Sweetheart like you

Well, the pressure’s down, the boss ain’t here,
He gone North for a while,
They say that vanity got the best of him
But he sure left here in style.
By the way, that’s a cute hat,
And that smile’s so hard to resist
But what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you,
She wanted a whole man, not just a half,
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child,
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh.
In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear,
It’s done with a flick of the wrist.
What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

You know, a woman like you should be at home,
That’s where you belong,
Taking care of somebody nice
Who don’t know how to do you wrong.
Just how much abuse will you be able to take?
Well, there’s no way to tell by that first kiss.
What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

You know, you can make a name for yourself,
You can hear them tires squeal,
You can be known as the most beautiful woman
Who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal.

You know, news of you has come down the line
Even before you came in the door.
They say in your father’s house, there’s many mansions
Each one of them got a fireproof floor.
Snap out of it, baby, people are jealous of you,
They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss.
What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

Got to be an important person to be in here, honey,
Got to have done some evil deed,
Got to have your own harem when you come in the door,
Got to play your harp until your lips bleed.

– Bob Dylan

Squeeze

In his canvas bag, the pair
of skates could’ve been a valentine.

It’s February. I slice across the rink
thinking of blood oranges:
the squeeze, his hands,
the clockwise rotation of the juicer.

He follows my motion on ice
the way I know he’ll follow me home.

And again, I’m angry as only
an other woman can be angry
when her last triple salchow
of the day ends in a fall, a bruise.

His thin figure in the bleachers
chips my concentration.

Like a head cold. Fruit pulp.
That stubborn clog in the drain.

– Arlene Ang

The winter academy

The folks behind the excellent online literary journal Prick of the Spindle have kindly published my story ‘The Winter Academy’. It’s here.

The metamorphosis

But Gregor was now much calmer. The words he uttered were no longer understandable, apparently, although they seemed clear enough to him, even clearer than before, perhaps because his ear had grown accustomed to the sound of them. Yet at any rate people now believed that something was wrong with him, and were ready to help him. The positive certainty with which these first measures had been taken comforted him. He felt himself drawn once more into the human circle and hoped for great and remarkable results from both the doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing precisely between them. To make his voice as clear as possible for the decisive conversation that was now imminent he coughed a little, as quietly as he could, of course, since this noise too might not sound like a human cough for all he was able to judge. In the next room meanwhile there was complete silence. Perhaps his parents were sitting at the table with the chief clerk, whispering, perhaps they were all leaning against the door and listening.

– Kafka, The Metamorphosis (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)

I stopped to listen

I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I began again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didn’t work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams on golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

– Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

A report to an academy

Until then I had had so many ways out of everything, and now I had none. I was pinned down. Had I been nailed down, my right to free movement would not have been lessened. Why so? Scratch your flesh raw between your toes, but you won’t find the answer. Press yourself against the bar behind you till it nearly cuts you in two, you won’t find the answer. I had no way out but I had to devise one, for without it I could not live. All the time facing that locker — I should certainly have perished. Yet as far as Hagenbeck was concerned, the place for apes was in front of a locker — well then, I had to stop being an ape. A fine, clear train of thought, which I must have constructed somehow with my belly, since apes think with their bellies.

– Kafka, A Report to an Academy (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)

Untitled.

He’d asked his father, implored him to let me keep me with him, close to him, he’d told him he must understand, must have known a passion like this himself at least once in his long life, it couldn’t be otherwise, he’d begged him to let him have his turn at living, just once, this passion, this madness, this infatuation with the little white girl, he’d asked him to give him time to love her a while longer before sending her away to France, let him have her a little longer, another year perhaps, because it wasn’t possible for him to give up this love yet, it was too new, too strong still, too much in its first violence, it was too terrible for him to part yet from her body, especially since, as he the father knew, it could never happen again.
   The father said he’d sooner see him dead.
   We bathed together in the cool water from the jars, we kissed, we wept, and again it was unto death, but this time, already, the pleasure it gave was inconsolable. And then I told him. I told him not to have any regrets, I reminded him of what he’d said, that I’d go away from anywhere, that I wasn’t responsible for what I did. He said he didn’t mind even that now, nothing counted any more. Then I said I agreed with his father. That I refused to stay with him. I didn’t give any reasons.

– Marguerite Duras, The Lover (trans. Barbara Bray)

Fictitious autobiography

1

No commands were necessary, nothing was spoken. You were shown by example and subtle correction how to raise no dust, how to mistrust your feelings, burrow under your life and with your own hand throttle down whatever fresh shoots emerged. You never found out why this happened to you, why you had to be born into this kind of family.
   All you knew was that the real, open life was elsewhere. You could see it. You saw it in the way other families talked to each other in parks and restaurants, the way lovers and friends laughed on the streets. You didn’t understand why you couldn’t meet each others’ eyes or speak without mumbling. Why every emotion, surfacing, seemed to turn hostile.
   There was some evil, some shame that could not be brought to light without catastrophe. There was no cause. If there’d been a cause, it could have been confronted.
   The life of the house revolved around the mother, its only healthy root. Communication took place through her. She was drawn into the deadlock of mistrust as if by a confidence trick. She gave it all she had, but it was always too late. The shame saw in her an opening, a breath of life, and used it until she had nothing more to give and she closed up too.

2

   You did all the things one had to do, you made sure you were secure, buffered against life, just as your parents had done.
   You went to the biggest city, as one did. Walked back and forth through the sooty roar of traffic every day, as one did. Watched life from behind a pane of glass, from the grey lake of your mind.
   You remembered the Dutch porcelain girl on your father’s desk, surrounded by bills, the hourglass in her hands measuring time until time ran out, until time was turned over and ran out again. There she stood, in her red bonnet and clogs, forever mute and smiling, letting time slip through her hands.

3

   When, after many years, you felt you had reached a kind of end game, you were given some pills.
   You invested what little hope you had in them, and something happened.
   They didn’t change the world. They didn’t remake you. If you were intended to know gloom, they didn’t cast it out and raise you up like Lazarus. But they took away the final despair, so that you could act in spite of the feelings that had ruled you, and emerge from your shadows.
   You talked to people. You felt more confident. More yourself. You saw your past in a new light. You saw the injustices you’d let yourself and others be subjected to. There was no reason for them, but you hadn’t seen it at the time. There was no one to blame.
   You saw how differently we grow up, beset by different problems. You saw how life, even compassion, were possible after all.
   You decided to live. You looked for the deepest thing on earth and found love. You loved love, but had never learned to show it, so love couldn’t love you back.

   When out of his hiding place came God…

 *

Jane Graverol, Untitled, 1973

Manifesto

In my craft or sullen art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

– Dylan Thomas

Open wound

Keeping a wound open can also be very beneficial: a healthy and open wound; sometimes it is worst when it skins over.

– Kierkegaard