Close your eyes and open your mouth, said the snake in the tree to the girl below, trouble-diving his shadowy vines.
Lovely cripple coughs, dabs blood from her fingertips.
The whip curls, catnapping in the bathroom sink.
She sits, balances a postcard on a trembling knee.
Triumph has given her a muscle spasm in her left thigh.
It stutters, lessens, passing.
She lifts the postcard, holds it to the weak glow of the motel room lamp.
Where nothing is revealed.
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Nose in a book.
True red hair in lush ponytail.
Wearing a dark blue pullover.
And only a dark blue pullover.
Left leg dangling from the chair, right heel against right bum, unclipped luxury of crotch on display.
Peter puts the photograph aside and sighs across the coffeetable.
-Don’t be a dolt, Simon says.
-she’s not the girl for you, pal.
-There was a time I might have agreed. But not now. I must and shall have her.
-Well then, I wish you a quick and painless death. Or, a full and speedy recovery.
Outside, a reservoir’s worth of rain falls heavy, sudden from the sodden sky.
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Weeks earlier Fiona Towton sets down her book and slides her hips into a pair of white cotton panties.
Except for the chair the large room is unfurnished.
Lotused on the floor a young man fiddles with a camera. Smoke from his cigarette puffs out at intervals, hiding his face from examination.
Even so Fiona scolds.
-Oh really, Puss! If you insist on freezeframing my pelt then why blush so?
The young man doesn’t look up.
-Call it ardor, Fiona.
-Ardor? Ardor for what, art or arse?
-What’s the difference? Puss asks.
Standing in the middle of the room Fiona smiles.
-Simple. Art lasts forever … and the other …
She snaps her fingers. In the big empty room the sound is thunderous.
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-Pulverize this, the policeman says, taking the woman’s hand from the steering wheel and clapping it between his legs.
-The light’s going to change, she chills.
-do you want to come? Or go.
He unfingers her wrist and vents a foul wheeze of a laugh.
-Go on then, he says, business before pleasure.
-Pearls before swine, the woman mutters and slides into gear with more than necessary force.
Lt. Jocko Pitt turns towards his driving partner, Sgt. Emma Glass.
He’s reaching for something in the back seat.
A pretext. A sham. A ploy.
So he can filch a gaze on the uniformed, snowwhite Glass bosom.
He thrills filthy at the confident shuddering, the peaceful ascending settle of Emma’s breasts, carrying them forward on official police business.
Emma sees through him. She doesn’t mind the pry of his swotlidded eyes.
Because.
Her suspicions shrill. Rank in their refusal of mollification.
Jocko can’t.
Couldn’t.
(Ever?)
(Again?)
Against regulations she turns the radio on. The weather report. Breaking up in a ghastly static intercourse of groan and whine. Emma frowns and accelerates.
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Gwendolyn Peach is jubilant. Her burnt-orange tea gown rills, seeming to throb around her handsome curves with equivalent scortatory joy. She lapses from room to room. Her flat is tiny. Her jubilance inflates it. She has three pies in the oven.
Rhubarb. Sweet potato. Deadly nightshade. Bolshoi raindrops pellet her kitchen window like rubber bullets. They are useless in the suppression of her private intifada. The divorce papers bask beside her bedside lava lamp. Gwendolyn is free.
Free!
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Midnight strokes, all thunder and lightning. Happy, shivering, Churl chews the edgy cuddle of his stinking blanket. He has big plans for the morrow. But is it ready? The morrow? For him? He cares not a whit for he intends to chomp it tiger down to a devoured zero and spit out the wee hours like caramelized melon pips. Churl sleeps, stroking himself to nocturnal creepy vigilance.
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-Fuck you, Roger! Fuck you good and deep and hard! You shit.
Mimi’s open-air embarrassingly public roar does a kestrel turn and drops to gluey sobs.
Her hands invade the space above the picnic table and withdraw, as she clasps up her purse and walks quickly towards the indoor bar, nose already buried in sky blue tissue.
Roger rises insincerely.
Fiona’s gesture freezes him.
-No, I’ll go.
With the women now gone the offending Roger cups his chin and affects a look of knowledgeless pain.
-Puss, he says.
Looking at the young man benched beside him, Fiona’s imperturbable shadow.
-what the hell was I thinking? I should know by now that she can’t take it. Even when she really is asking for it.
Puss shrugs. Sips from his glass of beer. Belches. Doesn’t bother to cover his mouth.
-Beg pardon, Rog. So what’s new? If you don’t mind my mentioning it? Mimi and Roger. Slit Meets Pig. Violence, language, adult situations.
-But all I said this time was that Mallarme could clip the claws of Baudelaire!
-It’s the Beatles versus the Stones. Get used to it. Jesus, you married her.
-Yes, Puss, that I surely did.
-So take her home and give her head and tell her that you’re sorry.
-You think so?
-With Augustinian certainty. Works every time.
-Thus far, Roger nods, this has proven true …
His dots pausing the air, a tone apprehensive for the instance howling: ‘But! …’
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When the telephone rings Adelaide Querelle has five seconds in which to make her life or death decision.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Adelaide pulls her head out of the oven, fumbles off the gas and crawls out of the kitchen.
The answering machine’s got it covered.
-I’m not here so leave a message. Please and thank you.
-Miss Querelle, I know you’re there so please pick up …
Adelaide clips the receiver from its cradle and lays her head beside it on the floor.
-Bbzxgh.
-Ah, there you are.
-bbzq.
-You don’t sound well. I’m sorry if this is a bad time.
Adelaide spluttered and coughed, uncrossed her eyes and watched as a bead of spittle wormed and slid down the mouthpiece.
-I’m here.
-Okay, that’s better. Though not by much.
-Bad time.
-Yes, well. Forgive me later. Right now I need for you to be quiet and listen while I proposition you.
-Fucking prank.
-Not this time, I’m afraid.
-How’d you get.
-Your number? Let’s see, it’s right here on the back of this business card I’m looking at. Gil Sharkey, wedding photographer.
-Sharkgillsharkey. No, I don’t know who.
-Surely you remember Mr. Sharkey? Last Thursday, I think? Tattler’s Tavern? Any of this coming back to you?
-Is this the police.
-Yes, ma’am. Badges, handcuffs, the works.
-I sort of remember.
-Don’t fry your brain, now. I’ll give you credit for trust, if nothing else.
-Who are you then, Policeman?
-Well, right at the moment, I’m the guy in the mid-range suit in the phone booth across the street. I’ll hang on while you hop on over to the window, okay? You can check me out and then you’ll let me in and we can have a little Q and A. Oh, and Adelaide?
-What.
-I’ve brought my own booze and I’m happy to share.
-Fuck you.
-Sure thing, babe. Now hop on over to that window and let’s both have us a look.
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Jumping his place in the queue of dramatis personae, Churl snores.
Flat on his back, a chapelizod erection lofting the blanket like abdominal triage.
He’s dreaming the nasties tonight.
Gargling faux buttress, saints swatting let fly. Annexed to her dutiful pear, her whipped peach, cries nuncle, jams the dessicate to ambrose hue. Mull, loll, light, dumb, show and show. Claw hot pearl, cool glaze sours pain. Cry bright up yes. More as do not know. Thumb for prick, wee suck all dry. Pupil clean as scratch. Look lovely, skindeep swimmer. Neville never nozzles nipple. Bourbon bosom bothers baby. Surgeon swaddles, septic sarong. Lazy lonely lunar lover.
Rainy Ashpit, slut du jour, medicates green sorrow. Her brows plum, her repose astarte, peeled and plunging.
Churl’s dreaming eel dribbles and weeps.
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(Postcard I)
White, black, washed-out dun.
Photographed by an anonymous Swiss missionary during some misbegotten, best-forgotten campaign of Calvinist conversion (1906?-1911?).
Taken in the northern state of Punjab.
On a plain outside Amritsar, a Sadhu sits crosslegged. His body is skin, bone, and muscle, his eyes fixed midway glare and glaze. Between his legs is a bowl of milk, in which he is washing his penis. There is evidence of recent surgery in the tic-tac-toe of sutures. An erection would surely burst the stitches.
Dear A,
café-life ain’t the life for me.
I observe too much & am driven
to morbid thoughts. I see how
people seemingly engrossed in
conversation are only truly interested
in what they themselves have to say.
It follows that the only honest ones
among us are those we shy away from
in disgust, those wretched sidewalk-weavers
who mutter to themselves, & in whom angels
& devils struggle to outshout each other.
Thousand-Eyed Annie