#januariad

On the Street, There Is a Corner

He played every day at 4 o’clock.

Laundry dried, paving stones listened, coffee in small cups chilled on windowsills, on cafe counters, on streetside tables. Cigarette smoke wafted, blown by breath or breeze, dogs were held and hushed and narrow streets cradled his music. School children quieted their shrieking, ran around him like a stone in their river, his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched around a battered violin. On the body was a scratch, on the neck a name half-carved, an A, two N’s and another A. Play to the streets, old man. Play to the stones. Play to the children and the laundry drying overhead. Play to the ladies leaning on their windows and the other old men with black coffee cooling in small cups by their elbows. Play to the empty air and the casual wind. Play to the corner just behind you, the one you haven’t looked at in years.

At 3:30 every afternoon, the old man walks backwards from his home just a few doors away, sets down his case and takes out his violin. Tunes and plays and keeps his eyes closed to never catch an accidental view, not in puddle or carried mirror, not in sunglasses or the glossy surface of a green or brown eye passing him on that narrow street. A deep breath and shaken fingers, he sets the air on music and plays his gentle flames up and down the buildings. A corner never looked at, a turn taken only once. On it there is no storefront, no window. There is a crack in one of the stones, on another there is carved a heart, and at the base there is a rusty gutter wrought of iron and damp with light morning rain. He never looks but sees still the footprints on that street made by small shoes that stepped in a puddle, wetting small socks, small ankles. They are always damp, those prints, always just seconds from fading in the sun that comes out at 4 o’clock.

Ear cocked, head tilted, fingers nimble upon the strings, he listens for small footsteps, excited clicks upon the stone, a sing-song voice calling out his name. He barely hears the music that he plays to the corner he never looks at, to a street full of people that, like him, have not forgotten the reason that he plays.

Not yet.

Chains

Chains are a funny thing. My daddy used to talk about ‘em all the time. Chains. We got these fascinations with them, Daddy used to say that when I was just a tyke. I’m old now, but don’t you look at me like that, there was a time when my hair was meant for bows. Metal bent and worked and linked into other metal, flexible and strong. Armor, bondage, criminal, jewelry, sailing, battle, loss of freedom, slavery. We humans love, love, love our chains. Love our limitations. Sometimes we hate them. Sometimes for the good of all they have to be broken, just split and beat and melted to slag. If they’re just a metaphor or not.

But other times you gotta build ‘em strong, build ‘em big so they’ll never get snapped, never get broken. So they’ll hold forever. Heh. Nothing holds forever.

When you gotta chain up a monster, you need strong chains. When you gotta bind down something so big it’ll destroy you if you let it, you build those chains so big and so strong that the weight of ‘em’ll hold that thing down no matter how sharp its teeth or how long its wings. We broke the chains on god because we needed the iron. Let that go. Let that big old love-and-punishment-for-all float off into the ether of idea and imagination where it belongs. It’ll still listen if you ask right, but I hear results are unpredictable when you go speaking to the sky.

My daddy told me about that. He was there when they clipped the chain, when links fell to earth with a noise like nothing else. They rust now, deep at the bottom of the canyon they made when they dropped. God chains. Daddy told me and I know it’s true because he built the chains that hold the truth after we lost our grip. After it grew too big and strange with all these people tugging and cutting and carving and stretching. Iron. Iron rusts eventually, but iron is best he told me. Pure iron. Hammered and shaped and with the other lads in the mill. No more boats, no more guns, no more horseshoes. We mined the earth until it would never turn red again and when my father coughed and hacked on his deathbed it smelled like a smithy in his room. If it was iron, it went to the chains and leaders talked in panic and people called the house and my father wiped the sweat off his brow and put his hat back on and simply said.

“It’ll get done.”

Solid people to build solid things. We needed that then. We still need it, but people are forgetting so you listen good here while I take these last sweet breaths. You smell that in the air? Sharp? Salty? High in your nose like tall sky, recent failure and creeping fear? That’s it. You smell it. I can tell, youngster. You smell it. Good. Hold to that smell, and I’ll tell why.

That’s rust.

My daddy built those chains heavy and he built them strong, but they’re rusting just the same. You better see to them. If they snap? If they break?

You’ll never get them back on again.

He Was Ours

They found the egg in a basket between the Twin Towers, the ribbons tied to the handles ruffling in the winds that met and mated and procreated through the glass, stone and steel canyons of the Financial District. Speckled with pink, purple and peuce, the egg would vibrate when complimented and went still near loud noises. They kept it swaddled in cotton blankets knitted by the scientists’ and naturalists’ grandmothers and aunts and even uncles. They bathed it in heat and warmth, and encircled the egg with their arms. They lay their cheeks onto the smooth, warm shell and hummed to whatever was growing inside. They would say ‘you are safe’ and they would also say ‘you are loved.’

It hatched.

It let its first screech onto the world, the warbling sound nothing like the deafening, bowel-loosening roar it would grow into. The women and men who cared for it held it and kept it from the cameras and attention and made sure that the first thing the beast felt was safety.

An evolutionary breakthrough, a walking, living bit of proof.

No, not proof. A loved one.

It grew and ate cows. The city put forth a subsidy for farms to raise more steer.

It was New York City’s monster and no matter the government writ or national pressure or lines of impatient scientists who wanted a chance to poke and prod, they did not allow it. The beast grew and grew and grew. It stalked the streets and tourists came from all over to meet the tame monster of New York and offer it chunks of raw beef sold skewered on long sticks so they could feed it safely. The monster was a delight for small children. Other leaders expressed fear. The Pentago quietly trained a team of pilots in case the beast developed a taste for buildings and pedestrians. Their generals watched monster movies over and over again. The president took pictures with it.

Then the monster knocked over a building.

It’s handlers shouted at it and it cowed its great head, and lowed and was sorry, hiding behind its paws. What was wrong with, they asked? Nobody had ever seen a lizard the size of a skyscraper. Nobody knew what to do.

Then they hit upon it.

They cleared half of Broadway. They built buildings from cardboard, cheap wood and tin. The entire city pitched in for the month, it was a celebration. When it was time, they unleashed their monster and ran screaming and laughing before it. The beast bellowed and smashed the fake buildings in delight and was tossed meat by the crowds running in mock terror.

Their monster wriggled, jumped and danced.

At the end it curled up in its place between the great heatlamps they’d built for it and fell into a deep, happy slumber.

It was their monster, and they were never going to give it up.

Helluva title right? Got you listening. Gets everybody listening. I expect that’s why Decky Edwards, we all call him the Vicar, says shit like that out loud to perfect strangers in the bar.

“I was kidnapped by sirens and they replaced my left nut with a mechanical ball that plays a song.”

It’s not like you just turn away from some shit like that, no matter how jaded and New York you think you are, somebody starts talking shit like the Vicar does and you can probably hear the cows back home mooing, right? Smell mom’s apple pie?

First time he said it, Mark and Sej, this Albanian fuckin’ madman, wanted to know why police and firemen’d been messing with the Vicar’s nuts. In Sej’s case it mighta just been a translation thing, or if we’re talking about Sej and Mark put together, a vocational thing, or a public school thing.

“Sej, the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.

“He says his fuckin’ bole has a siren.”

“No, he means sirens fucked with his testicle.” I said.

“Right. And I want to know, police or fireman?”

Mike nudges Sej. “Why not ambulance? Ambulances got sirens.”

“That is a good point. They’d have all the shit you need too.” Sej says. “Hey, Vicar, why’d an ambulance fuck up your bole, bro?”

It sounds like a joke some shitty kid would tell you. “Why did the ambulance fuck up your nuts?” I let it go. I correct that shit and I’m gonna end up with some permanent fuckin’ nickname like Bookworm or Librarian. What? You think not? We been calling this one dude Fuckface for so long I don’t even know what his real name is. For all I know when he gets pulled over, 5-0 is like: “Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr. Face?” But it wasn’t the cops and it wasn’t the fuckin’ firemen, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an ambulance, but to be honest those things scare the shit outta me so I’m not ruling it out that the Vicar got drunk or something and they picked him up to put a kazoo in his nutsack or whatever.

Then one night, the Vicar turns on his barstool and says to me.

“You seem like a smart kid. Not a fool like these alcoholics.”

“That fuckin’ tomato juice in your glass, Vicar?”

“I want to tell you a true story.”

This is kinda why we call him the Vicar. Least, I think that’s where it comes from. He gets fuckin’ hammered and wants to have fuckin’ storytime with you like I imagine some priest is when he wants you to come to his office after mass to show you these great comic books he’s got about Special Jesus. “It’s just like Spiderman.”

Trust me, kids, it ain’t just like fuckin’ Spiderman.

“I used to be a sailor.” The Vicar tells me.

“What like sailboats and shit?”

“Don’t play with me, kid. You’re not that fuckin’ dumb.”

I sipped from my drink and ordered another one from Fausto behind the bar. His hands shook so much he could fuckin’ probably carbonate whiskey. “Have one for yourself too, Fausto, before you fuckin’ drop something,” I told him.

“I had a beautiful boat. The sun would turn the wood to gold.”

“You used to be rich, or what, Vicar?”

“No. Maybe. That’s a relative question, kid.”

“So what? You had this boat.”

“I was sailing off the coast of Greece. Near the islands there.”

“Only thing I know about Greece, Vicar is those fuckin’ sandwiches nobody knows how to say their name right.”

“Smartass. You wanna hear this story or not?”

“Yeah, sure.”

And the Vicar said:

The wind died and the moon turned the islands silver. I didn’t mind just drifting, my ears empty of waves and wind. The boat talked, like they do. Creaking. Groaning. Settling its beautiful bones. Then I heard this melody. Figured it was coming from the shore. It got louder and louder. My ears were filled with it, shrieking and screaming beautiful. My teeth rattled in their sockets, two fillings popped loose and I nearly drowned in the musty smell of feathers. Then the sound stole the sky, it stole everything. I fell into darkness.

When I woke up, the moon was nearly gone and the sun was starting to burn the horizon. I spat my two filling out onto the deck. It wasn’t until later that I heard the same sound, a smaller version, coming from, well, my pants.

There’s my story.

“You trying to tell me you got roofied by sirens. Real sirens.”

The Vicar nodded.

“Bullshit.”

“Where’s your sense of magic, kid?”

“Special Jesus stole it.”

“What?”

“You’re fulla shit, Vicar.”

Then this motherfucker does the damndest thing. He asks Fausto for a glass of fucking water. And starts humming this little tune. Really catchy, I think I heard on KTU once. But then he starts slowly drinking the water and the tune keeps going, and I realized it’s not even coming from his mouth. It’s coming from, well, down there.

He winks at me over the rim of his glass and keeps drinking.

The little tune keeps going. I swear to Christ, I’m halfway leaned it toward the Vicar’s junk when I finally snap out of it. I gulp my drink.

“Cute trick, Vicar.”

“It’s a gift and a curse.”

Fausto snorts and says in his quavery voice. “It’s bullshit too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, fuck you, Fausto.” The Vicar said like a little fuckin’ kid you take his toy away.

“He’s a fuckin’ failed ventrilo-something. Dudes with the fuckin’ puppets. He got drunk in here one night and told me.”

I start laughing. “Man, fuck you, Vicar. You keep fuckin’ around with those puppets they’re gonna put you on a registry.”

“They weren’t puppets.”

“What?”

“I said they weren’t really puppets. They were something quite different.”

Fausto shook his head and started dumping glasses into the sink, making more noise than he normally did.

“I’ll tell you about it.” The Vicar said.

“Tell you what, Vicar, you can tell me about how you’re gonna pick up my tab before I tell all the guys you play with dolls.”

“Hey, Fausto. Can I settle up?”

Fifteen Things to Do With a Llama in New York City

1) Take it to Katz’s, ask for a plate of lettuce. When the guy behind the counter gets pissy offer to pay double and then order an egg cream and a pastrami sandwich. Don’t let the llama drink any of the egg cream. Gives ‘em the trots. Eat the sandwich. Assure the llama he doesn’t know anybody in the salamis behind the counter. Probably. Be convincing. Llamas hold a grudge.

2) Take him to the Central Park Zoo. Tell him he’d better behave on this trip or you’re gonna sell him to the petting zoo. Be ignored. Llamas don’t speak English, dummy. Buy him a pretzel and an I Heart New York shirt. Don’t make him wear it. He bites.

3) Stop gendering the llama. Maybe it’s a girl. Make the pronoun in the next several entries “she.” Buy the llama more lettuce so that it doesn’t get cranky.

4) Take her on the Staten Island Ferry, point out the Statue of Liberty and tell her all about Ellis Island and how people used to get to this country on steamships. Realize the llama still doesn’t give a shit because she still doesn’t speak English. More lettuce.

5) Stretch this list out because you titled it fifteen before you started running out of ideas.

6) Listen to the guys on the Staten Island Ferry talk about the llama.

“Is that a fuckin’ alpaca?”

“Nah, that’s a donkey.”

“It’s not a donkey. It’s a fuckin’ alpaca. My wife knits, bro. I should fuckin’ know.”

Inform them that it’s a llama. They’ll argue with you and tell you it’s a camel. Tell them it’s really an Afghan hound. They’ll ask you what their grandma’s old blankets have to do with the wild animal who has just stolen an old man’s cap and is running around the ferry with him in enraged, limping pursuit.

7) Get the hat back for the old man. Careful. The llama bites, remember? So does the old man.

8) Take the llama on a cab ride around New York City, tell her to pretend you’re both in a submarine and she’s the periscope. Tell her to watch out for Russian submarines. Tell her all the public buses are Russian submarines. Expect her to freak out about how big the Russian submarines are and how many are on the road with you, but remember the llama still doesn’t speak any English other than “snack.”

9) Take the llama to the Empire State building and suggest you visit the observation deck. Tell the llama the elevator is broken and you’ll have to take the stairs. The llama will snort and toss its head. You’re learning to speak llama. This is llama for “fuck you.” Wonder if the llama is learning to speak English.

10) Realize you’ve made a huge error when you see the police officers at the top of the deck. One of them shouts. Make a daring escape through the building, down stairs and elevators and service lifts, the llamas hooves clip-clopping on the linoleum floors.

11) The police are after you. Find one of them alone and command the llama to take the cop out. Have you ever seen a llama head butt a guy? A llama uses his whole neck and since its brain is about the size of a prematurely born walnut, there’s a lot of skull to hit with. Take off the cop’s vest and his gun. Strap the vest onto the llama. You don’t want your llama getting shot, do you? Keep the gun. You’re going to need it.

12) Storm the nearest bank. Tell people the llama is a camel and member of Al Qaeda and is thus not fucking around. As the people stream out of the bank, prepare to make your stand in the back. Try to pull the llama behind cover, but realize that even laying down, its head sticks up above the counter. Realize that you have a serious logistical problem and move the llama behind a pillar.

13) When the cops line up outside scream “You’ll never take me alive, pigs!” Poke the llama and get it to bray at them. That bray is llama for “Que nunca me toma vivo, puercos!” Perhaps the llama would understand you better if you spoke Spanish. Realize that in this era of globalization, there is no guarantee that the llama is from South America at all. Even if he is, he might only speak Quechua.

14) Scream at the llama, “Stay here, I’m gonna make my last stand!” The llama will say “Okay, bro.” In confusion as to whether the llama learned English or you learned llama, run out to confront the police in a hail of gunfire. Get shot.

15) As they’re loading what’s left of you on a stretcher to take you to Bellevue Hospital, overhear one cop say to another: “Is that a camel or what?”

“I think it’s an ostrich.”

Call out, “It’s a fucking, llama!” Expire in peace, your mission is completed.

The Building

The half-broken building is a black shadow in the red dawn. The young man climbs the steps and scaffolds, lugs tools up two final ladders. Routine steps and routine fingers, routine hands hold routine positions. Here is his handprint on the dusty brick from yesterday, and the day before and the day before. Here are his boot prints, here are the marks from his jackhammer.

His tools roar. They are hungry. They bite chips and shards from the building. People must pass by below and the sun overhead, men must work by his side. That is the way of jobsites. He smashes, feet firm upon the thing he destroys. He stops for lunch in the middle of the day, and drinks coffee from his thermos. That is the way of working.

A whistle must blow. He climbs down ladders, steps and scaffolds. Other men talk around him, make jokes, light cigarettes. They must, after all. Work must have an end.

Dusk has turned the sky red. The young man sighs. The building looks the same. Surely that whole day, something was accomplished. Days begin and end, in between things become different under power of will. They must. Surely that is the way of working. Nothing can change that.

Up on that dusty brick wall, a handprint fades from sight as the sky fades from red to black.

Useless Words in Different Languages

He always passed the psych eval. Every year. Not just anybody got hired for this work. The month leading up to the test, he’d read the right books and go on a trip. Maybe stare at a dandelion in a field for an hour and listen to his breath rattle in his ears. He’d measure a square foot of turf and count every struggling blade of grass on it and give each one a name. So far, he’d named 4,435 blades of grass Jerry. There were fifty Jerries on his lawn, one for every square foot, and he’d begun to stare covetously at his neighbor’s yard.

He’d take his test. He’d go to work. Night shift at the button. Every night. 6pm to 6am. All was well. All would always be well. But there were times...

Seeing a therapist was out of the question and they’d know if you were dosing something that polished the edges. Any funny little white pills, any orange bottles with people named Dr. on the label, they’d know and that was it. He needed the job. Important job. So he stared at dandelions, he named grass, he learned how to say useless words in different languages. Floccinaucinihilipilification, in English, was the act of considering something unimportant.

A thermos of coffee, a packed lunch, a paperback book.

Walls of instruments, panels of buttons, carpet of industrial gray.

6pm, 7pm, 8pm, and on and on.

The red phone next to his hand rang and he snatched it with sweaty hands.

“Yes. All is clear.”

He hung up the phone and turned to stare at a pair of round red buttons. One marked “spin” and the other marked “stop.”

He sighed with his hand hovering over “stop.” It would be so easy, like watching you watch wind down at the speed of one hundred. He breathed in, he heard it rattled. There were fifty Jerries on his lawn. The dandelion flower is actually a tightly packed mass of many tiny florets, and each petal represents a single flower all of its own.

He pressed the button marked “spin,” exhaled and picked up his book to wait for the next call at 7pm.