Poem: Eulogy for the Vampire Story

I want to write a vampire story
but what is left to say?
What could one more iteration of a premise
even as poignant as eternal thirst
contribute to the ambient hum of b-movie plots
and abstinence parables behind it?
Its ubiquity is a true shame, the vampire story,
for who has not known
the tragedy of unyielding desire?
Who among us
doesn’t crave an alter-ego through which to explore
those dark thirsts that drive us through object after object
in pursuit of something ineffable, which recedes
even as the horizon recedes?
Surely here’s a subject
Aristotle himself could unzip his pants to.
But our thirst, it seems,
has moved beyond vampirism; our fangs
retracted from a victim long since drained-
cast aside with all the other clichés
we’ve grown tired of hearing: love’s first kiss,
stories with sunsets, knights and happily-ever-afters.
And as I sit my weary heart down before this blank screen
I pause to wonder: just when did life get
so goddamn sweet?

Story: The Gnomes of Eden

I was gazing out the window when Jeff’s elbow suddenly dug into my ribs. “How bout that gnome, man?” His face was turned towards me, but his eyes fixed on a still figure crouched in a garden across the way.

“That is surely a gnome,” I answered and turned back towards evening. Outside, the steady hum of crickets was just beginning to call, but my attention to it was abstract; preoccupied by a startling sense that beneath my clothes I could feel my own nakedness- outside of them even- like I was back in the garden, on the verge of original sin, only the fall this time was backwards; a reverse stumble over the branching segments of human perception: its categories, its knowledge, its naming. Every opposition, sun and moon, hot and cool, seemed to occur now simultaneously, like an unfolded coin.

The sky alone was different- strangely soothing in its inconsistency. Like a murmuring stream the colors of evening drifted into one another: tidal shades of crimson rolling against the clouds, and swirls of amethyst deepening, then lightening. Reclining in my seat I watched it all absently, finding relief in the sky’s slow alternating rhythms; the steady breath of change… But then there were gnomes.

“I think I’m going to go get it,” Jeff said, suddenly recalling my thoughts.

“What?”

“The gnome, man. I’m going to go get that gnome. Don’t you want it with us?”

I shook my head and blinked, as if a pebble had just struck me on the forehead. “Get the gnome? Have you lost it?” I asked. But the syllables rang without conviction. The truth is I could not say whether it would be good or bad to have the gnome, and thus confused, I quickly became indifferent. “Just don’t let anybody see you.”

And so he crept carefully across the lawn towards the front garden. It was that moment of clarity which always occurs just before sunset, when things are most vivid. The grass bristled underfoot as he lifted the plaster figure from beneath a twisted tree, and there was a ridiculous strain on his face as he heaved it into the backseat and reclaimed his seat behind the steering wheel.

“Smooth,” I said, and he grinned as we slowly fled the scene, riding for a while in silence. I tried to think of something to say, something to distract me from the backwards tumble, but found myself unable to speak. There was a conversation in my head, but my imagination seemed to fill in both sides, so a confused silence settled between us.

At last one spoke:

“Can I have something to eat?”

“Fine with me,” I said.

There was a pause.

“What?” Jeff’s eyes left the road for a moment to scan my face.

“I said, ‘Food is fine with me’.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Jeff replied, annoyed, “but weren’t you the one who just asked for it?”

“No.”

And the next scene unfolded as if through a lens: A shot of Jeff and I in the front seat as the car comes slowly to a halt. Wide eyes turn and meet one another, exchanging glances before each gaze falls on a spot in the back seat where a plaster figure sits, hungry for French fries.

The scene snapped back suddenly into real-time as peels of laughter erupted from deep in our stomachs. Making a U-turn, Jeff sped off to Wendy’s, where still giggling, he ordered three bacon cheeseburgers and a large French fry. As he passed back the gnome’s portion the girl at the window didn’t seem to mind what must have been a rather strange spectacle. We drove off munching happily on our food.

Jeff and I had a difficult time eating though, finding ourselves constantly interrupted by spastic fits of laughter that caused us to cough and nearly choke now and then. But eventually we settled and continued to drive, the ability to differentiate slowly descending now like the distant glow of familiar lights.

Speech finally issued from the back seat after a little while, penetrating the comfortable reverie we’d allowed ourselves to slip into:

“Can I go back now?”

Our features froze with alarm as our sense of the situation suddenly dismantled. Something was wrong with the question, with the speaker we realized, and in another moment of cinematic unfolding we looked into the back seat and were horrified to find, not a plaster garden gnome, but a very live little girl!

“Holy shit!” I couldn’t tell whether it was something we’d actually said or just a flash of psychic cohesion- a thought, a vision of terror we found ourselves suddenly both inhabiting.
Jeff drove faster now, speeding through the winding, sub-divided network of pale houses until, guided by the little girl, we finally made it back to the familiar lawn with the bristling grass (now obscured by darkness).

An interior light shone in the windows, but nobody was in sight as Jeff got out of the car and knelt before the little girl. I sat wringing my hands in the front seat as he grasped her shoulder at arm’s length and produced from his pocket a crumpled wad of bills. “Look at me,” he said harshly, desperation distorting his voice. I could see beads of sweat gathering on his forehead, and upon the girl’s face was a terrifying expression of vacancy. “Here’s all the money I have in my pocket.” He placed the wad of cash in her hand, and still grasping her shoulder, held up a single finger in front of her face. “Now listen to me… You must never talk to strangers.” And his grip on her shoulder tightened. “Alright? Promise me… you must never talk to them.”

And pocketing the money, she nodded her head, returning without a word to her still position beneath the twisted tree. Interior lights continued to glow as Jeff and I drove away silently, eyes fixed ahead of us, neither looking back.

Poem: On Growing Up

I sometimes misread the poems you send me,
carried away occasionally upon a new
and unexpected voyage of meaning,
and arrive at next line breathless, exhilarated
until I recognize my mistake and nod once more
at the sound progression of your logic
sighing into the steam of my coffee.

It reminds me of when we were kids,
when huddled beneath a blanket you pointed
toward the stars. “That’s Cassiopeia!”
you whispered, pressing close
and tracing its shape with your finger
until looking past I watched one shining point
open into many- infinite figures
in the night’s geometry- and smiled.

You smiled too, thinking I’d seen
what you’d set out to show me, and together
we laughed until our eyes
were moist as the grass beneath us, content
in our understanding of one another.

Story: Chandni Chowk

*Here is an excerpt from a longer story I wrote upon returning from India called "A Journal of Things Held":

A haze of kerosene and petrol hung between vehicles at the traffic light, wavering in the air and bending the figures moving between cars selling every variety of book, magazine, flower, and sliced coconut; while others offered only good karma and the joy of giving.

A child staggered up beside me and the rickshaw driver cast him a sidelong glance, paying no further attention. There was an open wound on his shoulder- a laceration like a knife- and the hand he held out to me was also disfigured, mangled as if it had been broken over and over. He spoke something slow and in Hindi, ending with Please, and I reached into my pocket to find only a fifty rupee note, placing it delicately into his hand. I would have given more if I could spare it, but even so, I noticed the driver scoff and shake his head in the mirror. The boy held the money in his hand and made a small bow, thanking me in strung sentences that seemed to be neither Hindi nor quite English. And as the light turned green we continued our journey to India’s largest fort, built by the Mughul emperors and palace to centuries of Indian rulers.

We drove in silence for several moments, and the driver cast me several glances in the rearview mirror before he finally spoke. “The boy,” he began, having nearly to shout to be heard over the engine. “He do to himself.”

“What?” I shouted back.

“Himself…” He made slashing motions with his hands and rubbed his palm for money.

I nodded and didn’t say anything, wondering at the sensation I felt: that I’d been deceived. The boy had manipulated me. Shown me something that had not been done to him, but by him, and unknowingly I had been patron to this apparent tradition of self-mutilation. But after thinking about it for a while I am not so sure. Not at all, in fact.

Poem: Night Path

Rubbing our heels
we hardly notice
its will:
blades of grass bending
before each step,
the wet
shape of your foot
glowing white
in the dark.
For a moment
I wonder
if you can see me
through the ruined window
when licking your lips
the glass fogs
a moment
as we pass.

Poem: Contact

I remember the moment the world stopped,
enunciated by a final tick and the first
long gasp of silence

How we lay together
as our planet paused thoughtfully
marveling at its quiet; not so much as a cricket’s song
to share our whispering.

For years the world stayed this way
and we grew pale from holding one another;
unable to come any closer but content
even as the world outside began to wither.

The air grew cold, and the ground
hard, and the leaves fell early in winter.
Even when spring came, still they remained
listless and piled upon the ground.

Out front, our sycamores held mangled limbs
toward a sunrise that would never break, and I remember too
how your breath would sometimes whistle
like a winter breeze through their stiff branches.

Poem: Cobwebs

I breathe into my hands and turn the keys to get the Chevy warming,
waiting for Dad’s thick denim profile to emerge from the house.
When it does he’s grasping a mug, and bending his mouth
to where the coffee has burned him, crossing the empty space of the garage,
his hard features framed by a cobweb in the corner:
its freshly spun threads shining in the cool morning light.
I watch as he approaches and at the last moment swats it down with his hat,
afterwards climbing half-heartedly behind the steering wheel.
I shift his bagged lunch to keep him from sitting on it and catch myself
staring abstractly at the mangled web, waiting for the reverse gear to sound.

But we are still.

I turn to find that his eyes too are trained on the ruined structure,
or looking past it, foggy and indistinct like pools of milk.
“Godammit,” he says at last in a voice raspy with sleep.
“Build it there and of course it’ll be wrecked by morning.”
And I say nothing; just sit silently for a moment and wait
for the laborious pound of the reverse gear to sound.
When finally it does, he clutches the back of my seat and scans the driveway
behind us, and on his cheek I can see this faint glistening- a single shining stream-
then watch him turn into his dirty sleeve as we shift into drive,
waiting for the glare to erase him as we accelerate beneath the risen light.