ON THE FOUR – BY MY COUNT
Stolen: Once it’s proved to you, for example, that you
descended from an ape, there’s no use making
a wry face, just take it for what it is - FD.
A city of 200,000 people and one garbage truck: a vast expanse of nothing, spreading out before
me, growing larger with time: devouring children, playgrounds, immovable feasts of trees. One hundred
fifty books, he said, everything that literature has to offer, read them, and you’ll never have to read
anything again. I wish I were a woman. In all the dulling streetlights and fading windowsills, I can still
see your face: as warm and round as the first time I kissed you - that little drugstore where I used to steal
baseball cards, where we bought our first pack of kissing gum: sixty-seven cents and you were all mine. I
smile, and I think of bubbles. A shout in the street,
"I wouldn’t mind so much that you were late, if only you’d bother to show up at all."
"What?"
"The book, man! Did you bring me the book?"
"Oh." I slump my weight and wait for my bag to slide around front, "it’s a book on nothing, and
this one is on glue But I wouldn’t bother reading either of them. What do you want’em for anyway? You
can barely read street signs."
"Never mind all that. Do you need any money? Have you eaten today? Can I drop you off
somewhere?"
"No, I’m fine. I’m heading down to the pier, it’s been a couple days." I know I’m alive, and that’s
my heart beating. My cigarette goes out as I see his eyes grow sad with disappointment. "Don’t worry,
I’ll be fine, now just go away before I start hallucinating in front of strangers." Scratch, flame, and inhale:
white cloud mushrooms protecting me.
From my window, I can smell the bakery making French bread and croissants: the breeze off
State St hitting my face so gently, and the sun encroaching on my living room floor, discovering new
territories and colonies of an empire that never ends. It seems history is to blame. My eyes focus on the
void above the city: the humming of industry that only fathers can hear. I’ve never known the freedom of
absolute poverty. My mind is a wasteland of dependencies and expense accounts, all of which lead back
to one source: my only holy and eternal mother: calling my name from down the hall, she rings clearly in
my mind. I turn and look, but there’s no one there. Just the absence in my mind: the prolonged ringing of
a sound I’ve never heard: words, they’re just words. I scribble the few things I find accessible in a
notebook and change the subject. - It’s time to wake up.9:31am
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