Tuesday, April 29, 2014

AROUND TABLES

This this place for turning around backed into that was could have been how it happened to be how it could have been how it happened to be in this this place for turning around backed into that that place this this this this and that place here and there some with glasses here and there some without glasses lifting a hand to the forehead watch the nose not this nose that nose just watch don't stare ensure the eye contact lack of contact except for fun making fun had to add in a little not such a thing thing no matter what father what mother says lack of contact lack of eyes empty dark sockets leaning over the edge pupils jump out from under the ledges so white seeing red in these bloodshot infected visions of dry hills of garbage and sticky and crusty for rubbing hands stick to these bloodshot infected visions of dry hills of garbage stained homes missing persons found by a critical sky.

"Why do you keep doing that?"
"Have I not been clear with the foregoing?"
"You haven't been clear but that's besides the point or not even that close. I just want to know why you keep doing that?"
"You mean the circling the places to sit."
"I was asking about the eye twitching."
"Loose nerve-ending somewhere."
"Ever considered going in with a tool to repair the damage?"
"The thought did cross my mind."
"Any action ever accompany the thought?"
"Suffered too many actions accompanying thoughts an onslaught of chaperones, a pandemic of arranged marriages, a veritable plague."
"The stuff of viral couplets."
"It's on these rare occasions that I can concede being flat on my back ice and banana peels having sunk deeper into the septic cake of my brain being thrown off-kilter by another's rejection of the correct pronunciation of last names that one finds the Earth against the shoulder blades providing that vigorous patting for a metaphorical burping."
"And the loose nerve-ending continues to spark away and misfire in that head of yours sans any surgical enucleation and rehabilitative stitch in time."
"Mother checked me in shook out her fur luggage thought I could become one of the staff playing chess with the neighborly sociopath a colleague of their own not including the laconic customers."
"Nothing even resembling an exploratory poking around?"
"There's been the reflective dig if that's what you're getting at. Keep running into an accumulation of tools that were left behind and are now in the way is the thing."

Slapping the stomach knuckles cut on the bark of a tree toppled along intestines felled by hunger cracking the neck wrists punctured by the fangs of a staple remover imploding under the fishbowl of a lost head lost at the first sign second sign of too many stretches of nothing for arms opened to catch in the throat what sadness only an allergic reaction to saying things more slowly until the track melts in the imprisoned frame of a glare making the button in the center bleed slapping the stomach knuckles cut on the bark of a tree toppled along intestines felled by hunger.

They giggled no they did not giggle they had advanced beyond that as they did not move from their section of the table and when he orbited to transect the plane of feedback that's when he went around again for more his curiosity bending him around the finger dialing a rotary phone dead who is it asking for her name pretending not to hear fluorescent lights over the theater where school where work where home downsized the role and supersized the spotlight as they looked on and they did giggle.

"Are you going to open it?"
"Open what?"
"Are you going to sit down and open it?"
"Sit down where?"

He didn't know. He didn't know what he wanted or he thought he wanted to walk around the tables and see see if they wanted to to notice wanted to talk wanted to ask and what he what they wanted never quite matched. He didn't know.

"Are you going to open it?"
"You got me something?"
"What are you asking?"
"What am I asking?"
"Looking for something?"
"No not anymore."
"You're still looking."
"No you you've killed it."
"I've stirred it."
"No you're looking for it. Ripples in my ignorance of you but there is no more room between the waves to be moved the waters have been polluted by your branches dragging them along the bottom the very bottom of me no ripples in my ignorance of you you the ultimate drag."
"I do look for it still. Yes I do. Not the other shoe not the watch or the clock or the dead batteries not the other hand not the other face just the other half of this hand."
"I never I never."
"That's right you never a lot of things."
"Where? When?"
"Where? Where did they go off to? Is that what you're asking?"
"You're asking me about my asking again?"
"You want to know about oh let me guess the meat grinder the mulcher the voracious mouth of some machine all that keeps growing back it's the only part that does. You never really looked or really noticed how the other half wanting the other half to suddenly thrust back out across a wooden table once the meat is gone it is gone and the bloody grass fading with weeds surges over what has been severed. He didn't know."
"Who didn't know?"
"The little boy. Wasn't that little anymore making his rounds in the rings of fire getting burned."
"What about her?"
"What about her?"
"They kept holding up their magnifying glass over him trying to brand him with her name."
"Her name?"
"Yes, what was it?"

"I thought you were going to tell me."
"Do you prefer they be two disembodied voices over the desert floor?" 
"It was after getting out of bed and wandering down the hallway in the dark of night she tried to guess how far through the room she had gone and if her hands had come to rest on the table where the puzzle was that she had spent all that time and originally one piece was missing and in all her searching she had recently discovered there were now two pieces that were missing."
"I think I know who you're talking about."
"She had a knack for puzzles."
"No the one who's face was one of the missing pieces."
"I thought that was the top right corner of a guy's head who is now buried at sea and the bottom of some rusted railing behind him."
"I heard they got tired of trying to find the sea and dumped him a hole full of bodies in the desert."
"That's right."
"Maybe it was the other missing piece that was her face."
"Maybe. Who's face?"
"She's supposed to know this very old woman with some mutation she had and one of the freckled catalogers was trying to make the very old woman look at the cover of this book she pulled out of a box full of appliances."
"Freckled catalogers?"
"One of them they sequestered in this back room cataloging the genetic code of the mutation with 8 or 9 others she had freckles with these blue eyes."

"What did she wear?"
"Maybe that was the other piece that was missing."
"8 or 9 others?"
"The box was full of appliances mostly blenders and it was labeled coffee mugs and she pulled out a book that she tried to get the very old woman's attention to examine the cover because she wanted to see her reaction to when she blew the dust off and how it made the scene less interesting when the dust had supplied some background to the outline of a figure some wasteland that could be simply blown away and leave a figure whose edges bored all the way through to the back of the book."

He didn't know. He didn't know what he wanted or he thought he wanted to walk around the tables and see see if they wanted to to notice wanted to talk wanted to ask and what he what they wanted never quite matched. He didn't know.


- Max Stoltenberg







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