a hospital bed, stuck with tubes and electrodes. The last thing I remember is finishing a water bottle full of vodka in the back of sophomore physics class. My mom sits in the corner sobbing in choked bursts. “My son, the drunk!” she spurts.

Drivers-ed class was showing an instructional video. My then girlfriend, sitting in front of me, discreetly reached behind her desk and up my short’s leg. After my erection subsided, I sauntered to the bathroom to peel off my boxers. I naively hoped the DMV would be this exciting.

I awake in a urine-soaked and vomit-encrusted mess on my bedroom floor. My mom stands over my naked body; she’s obviously been crying. “Why can’t you just stop?” she pleads. It’s Tuesday, so I shower, dress and go to my junior-year homeroom.

People say you’re addicted to heroin the first time you try it. I was a science major, so it was only a lab experiment to me. Six hours later I vomited in my dorm bed and writhed in agony. I knew just one more hit would make everything alright.

The girl sleeping with her back to me is my girlfriend. Awakening, I re-piece the previous night. The last thing I remember is discovering her infidelity, and walking towards her with clenched fists. I lay in bed, too scared to wake her and see the horror. My dry, shaking sobs finally stirred her.

After detox, some friends advised me to say “I love you” to the people I had hurt most. The first person’s usually the same for every recovering addict. In a Thai restaurant’s dimly-lighted bathroom I took a deep breath and said three words into the mirror.

____________________________

The sign on the door urges, “This Is a Safe Place.” I walk in behind my father, who has himself strung together four months of sobriety at the age of 62. We enter the nondescript church rectory and take seats next to the other five inhabitants from middle-America retirement communities. Just a teenager, I am the only participant under fifty years old. As I descend torturously into my stiff-backed folding chair, seven hits of ecstasy beckon, connive in my billfold ID sleeve, as an emergency curative. After some initial readings and collective grunts, “Hello, my name is Tommy, and I’m an alcoholic…”

After forty minutes, however, I sense peace and contentment for the first time since I reached into the high oak cupboard that held 15-year-old single-malt scotch. Neuronal appendages split and reattach. I cry, unforced and unashamed. I forgive myself for the sick I was.

When I cross the doorway threshold to the sun-baked O.C. parking lot, the sign still reads, “This Is a Safe Place.”

I moved to New York a while ago in hopes to become a writer. I’m not exactly sure how this career is going to pan out, or even if it’s going to, but I’m happy about the relocation. Not that I disliked my family. I mean, they’ve got all of the functions and dysfunctions of every family. An over protective mother, a testosterone laden father, a whiny sister, a strange brother, a senile grandmother and a dog that everyone seems to treat like a relative, who ironically is the normal one of the family.
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I’ve never been the one to follow the crowd. The basic principle behind my choice is simple: if I see a group of folks doing something, I force myself to stop, look and decide if what the bulk of folks is doing aligns with my own mindset. More often than not however, my mindset will automatically oppose whatever I see the majority doing because of the groupthink policy of this day and age. It doesn’t matter to me what some marketing department’s demographic research says about me, companies can NOT make a product geared towards me based on mass attraction; I renounce and ‘appeal’ such logic.

The reason is that such logic dangerously categorizes a group of people and asserts homogeneous thinking. Such is the case with the candy wrapped rap that is quickly decaying the teeth and fattening the collective body of the Hip Hop community. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, what becomes of the worth of said opinion when it is based upon and influenced by the thoughts and actions of an entire assembly of mislead and misinformed people? We have become lyrical lemmings led to a deadly, self-propelled free fall that awaits us at the high point of Hip Hop’s mainstream popularity… and there’s no place else to go but down.

”Mass Appeal”

Unless delegated by God,
I can’t be led by mobs.
I’m not like the rest of the flock that blindly follows.
Feeling my way through Braille passage
By stealing away with groups to hail the masses
Simply seals my faith into a frail package that’s decidedly hollow.

Such methods of exodus plannin’
Leads to textbook and reckless abandon.
To be restless and stranded are its awful aims in the long term.
Though I reckon this madness
Is wretched and drastic…
Its essence is massive as it attracts traffic like moths to the flame
caught up in the cloth as it burns.

Compacted in drafted winds, it’s like fledgling child liars.
Rather, the pattern can spread like wildfire.
Grounded higher, the proper vantage brings all into focus.
So instead of drudging through drowning mires
Where sudden moves create crowd divers…
Be crowned and sired – move the crowd beyond being throngs of locusts.

If you want to gather crowds,
Organize it against what’s happenin’ now!
Don’t leave ‘em scamperin’ after bandwagons bound to be left behind!
Don’t feed ‘em reruns of empty rhetoric –
Don’t beat lead drums into empty crevices…
Don’t be a bum like emcees with no messages –let your destiny shine.

Be at the head as a lead guide.
Leave Red Seas 20,000 leagues behind.
Lean against the grain – seek and find your irreverent relevance!
Dare to show different strokes of genius.
Dare to lead indifferent folks to Jesus…
Evoke a provoking thesis lined with eloquent severance.

Don’t react to systemic stimulus –
Detach roots from insipid kinship.
Use the given wisdom sent from Him – reject groupthink fallacies.
Challenge what’s known with solid research.
Seek the chalice of thrones with a knowledge rebirth…
Acknowledge and reverse ghetto mindsets blindsided by hoodwinked mentalities.

Cause conflict! – contradict the dismal plight
Of unconsciousness that haunts the critical might
Of flocks the size of the Israelites – at least they had Aaron and Moses.
We’ve let our souls follow pitiful guides essentially
Because we’ve got role models who pivot their liability…
Which leads to abysmal strife and misery from plentiful errors chosen.

We’ve been called out to be taught different –
So fall out from dream walks into vision.
Like Stephen Hawking, exceed the limits of your surroundings.
Don’t let corporal forces coagulate and congeal you.
Push court ordered warrants for mass appeals through
Before such tactics kill you with the kindness of kindred crowding.

© 2008 Reggie Legend
Steel Waters, Inc.
reggielegend@hotmail.com

For you, Reader, that name might immediately conjure up the actor-later-turned-poet who starred in a score of gangster films. But instead I’m referring to the Oakland-based wordsmith who blew me away with his performance of Breakbeat Jesus. I can still see a screaming crowd of poets going on as if the first few lines of his poem were to a favorite jam from back in the day; that jam that once moved them in indescribable ways.

Since then the original has been recorded and posted on Youtube, along with its remix Breakbeat Jesus ft. Joshua Walters on beat box. But his range goes way beyond this powerhouse poem. So instead of trying to explain how much I’ll do what us poets do best, which is let the work speak for itself!

Cathedral

Keeping monks hours, I rise
at midnight to a false dawn
where the sun pauses at the horizon
to creep sideways like a crab.

Our crew chief materializes at the door
salmon roe dripping from his palms
large as prayer beads. Midair, he draws
the sign of the dollar. Then, I am Lazarus
summoned. Baptized in fish blood,
a rain slicker my shroud and am clumsy
as any thing newly risen from the dead.

Men in ripped rain gear lay stretched
along the hallway floor in obscene shivering
parodies of their former mainland selves

We pray over the burning incense
of a marlboro and return to the sanctuary
of our ice steeple. We chant
beneath a malevolent god—a huge metal tank
furiously hiccupping fish and drooling arctic water.

It stands, at the altar, a cross.
Like good apostles, we bow our heads
having already taken vows of debt, poverty
believing our lives prior to this
was a vision had between shifts.

We use herring for our communion.
They represent our sins and spewed
before us every 15 seconds are a new
assortment of reasons to repent.

Here’s a herring for every time I cursed my father
Here’s one for every time I wished someone
dead or reached into my pants whispering a girls name.

Here’s one for jealousy, for laziness, for blasphemy,
for idolatry, for rudeness, for selfishness, for vanity
for stealing, for cruelty, for lying, for boasting, for
anger, for envy, for greed, for sex
for chrissakes, make it stop!

MAKE IT STOP!!!

After eight hours, I spend breakfast
on deck surrounded by the quarantining ocean
so barren and desolate it is
even islands cannot grow here.

Suddenly, there appears on the surface
of water a severed stalk of kelp. I blink
twice before convincing myself it is not
a dead woman
floating, forgotten
her hair spread in a black web.
It’s just… uprooted seaweed
that, until now,
has only known sunlight
in its prayers

anyway, this apparition frightens me
because
this is the first time
I’ve ever seen a dead body
and was
envious

This Past Saturday At The Farmer’s Market

An African brother shoves a basket of boysenberries
at us as if paying a debt. They bleed
on our fingertips, plead sweet mercy on our tongues
Asked his name, the man smiles proper, his hand a gift,
says: “Too Complicated.”

We buy nine dollars in cherries
off him, all white and red and spotted
and sweet and sour, too. Flavors
turning in our mouths anxious as police lights.
We – no, I—nearly trip over this sister pushing a baby carriage
We know her, but couldn’t pull her name for nothing!
Her new daughter asleep in turtle shell carriage
her cheeks soft as rain soaked petals.
Her three year old son standing sentry
digs into our kettle korn sack only after momma
stamps approval with a glance.

Later: fish tacos for me, Himalayan
curried chicken for her, us both lunching
watching children bounce in the fountain–
hot pepper toes pickled cool in water. Giggles
going off like Chinese firecrackers!
Dimples in bloom! Tiny teeth at separate corners
of the mouth grudge matching! Thighs
you’d want to fried chicken bite so golden brown!
Pity another poor momma, her daughter catfish
writhing on her lap– mango shake shook
everywhere! The little girl on a straw
never blinks, channeling opium addict ancestors
thru the unique ecstasy of fruit sugar.

This is us at farmer’s market, circling
back to brother Too Complicated who
offers one arm for her, the other for me. A chain
of chins on his shoulders. “Where you been,”
he says double hugging us. “And why has
it taken you so long to come back?”

Friday the 13th Part 14 L Is For Love

Oh, to be married
yet
not be able to
say the words, ‘I love
you, darling’
–is what Jason has for nightmares.
Jason remembers
standing on the shore
of crystal lake years ago, trying
to make those word-sounds
like the kids,
Yielding a noise from his throat
like gargling
like moaning
like the blues.
This is what led him
to speech therapy.
Working with Dr. Amy
(simple enough to say by week 2)
teaching him
for the first time
the alphabet.
‘A is for axe.’
‘B is for body’.
It took months, this
process of learning–
of feeling words, whole
complex words in his mouth
Say: Library. Say: November
until what was left of his tongue
would lay exhausted against
the crumbs of his teeth.
It was like dating in a way..
He and Dr. Amy,
would have lessons
while walking downtown.
Say: Mailbox. Say: Bus Stop.
And they’d have the best time
sitting drinking tea
Say: Toast. Say: Milk.
Until one day
Jason stands toe to toe
with his wife: “Who
was that whore I saw you with
downtown today?”
And Jason learns
how easy it is
for words to get stuck
in the throat. Say: Stutter
And in his next
lesson he asked Dr. Amy, how
do you pronounce a lie?
How Do You…
Say: Old Friend?
Say: She just asked me the time?
But in marriage,
secrets don’t live very long.
After a while, it was Jason’s
wife who stopped talking.
Until one day, while she
peeled potatoes
in the kitchen, Jason
returned home and
placed Dr. Amy’s
head in the center
of the dinner table,
her hair a potpourri of wild flowers
all easy now to pronounce
–roses, daffodils, irises, daisies–
and, for the first time,
said to his wife,
“I Love You, Daring.”
A is for Always. F is for Forever.

Negro-Geist!

I. Daddy

old crow, jack daniels understood
my father mouthfuls at a time.
Jim Bean and Old Forester
were uncles in hard glass suits
they’d roll up in the knuckle
crack & sign of hennessey
taking its first breath, then hound
dog laughter & dominoes
falling in hail on the grave
yard of the dining room table.
Relatives who existed
through stories would ease
in like zombies on ropes of
blue marlboro & newport & camel smoke
then demand a séance in spades, coon can
& texas hold em

no wonder they call it spirits!

Spirits baited my father with
couvoisier, snatching him out of his body
like a river catfish and he’d vanish! like that
spirits made him burn rubber scream
in the driveway, stand on my bed a sloppy
marionette & speak in tongue
or just toss pans and skillets at midnight

I wouldn’t see his ass again
till the next afternoon looking
like something had chewed
all the sugar out of him
and spit the gray pulp on the couch

II. Johnny

My cousin Johnny volunteered
for possession every week.
Spirits lit that nigga up like vesuvius,
he was certified!
electroshock exorcisms did nothing
empty bottles & cans
were his weekend storm warning
old english, colt 45, crazy horse,
cisco—they’d demand sacrifices
in blood so bottles of
haldol & thorazine
would dice roll under the couch
Friday nights, then doors
slam to splinters, tables
get flipped, walls
kicked until strait
jackets lay waiting on
the lawn. Momma
would site visions of gang
boys with tire iron erections
& johnny’s convertible skull
with its metal vent as if
it explained anything.
it didn’t.

‘tween dusk Friday and dawn Saturday
he’d still be ready to
blow this muthafucka up.
You want some of this?
Do You Want Some Of This?!
oh no oh yes oh no oh yes
I’ll be damn I’ll be
damn I’ll be
damned!

James Cagney is a writer, poet and performer from
Oakland, Ca. He’s appeared as a featured artist at
venues such as The Starry Plough, La Pena Cultural
Center, Above Paradise Lounge, Spasso’s Cafe, The Java
House, Mahogany Restaurant, OK Hotel among others. He
has also appeared on stage in the Afro-Solo
Performance series, Four Brothers with Will Power,
Ritual Theater 2000, and Celebration of the Word with
Maya Angelou and Quincy Troupe. He is the author of
four volumes of poetry including Transmitting The
Disease and Hot Death and the forthcoming Blood
Strangers. His work has been published in Asili
Journal, Cake, Drumvoices and Sussurrus.

This is me broken
For months you’ve documented this spiral
Downward with flashbulbs and camera rolling
This is me broken
Same body you praised for hourglass
Now ridiculed as ticking time bomb
Read more »

The Godlist by T.S. Hand

“Hope ya ain’t goin’ far.”

I didn’t answer him, I just climbed up into his early-nineties Ford dually and set my rucksack between us. He made another stab at conversation. “Pretty girl like yaself…dangerous to hitchhike, even around here. They’s crazies all around this side of the Sierras.”

“I know,” I said, looking right into his eyes for the first time since he shoved the truck down the highway. Either my response caught him off guard or the way I gave him an all-too-knowing look, but he seemed to shudder a little. Maybe I had already given away too much. We made small talk, and I let little notes of laughter hang for awhile on his unfunny jokes. He commented on my intelligence, to add to his earlier “pretty” complement. They always did this, always tried to appear so kind.

I came onto him subtly, enough to let him know I was interested, but not enough to make him think I was for sale. He got the hint. After we passed a sign out of Lone Pine, California, cautioning “next services 77 miles” he called my attention to the nasa satellite array a couple miles east. Six upturned mushrooms big as freighters pushed their stalks up to the sky as the seti project’s search for Truth.

It was then—with my attention turned east—when he cut the engine and began his acting debut: “Oh, shit, shit! Goddamn this piece of shit—”

“What? What is it?” I knew the stunt.

“Goddamn truck run outta gas, all a way out here.” He really was making this too easy. His biggest mistake was pulling off on the frontage road, where he said we wouldn’t be hit by any drunk drivers. I eased the cap off the spray canister in my pocket.

He hopped out of the cab once we rolled to a stop. He said he’d call Triple A to get this whole mess fixed. Good play, I thought, most girls have probably fallen for that. I saw his fingers mash nine digits into the cell phone’s key pad, knowing that Triple A is a ten-digit 800 number. He carried on a great fake conversation, really an Oscar-worthy performance.

Jumping back in the cab, he flipped on the radio and scanned for awhile. The only station in range, propitiously, was an evangelical station. I asked him if he believed in God. He said, very openly and matter-of-fact, “Sure, I think God’s in them mountains over there and in that little fishing stream we passed awhile back. Maybe God’s in these little moments that test your mettle, too.”

“That’s all just marvelous, but what about the balance between good and evil and reckoning and all that? Don’t you believe in that?”

“Well, uh, sure honey. But when ya get to be my age, ya start to see that it ain’t all black and white like they taught ya in sundee school. They’s good wolves and bad wolves in all of us. The one you feed everyday, that’s the one gon’ win.”

I pretended to mull this over, like his words had made some profound effect on me. He decided the time was ripe to put his hand on my thigh. We both looked at it flopped there, helpless. I’m sure we had completely different thoughts on what would happen next.

He leaned in for a kiss, eyes closed. I maced his tear ducts and open mouth. While he flailed around, going on about, “What the fuck! Jesus!” I fingered open my cargo shorts pocket. A more cultured man would know that cargo shorts are suspicious on a girl who looks as good as I do. I took out the medicine bottle of ether and soaked my handkerchief in it as he groped along the door for the latch. I strong-dosed him, enough to keep him from moving so much but not enough to knock him out.

Opening my own latch, I climbed down and around to his side door to let him out. His weight helped the door flop open and he collapsed in the cloddy sand. After a few deep, controlled breaths to decide the Gameplan, I worked on his face with my boots and at some point he lost consciousness because he stopped blocking.

Skulls are like piñatas: once you split them they practically dissolve. Pink bits and red and tooth squeezed out of the entrances to his caved-in face. After his pulse stopped, my rucksack of tools took its normal position on top of the sternum. I put on my gloves and fitted the surgical saw attachment to the cordless drill. I carved out his upper and lower mandibles and removed the soft palate; teeth are a bitch to get rid of, and on this trip I didn’t have access to an incinerator, though there were some smelting kilns up in Bishop if I was feeling mischievous and daring.

Only one car passed in the half-hour and there was a high sandbank concealing me from the highway. I unzipped the vacuum-sealed pouch and removed the six-foot bag and from the other rucksack pocket I pulled out the Tupperware of Centenella larvae, which would dispose of 200 lbs of evidence in a few days. Before I zipped the whole mess up to throw him in the hole—oh yeah, I dug a hole after I removed his dental records—I plucked up his sausage fingers and dabbed one in the pools forming near his neck. I opened my notebook to the bookmarked page that said “ Terrence Bedford” at the top. Somewhere near the bullet points of “occupation” and “offenses” I smudged his gooey fingerprint, blowing lightly on it until the stain turned maroon.

Ten minutes later I climbed up to the highway. North to the right and South to the left. I opened to the back of my notebook, to “The Godlist.” Of the nineteen entries, eight had strikethroughs already. After crossing through “Terrence Bedford, rapist, Big Pine, CA,” my pen rested on “Othelia Downs, child molester, Needles, CA.” I scampered to the southbound side of the highway and was about to thumb a ride when Mr. Bedford’s cell phone rang in my cargo pocket. After contemplating the 800 number appearing on the caller-ID screen, I answered.

“Oh, hello,” offered a warm-voiced woman, “someone from this number requested the emergency fill-up service. We’ve dispatched a tow truck.”

“Oh, thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Is there still a problem?”

“There was, but I think we fixed it.”