—I SMASHED MY GLASS ON THE BAR BECAUSE I GOT CARRIED AWAY

 

 

 

Hurricane Girl  /  Marcy Dermansky

 

 

 

It was wild, how fast the tides could change.

 

Allison had a tendency to be unkind to herself.

 

Usually, though, it was more awkward to be rude than polite. 

 

“You are fine,” he said.

It was nice, to hear that spoken out loud.

 

Sometimes it was important to not push your luck.

 

Often, it felt like not enough people were nice to her.

 

It was good not to be dead.

 

Allison found herself constantly apologizing to her father, wanting to go back in time.

 

Most people never got to see the insides of their head.

 

Instead, Allison began to cry, because she hated being yelled at.

 

There would be another hurricane. And then another.

 

How was she? How was she? How was she? The easiest answer, of course, was fine.

 

She was going to be one hundred percent soon, but “soon” was open-ended.   

 

A peace had been reached, but it was ridiculous how quickly things had gone off the rails.

 

“It looks like you went away for a second.”

 

Everything would be fine, Allison thought, if she were not required to speak.

 

She had a weakness for pools, the way some people need to pet every dog they see.

 

Nice was not a quality that Allison had properly appreciated in her twenties. Allison was in her thirties now. Too many men had not been nice.

 

There was a look on his face that she did not understand. It might be love, but it seemed more like worry.

 

Strategic lies were a good thing. A kindness.

 

“Not now. Just had brain surgery,” Allison wrote back, which was, fortunately, an excuse for just about everything.

 

Real life sometimes felt too hard.

 

Anyway, she was fine. She still had her health. That was what people liked to say. 

 

She did not want to stop. That was always a risk.

 

—WHATEVER IT IS, IT’LL KEEP ‘TIL THE MORNING 

  

…Self-esteem, man, that’s a really tough nut to crack.

 

…So, hey, I guess I’m a little bit older now. Who knew? But I’m also more grateful. And I’m not quite dead yet. So, there’s that, too. Yay.

 

…Jerk. Jerked. From one extreme to another. Just like global warming. Or Jekyll and Hyde. What to do with all that?

 

…All politics aside, don’t you think Joe could use a fucking break?

 

…If I’m not careful, my office is going to reach up and swallow me whole like those plants in The Ruins by Joe Hill.

 

…But my office is going to be golden when I’m done with it. I swear. When I’m done with it. When I’m done with it. When I’m done with it.

 

…Yesterday, like a lot of days, I woke up while most of the world was still sleeping. There was abundant sunshine all around, but it seemed like a waste of sun, since everyone else was sleeping but me.

 

…I’ve had some funky dreams of late. One, in which my four-year-old nephew totally cussed me out, and another where I was in a restroom, using the urinal, when Putin walked in.

 

…I should probably shave one of these days, or else I’ll end up looking like Santa Claus in summer.

 

…Cold sores are manifested stress. Everything feels, and weighs, twenty times more than it actually does.

 

…It’s really easy to forget we’re all human. We read the books, see the films, but it’s never really like that at all.

 

…I think the biggest things about being friendships are intentionality and really wanting to be in it.

 

…The second cutest dog, in the history of dogs, is living five yards from my office, and I’m aiming to kidnap her. Her name is Izzy. Or her name was that.

 

…In the words of Justin Bieber, “Never say never.” For instance, I never thought…well, that so many fucking things would happen, or that this road would go this way, instead of that.

 

…One of my best friends told me she was “overbearing” yesterday. It made me smile because she is the least overbearing person I know. I have some really great friends. 

 

…Everyone has their own feelings and thoughts about the Roe vs. Wade overrule, but I just can’t wrap my head around the government telling a woman what she can, or can’t, do with her body. They certainly don’t legislate what a man does with his penis.

 

…There’s got to be a morning after…

 

…Sometimes the hardest part is just figuring out what you want.

 

…I wish I didn’t hate throwing up so much. I’d be a lot thinner, otherwise.

 

…“Show don’t tell.” I’ve failed in that regard a number of times, and I’m not proud of it, whatsoever.

 

...I shed a lot of tears yesterday. It’s so different to cry when it’s because of joy. 

 

…The spiders are hanging on the window again, which must mean it’s summer, or some kind of symbolism meant to torment me.

 

…Even the simple things become rough…

 

…Where I live, people really like their fireworks. I mean like REALLY like them. One-off bombs have been booming all week, and every time they do, they make me jump. I’m like a new pup and don’t favor loud noises.

Is it really independence you’re celebrating, or something else?

 

…Nothing but a needy flirt. Sure, if you say so, but look at me now. 

  

—I SPENT A LONG TIME BELIEVING IN A DREAM THAT HAS PASSED ME BY

 

 

                                      Happy Birthday, Peter Pan

 

There’s another leach in my throat, large as the head of an overfed python, but I’m tired of running. Plus, the party’s already started.

It’s to be a backyard game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, though it feels more like a bludgeoning. What Mother doesn’t see is: That kid has a pocket knife. That one a hatchet. That one a razor-wire thumbnail that’s been places it shouldn’t. The other kid, with the full moon grin, he has my virginity.

Happy birthday, Peter Pan! my sister shouts, a jibe always, before driving off in a plume of fury. 

Isn’t it nice? They’re all here for you, Mother says, no eye-contact, her phalanges busy smearing frosting or else looking for other dismembered phalanges.

The bright stooges from 4^th grade, or held-behind 5^th, stand around like sunburnt cornstalks. It’s charity, a Walk-of-Dimes, but no one or nothing’s moving, just their lids and tongues. It’d be pornographic, if we knew what that meant. 

We’re specter kids, all of us, some who know it, but most who don’t.

There are black candles and a black cake, a black cape floating like a headless crow falling from a branch. 

Just like a magician, Mom says, as Jerry pulls a switchblade from his pants and guts me in the larynx.

The candles, with their small family of flames, polka in the backyard breeze while the smell of a backed-up sewer swirls among their charred odor. That would be pornographic, too, if…

Behind me our trailer shrinks then bloats like the throat of a giant bullfrog, and I know I’m seeing demons again, but I try not to shriek or sprint.

Someone says, Stupid Dumbfuck, under their breath.

Someone says, You blow ‘em out now, idiot, Fag.

Someone says, I can’t believe my parents made me come to this shithole.

Someone else says, I got a dollar that says you’re going be dead before this is over. 

I totter in a cyclone of shame or confusion or, you might say, adolescence, while beheaded crows drop on our squat, scorched lawn. I wait until they pile up like unread newsprint, black and gray, until there are thousands of dead birds. That’s when I lean down, blow and blow and blow, because what other choice is there?    

 —WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

 

 

Innocent

 

The flowers bow as you pass by, the deer stay startled. and the sun stills itself. You have power I can’t comprehend, you just five feet tall, wearing wigs when you don’t need to, beating your children when you don’t need to, making bedlam and horror your brand, one innocent after the other.

 

—I’VE GOT A NEW COMPUTER AND A BRIGHT FUTURE IN SALES

 

trash 

 

it’s an endless

circle 

of constriction

voices pillows 

or palms 

everything meant 

to dictate 

asphyxiate

eradicate 

what’s deemed

worthless

and this house 

can’t get 

any smaller 

unless they make me

into dust or ash 

sweep the debris

into the trash

and finally ignore 

all the horror

of ancestry

 

—I’M RUNNING LIKE THAT LAST “E” IN SILENCE

 

Hand Rest

 

When I ask, “Who did this to you?” her eyes barely bloom, veiled as they are, in bleak weather, no different than a smear of confused crows. 

When I start, “Honey—" she snaps back, “Fucking don’t call me that anymore.”

When I reach for her hand across the couch, it morphs into a limb of disparate, squirming tentacles swimming toward a seafloor.

When I say, “It would probably help to talk,” she crimps her teeth, chipped on top, like fake diamonds, into my forearm, gator-gripped.

When I say, “Shit! That hurts,” she doesn’t loosen her grip, even as a spool of our shared blood oozes onto the hand rest between us.

When I say, “If you can give me a name, or anything, anything at all, we can get to the bottom of this,” she squirms off her chair and melts in place like a warped pastiche portrait.

When I begin to consider all of the bad men who seem good, I get dizzy, jaundiced, and depressed, like God juggling six billion pathetic prayer requests.

When she releases, and curls in for a cuddle, the world, for once, smells antiseptic, sealed in a hood of safe cloud cover, sunflowers blooming somewhere.

When I hold and breathe, cathartic-slow, like a kite breaching Heaven, she says, “Dad, it was him. I love him, okay, don’t hurt him. But it was him.”

  

 —I GOTTA GET MY SHIT TOGETHER, BECAUSE I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS FOREVER

 

 

His Name is Dave

 

 Afterward, I lick the lies off your fleshy lips and muster a smile.

I’ve just cum an ocean across your chest and upper freckled arms, when you ask if the gardener’s showed up yet.

His name is Dave, or Jorge, or James. Something that rhymes with slave or stave, I think. A long-A name.

I stretch for the window, see the grass overtaking the fence, the old men sunflowers stooped in a petrified sigh.

         “Not yet,” I say, upbeat as I can.

I watch a horsefly, the size of a quarter, figure-eight in the gauzy air, bumping against the glass on repeat, as if its drunk or else a masochist. 

         When you ask for a towel, I’m up and still erect, my cock pointing in every direction but home.

 “Hon,” you say, “Please. I’m still so tired.”

So, I slink past the window, the schizophrenic fly, and the barren lawn below, right on into the bathroom. I grip the hand towel looped over the silver halo and jerk it free, offer it to you, saying, “There you go, Love. Nap now. The sun’ll be up soon enough.”

 —BUT EVERY SINGLE TIME THAT I DO, I’M LIKE, UM

  

                                           Donbas

 

 I’m drinking a dead Russian tonight, the liquid briny and entirely regretful.

Again, you tell me I am being over-sentimental, with those eyes, and those perfectly plucked brows that hook into two concentric half-moons.

I turned off the news ten thousand years ago, but it’s still playing on repeat, that sallow scene with the sobbing mother in her village, clutching broken pieces, her boy nothing but limbs and ropes of blood, human spaghetti or Bolognese, her screams muted yet pinging, pinging, and pinging in the gray distance as you nod off again, just beginning to snore.

 —CAN I OPEN A WINDOW? CAN SOMEBODY OPEN THE DOOR?

  

Can I Open a Window?

There’s not 

a solitary wave 

out there 

that likes me

not even a 

lonely branch 

on those

century-old cedars

and so I’ll 

deal with that 

the same way 

I do hyperbole

sucking down 

a tidal wave 

of Cabernet

trying not to 

feel fecal again

wondering if 

there’s anything 

in me at all 

that’s special

You used to 

say you loved me 

but now it’s hard 

to breathe with 

a rag of lies 

stuffed down 

my throat

I hope you’re 

smiling this morning

I hope it’s 

abundant sunshine 

where you are 

every bit of it

gleaming like a 

crown of thorns 

upon your halo

—LET ME SEE WHAT SPRING IS LIKE ON JUPITER AND MARS 

  

ten-thirteen

 

I don’t know 

what happened 

to the sun 

it’s become 

so disobedient 

running away 

from home 

fornicating with 

hoodlum clouds 

chewing tobacco

and spitting on 

the roof of every

neighbor’s house

it’s been that way 

since you left 

almost two years 

ago today

at something like 

ten-thirteen 

in the morning

 

—AND I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE, BUT I WON’T DO THAT

 

Tentacles

 

 

When you 

come home

for Christmas 

that year 

just paroled 

from prison 

for having  

killed a man 

I freeze during 

each story 

about “punk” 

rape and rusty 

shivs gutting a

bloated “rat” 

I am nine and 

frightened

and you are a 

scarecrow 

come-to-life 

with limbs like 

muscled tentacles 

their reach 

unknowable 

And that night 

in bed

when I can at last

stop shaking 

I lie wondering 

about the 

real meaning 

of the words

cell and genetics 

and molestation 

while out my 

window all there is

are stars

some bright 

some bleak 

each of them 

huddled together 

awkwardly

in vacant confusion

 

—I  WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE BLUE SKIES, LOOKING UP AT YOUR BROWN EYES, MADE ME REALIZE THEY DON’T REALLY MAKE ‘EM QUITE LIKE YOU

 

 

Extradition

 

If the moon

has an extradition 

treaty with earth, 

I should be there by 

just-past-coffee time. 

Can you stall, please? 

Time is in flux here, 

if time really exists at all. 

But if it does—time—

— then I’ve got a 

hand-printed poem 

in my right front 

shirt pocket. 

It’s messy as hell, 

and embarrassing to boot,

yet every word is 

entirely true, 

and meant only for you.

 

  

—I’M NOT THE MAN THEY THINK I AM AT ALL

 

I woke up and 

pillaged the planet 

stripped its soul first 

broke its hollow bones

then set the heap on fire 

and when I was done 

brother after brother 

did the same until 

everything was rubble 

made of smoldering cinder 

while we floated on filthy seas 

watching wisps of smoke 

write our names 

and confessions

in the doomed sky