The county’s leading liquor clerk tapped gently on a pile of wooden legs - waiting
When the sails licked the cliffs, the clerk twisted the blinds and broke off the boards
He used the boards of the broken window and fashioned wooden legs
A tiny swan and a criminal, both ash and white striped and burdened by their own kind of shackle
Drank tequila sunrises and milky dusks
It was what they did before stealing wooden legs
The nightmare walked sideways on the walls, head backward, back backward, thinking backwardly towards the Chardonnay
The nightmare brushed past the tiny swan and crook with a stunning wooden leg and a sparkling red, the embodiment of death, love and armchair shenanigans.
Her ID was legit and tragic and growing inaccurate by the second. The clerk obliged out of the darkness he felt and the booming business of his carpentry project on the side.
He sells the nightmare a leg and she ties it tightly with hemp wire
And the next morning
Untied from the port, a rhythm creaks from the oars and ship pores and backward she rows
She left her sweater on the crook’s dresser
welcome to Mania
this is a carnival of self-righteousness
this is a circus of destruction
the carousel suspends above empty pits
and the world’s deadliest animals roam freely
find a seat on smallpox blankets
where we eat in the face of starving artists
and read Kafka to children
serving drinks to hell is a crime
welcome to Mania
come to me, and see how I’ve wrapped the empty holes in my soul with skins and how I beat on them until they reverberate through my body
come to me and watch how strings aren’t just pulled
they’re fucking yanked
we are Geppetto’s ancestors
come to me and fall in love with the way fire burns from a distance
wave your hand over matches and blush red
welcome to Mania
this is the only place where you can taste the ravaging of
a city in Mongolian stir fry
here, chernobyl residents get free healthcare
because radiation is a right of passage
this is the only place where sex is the source of all AC currents
we praise Tesla and fuck in his name
splitting atoms saved mankind, everyone here is comfortable
being torn to pieces
but settle me love
tell me when it’s over
Pull the master switch and let the facilities close shop
closing time is an abstraction
set by an imaginary hourglass made of orange bottles with
funny names on labels
some days I call in sick just to think of you
the clerk found a map in his grandfather’s armchair
buried savings from the great war
4 and a half feet under around the corner of a liquor store
lived a box of woodgrain and papyrus notes, all of
which read “for safe keeping”
the old parchment glued to the clerks legs and sawdust
mummified him
he sat numb behind the liquor store
waiting for the crooked log driver to bring cedar
and aspen and sometimes sandwiches
the laminate map on the counter
served a placemat for crumbs and cigarette ash
freckled and brown like the blinds with sunlight flakes
or riddled and old like the pile of porous wooden legs
a few minutes before close, the nightmare comes home
with a bottomless liver and leg she’ll soak in the tub
the tub leaks slightly over the whiskey
the tub is closing time, is bucket time
is the bucket out back near an armchair from 1928
grandfather’s are frugal men and men that say
“build it yourself”
save money, fix faulty machinery, i.e. an armchair
that takes the legs of nightmares when they sleep
kitten curled feet tucked
far from liable
obligingly, you put her together with a wooden leg
I’ve seen the lies and the truths with their cocktails
keeping a cosmopolitan close in one hand and
a stranger captive in the other
scheming against eavesdropping bartenders
when alone, the lies and truths speak softly
stare at a drink menu together and whisper reserved thoughts
that brush by like a bundled up trench coat
touching my periphery and nothing else
the lies and truths will offer me chances
and free drinks
never changing
with the same drinks and the same performances
that fool everyone but the bartender
from the end of the counter, I watch them take shots
and lean in
more strangers pass by leaving gifts in their pockets
asking for a chance
between elbows and sleeves and collars
a flood of trenchcoats bury the two
behind a slurring radio, shots of voices
are tossed around the bar with closing tabs and credit cards
my eyes jump out at the last second and catch them hailing a cab
I can tell the two apart just fine, I say
usually caught in a paper smoking jacket
with the demeanor of someone that has permanently forgotten something
of importance
a tiny swan with salty tuffs plays with
wiry feathers
and anachronistic Bukowski shorts stapled into cedar paneling
just beside the bed frame where weeks of crusty feathers have been
caught in the splinters
every ornery morning, the tiny swan
wakes to the lick of sails on the cliffs
he crawls into the ceramic tub outside -
an old bird that plots long cons
and watches shitty daytime melodramas at a local convenience store
sometimes he doesn’t get out
sometimes he just sits in his dirty tub or dirty truck
a picture of a lady swan hangs from the rear view mirror signed
by Burt Reynolds with notes from last Wednesday’s local labor meeting
a picture folded twice that no one talks about
even the pigeons on the corner don’t ask, don’t beg for crumbs,
don’t eat sawdust off the back of a log driver’s truck,
They taste the difference
the tiny swan drives with wooden blocks on the pedals
following a scar at the water’s hips made from the
daily commute of a secret lover
by the time the cliff has been climbed
the crooked log driver will tell the tiny swan about the next step
to ripping off island inhabitants
the secret, he says, is knowing when
the tiny swan dreams of big scores, big breasts, and redemption
all of which award him a routine trip to the liquor store
The only indoor plumbing contractor on this side of the ocean is a tiny swan
He sucks at his job and never fails to piss off the liquor store clerk
the port authority raised an extra set of hands, that grew to be
a bigger set of hands
hands with sweaters stretched at the wrists, often splintered
panelling dock planks and planning revenge against rubber boots, the panelling of rubber faces that spit and grow hair and sink and look at a kid that is just a set of hands
the port authority thinks bribery substitutes apologies
they speak at supper time
take a sip son, everyone feels that way
how can they, says a pair of hands
if they aren’t hanging from the harbor and biting waves
while a shadow puppet flickers on the wall, say bite, say hands folding, say anxiety, say biting waves, say harbor, say harbor
the shadow puppet leaped into the sea and happened upon a log
out the window, balancing wakelessly, teeterless
trustworthy of an atom bomb, weighing just as much
with the control of an alcoholic tiny swan
the pair of hands followed the shadow
onto logs and quit being a pair of hands
he took log driving courses at the YMCA
and business classes at the community college
and business classes from the working classes
and gave business classes to the working classes
they nod at him from healthy pensions, wages, and bellies
the port authority got sick from swallowing waves and shadow puppets
a shipwreck and an orphan sign up for classes
to be something other than a pair of hands
a son to the port authority worked
pulling planks from the harbor
feeling pruritus on skin that was bark
and accustomed to touching other bark
the envy of trees
he never shivered
at the vacant taste of weak coffee or sheerness
a quality most people don’t see as fair
they hid vacant glances over cardboard cup masks
orphaned sentiment, unorphaned quiet
lone log driving llc.
the only employee smoked cigarettes on a lucky strike
and refused opportunities that called
waiting for one ship in particular to fall apart
the ship that rides the hip in the water
and never wavers
she docks by herself
unloads barrels of empty thoughts and wrinkled sweaters
drops them off at an orphanage and takes a cab
to lone log driving llc
a lone log driving worker comes off strike to be a crook and ends up getting a call around noon
an order for carving wood
“I only deliver logs by the sea,
it won’t be worth carving when it gets there”
the liquor clerk says it’s fine
“I’ll board the windows first while they dry”
the clerk wonders if he’ll hear the nightmare at the other end
the telephone grows darker with chameleon shadows
“I won’t charge you,” the log driver says
“I still won’t give you a discount” the clerk says
brothers split after a great depression
after starting a carpentry venture just before the market crashed
on a cliffside island town
three decades and a second or two
a nightmare was born as a granddaughter
spawned by sea fire
and a house full of uncomfortable seating, assets
spilling extendable iron leg rests
and scratched armrests
over rugs, quilts, and other carpet substitutes
a great thing for kids to jump over
as she got older, she kept her childhood
in a belief that leg rests were lava and books
read better with her feet warmed under cheeks
or tucked in chair folds
Papa believed in American manufacturing
shipments in storms, in shitstorms
believed in taking, being loud
while the softer brother
that gets sea sick
sticks to workbenches, whiskey brewings, and stomach ulcers
the nightmare stomachs and she stomachs well
stomachs small towns, shitstorms, whiskey and wine,
she stomachs tiny spaces, gory mystery novels, stomachs
the sight of blood, she stomachs the sight of blood so well,
stomaching iron on the back of her throat or iron through
her leg, stomach in a cliffside sawmill stomach in a
tub, stomach donated to an orphanage that’s too big for its
own good, stomach and sweet belly, translucent sheerness, stomachs
sold behind liquor store counters, stomachs beside bedsides and other stomach looking furniture, dead stomachs too many stomachs
in a small town of stomachs
and a few armchairs left after the great depression
I wouldn’t suggest buying one unless you have the stomach for it
the clerk rides shotgun with the log driver toting a twisted armchair.
their socks holstered kerosene while the tiny swan flicked matches out the windows fecklessly from the back center - sans seat belt,
sea felt pride and vinegar
the humidity boiled the engine into each of their stomachs and the clerk bit his lip not to vomit
there was a sickness in their shoes as they rattled up the cliff
let’s do it here the clerk says
the armchair sprouts many legs and took their socks
which they prepared for
and the tiny swan set the spider armchair on fire
whisper blaze - “I ain’t got time to bleed”
they turn to anemics
disarmed by nightmares and fear
afraid to lose their legs
you are not an imposter
fuck those bastards you are not an imposter
I know that you curl your toes under your shoes
hold your breath before you speak
check your laces twice before you step
out on tightrope 8 miles above ground
when you swallow a sentence and chase it with whiskey
trying not to choke on the sharp edges of “not enough”
your stomach bile will vault through your esophagus
in perfect lingual trapeze
stick the landing with ease and say ta da
say everything except what you need
when you rise from your knees
those itchy words will drop
into the soul of your shoes
with which you curl your toes
hold your breath
and check your laces twice before you remember
that you are not an imposter
in front of you are jesters and clowns
and a circus of whistles, bells, and soulless sounds
your shoes will grow three fucking sizes
because a) the grinch ain’t got shit on you and
b) you can do the Charlie Brown to space funk and
see(c) that you have all the room in the world to move your feet
tumble from your tight rope
let the people around you string together bridges and safety nets
go out to the carnival and win some bottle caps
take the stuffed version of you from the prize rack
and sleep well with it at night