STILLBORN FOOTNOTES

Sanity raged in my family raging it ran in my family from one wall to the other from one room to the other from the bed to the car from door to door from foot to mouth from elbow to ass from hearts to hands from arteries to the floor from the floor to bloody palms from bloody palms to the face to the operating room to operational definition to mission statement to laminator to wall raging in bold letters red with raging sanity raged in my family raging it ran in my family from one wall to the other no escaping it from dead end to dead end from strained muscle to strained expression from stained undergarments to preparing to flinch from maintaining appearances to keeping up from fuck up to fuck up sanity raged in her family raging it ran in her family from one corkboard to the other as they grew empty emptier the being was recaptured and another 7 years was added to the sentence.

"We only have one pushpin."
"I know. It's been like this for long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough for me to know."
"You must be pretty dense."
"That would not be far from dead on the mark."
"And what would be dead on the mark?"
"Some poor old bastard by the looks of him."
"When did he get there?"
"The morning flames of the Sun torch another cadaver as well as expose the night's most recent defecation."
"I wonder if he was killed in bed."
"You're wondering can be compared to windowless shopping in this abyss. Beds are body-bags with pillows."
"Are you suggesting that it might possibly have been manslaughter next to the bed?"
"I am suggesting nothing of the kind. I doubt very much this dead sap has been anywhere near a bed in ages."
"Ages? And how much does that amount to out of my life? Your life?"
"My life. My life amounts to stumbling into my final destination: a warehouse full of crumpled up empty water bottles."
"If only I could come across a phone."
"Just so you could confirm the silence of the universe on the other end of the line."
"I might get a connection. You never know."
"What a stroke of luck it would be to have your head refilled with the same old noises the same old regurgitations."
"It was you making those barfing sounds last night that interrupted one of my dreams involving a hospital administrator going on and on about staffing levels and non-formularies and how he can't seem to find good honey anywhere and he's spewing this all from the backseat of my car while I am trying to navigate our way out of this strangely designed neighborhood consisting of roads mapped out like Venn diagrams. Then I hear this disturbed gurgling coming from what I think is the engine only to find out it was you making those barfing sounds last night that interrupted one of my dreams involving-"
"A hospital administrator in the backseat of your car. I've heard this somewhere before. Have you ever had a car?"
"Just in this dream I had last night. I do remember during the dream being aware of taking the time in my head to notice what it was like to drive. So this is driving I was thinking to myself. And just as the space began to stretch a little that's when I felt like I was in a box with wheels as if trudging over a cheese grater and it kept closing in on me my head the pressure closing in feeling it in my lobes inside the tiles of my ears and turning from one street around the next corner onto another street the same street around the next corner the same corner looping into circles a pattern of knotted labyrinths nested inside each other streets and corners looping as your eyes split in halves shimmering with the dying juice of fruitless traveling mirrors reflecting each other into endless dark tunnels."
"And then I woke you up with my vomiting."
"Not just yet there was the dead animal."
"Dead animal?"
"Next to me on the passenger seat."
"Could you tell what kind of dead animal it was?"
"Now that I think about it the windshield. It was on the windshield. Some nasty organ that had to do with digestion or excretion perhaps smashed right there and blocked my view."
"An internal organ collided into your line of vision."
"Just as I thought I saw a woman who reminded me of a young lady my mother took in as a renter at this abandoned amusement park we squatted at for a while."
"Did she actually have money to pay you rent?"
"She would pay us with money she found around the park."
"Why didn't you just scavenge for the money yourselves?"
"My mother insisted on having about the place the kind of woman she didn't want me going off and marrying and I didn't feel much in the mood for scraping up loose change that had mostly accumulated by the merry-go-round. Didn't believe in marriage anyway. Being in her vicinity was enough. Until she disappeared."
"What was she like?"
"That's when you woke me up with your barfing."

Under a bridge 
grabbing at wordless sayings
chest open shut nodding
disapproval fumbling
for a place to latch onto
a beam of the towers
one of them 
climbing back down
after the rot
tired thoughts
that die in their sleep
the night before
under a bridge
grabbing at wordless sayings
climbing back down
still fall
not too far
enough to keep going on
with the unconvincing
persuasive dragging
through the desert
under a bridge 
after the rot
tired thoughts
that die in their sleep
reawakened by the sand
kicked in their facing it
with the unconvincing 
persuasive dragging
through the desert

"Maybe he was dropped from the sky?"
"Who? The poor bastard over there? I haven't heard or seen anything flying over."
"What about that really long menacing shape we spotted the other day?"
"You mean that cloud?"
"It wasn't just a cloud. There was some unusual sound coming from inside of it up there like some great metal doors opening up to release another expired prisoner."
"What you heard were the doors of your brain crapping out exhausted rationalizations."
"Maybe he was always here dead for some time and was lying under a waste pile that got blown away during one of our many dust storms."
"That might initially seem a little more plausible than your first speculation, but garbage tends to collect here rather than be dispersed from here."
"That's true. The only validation in my life has been parking."
"So you had a car?"
"I managed to get a company car briefly until I totaled it crashing into a row of portajohns.  They decided not to replace the wreck and demoted me instead to working in the copier room. Spent most of my time clearing paper jams and having to read over their nauseating catch phrases like: make change a habit until it becomes a routine."
"At least you had a company car. I never had a car. I dreamt about driving a car with a hospital administrator in the backseat."
"Bitching incessantly about non-formularies."
"Exactly. Have you heard this?"
"I have another speculation."
"About what?"
"About the poor dead bastard over there."
"What about him?"
"I think we have been approaching the problem of him from the wrong direction."
"The wrong direction?"
"All the time we have been trying to reconstruct how he (the poor dead bastard) came to be situated thus dead on the mark over there when we have been ignoring how we came to be situated thus dead on the mark over here. We are nothing more than in our vexatious attempts to keep him (the poor dead bastard) in our thoughts he (the poor dead bastard) has been keeping us (the two worthless shits) in his thoughts."
"You mean it isn't as we surmised?"
"Not by any means. We (the two worthless shits) will not find rest in the black screen of the computer monitor being shut down for the last time. No heralding of an endless obscurity or stupefaction. There is only to be us (the two worthless shits) to linger in the indestructible particles of a corpse's afterthoughts."

Can't get it out the how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong or out at all only stuffed between molding coats in the closet to drop when the walls tremble with decay's feigned curiosity landing on the dirty rug among the overturned roaches brittle shells of former organic disgust how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong can't get it out the how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong or out at all only stuffed between molding coats in the closet to drop when the walls tremble with decay's feigned curiosity.


- Max Stoltenberg

BURNT SHREDDED CHEESE

Looking for a list
Inside the lost measuring stick
inside the off head
severed from some body
somewhere
and lying in a box
so much lying

Twice not three times
by the fourth broken expectation
swells in the cap 
toppling another wig
replaced by the next graft
less a line

less a line

working on it the wiggling room
smaller and slowing
denied death
inherit the incurable
spreading to the size
of an oleaginous life

They had followed the crumbs into the woods from a sandwich she had been eating when they heard the backdoor slam shut. One spoke of their fear of insects another of what they thought might happen to a fashion designer and two of them compared their experiences of trying to copulate in the dank underground tunnel system underneath an abandoned mental hospital as they busied themselves in conversation until one of them most likely the one with the most acne had noticed they had been following a different trail of crumbs.

"I wasn't really into it until she mentioned the thing about what was that thing?"
"Whatever it was that you were really into piqued your memory apparently."
"Who would do that to their privates?"

Perhaps at this point it should be obvious that your attention would best be drawn to that person who shall remain unable to enter the banter was a doleful and habitually morose ass-picker who found himself rarely pleased when examining his hands with a sniff. He then stood awkwardly with his mitts held in front of him as if he had just dropped something and the sound of its shattering demise would awake the world into a overwhelming denouncement of his existence. He insisted that that it was the structure of his crack that made it difficult to make satisfactory wipes after sloppy shits that were the order of the day no matter how he kept his diet the same colorless menu day after day after day after day after after colorless the same colorless menu same day same colorless menu day day day after colorless same colorless menu day after day after after the truth of it was is still is poor bastard day after day after the truth of it is that it was the structure of his crack in his mind that made it difficult to make satisfactory wipes after sloppy shitting upon from those who used up all the time with taking their time unzipping and zipping and unzipping and letting it all fall out a #2 cornucopia of feces to pour down on those who held out their mitts before them as if they had just dropped something no picking no longer necessary.

"They used the idea of selective selective or -"
"You're referring to their underlings?"
"Selective listening?"
"Not their underlings. I'm speaking of gonads not any military nomenclature."
"You excel in selective interrupting."
"That's what you've been getting at all this time selective interrupting."
"They are going to damage themselves with those objects."
"That is not what I have been getting at. How would you like me to hit you with a plate?"
"They are going to damage those objects with themselves."
"What plates? There aren't any plates out here."
"When I rejoin things it's just a series of meetings."
"Selective what then?"
"She had that look on her face."
"And did this consist primarily of people and their surreptitious intersections?"
"That's what happens. You end up with a selective fill in the blank when you pop in and out of it."
"What sort of look? Was it like she really did enjoy it after all?"
"Around a table a conference table."
"I engaged in no such popping in and out."
"Her shoulders came up as if they were going to squeeze her head right off. Just as I told her that the icetrays might have been in just long enough to get a thin layer on the top she shrugged again and retracted one of her fingers in a rather disappointed fashion. Did you? Yes, she said."
"Speaking of plates."
"Speaking of gonads."
"Speaking of meetings."
"My uncle the one with the strange scar by his right eye found a frisbee and when he lifted it up he revealed an elbow."
"How long was it?"
"I think they've dissolved into everyone's lack of availability."
"Was some goofball sleeping under that frisbee you know attached to the elbow?"
"Without stimulation?"
"Dissolved into everyone's lack to put it bluntly."
"Just an elbow by itself."
"Hand, paper towel cardboard tube, or beanbag chair?"
"Everyone's been repeatedly hit with a bluntly."
"She had nice elbows."
"Beanbag chair? Are you kidding?"
"Can you describe a bluntly for me?"
"I've never told you about her. I don't know why her elbows stand out to me now? We met on a boat that sank. It wasn't completely my fault. The only bucket I could find had no bottom."
"His scar was very distinct. It looked like a kite being flown from the corner of his right eye."
"I never had a kite."
"You didn't miss much with telephone wires and trees."
"Just tell me how many inches."
"Everyone was given credit to get their own bluntly."

They came they came upon soft ground made by their digging and their burying imitating upheavals I knew a man named Lava and that's all I know about him. They came they came upon soft ground made by their digging and their burying imitating upheavals I knew a man named Rubber I could have been mistaken about that one and that's all I know about him except the woman who was always with at least on the few occasions I bumped into him and I do wish I could have known her more she had a beauty that was dimming probably due to the way he treated her at least that much that I saw never knew her name before her light went out or flickering somewhere near where they came they came upon soft ground made by their digging and their burying imitating upheavals.

Introductions exit
leaving monitoring
mistakes discovered
noted
not what remains 
in hardening dirt


- Max Stoltenberg

OUT OF

Toward what seemed like an appallingly drawn out matter of course the events of the night twisted around and between limbs of dissatisfaction curling shards into frozen smiles dripping into bowls of moldy salsa ignored and thawing frustrated glimpses of puffed up expectations under slices of limelight pitted against fixtures of determined and pathetic squandering of attention toward what had seemed as if it had a familiar lack of a developed sense of possessing a ring to it between knuckles as he fell off the chair and was made aware of the scraping of wood against skin and bone of his back sitting with a thud his body folding and staying slumped in the sleeping bag diaper of his current adherence to the floor mitigated by the perspiration and excrement in the seat of his pants under the bleachers accompanied by the disposed not so eager to rejoin the top or the bottom or the top of the bottom of this upended place ready or not whether or not all are ready put an end to it already.

He slogged towards the window might get there to pull himself up for looking down upon the sidewalk if he could pull himself up if he could slog towards the window might get there what made him think what made him stick to the room to the building he found himself in he had been asking questions again lately and the same answers surfaced between each flush between each lump of defecation he slogged towards the window might get there to pull himself up for looking down upon the sidewalk if he could pull himself up if he could slog towards the window might get there what made him think what made him stick to the room to the building to his own tongue.

"Everything looks like blood to me in the dark."
"But it isn't dark now."
"I know that. I can see that."
"And what does everything look like to you in the light?"
"Petrified and set in silent stone."
"So I said to the doctor."
"Are we giving one of these another going around?"
"Sure why not? So I said to the doctor."
"I was going to offer a response to that."
"To what?"
"You asked why not and I was on the verge of an argument against leaving more bloody worn out footprints in the overtread so I said to the doctor."
"Bloody worn out footprints?"
"In regards to all the circles we go in."
"Like that time we circled that area with the hills made out of bed coils."
"Everywhere we go we manage to go around in circles."
"Name some other places we went in circles."
"There was the ditch with the rotten pancakes."
"I remember the rotten pancakes unfortunately. What else?"

When I remember to forget
I forget with the condition
That I remind myself
to make a reservation
somewhere inside myself
somewhere outside myself
to hang in there
to be hung out to dry
grabbing the broom
keeper of the rocky yard
from spilling onto the roads
with holes in them

"There was the well we kept ending up at until we were beaten up by those men."
"Lawyers they were."
"How did you know they were lawyers?"
"The comments they made."
"What sort of comments?"
"I object to this and I object to that."
"They objected to us? Everyone objects to us."
"They used some other legal terminology."
"Reminiscing were they?"
"While they kicked our asses."
"And sent us on our way."
"Since when has it ever been our way?"
"Since they kicked our asses. A thorough ass-kicking can set you straight."
"Until we end up in circles somewhere else."
"Until we end up in circles somewhere else."
"Well?"
"Well?"
"There was the well."
"Do you think it was their well?"
"It ended up being their well after the fact."
"Well after the fact. It had been dry for who knows how long."
"One of them actually wore a watch I think. It stood out to me because I specifically thought to myself that I hadn't seen anyone with a watch for some time some undetermined amount of time."
"It wasn't a watch. It was a spiked bracelet. It stood out to me because I specifically thought to myself that hurt after he hit me with it."
"I specifically thought to myself."
"I know what you specifically thought to yourself. I believe you that you thought you specifically thought to yourself something or other."
"That explains why you've been stuck with me for so long but I was referring to something else another something or other. It wasn't a dream. I know when I'm awake and that is truly a sad thing. I once thought to myself what if I stood on the edge of a forest and I know it's due to my thinking my specifically thinking to myself what if there is a forest at the end of the desert even though I'm a little more than beginning to suspect that there is no forest at the end of the desert and there's always this bundle of nerves in my brain just before I specifically think to myself and this bundle of nerves confers with one another and decide let's give him enough rope and then I see myself standing at the edge of this big forest the kind you could hide in for the rest of your life and standing there in my way is this person and they look like all the people I have ever sat across from in a job interview and they ask me what would you do in this situation: go back, stay where you are, or go forward? And I find myself looking down at the sand and then I look up at their face and their expression where sand and bark meet where the gestures of impatience and indifference meet where the thoughts behind the scouring eyes of where's your gratitude? and don't you realize I brought this forest with me? meet. And I answer them that I don't recommend any of the options. And as it all starts to fade into a dry well, rotten pancakes or bed coils I know I keep putting the forest there I keep putting it there at the end of the desert even though I'm a little more than beginning to suspect that there is no forest at the end of the desert and I still see the person's face no forest just their face and I specifically think to myself I guess we'll stay in touch."

Toward what seemed like an appallingly drawn out matter of course the events of the night twisted around and between limbs of dissatisfaction curling shards into frozen smiles dripping into bowls of moldy salsa ignored and thawing frustrated glimpses of puffed up expectations under slices of limelight pitted against fixtures of determined and pathetic squandering of attention toward what had seemed as if it had a familiar lack of a developed sense of possessing a ring to it between knuckles as he fell off the chair and was made aware of the scraping of wood against skin and bone of his back sitting with a thud his body folding and staying slumped in the sleeping bag diaper of his current adherence to the floor mitigated by the perspiration and excrement in the seat of his pants under the bleachers accompanied by the disposed not so eager to rejoin the top or the bottom or the top of the bottom of this upended place ready or not whether or not all are ready put an end to it already.


- Max Stoltenberg

WHEEZING FRACTIONS

Drunken piano music vibrates against the sides of the glass bearded and struck from the record so that it was no longer playable at least to some ears at least to some behinds some card tables unfolded and put away not put away about to be never getting there and she has left ahead of the clueless man having grown finally into his portfolio his sack for balling up just in time to make way for the announcement of his terminal illness half way the doctor estimated more like more like less like is how it shapes up for the plummet the damned fruit preferred as horizontally as deemed fit rolling into the gutter where the doctor's notes have curled up the other side for phone numbers, email addresses and insults such as: doomed buffoon weakling and coarse sock puppet.

I can't concentrate on what was I concentrating on something made from concentrate concentrated beam beaming from ear to ear until they split their face across until the top came off or bottom fell out from top to bottom of this life a coming apart a split fissure for then dropping into lost in one's own crevices that meet in a puckered hole of what one never cared for never really cared for the pulp that coagulates in the nostrils chunks of brain wet red roses of histrionic ranting the door won't open and I have stay seated until reaches across the calendar and begins to rip in half and half again and half again as the days continue slowing down into this nothing this corner of a wasteland shaped somewhat like a corner I seem to have stepped out into it I can't concentrate on what was I concentrating on something made from scratch how did that get there must have done that while I slept behind that trash heap or in front of it never cooled down never cared for that for about must have done that while I dreamed of clawing at something or being clawed flashes of sharp talons her fingernails when her hair was short would put these fingers on the back of her neck and move up moved up and that was the last the highest floor it wasn't me who jumped off that was her lot the lot below where she was found by some school children started to move in a way that reminded me of hard to concentrate until bigger people taller people walked up and scooped them up like a detachment of front-loaders.

Get on with it then you bloody lunatic individuals with reassembled shred applications for brains strain your eyes to see through the tears and sweat if every box was filled in until all the shit of your mechanical lives squirting out of your corneas your irises your sunflower seeds as chew and spit sitting at the window with the drawer you lean over to take their forms and misunderstand what they try to explain no one hears much just parts just patches of a dying lawn under the Sun's desert halitosis.

"I am going to I am about to I am going to crush that bug crush it with I am going to crush that bug with looking around for something to crush that bug with a tissue my tissue a tissue a piece of paper cardboard a newspaper a newspaper how about that about to I am going to crush that bug with still looking around for a shoe a sandal a rock the Earth has been ground down into smaller particles remember that crush that bug looks like a tangle of string actually always do this and then leave it tell myself to pick it up and throw it away and tell myself never mind because I would just throw it away and I'd run into again and did anyway whether I picked it up or not."
"You were going to crush something what was it?"
"I don't know."
"No you don't."
"I am without a brain."
"You continue to have a brain and it's very damaged."
"You were there."
"I was where?"
"You were there to see the car the red car with the brain stuck to the treads of the front right tire."
"Red car?"
"That was my brain turning over a new leaf flattened between the pages of another absurd chapter."
"When was the last time I saw a leaf?"
"It was a bug I was going to crush."
"About to crush looking about to find something to crush with have you seen any leaves none have you?"
"Just my senses that I have taken my leave of."
"I should take my leave of you and your senses you have taken your leave of."
"She had some meat on her that's what I liked about her and she could belch like a sludge tanker."
"Then she took her leave of you," said Chum-Guin.
"And her eyes."
"Why don't you take off your shoe and kill the bug with it?"
"I've learned not to take anything else off these days. Took off my shoes to give my swollen ghastly feet some dusty air and that was the last I saw of them. Got these sandals from a corpse. Looked like he used to be athletic. Lot of good that did him exercising in the desert."
"Wasn't always a desert."
"It's a brown ball floating in the waters of space-time. The color is in our eyes her eyes."
"Was in her eyes."
"I used to like watching her sleep."
"Why? Her eyes were closed."
"When her eyes were closed it was like a power outage that disarmed the world."
"So you won't use your sandals even to demolish the bug?"
"Everywhere I moved or wandered I got there just as the construction or demolition was done. Plus anyway sandals wouldn't do for the likes of him. He's a rather large chap like one of those ticks."
"We haven't seen those monsters since we were in the sewer."
"We haven't gotten that far never do. She once said to me."
"Here we go again."
"No the here we go again is the waking up part let's get that straight you fuck-crack the one thing I want to take off and never get back again is this and it doesn't go away and that's why when I took the sandals from that corpse I looked at him ever so briefly and didn't say a word I only thought one as I turned around and never saw him again."
"Until you tripped over another one."
"That's the word I thought to myself."
"What word?"
"Until."
"The word I think to myself the most has to be just."
"Just?"
"It was in all my questions when I thought I had grown up and don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. That feeling you don't know what the fuck you're doing and that's why you need someone else to see the stuff you're missing and the only stuff you're missing is the someone else even though they are right there in front of you because they don't want to know you and you don't want to know them and this bathroom of a skull I have the only place I could go to get away from all the fake re-framing of things has been clogged with that word just as if the outside has told the inside: you wanted just you can have it and choke on it! and it's smeared all over the tile of my bathroom mind until it stretches my gut and leaks out of my ass."
"You haven't said a word to me about this word until now."
"Metaphors are like the debris that gets blown around and clings to us."
"I was sharing one of my bitter reflections with her and the topic of destruction was raised. She argued that you can't really destroy things. Her example was food and how it goes from the mouth to the sewer. And she said to me she once said to me: the sewer is a good place for a piece of shit."
"And now she's dead."
"She's been dead. Now we have ticks."

The fragments keep me together us apart from each other together again among the fragments in our midst the bonds so thick with walls holding up the roof the sky the fragments keep me together us apart from each other together again among the fragments in our midst the bonds so thick with walls holding up the roof the sky it's falling again in see-through pieces all together blurring us apart wet with drowning among the fragments keep me together us apart from each other together again among the fragments in our midst the bonds so thick with walls holding up the roof the sky it's falling again in see-through pieces all together blurring us apart wet with drowning among the fragments keep me together us apart blurred by the rain together we blob in the middle of the table on the paper plate.

LIGAMENT EXTRACT

And under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under the road that widens and narrows and widens. Do you want to hold on to what you have left? Do you want to dig your fingernails into the ceiling underneath the shoe used to hammer you into place like a nail. They don't like it when you say lost. I said it once that might be all the times I get to say it today before they burst in like kicks in the chest now now the soup the stew of air has been left out to sit too long left do you want to hold on to what you have left? Do you want to dig your fingernails into the ceiling underneath the shoe used to hammer you into place like a nail. They don't like it when you say when you say I know not you I say I say I know not you you I know not I tried to know you maybe not hard enough I would explore when I when my orbit was my orbit collapsed a sick caress here and there our yards bonded together with mucus and each other's bodily oozings.  

"I am."
"Go ahead."
"Go ahead what?"
"Go ahead and say it."
"Say what?"
"Finish what you were saying."
"I did."
"I thought it was a dot dot dot."
"It was just a dot."
"How was it just a dot?"
"I was answering your question about who is an exemplar of madness on legs."
"You started talking like you always do in the middle of a sentence and left us hanging even though I'd rather it was from a crossbeam in a garage."
"None of the houses I saw around growing up had garages."
"None of the roads I saw around growing up had houses."
"I miss all those interactions."
"With people?"
"No, with medications."
"Back up a bit."

And under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under the road that widens and narrows and widens. Do you want to hold on

"Not that far back."
"Blood?"

when I when my orbit was my orbit collapsed a sick caress here and there our yards bonded together with mucus and each other's bodily oozings.  

"There was no question."
"Maybe you were improvising?"
"The last time I tried that we didn't speak to each other for days."
"It was weeks."
"Days weeks who gives a shit? It was quiet nonetheless."
"Quiet? Even if we had tried to converse we would have been drowned out by all that noise that kept screeching back and forth under our feet made by those machines and we ended up in that foul caved-in chamber."
"It couldn't have ended there we had to be revived by an air pocket. And those were more like insects making that screeching noise."
"By rubbing their wings together like maniacal violinists?"
"Mesh speakers on their underbellies."
"How do you know that?"
"A couple of them ran me over during that time I was an afterthought to you."
"Are we going to revisit that again?"

Tense and curt responses from their organs both had small pipe organs they copied each other smashing their paws into a cluster of migraines plumes of what looked like shredded newspapers but were not with no news just a lengthy sluggish downpour of pages of score lines intertwining with saps and dupes.

"I don't know where we are now."
"We'll circle back around for him."
"Back around to that again?"
"For him."
"Not him."
"Just for a reference point so we can have a nice fresh restart."
"Nothing fresh about it being our 20th or so restart."
"Must you always round up?"
"I thought I was underestimating just to be fair. No point in being fair I guess."
"And what reference point are we supposed to use to circle back around for him who we keep referring to as our reference point for just repeating ourselves?"
"We'll know by the gathering of garbage cans that we're getting warm."
"Fancy that, getting warm in the desert."

Press them together
Touching overlapping regret
Meant for the unfinished
incompetence mingled with vomit
it is assembled into a gross cake
in the back room
for its stench to roll over
into backyard graves
at the sound of our voices

"It can't be a gathering. More random than anything else."
"He could have put them there."
"I doubt it. He never had any limbs."
"Just past the cans is the hole."
"You mean the hole in your reasoning?"
"No, the hole he was tucked into just past the cans."
"There was no hole just past the cans."
"All right, the hole was a little further on past the cans."
"Get it through your head about there being a hole."
"I could have sworn there was a hole."
"You could have sworn and rather colorful expressions you used last night rattled about in my fucking skull and prevented me from obtaining a wink."
"Fine! We're working our way up to it again the complaining and the arguing about the complaining and the arguing and the angry shouting losing our voices and the quiet that is too brief before the clamor of our shit backs up from beneath us to flood our silence run over by it as we run over it again and again and again until the truth of it is we took our anger out on him and you can deny it all you want that you didn't take part in it he has no bones let alone any skin any trace no hole to speak of."
"That suits me fine no bones no skin no trace no hole to speak of."

Tense and curt responses from their organs both had small pipe organs they copied each other smashing their paws into a cluster of migraines plumes of what looked like shredded newspapers but were not with no news just a lengthy sluggish downpour of pages of score lines intertwining with saps and dupes.


- Max Stoltenberg

HALLS OF PUS

If I said anything to you you'd put me away not very far just a little more than the distance you already keep me at and so I have nothing to say about that part wait there goes another one like a little tin can you flick with your index finger over the edge into that abyss you locate only in your mind but can never seem to come upon until you run into someone else and I have nothing to say to them or to you standing across from a life 40% discouragement and 60% hesitation adjacent to a future that has become 99% disinterested and 1% percentages under the narrow belly of graying thread hanging by not if you let it waste your thoughts in the cracks of the windows blocking the view of the sky muffled with the semblance of clouds are they or are they storms of dust dust storms churning up what tries to rest from aging toward dying and blows them on away from their graves and into the laps of burning faces rubbing their eyes to rid themselves of our age forgetting not really what we did or said and with that I have nothing to say to you you'd put me away not very far just a little more than the distance you already keep me at and so I have nothing to say about that part wait there goes another one like a little tin can you flick with your index finger over the edge into that abyss you can locate in your mind but can never seem to come upon until you run into someone else.

I go back over it sometimes a lot of the time that is my congestion that never clears up that never goes away I am the one who does instead walking down to what's not there anymore and in its place is a sign or what the sign was on bars of metal for reaching out for drawing away after contact with the scraping heat.  We are disease packaged in unraveling drains knitted with that last nerve stretched by pills nowhere to be found picking up the crumbs on the curb those are crumbs aren't they didn't throw up too many times on the last occasion.  

"What's that reek? Is that your pants?"
"It's always been my pants. It's only gotten much worse."
"Can they actually do that? I mean is there an axiom?"
"I used something else when they were stacked too high you couldn't get from one end of the room to the door."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't remember what it was called."
"What it was called?"
"What it said on the box."
"What box?"
"Of detergent."
"We've never had a room since I've known you at least."
"At least. I do that to people."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he discovered the flat tire and opened the trunk to retrieve the donut. The therapist was on his way home late for his birthday dinner his wife was waiting with the kids reassuring them it would be any minute while he struggled to get a hold of the donut and clumsily lifted it over the rim of the trunk. 

"We need to go back."
"Haven't we discussed this already?"
"When did we do that?"
"Do we need to go back in your mind?"
"Didn't we agree that was a bad idea?"
"I thought you didn't remember."
"About going back, but not in my mind."
"It's all rather inside out or outside in I'm not sure which when we keep coming back to it it being the going back over it rigmarole with the positions and arguments that led up to the agreements and the pretensions that led away from them into forgetting and exhuming shit when it's again your turn to dislocate one's knees before novelty until you're nothing but a salmon swimming up a stream of guilt."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he pushed with his heel on the tire iron and it resisted him as did the ground as did the rest of the world until he felt the metal hit the side of his ankle as his foot slipped off back to Earth back from his suspension hadn't gotten far enough in his reach to determine where that novel had fallen if it had really fallen between the seat and the door.

"Food is overrated."
"You're just saying that because of our unrequited hunger."
"No it is overrated. It always got in the way of doing something else I'd rather be doing like running running around running away and then you'd get called back to the table and sit with them and the sound of their voices the weather patterns the shrouds that covered everything you did from then on. Just when I was becoming familiar with not missing it it had to come knocking with its slithering its way through you and make its vomit its shit the factory's tapestry headphones with their vice-like grip on your head wringing out the tears from your fuse."
"To you everything is overrated."
"No, just existence is overrated."
"That's what I mean."
"I have to start somewhere."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he pushed with his heel on the side of the head and it resisted him as did the ground as did the rest of the world until he felt the metal the machinery of his routine that had veered off the road hit the concrete someone had started to pave in the desert a fragment of a path he had just stopped to help that's what he said with his presence with a look until he put his foot down on the side of this head that had been thinking for too long about living too long around too much meaningless nonsense as his foot slipped off the back to Earth back from his suspension hadn't gotten far enough in his reach to determine where that novel had fallen if it had really fallen between the seat and the door.


- Max Stoltenberg

THROWN IN A GLITCH

That was not very helpful the voice echoing down the hall getting away from this reminder of the unnecessary left with nothing to recommend itself where he sat at his desk and felt the words back up in his mouth and into his head along the paths tunneling through his skull to resentment and only hearing the echo sliding down the hole of his existence making him gag about to throw up and lift his hands up toward the resigned clouds that bring no water only sand on the back of the neck. Precipice head dented in supposed to match the expected so it will go as planned can't find the basket to hide a flattened votive under names older stick figures could make some faces in a blank space for making some older stick figures only the impressions of lines as the Earth pushes out our lines and footprints erasing our burrowing in time worms dead worms in dead ends.

He left his hat on the floor next to the chair that must have been what happened and then the dog got it took it outside and now it's in a corner of the backyard surrounded by feces and weeds she wanted to apologize for being so technical to him of all people and he was of all people the first to complain or second or third to complain being the first to procrastinate to complain that she was using big words and in her routine that was shackled to his routine like an old train car she decided to tell him to go fuck himself.

Can I talk about her? Can I mention her without there being any room left for her to mention anything about herself? Can she talk about herself? Can she mention anything without there being a stream of emissions at the bottom of the page submissions of expression on her behalf with all of their suggestions for her future for her body where she should go and with who and with what? Can I mention her without them dropping various tools sharpened and unsharpened clean and unclean at the bottom of the page with their directions with their instructions for her?

The bottom line never ends. I have nothing to add. Why should I? All the contributing has squeezed us out fallen out of their back pocket until they discover until they remember us we have been chosen to be stuffed in their back pockets until they stuff their back pockets and we fall out by the road by the road they find us. The bottom line never ends.

She looked up to him. Not because he occupied a higher position well he did occupy a higher position but not in her mind but in the room they had chosen to stay in not that they had chosen to stay in the room perhaps a case could be made that they had chosen to stay in the room in the first place but not that they had chosen to have such difficulty leaving. He spoke down to her not that she was fitted into a lower position even though it could be stated with confidence that she was in a position lower than his or that it could possibly be attributed to how he spoke to her in a manner that suggested he was an arrogant condescending fuckface. 

"Are you stuffing your bra?"
"Are you stuffing your head?"
"With all sorts of nonsense. And you?"
"What is that now?"
"What is what now?"
"Is that actually music?"
"Are you kidding? It's always almost always someone trying to get an answer and not giving the other a chance to finish as well as get their explanation in. Forget that. Why even bother speaking at all? I spend more of my time lately chewing the inside of my lips both of them."
"Both of them?"
"Upper and lower."
"Hide and seek. It was never about whether I was found or not but whether I wanted to be found."
"I was always it."
"I was it and more often than not I would never be found and I'd sit there crouched down in some thick bushes and the fading light of day became engulfed by the darkness of a closed in space where the world was wrinkled tight and the noise of everyone else drowned under the surface of wanting to play when they ran off they ran off and even though I knew they were gone I'd come out slowly from the cover and walk about gently and hesitantly until it left my mind in a puff of smoke of forgetfulness that this day had ever occurred or was taking place and then suddenly there they were playing I guess they gliding along past me and as they all looked around I knew I was still hidden out in the open."
"I was always it."
"What do have there?"
"Some shred."
"Pulled it out of your bra?"
"From my breast."
"Your breast?"
"My left boob to be more precise."
"Is there any blood?"
"Look at the stains on the shred."
"That's red ink."
"Not all of it. Red ink has . . . red ink whatever."
"What were you going to say?"
"Something clever about red ink or so I thought but now I know why my head that the other girls at school used to ridicule is misshapen because it's infested with ellipses."
"Your left breast is misshapen as well. It has that depression right there. That must be where the shred is leaking from."
"Or where the world has pushed down too hard."
"You have to keep backing up into yourself on the other side of a depression. So it's not a shred-filled implant."
"Last dust storm blew this crap into my shirt and bra. Nature is quite the taxidermist."
"It always seemed to me that black ink had more blood mixed into before it was put to paper."

The bottom line never ends. I have nothing to add. Why should I? All the contributing has squeezed us out fallen out of their back pocket until they discover until they remember us we have been chosen to be stuffed in their back pockets until they stuff their back pockets and we fall out by the road by the road they find us. The bottom line never ends.


- Max Stoltenberg