Best new American writing

Trying

2011-01-25T07:19:00.000-08:00

A man who, in what some might call, overcame in fact very little in getting to where he might possibly still be, unless something has happened to the form of our receptivity, in what some might, in whom they might, in what'm, some might, excuse me, I'm trying to read the cards, in what some might call a tragic reversal of the stereotype once prescribed for this fledgling nation, a man what we believe is not capable of preventing you from writing about him, a man who can only act in response, not in pre-emption, and how not different he is from any of us in that way of regarding a person, but who so many careers hang in the balance, I mean we are trying to go from memory now, but words are lonely on paper, and they wrangle you, a type of insect restricted to fires, constantly apart and back again, that how he would like us to describe him, and are we just kidding him into being, or does he not need any trying, an actual partition of physics, driven by motives we cannot, the very, the very person, and as currencies do this or that, do everything they possibly can, a man who believes he's transcended the very world he doesn't realize that he, a kind of overnight man, and isn't shy to blend rap music and also his private sexual times, free webinars, driving all over the sky like a car, yes, we know that you're closed but we just need to elbow in through the door here, yes, oh a relief to, a man who theoretically is not flattered, and so we can talk about him forever, feel pure tunnel freedom, a man powered by ignorance, an awareness vacuum, who must avoid the seeking wind or else change into another metaphor, a man of multiple bickering genres, an overdescribed man, a distraction from the grave realities facing the youth in the following nations, a man quite different than you're imagining, but not so different, an n plus two man, if n is the vision, and two is just what he brings to the party.

Sensitive people

2010-06-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

KEY

girl → otter

crying → floating on the water

safe → dangerous

house → lakeshore

sensitive people → venomous flies

what hasn't been explained → apprehension

feel ashamed → think about the flies

STORY

The girl is crying. But crying is safe here. It's safe because the house is populated by sensitive people. Sensitive people can detect what hasn't been explained. They have a special set of antennae for that. Do not feel ashamed, girl. To feel ashamed while crying would threaten your happiness for the rest of your life. Crying, if you don't feel ashamed, can be good for you. But you do feel ashamed. You've gone and done it. The sensitive people are coming to you now.

Hardware

2010-06-01T02:38:00.000-07:00

Stand in your garage and strike at the metal block with an axe until you have hacked off a small pile of shards. Do this with several conductive metals, such as copper and aluminum, until you've created a mulch. Lather the mulch with a silicon gel, and then transfer it to a bucket.

Smear the mixture over your dead electronics with a wire brush, or, if you must cover an especially great volume, connect it to a high-powered hose. Collect batteries of all types, and begin firing them into the mass. You may want to hire a pitcher.

After three to ten days, your dead equipment should begin to sizzle, and a vibration will emanate from the pile. At the first sign of this activity, no later and absolutely no sooner, drag your mulch in a heavy trail from the pile to your front door. Within a few weeks, you will awake to find the electronics lined up at your threshold, waiting for your instructions.

Lines Written on a Key Largo Bridge

2009-08-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

Your shirt shone moon-white
on a night without moon
(we’d seen the stars rise instead)
and the gray in your hair fluttered
like fishing lines hooking the wind.

I hummed a song you didn’t know
as we ran our feet through the surf,
and even for the time of year,
the warmth of the waves surprised us.

But you didn’t touch me until later,
when we sat on the bridge,
and only then to point out a distant freighter.

“We would have missed it,” you whispered,
“had there been brighter lights in the sky.”

I looked, and felt self-conscious –
the ship shining
its obviousness so vainly
on the horizon.

You wouldn’t let me hold you.

I drifted then, buoyed through the night and stars,
everything departing and you
becoming a distant shore.
Only the smell of the sea grass
reminded me that I, not the ship,
was the land-bound, fixed point.

We stayed until sunrise
and drove the car home slowly.
You were afraid we’d crush crabs
blinded by the morning.

Border patrol

2009-05-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

He raps his nail against her rooted tooth

Wipes the slime that gleams along her gums.

Bloody lace surrounding lacy blue

Where the eye rebounds against his thumb.

Quit, she says, you're making all the scenery shift–

But could there really be another dream,

Besides a woman-wearing thought in his?

Its own incoming light and faulty wings

Close-behinds and, buried under oceans

Evils held in place with incantations:

Certain words there are which can't be spoken,

And he is clumsy, clueless, lousy with impatience.

But oh if she could know the dream he draws her skin across:

His unhopelessness is a pessimist, her sighs like fragrant songs.

On Feeling Tired

2009-04-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve grown tired.

Veins, and cartilage, and unknown cells
quivering with the fatigue I’ve taken
upon myself.

Even the days grow tired with me -
birds singing carelessly for neither
pleasure nor doom … but for silence, and a moment’s rest.

Picture by Sarah Folkman

Evening at Applebee's

2009-03-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

"And this," you said, "long beach at Haat Plaa Muk,"

Blond of your brown right hand becoming that damp

And trash-dappled sand in the air above your mug.

"And this home I," pointing at a callous on the puff

Beneath your little finger, probably a place

With nervous chickens and broad fluorescent blossoms

Bobbing in the yard. The light surrounding your face

Is the alien green of the grass on the screen the TV

Looks through to the bar, and about a nautical mile

From the curve of your hand you are carving a double-u reef

Where the cuttlefish teem and the scattering moonflashes pile.

I swam in that water, renewed my interior flesh

Which mixed with that air and that cool and that slippery food

And reverted to gray in the blown static spray of home I had left.

Memories

2009-03-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

Quivering fire

Mirrored in a pool of wax

Glows devoid its heat

Despues del adios

2009-03-18T22:51:00.001-07:00

Es dura la noche y larga

sin tí,

como vías ancianas de un ferrocarríl.

Y es como un grito vivir la tarde

(algunas con nubes,

algunas rociadas

de sangre);

y al levantarme - mañanas frías,

sol de madrugada -

escucho quejar la espiga,

llorar la guitarra.

Refinery

2009-03-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

Evening Anagram

2009-03-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

-To A.B.

Another day goes by;

useless, all that I have said and done,

standing near you when you looked away.

The light – and the light looks brighter on you

in the evening, just when you begin to mind.

No - but the light begins to fade when I walk by.

Life flows, though, as the Greeks and Donne once said.

Another sunset, another moon without you (I’ve seen so many),

never to see one (as though that would happen) again.

Could you understand, then, if I told you?

Everything would fall upon me, then, and everything would fall

because you couldn’t understand.

Unless the skies would breathe it,

tenderly, as though they didn’t care,

leaving room enough for the merest escape,

everything (I guess), then everything - tenderly -

returns to you beneath the night-light, and your hair.

Twenty, II

2009-03-10T02:57:00.001-07:00

They were two men and they fell in love for one night.

A secret romance. Neither gave the other his real name or age. They traded false histories as they would business cards – the older man claimed to be a doctor and the blond boy said he was writing a novel.

But their hours were scarce. From the bar’s dance floor, to the fumbling for apartment keys, to the bed covers tossed aside, to the towels where they scattered the refuse of their love, the men could feel the minutes pricking them like careless fingers.

They saved their words for last, when the dawn came, and even then it wasn’t enough.

So instead they spent the last hour of their passion sliding hands over each others' thighs, microscopic hairs swirling round the mazes of their fingerprints.

They parted ways when the sun peeked in through closed curtains and demanded to be let in.

Later that day, the blond boy would say – when asked about the dime-sized bruises on his neck – that a chick he’d met at the skate park couldn’t leave him alone. In perfect detail, he’d describe breasts he’d never touched.

Being Sunday, the older man would pay penance in church: twenty dollars slipped into the wooden coffer.

He’d then leave, quietly, awkwardly, as if he were slinking away from a former lover’s house.

(Photo by Sooreh Hera)

Spring

2009-03-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Water falls in syrup strings

From icy roofs that were.

A jacket sleeve hangs from a crate:

The hobo bares his shirt.

My desire is a little light

In a house of ice and snow.

I feed it New York spectacle,

The fire for to grow.

Yes, one more thing ...

2009-03-06T20:06:00.001-08:00

I feel like riding a balloon.

I've never done that.

I should put it on my list of things to do.

When I start that list, I'll put it on there.

I'll never make a list.

I'll never ride a balloon.

Warm are the still and lucky miles

2009-03-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

You have a camera

2009-03-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

You have a camera you point at the screen on which I've distorted the things that I've seen. It takes what it finds and scrambles the lines and routes to a screen that I point to with mine. When my camera's bent all the light that you've sent you capture what's left with your misshapen lens. When the sequence repeats to the hundredth degree we have authored the movie I'm living to see.

Malinowski

2009-03-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

A name remembered or unremembered through student halls,
it may be that his portrait still hangs in some collegiate junction.
Somewhere, his voice remains, perhaps behind book-littered walls,
muttering the complicated elements of origins and functions.

I read him now, as though I would read the accounts of some explorer,
Remembering his life because it will show up on an exam.
Because the times demand it, I shall forget it all tomorrow,
Like the scholar’s footprints on Polynesian sand.

He’s gone. Used up, his esophagus closed some time ago.
I look at the sunset — part of him remains in the book between my hands.
Who else would hold it? The sunset makes me wonder, though:
is his savage-sounding name still remembered in far-off Trobriand?

Lorca

2009-02-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

Solo luciérnagas
soplan en la noche Cordobesa.

Dejadme aquí muerto!

El sabor de naranjas
en los dientes
y de tierra en la lengua.

Dejadme aqui muerto!

Y el suspiro de las aguas
mimando mis
cabellos

Ay! Ya os es dicho que me dejen aqui muerto!

The Lighthouse

2009-02-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

Behold the strength of the lighthouse —
a savior of men, of their industries, of foreign wares,
perched on cliffs that long have stood the swell.
The insecurities of night have never touched it —
a guiding light, an angel to the water-blind,
the lighthouse stands — the sailor’s hope,
beckoning the tide-wearied home.

But imagine —
over countless days (how many?) the workers toiled
to secure at first the beacon’s monstrous base.
Bones, marrow, human waste all sprinkled
in the chaos of those endless days.
No guiding lights had they;
the sun, the moon, the stars, the elements —
to these the workers clung and prayed.
In the distance, darkness and the rattling of the sea foam —
by their side, not even the comfort of fire and home.

So did the lighthouse come to be,
standing sternly now over the seas —
in darkness finding its own light,
now stands in darkness to give others peace.

Complaint, against a dull day

2009-02-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve had happier days than these.
Seen better sunsets, better seas —
tasted better wine in better places,
have grown accustomed to more pleasant faces.

And bad days? I’ve known worst —
have cried into the earth, and cursed.
Walked endless deserts, endless miles
to see Misery come my way — and smile.

So who are you, TODAY, to try to change my life?
What do you think you bring, what joy, what strife?
No, you come to neither hurt or please —
I’ve had much greater days than these.

On all sides

2009-02-17T11:46:00.001-08:00

He wasn’t a hermit, like the Ancient Fathers,
to be written of and admired,
not building houses of redemption under mossy caves
or crawling naked for salvation through the desert sand.
Like them, though, he could attest
to a moment of great importance,
when the heavens blasted on him all their loves
to reveal the smiling countenance of the Great Name —
but only once.

Since then, the revelations had grown less.
Afterward, the business of the moment was carried on as always,
with the same asked-for smile and occasional frown.
His glasses bore the steamy burden of rainy days
while his legs continued to display the glories of athletic scars.
It would have been impossible, they say,
to have known the tremendous weight
he carried inside.
Even those made close to him
by an unwavering connection of genetic strands
could not identify his agony —

how, after the most astonishing ecstasy
of his meek-lived life,
he was clawed at and desired
by desert demons on all sides.

Twenty

2009-02-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

After thirty years with the company, they told me attrition and these hard times had forced them to make tragic but necessary cuts.

I was the only one from my department they fired.

For the next two weeks I lived on nothing but a diet of alcohol and grief.

But a different hunger brought me here. No one talked to me in the bars, where the bright lights make it obvious I reek of cowardice and discontent.

Here, the others are too busy staring at the women on the stage. I ignore the others as well. I wait until the girls walk by and then I look at my face, reflected on the grease that pools around their breasts. Some of them talk back; others just run their fingers down the swellings of my spine.

I ask the prettiest one how much for ten minutes in the curtained room. Her dark hair flows in ribbons from the edges of a tilted trucker’s hat. Her body radiates softness.

She tells me it’s forty-five.

I reply that last night it was twenty.

She winks, unsympathetic, and tells me tonight is a special night. I only have twenty left.

I don’t watch her leave. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll buy food and eat a real meal.

But should I have pasta, or celery, or carrot cake? Or pickled strawberries and pumpernickel jam?

I buy two more shots to help me decide.

Arse Poetica

2009-02-14T17:43:00.000-08:00

"I don't know about poetry,"
dad would mumble when
books of verses stumbled
somehow into his house.

As awkward as an adolescent
he'd amble by and catch me
reading, at night, while dangling
from living room couch ledges.

"Sentimental trash," he'd say,
or, "Mostly for fairies and pansies."
He'd wince and, unasked for,
gift me with disapproving glances.

"Be careful," he began.
"You read too much of that
and turn out queer." And as he left
I know he meant to ask:

"Are you going to stop reading?
Are you going to turn queer?"

And I didn't.
And I did.
And I keep it secret that verses
now stumble out of me.

Nervous Merv

2009-02-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

Merv sat fervently on the couch

and plopped a lot of pills into his mouth.

Life stayed the same within but changed without.

His wife popped rapidly in and out

while ghosts of roaches fat and stout

flashed across the kitchen grout.

The slanting glinty dusty gout

that told the sun's descending route

blew through the hues of rainbow trout.

Cried the wife, 'Get up, get up, you lazy lout!

or I'll call Dr. Oosterhaut.'

But Merv could not discern her twittered shout

as she tried and tried to flex her clout.

Merv thought, 'What's this speeding up about?

The world's escaping me, no doubt.

It's raining all around my drought.

Over and over.' Over-and-out.

The greatest love of all

2009-02-13T01:58:00.000-08:00

Calm down, you tell yourself, take it easy. You're doin' fine. Just relax and go to sleep. If nothing else, you'll always have me, your self. Really? Well what are you doing tonight? Tonight I'm busy. Tonight I've got to rest up, I have a big day tomorrow. I do too, but I'd rather sleep with you, baby. Look, I've got to go. Why? I'll talk to you later. When?

motion sustained

2009-02-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

the park's covered in fallen blankness

and winter trees radiate

like struck mirrors

unannounced, the picture begins to move

an airliner eases in
you can see its windows, and

out of desire you project yourself through one of them

between an Indian woman speaking quietly to her baby

and her mustachioed husband, who reads on his BlackBerry

how divine to live at the end of one's gaze

as though it were the tip of an antenna

down here, the body stands for the past

which, rest its soul and all, is fetid and festering

after a short while, right, you sicken of anything

and so you go for walks

or you pace, give chase

to yourself

i'm not much for travel someone says

and you see me i'm dumbfounded

i say that's what separates us from the trees

and i return to my poem

trees are incapable of loving

because they don't feel this pain at their own presence

er their leaves are alive, maybe those do

but it's they who shake as though harnessed

Morning

2009-01-29T14:10:00.000-08:00

Wake up at three p.m. Feel the departure of all sorts -- killers, waitresses, presidents and children. A grey-haired man with an earring makes eye contact as he leaves. They've all spent the night in there, hanging out, poking around. You want them to tell you that they approve, that you'd make a fine leader of men, that you won't be subject to any of their terrible inquisitions, but they leave without a word.

Moment or minute

2009-01-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

'How can any particular compare,'

said a saint who had loved you

and moved on,

'to the great Everything? I close my eyes and I feel it.'

Once, at our old apartment,

you hit me in the balls without explanation.

We both cried privately, absurdly.

Years later I've found you where you're living in Lancaster.

We take places on your bare,

altar-like mattress. I kneel over you, exalting

in the inevitable

Moon-blue glow from tiny nightlight, window's

shape sliding over your belly as car

passes, your burning

skin. Divisions

in the sum of all things.

A penguin alone looks over the ice shelf and thinks about going for a swim

2009-01-23T01:19:00.000-08:00

A light glows. It begins to flash. Explosion-implosion. It slows exploding, and in the void, a rock grows trees. Three historical eras -- Blue, Yellow, and Red -- go by, green and orange in between. Six years pass, ten seconds. An alarm rings. You move a muscle on your cheek. Someone gets up to leave. Time wants to stop but can't. It whimpers, allows itself a whimper, knowing it's hopeless. All feel a moment of déjà vu before time is whipped again and staggers on and the sun is hoisted up the sky.

Nature poem

2009-01-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

The Santa Mannabo wind
that slams the leafy sidewalk like a big invisible boot;
the airborne seeds of silvermoss;
the Cassian candelabra trees in the wintry park,
upswept, like the fine hairs of a love triangle;
the lark-a-doo,
coming to rest outside my window;
the scarlet fritillary that shivers in the San Bonobo wind;
the lazy turtleduck;
the slizzgrass and autobush and upsoil;
the California reefer bug
strolling with the Hackensack rockworm --
folding coasts;
the still-green blubberfruit, slam-dancing in the iridescent light
of March;
the electro-leaf;
the racktard stophopper;
the Saint Bonerowner wind
tripping accidentally over a stump;
the underwear beetle waking from a nap;
the wrinklerat shaking his head slowly;
the swamp-man
and his four beautiful children;
Mother Nature humping a hill like a pillow;
the clown-faced ant baby;
Eutamias minimus biting the head off of Allocricetulus curtatus --
watching this through an X-ray machine;
the partybird and skeeptile;
the smug-ass loggers
flung into space by Stove Bonecus the Wind.

Subway poem

2008-12-04T09:17:00.001-08:00

What if the subway announcer could hear herself
calling through the old speaker like one chicken

in a fiery barn full of choking chickens?
Would she say, Oh no, oh no,
what a waste?
Would she say, I am a diarist then,
of stops and service changes?
Or would she say, How like any human calls
mine are. A woman pushes a stroller,
and the sound is like crackling fire as its wheels
unstick grit from the ground.
Crackle-ta-crackle crack!

Lamentation

2008-12-02T08:47:00.001-08:00

I curse myself, curse myself, curse myself

for not getting the omelet.

Bed-Stuy poems

2008-11-13T18:02:00.000-08:00

Little black bird
Picking at a chicken bone
He plucked from a puddle

Hands at your sides
Eyes on the pavement
Smile at your neighbor

Up the stairs
At Myrtle-Willoughby
Are those pants chafing?

Drips from the ceiling
Rats getting brazen
Where is the G train?

America's Army

2008-09-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

As a boy, I used to spend entire weekends at my town's brand new, state-of-the-art video arcade, lobbing bombs at terrorist command centers. Every now and then, just for shits, I'd frag an ice cream truck, a school bus, or a baseball game. Years later I read that the arcade had been a property of the American military, and the images on my screen had all corresponded to real bombs and targets in southern Iran. I felt that my will had been hijacked. Worse still, as time went by I couldn't help seeing parallels between this crisis and other aspects of my life.

I once coveted my brother's wife, for example, and the two of us used to nurture our love in secret. Because it felt like a dream, because we assumed it would never see daylight, because we thought we were stealing moments out of time and sealing ourselves off, we felt free to act with abandon. But we had been wrong. Our affair grew until it broke through its crust and terrified a crowd of onlookers, which included my young nephew. And as it turned out, to my surprise, I didn't really love the woman after all. She tried to marry me, civilians perished, etc.

Or this. When I was in high school, I developed a rabid obsession with the 1950s actor James Dean. I watched his movies regularly and I studied his whole life history. As I fantasized about my future life -- from my lowly, lowly vantage point -- it was always checked against the life of James Dean. When I reached my late twenties, I paused to assess my situation. I had indeed risen from the onanistic doldrums of my high school years. Just like my onetime hero, I was an amateur car racer and had experimented with homosexuality. I was making inroads into a local acting troupe. I realized at this juncture that I no longer even liked James Dean. This was all wrong. My fantasy was never supposed to succeed, especially not in this perverse, halfling fashion. Was I an insane person? Whoever thought I should be given mastery over the course of a life?

Scenes from memory

2008-07-14T18:27:00.001-07:00

We were driving up to Georgia along the gulf coast and we were both pretty drunk. You were wearing the dolphin earrings that you’d stolen from the last rest stop. You kept trying to correct the wheel, but you were drunker than I was and so we sent a few oncoming cars careening off the road as they tried to avoid us. I told you to stop or I’d turn the car toward the sea and keep going. You sat there quietly. After a while the car rolled harmlessly into a watery ditch, but it was only because I’d been watching you run your fingers over your bottom lip in a sort of rapture.

By coincidence, I was behind your car on the St. John’s Highway. I saw you stop and let a prostitute inside with you. Back at home, the liquor cabinet was empty. I went to my stash, but you'd drank all that, too. I stood in your room and sang quietly. I shot your gun out the window. Why was the wreath I’d made you broken on the floor, why was it partially burned? I imagined you lighting some gin on the wicker and then just staring into the fire, drunk and suddenly transcending your own life. I slept that night in your bed, which smelled so much like you -- rotten wood, stale tobacco -- that I was glad I could enjoy it alone.

You were sleeping heavy off Xanax and vodka. I pulled up one of your eyelids and looked into your iris. It was darting around like you were frightened of me. I’d expected your eye to tell me something about you, but I had no idea what it was seeing. You'd gotten mascara all over my fingers. I poured a cold Mr. Pibb out onto your face, but you still would not wake up. This is bullshit, I thought.

We’d taken a weekend in the Carolinas. Swimming behind waterfalls, fucking in the clovers, nuzzling your dirty neck under the stars. I watched you stand tall and draw from your wine jug or smoke while looking at the sun and I thought, Magnificent. You made me feel like I was born to be a woman of the trees and to touch the Smokey Mountain sky. On the way back, we stopped at an overlook. You stood there on the edge of the cliff, looking out. The big world curved below you. I took a drink and passed the bottle to you. I’ll admit I wanted to end it right there in that last perfect moment. It would have been so easy to just lean on you unexpectedly. I took deep breaths and pictured your whole fall. In the end, I didn’t do it. Forensic technology is amazing these days, plus I could have never faced your family.

You were out downtown somewhere with your sister from West Virginia. I don’t remember why, I was bored I guess, but I picked a pair of your panties up off the floor and tried them on. Then I found the blue lacy bra that went with them and I hooked that on. It was pulled pretty tight. I sat there with my penis tucked underneath me and I rubbed my hairy thighs. It was scary because I felt like I’d left my body. Then I imagined me, the man, lowering himself into me, putting his hands on me. I couldn’t wait for you to come home. I changed back into my regular clothes and waited in the big chair across from the door. You had said you’d be back at one a.m. I had a bottle of Jim Beam and a glass that I was filling. One o’ clock passed without incident, and by one forty-five I wasn’t even a little bit horny any more. At three thirty you finally came home and that’s when I threw that bottle of Jim Beam against the wall.

There will be no divorce

2008-07-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

CHARACTERS, in order of speaking lines:

Peter
Mincent
George
Autumn

SET

The interior of an embalming room. A brawny, hirsute man in a work shirt and slacks stands over the the work table, facing the audience. Beside him is a boy, slight in stature, who fidgets constantly. A dead woman lies on the work table, covered up to the neck with a thin cloth that leaves little to be imagined vis-a-vis the curves of her shapely body. A lateral red gash splits her forehead. At stage left, there is a door. The man, Peter, begins to speak in a thick Eastern European accent.

PETER: What kind of a mother, Minnie, names her boy child Minnie?

MINCENT: It's short for Mincent, Uncle Peter. And I like to go by Mince. I told you.

PETER: In Kirkusk, the men have name which end with a heavy sound: "Er." "Um." "Og."

Mincent regards him with puzzlement, disquiet.

PETER: Now. Let us begin with the lip. [Swabs an applicator in a color palette, in a section of vivid red.] It is important for the lip that you pick a strong color. This is where the most change occurs after death. In life, there is much blood here. [His voice grows gradually softer, and he begins applying the color.] Is very sensitive in life. Important, also, to be gentle. So gentle. Yes.

The door opens, and Peter is startled out of his reverie. A clean-cut young man stands in the doorway with his hand on the knob.

PETER: Hello, Georgie. Please to meet my nephew Minnie.

GEORGE: Good to meet you, Minnie. [To Peter] He helping you out today?

PETER: Yes. He is my intern. Fifteen years old. Wants to be someday a makeup artist. [His tone grows lively.] A very fancy makeup man!

GEORGE: Well, Peter, I just wanted to say that if you have any second thoughts at all about preparing Autumn -- about preparing this one for viewing, I can get someone else. Or I can do it myself, you know.

PETER: Thank you, Georgie. But is better this way, I think.

GEORGE: As you wish. Nice to meet you, Minnie.

MINCENT: Mince.

PETER: Mince. Goodbye.

George leaves. Peter works in silence for a minute or two. The boy looks around, fidgets, now and again recaptures his own attention and watches what Peter is doing. He speaks up.

MINCENT: Are you sure you're okay with this, Uncle Peter?

PETER: [sets down his instruments] Yes. [Mincent seems uncomfortable in the silence that follows as Peter looks into an invisible distance.] She was my wife, and I want only to serve her for as long as I can. This, Minnie, is my last chance. [Yet he does not continue working and instead maintains his ruminative pose. Minnie leans forward over the table in an attempt to see his eyes.]

PETER: You know, she did not really love me. [He grips the corpse's leg firmly above the knee] One day, she tell me this. Probably she fell in love with yoga teacher or something. But it's not important, so much. You know she have the herpes, Minnie? Yes, it's true. Big ones.

MINCENT: Uncle Peter, I don't want to hear about that.

PETER: Oh, she have so many health problems. Had to wear diaper all the time. Penguin skin. And feet like old clay, with the cracks that ooze yellow. I did not allow her shoes off when I am in the room, even when we make love, which we did always all the time.

AUTUMN: Ha!

PETER: And did you know, Minnie-boy, that she was legally retarded? When she was born --

MINCENT: Uncle Peter, what was that?

PETER: Was what?

AUTUMN: Don't listen to him, Mince. He's a murderer.

PETER: YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

MINCENT: Uh, what's going on here?

PETER: I married a cold, a cold woman.

AUTUMN: I'll tell you what's going on. [for the next several lines, addresses Mincent and the audience alternately] I fell in love with a man who was sweet, wealthy, and built like a gladiator, who talked all crazy but would melt my heart when he demanded "the cereal with marshmallow."

PETER: [quizzically] What? I prefer only that cereal.

AUTUMN: He would sing to me very softly. And the slightest reproach on my part would put him in tears. We were overcome with each other.

PETER: My vovooska.

MINCENT: What. The. Fuck.

AUTUMN: But then things started getting weird. One day, I found a bear pelt in the bedroom. He wanted me to wear it when we, you know...

PETER: [slowly, forcefully] When I was a boy, my mother would kill --

AUTUMN: Save it. Basically, he couldn't perform otherwise. Then it was a business suit with galoshes.

PETER: In Kirkusk, you must understand, the woman --

AUTUMN: And later, it was a balloon tied to my wrist so he could spot me in a crowd. Then he threw out all my shoes that didn't have heels. He installed closed-circuit TV around the house so he could see me pull up in the car.

PETER: Only for I prepare with soap and cologne!

AUTUMN: I felt positively imprisoned. We started fighting -- 12-round bouts that lasted till dawn. I whaled on his love until I thought I had it beaten. Then I told him I was leaving.

PETER: In Kirkusi: Dan lovosko mo hei-heijo. The wolves had me surrounded.

MINCENT: Wait, I thought you were still together when Aunt Autumn died ...

AUTUMN: So let me finish. I packed my things to leave, but I stayed the night because it was so late. When I got in my car the next day, there was a note on the passenger seat. It read: "Desolation in the jail, and yours also. With the lonely seal on the ice, it is possible only to drown. Maybe if you share your heart to me, I don't drunk, don't behave my passion. Too late goodbye." I couldn't understand it, so I just started the car and pulled out. Now I know it meant that I had to die for leaving him. I was the lonely seal.

MINCENT: Wait, if you didn't understand the note, how did you memorize it?

AUTUMN: Well, Mince, as a subjectivity, I could only know what I had perceived firsthand. But now, the "I" of Autumn Banks has dissipated and become part of "suchness." We -- void, nothingness -- are inherent in everything that comes from the void. So we are also everything, allowing a sort of total recall. As a non-existent, I am all-existent.

MINCENT: [tentatively] Okay.

PETER: Pah! I have something for your nothing, lady. You -- my everythingness. And now that you are awake again, you will not avoid me. Void that you say the thing [mumbles and trails off]

AUTUMN: As I was saying, I pulled out of the driveway and started down the road. Everything was normal until I couldn't stop at the red light, no matter how hard I slammed on the brake. That's when that pickup smashed into me.

MINCENT: He cut your brakes.

PETER: I make a small change, so the brake work at the first and at the last it stop.

AUTUMN: You destroyed my life.

PETER: I was a good husband.

AUTUMN: You drove me away and then murdered me.

PETER: I was a good husband. You were too stupid to know this.

MINCENT: I think I'm going to go now [makes to leave].

AUTUMN and PETER: No!

PETER: You should hear how I have suffer for this woman.

AUTUMN: No, you should learn who your father's brother really is.

MINCENT: I don't even get this. Are you a ghost or are you a zombie? Is your brain working again?

AUTUMN: There is a special relationship between the vibrational field of "consciousness" that you're interacting with now and this material body. But still it took an enormous effort to make this happen. Imagine a nuclear explosion in reverse -- energy condensing back into matter.

PETER: So what then? What you come back for? Perhaps to make love [softens his voice] for one last time?

AUTUMN: [considers him curiously for a moment] No.

PETER: What for, then? Why must I hear again your voice, which shakes my heart like so much nuclear exploding?

AUTUMN: I've come back for justice, to tell people that I was murdered, and to tell them who did it.

PETER: Who you will tell? Maybe I cut off your head right now, [crescendoing] say it was accidental while I shave your hairy neck!

AUTUMN: The boy will know. He'll tell them.

MINCENT: Do you think anyone would believe me? They already think I have emotional problems. Besides, even if Peter did go to jail, what would that do for you?

AUTUMN: Well I would know that he, uh --

MINCENT: For how long would you know? You just "collapsed into this earthly body" for the day or whatever. And even if you did know, then what? You'd still be dead. What's done is done.

AUTUMN: Justice is important, Mince. Someday, there... People... Pfah. You're a kid. You wouldn't understand.

MINCENT: I wouldn't understand what?

AUTUMN: I would -- He would go to jail, and then die there, and then I'd be... [to self] How would I...? It's justice! Okay? Mince? Ugh! Meaning is so fucking absurd! I don't know why I ever cherished life in the first place. Forget it. You know what? I'm out of here. [Body deanimates, falls to the table.]

For Peter and Mincent, suddenly struck with confusion, Autumn's collapse was a sort of reality check. Peter paces the room, possibly making his way out the door, but returns to his workstation. Mincent fidgets with some of Peter's instruments.

MINCENT: What should we do?

PETER: We continue the work.

Peter starts applying a putty to the gash on Autumn's forehead. Mincent appears frustrated that, despite a total aberration of reality, things seem to have gone back to normal without acknowledgment.

MINCENT: So, I mean, what was that about?

PETER: [looks at Mincent] Pretty wacky, huh?

MINCENT: [sighs in disgust, then, after a pause, resigns himself to the situation and begins to ruminate] Well do you think it's true then, Uncle Peter, what she said about the living world, about meaning and everything?

PETER: [takes a moment to form his thoughts] My ignorance, Minnie, is most precious to me. You understand this? If you are smart, you will follow this thinking.

Peter covers up the gash, sets his aside his instruments, and starts to leave the room. Mincent follows.

MINCENT: I can't believe you killed Aunt Autumn.

PETER: I am still in love with her.

MINCENT: Do you regret it? Killing her?

PETER: No. If she is alive, I think I am more heartbroken, because I know she is not with me.

MINCENT: Isn't that incredibly selfish?

PETER: Yes. [opens the door]

MINCENT: But is she really gone, anyway? I mean, we just --

PETER: [pauses with the door open] Minnie, stop your questions, huh?

MINCENT: Okay, but --

PETER: Stop? Stop. Come on.

They exit. The end.

Confessions

2008-07-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

My dear, sit down. Sit. It's all right. Sit down, I said. My darling Diana, please. Sit down here or I'll shoot you in the face.

With what? With this little charmer. Nice, huh?

Where did I get it? Where did I get it? The store. Listen. First of all, I want to tell you that you're right to suspect me of cheating. I have been. With four women. Five if you count finger-banging. One of them wants me to move with her to Norway. Or Peru or something, I forget. Hey, don't move. I don't want to see you move. My point is that I haven't taken any of their calls for a week. For at least three days. I'm through. See, I've done a lot of --

Oh, please. Please buck up. Hear me out, it's going to get better. C'mon. Oh do what you want. I've done a lot of thinking over the last few days. I haven't slept a wink. Here's the thing. They could all seven live with me in this house, semi-nude, servile. They're fascinating women, too. One is a Marshall-winning poet --

Good God! You sound like an ambulance! Hush, baby. Please. It's all right. Hush now. I'm talking. As I was saying, they could all seven live here with me. They could love me or hate me, fuck my brains out or line-edit my manuscripts. I'd still kill myself if you weren't around. I would. That was this little guy's first mission. See, you're going to get a phone call in a few days from a strange woman. She'll tell you some things, some of them true. But I know, I know if I can get you to sit here long enough and hear me out, that won't matter. Once all my heart's revealed, and this is the only way I can do it, you'll forgive me. Pay no attention, darling, to my little tear. He's just escaping through the window from a burning vessel. Oh Diana, don't you know? You're the only thing I can possibly conjure feeling for. I've written you a sonnet, love. I wrote you three, actually, plus two lyric poems and a more free-form piece which I'll sing for you at the piano later tonight. But this first sonnet introduces the series. Ahem.

"Your hair reminds me of a warm safe place
Where as a child I'd hide and pray
For the thunder and the rain to --"

No. Uh uh. Sit down. Darling I'll shoot you. In the leg. Just listen to the whole thing, it gets better. Turn around. Fine, don't turn around, the easier to shoot you. I'm sorry about the first few lines, if you don't like them. In fact I didn't even write them. Diana. Don't you dare touch that knob. I'll shoot you through the door. I'm going to do it. I'll. Oh. Oh, no. ... Careful on the stairwell, Diana! I'll call you!