A door like a mouth
in the skull of a hill,
and above it, two holes in the earth
like eyes.

I didn’t pause, I stepped inside.

My brain rashed –
so I touched the curved walls,
and scratched each expanse,
& my nails gathered clay
in cool heaps.

My eyes pricked –
so I packed the room’s holes
with soil and sod,
clipping light streams dead
like spigots
cut water to drips.

My heart noised –
so I shut the room’s door
and poured full the dark
with language so dense
that it buried the blare
I’d entered with.

My thoughts seared –
so I dug down after cold
in hill-bones,
and wombed there, a bug,
and am wombing there still,
until chrysalis

or fossil.

The Blonde was in the tent, tall and lean, in the soft dark tent with the rest of us. We sat on cushions and blankets in a circle.

I felt strong & eager. My name was chosen for me: Garantan. Our names were created by the Blonde, based on nothing we were allowed to know.

Outside the snow was everywhere, fine & powdery & always falling. It felt like Maine, but no one knew for sure where we were.

Details emerged: we had been flown up to this wooded place: $1000 apiece to be a part of the colony. One by one we were to be eliminated until only the winner was left. We didn’t know what was to be won. We just knew there had been no other option but to accept this and come.

And so this name-choosing in this tent, this was part of the introductory ceremonies. The Blonde presided over them all. We feared her and wanted her, all of us, regardless of age or sex.

The days passed and I felt so radiant, so connected with everyone in the colony, even as I knew we’d soon be trying to outdo and eliminate each other with whatever viciousness was required of us. This harmony was in my skin and fingers. I wanted everyone’s eyes and laughter, even their hidden feelings, their secret hates. I wanted more and more of it. I wasn’t afraid of anything.

And yet I knew what my flaws had been. I knew in the beginning I had been almost pompous where everyone else had been humble. When I’d chosen my sacred words to represent me, I had picked colorful, audacious words, uncaring. And it had been noticed.

Still, I was often shy & scared, and I didn’t mind showing it. I got closer to people through this, and I knew it helped me advance further in the competition. I didn’t want to bury anyone, just paint as loudly as possible while exulting in everyone else’s colors too.

Time passed and I realized how many people from my daily life were there: coworkers, neighbors. So many faces I recognized. And as the contest drew closer to its end, our ideas of our importance swelled.

 (Read More . . .)

I’m at some small party, in a house I don’t recognize.

A man, disheveled, mushmouthed with drink, is suddenly standing at the doorway.

He holds forth on why drinking’s no good. “You get too focused on the abstract,” he says, wet-lipped, florid-jowled. It lifts one into Foggy, Lofty, Philosophical Circles, he tells me. It orbits one out of the normal grounded details of everyday life. Instead of talking to people about normal things, you get to talking about big capital letter concepts: Love, Art, Law and Truth. He shakes his head in time with his harangue in hearty thespian punctuation.

Four or five friends of mine are there, watching me nod patiently. Their presence & judgment behind me feels massive and claustrophobic.

I want to claw a pit out of the carpet, into the earth, and squirm into it like a scurrying beetle. To be anywhere but here, suffering these slurred homilies.

He and I go into my room together, where with dread I expect him to discourse further.

Hulking, goofy-eyed, he lurches into my room, sweeping bottles off my dresser with a meaty forearm.

But it’s not all alcohol, I tell him, alarmed, watching the bottles crash. Only one little bottle of Vodka, I tell him. One bottle.

He looks at me with gentle reprimand in his eyes. It’s an almost magical transformation. His features all come together in knowing fatherly disapproval, nothing ogreish or condescending or ironic.

Just a warm & inviting urge for me to do better in his eyes.

Unable to bear this, the core of me blackens.