The Write Bloody Baller`s Cookbook Vol 2

THE WRITE BLOODY BALLERʼS
COOKBOOK
VOLUME 2
EDITED BY CORMAC WHITE & DERRICK BROWN
2
THE WRITE BLOODY BALLERʼS
COOKBOOK
CONTENTS:
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CLASSIC BLOOD:
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STEVE ABEE.............................................................................5
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NEW OLD:
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LAURA YES YES.....................................................................21
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MINDY NETTIFEE...................................................................27
MATTY BYLOOS.....................................................................13
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CLASSIC BLOOD
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STEVE ABEE
5
I LOVE THE SUNSHINE
Itʼs 6:30 a.m.
Iʼm in love with the sunshine,
the sun that shines all night.
I donʼt want no foreign chemicals in my body.
There is only sorrow and no love in that.
My sorrow must have love.
What do I see here? The sky is blue
in my mind. My neighbors start their cars.
Garbage trucks sigh, and squawk
and hum lifting garbage up
and tossing it into their big mouths.
They are loud and smell but are symbolic, personal
for I, too, am a big mouthed garbage truck
clattering lyric dirt and stink
through the neighborhoods of dawn and I am
recalling life as a young kid in Santa Monica
watching garbage trucks slip their forks
into the side slots of the metal apartment bins
and lift and flip all the egg shell cigarette cat litter
into the hydraulic guts and belly. It was
sexual. I can see that now.
Santa Monica trash trucks were sky blue
and filthy.
Itʼs 6:42 and
you canʼt see what I feel, anywhere.
But I feel it everywhere.
6
Ted Berrigan roamed New York
while his babies slept.
And I sleep in the room next to my pretty ones
and wake to work for all our loves
and Ted Berrigan roams
through the city my heart has
built of poetry.
Oh Baudelaire, you donʼt have to
do anything here.
Itʼs all done.
The sky turns its blue all the way up.
Itʼs simple.
God Bless Pepsi-Cola, donuts,
sun.
7
ECHO PARK POOL
Iʼm at the Echo Park Indoor Swimming Pool,
thinking about sonnets, watching my daughter, Penelope, swim.
Sheʼs learning how to do the free style.
She lifts her arm up out of the water. Then the other one. She lifts
her head out of the water to breathe. She stops and stands
and starts
again. Itʼs a lot to do.
There are a bunch of kids splashing in the pool all around her.
She swims around them.
A woman in blue swims in the deep part of the pool.
She comes to the wall, flips around, and glides the other way.
The life guard is a cute girl, small, with dark hair, and soft smile.
The pool is blue. The water looks blue
but I know it is not. It is water, clear and the color
of your hand.
My daughter makes fun of other kids.
What can I say.
I am sitting on cement steps, looking at the pool
and I am sad because I am reading poetry
and thatʼs what poetry does to me and I like it.
Poetry is all about having people talk about you
when youʼre not there.
Penelope, Penelope—
the name is like jewels and balloons to me.
Maya, her little sister, is like the ocean, glassy waves rolling
in to shore like the back of a whale
and she is like that to me.
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A little girl runs up to her mom,
asks her to fix something on her suit.
Sheʼs got that look on her face, where you
can tell what sheʼll look like when sheʼs a teenager,
but right now she doesnʼt know how to fix her suit
and she needs help so sheʼs got that I-need-help look,
the I-donʼt-know-how-to-do-this look and itʼs okay,
I was always freaked out to need help.
Itʼs a great look, very wise, very open.
The thing is we need each other,
but I suspect people of plotting to destroy me with
their help. I realize this is a problem.
I think of holding my wife in bed, spoons, I feel golden,
like gold is shining through me. I am golden at the
swimming pool.
So Penelope is learning to swim
and it strikes me that God must be
like a bunch of parents sitting there,
watching their kids learn to swim,
letting them learn, looking up from their conversations
or books to see if everything is cool,
walking over to the side of the pool if there is a problem,
but mostly letting the life-guard deal with it,
and the kids splash around,
float, get freaked, stand up, float again.
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HAIL TO THE THINGS I CANNOT SEE
Hail to thee, oh unseen things. Hail
stellar contraction shaping dust into a sun,
atoms waiting in darkness to begin
their fusion blooming solar fire,
electricity chewing across the wires in the wall,
neuron signal causing the heart to beat,
hormonal impulse causing pubic hair to grow,
synaptic exchange causing the mind to change.
I cannot see any of you, but I know you are there.
Hail
Oh ovum tumbling out of the fallopian waiting room,
into the clean blood darkness, alone,
waiting for brother sperm.
Oh seed generated from testicular emptiness,
looting and rioting in the vaginal night,
I salute all you unseen makers.
Oh heartbeat, accelerated
by smell of a shampoo
that reminds of junior high school French kissing,
first touching vagina, exciting stink, who knew
it would smell like that?
Oh sorrow held in chest cavity
upon the smell of incense
that parents burned to create atmosphere
during their alcoholic stupors, apartments of black outrage
with Charlie Parkerʼs Tunisian horn
blowing holes into the night.
Oh rain of tenderness falling on face,
brought on by memory of candle making
with mother on the porch of the apartment,
10
colored wax dripped into shapes carved in sand—
Hail to all of you, the invisible evokers of time past
and the things that happened and shouldnʼt have
and should have, and had to, but what do I know?
Oh wind keeping seagulls aloft, squawking and hovering
over my daughtersʼ and my hot dogs down at Santa
Monica Pier.
Oh gravity that holds the trees up and my bones together,
web of sunʼs stellar radiance that wraps this earth,
sphere of mud and bones, in perfect location
for the growing of our brains and other cosmic windows.
Oh sunlight, tinkerer of soul and mind,
creating my waking and seeing with your clear yellow light,
waking me with your rising, pulling me to sleep when you go,
my body like the oceans in their tides.
I am you, all of me, I believe.
Oh sorrow, endless holes in the sky and in the heart,
you are there again, purple thing, river-like, deliverer,
brokenly smiling the way to light.
Oh silence, kindest hush of mind and time,
loving terminus of all, the sky of purest now.
Silence, holding and blooming sounds
of airplanes passing through clouds,7th graders
whispering in the back row, heart beats
like bubbles coming to the surface of the water,
all rising from silence, all stone and gaseous
vapor and vision laying upon silence.
Love laying upon the silence, sunrise
out of silence.
Oh Hail, hail
invisible things.
11
FOR MORE STEVE ABEE CHECK OUT:
"
"
Steve Abeeʼs Great Balls of Flowers (voted Best Book 2009 by The Nervous Breakdown) is the
new religion of right now beauty sad mad glad freaked out explosions of the very daily day that we all live
and must celebrate in order to understand the secrets within the fortune cookies that are unwrapped and
cracked at our feet a million times a Day and only god knows how many times at night, fortunes strewn
about our feet, in the air, fortunes like hearts and eyes, eyes like doors, eyes looking through doors into
the next and the last and the maybe and should and the should not and the never and the OH my and the
Yes, doors into the Yes. The Yes, man. The eyeball love door into the Yes. That is what this book is.
**GREAT BALLS OF FLOWERS CAN BE FOUND AT http://writebloody.com/store/index.html
12
MATTY BYLOOS
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ONE DAY, LETTER FROM GHOST LEG
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I have a videotape. I watch this videotape over and over again, every night, by myself. I make
coffee, which never comes out right. Achievement, as a concept, weighs on me incessantly. The coffee,
too dark or not dark enough, thinned and hazy with nonfat milk, or turned pale-white with heavy cream;
itʼs never perfect. I have tried to find consistency in this drink, tried too hard at what has become the
impossible, and I have failed miserably. Perseverance in the face of adversity can yield achievement.
Beauty for its own sake, entirely. A perfect cup of coffee could signify a degree of over-achievement. I
drink my bad coffee and watch my video tape.
"
I have had this dream since I was eleven; every night, mostly, the same dream. Itʼs about
becoming whole. I feel thereʼs an alien aspect to my body. I take steps to improve this in the dream, steps
that any normal person would understand to be extreme. There is a persistent itch in the index finger of
my right hand. I stare at the finger twitching uncontrollably, almost imperceptibly, for hours in my dream. I
watch the finger for weeks at a time: I have lost countless jobs in this dream, in these dreams, because I
spend all my time watching the finger. Then I hack it off. It is a wonderment how much effort it requires to
do the banal: to scratch the itch, you might say—but there it is—the effort, and the release. It is done, the
finger gone. With this solution in place, a mild collapse ensues. Eventually, even the most bland
installment of a handshake with a stranger becomes my victory.
!
Medical researchers have identified three groups within the larger community of people
obsessed with amputation:
1.)!
“Pretenders” use wheelchairs, crutches and other devices to make people think they are
disabled.
2.)!
“Devotees” are sexually attracted to people with amputations and disabled people, and will often
search for them on the Internet.
3.) “Wannabees,” who get the most attention, live for the removal of their healthy limbs.
"
My world exists beneath a wet blanket of sorts, damp- muted, slightly hazy and mostly gone gray.
It is morning. I pace the apartment, recounting the same dream from the night before, dragging my feet
across the carpet, which is trying hard to still look chocolate brown. After years of weekly spills cleaned up
with bleach, the rug looks more yellow or olive drab than chocolate, slowly entering the realm of brown
camouflage. Between my toes a dampness—the echo of a spill that has not entirely dried. I fake-hobble
around, clutching my right leg behind me like a pirate. The feeling of my curled foot in my hand. There is a
stain in the rug in front of the bathroom that looks like a dead jellyfish, a blobby mass sunken into the
carpet with entrails curling off in another direction. Today is not unlike any other day; there is always the
opportunity for achievement, there is always pleasure to be found in the idea of asymmetry. Beauty for
beautyʼs sake: perhaps it is what the world needs. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth, rinse, spit, and towel
off my tingling mouth. I stand in the mirror with my teeth clenched until I can hardly recognize myself
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anymore, cheeks hardened and white in the middle, small apples turned inside-out, eyes bulging,
froggish. Several seconds go by. Maybe minutes. I ask the toothbrush why this has just happened. What
could it mean to be a person alone, holding my breath in the mirror? I hear the toothbrush mumbling
something incoherent. I never bother to clarify.
Statistics and Hearsay Concerning Amputation
!
Healthy people seeking amputations are nowhere near as rare as one might think. In May of
1998, a seventy-nine-year-old man from New York traveled to Mexico and paid $10,000 for a blackmarket leg amputation; he died of gangrene in a motel. In October of 1999, a mentally competent man in
Milwaukee severed his arm with a homemade guillotine, and then threatened to sever it again if surgeons
reattached it. That same month a legal investigator for the California State Bar, after being refused a
hospital amputation, tied off her legs with tourniquets and began to pack them in ice, hoping that
gangrene would set in, necessitating an amputation. She passed out and ultimately gave up. Now she
says she will probably have to lie under a train, or shoot her legs off with a shotgun.
"
Every morning, I drink my bad coffee, think about my dream from the night before, and replay in
my head the dubious aspects of my childhood, which I believe to be directly responsible for my present
condition, interjecting within this steady stream of mental images some of my fonder memories from my
video. I sit, tentatively, on my couch in the living room. This morning is quiet, feels older, moves slower
and less awkwardly. It is not gawky and reckless like other mornings; instead, it is more pubescent
teenager in appearance. I notice the window to my left is open. The broken blinds near the top of the
window frame always look like a bundle of tied-up sticks. To protect the room from the glare of the sun
would be a miracle in their present condition. A miracle represents the opposite of achievement, and thus
I deem it uninteresting. With a miracle, there is reward without effort, an impossible answer given with no
time spent struggling with the question. The morning air is chilled, tinged with foggy haze, and moves past
the window too fast. Occasionally, bits of fog appear in the room with me, blown in through the opening
near the bottom of the window. They take shape, remain uncompromised in their clusters of frosted white,
making it difficult to see from one side of the room to the other at times. Add to this, the steam from my
coffee, far too creamy this morning, with more the pre-fab smell of Twinkies than the actual taste of
coffee.
"
I have thought through the circumstances of my childhood relentlessly. Perhaps I have been too
hard on myself. I place numerous restrictions on my diet. I cleanse my liver with milk thistle and oil of
clove; detoxify my spleen and kidneys with mixtures of honey, cayenne pepper, and apple vinegar; grind
lime skins with raw garlic for my intestines. I conduct copious amounts of research on anesthesia and
wound control. I take steps to educate myself in the field of occupational prosthetics at the local college. I
go to great lengths to transfer my condition to a more socially viable and acceptable form, offering
countless hours of volunteer work with the handicapped. I have had several uncomfortable conversations
with psychologists and surgeons known to be specialists in the care of pre-surgical and post-operative
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transsexuals. Mine is not an aesthetic need; this visceral compunction towards functional asymmetry is
who I am....
A Clinical Definition of Apotemnophilia:
"
From the Greek, literally meaning “amputation love.” Succinctly, apotemnophilia defines the
condition of self- demand amputation, which is believed to be related to the eroticization of the stump and
to overachievement despite a handicap. The apotemnophiliac obsession represents an idée fixe rather
than a paranoid delusion. These persons, unlike paranoiacs, recognize that other people do not accept
their own ideas concerning self-amputation. Symptoms are induced for the sake of becoming an
amputee, and for the sake of erotic arousal, and seldom is self-injury repeated. The precise etiology of the
condition is not known, and there is no agreed-upon method of treatment. —quoted and adapted from
documents written by John Money, PhD
A Possible Chronology of Responsible Events from Early and Late Childhood:
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—At birth: I am born with a moderately deformed right foot, which looks a bit like a knobby
cluster of rotted oranges wrapped in soggy wet cardboard, and not like anything human. I see Polaroid
images of the foot, images hidden in a small envelope in the bottom drawer of my fatherʼs bureau when I
am twelve, and cry. They are trophies of his disdain for me. The foot causes me to walk funny, slightly
leaning to my left side and shuffling unevenly forward. My father yells at me for walking funny, until I
undergo surgery to fix my deformity at age fourteen. There is no mention of the clubbed foot thereafter.
"
—Domestic accident at three years old: When a boiling hot cast iron pot full of oatmeal capsizes
from the stove, I am scalded on my right leg from the knee to the foot. It will take several months for this
to heal, and I am rendered unable to walk (even poorly), for fourteen months.
"
—Near age five: Mom lights up a second cigar with a tiki torch from the backyard while she is
mowing the lawn, and while dipping the torch down to her mouth for the light, spills propane fuel from the
torch onto her leg, which immediately catches fire. She suffers third-degree burns and is bed-ridden for
eight months.
"
—Ages six to seventeen: Mom begins answering all my calls, monitoring all my mail, and driving
around in the car with the “mom seatbelt arm” on my chest at all times.
"
—Age twelve: I have my first thought that it might be nicer if I were a girl, the impulse of which I
understand immediately to be overwhelmingly forbidden by my father. I transfer any and all trans-gender
fantasies to my idea of a healthy limb removal. I break my leg on purpose when I force-fall off a horse at a
pony riding carnival attraction, and enjoy the acts of cast, crutches, and the modified means of mobility.
"
—Age thirteen: My fascination with the apparatus of the guillotine as a machine of healing (and
not of punishment) begins. I read many books on the subject, and attempt to make a miniature one of my
own after a few months of research with small scraps of wood, a five-pound weight, and several razor
blades. I only succeed in cutting off the most marginal amount of my left pinky finger, and feel dissatisfied
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with the process. Though the cut is small, I wear a band-aid with a tiny red bloodstain in the middle
(shaped like a Peony flower) for months.
—Age fifteen: I find my fatherʼs shotgun in the laundry pantry inside the service porch, hidden behind
several piles of clean old rags and a dust broom. I hold it, smell the raw wood of the stock, and aim it at
my knee without pulling the trigger. I put it away, telling myself that I now know where it is when I need it.
"
Slack space between knowing who I am and exactly what needs to be done next, and then
finding the wherewithal to get there. Slack space, colored gray. Gray is an underexploited space; this I
have decided. Gray, the color of my world, seen through tiny slits when I crunch down my eyelids. Gray
stands for impossible things: skyscrapers, entire cities, comic book gloom, stench. I am taking a shower.
Dunking my head beneath the faucet, smoke smell from my hair rushes out into the wet space with me,
musty like old luggage: the smell of gray space. I look down at my right leg. I am thinking about my video
from the last time I watched it. Last night, I bound up the limb six inches above the knee with surgical tape
and cyclone fencing tie wire, numbing the reddening band of skin on both sides of the tourniquet with
Novocain that I stole from the dentistʼs office and several bags of frozen peas. There are bruises on the
inside and outside of my thigh the color of eggplant, continuing down toward my calf in a shape that
resembles the gulf coast of Florida. After nearly four hours, the pain was unbearable, practically
impossible. The leg, hovering near rot, remains paranoid of what will happen next. Looking with fear in the
direction of the healthy leg, the intact partner, it has no other choice. My video loops the 100-yard dash
event at the Special Olympics. This is the hallmark of achievement in the face of adversity.
And then one day, a letter with no return address arrives...
"
To the rest of him, who faithfully remains intact,
"
I once overheard a wise man saying the following: “You donʼt know how to love the ones you love
until they disappear abruptly.” 1 With the passing of our union, now I know this to be indeed true. I need to
tell you a few things; please indulge me for a paragraph or perhaps two...
"
I donʼt really know where to start. I have tried to sit down with this, beyond tears, in order to get
somewhere using logic, tried to use something rooted in emotion, but also something that makes more
sense out of the reality of the moment we are experiencing. Emotions usually run at a clip not nearly
modest enough to allow a calm sincerity to guide oneʼs thoughts and words. You must understand how
1
From: DeLilllo, Don. The Body Artist. New York: Scribner: 2001. Page 116. While others struggle with it,
sharing is something we always took for granted. It was something we just did, the thing we were good at
—you went, then I went.
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much all of this has hurt me. I want to believe that this has little or nothing to do with you not wanting me:
I know I have done nothing wrong, to be sure.
"
For several years, we have been together. There has been an acquired autopilot intensity to our
shared commitment. Our physical separation now clarifies that situation as having ended, though
remnants of what we had before still linger, and most likely, always will. Trust me, slowly I will get this all
out. I am trying to understand that simply, our lives, once parallel, must have struck a gap. I know that
resistance to what seems to have been the inevitable can only produce sadness and pain. To give in to
pain will yield only suffering; that, I believe, is not necessary.
"
And so for the logic of it: I understand that there was a dire separation somewhere, likely induced
by personal growth on your part, which led you to this point of cut- off, this endgame. I feel as though
there is this truth: a person must become what he is, work on himself to the end, commit to oneʼs destiny,
follow through and be whole or compromise and be nothing; make oneʼs mark on history if he so desires,
or alternately relish the quiet that one can find. Do you see what I am talking about? I am telling you that I
understand why this has happened. If I look at it through the memories of our past, I can see nothing but
all the painful times we shared together, living as one body might live: completely. If I look at it through the
plans we had made for our future together, all of those hopes I thought we once shared are dashed,
grounded, no longer; there is only bitterness left. I must stay present in this. I dutifully remain loyal, with
conviction, in this moment. I am hurt, but I know that you let me go because I was not what you needed; I
couldnʼt begin to understand who you are without me, perhaps someone I wouldnʼt even recognize
anymore.
"
Let this memory haunt you forever, and know that it is me who makes your stump itch,
"
Sincerely,
"
Ghost Leg
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FOR MORE MATTY BYLOOS CHECK OUT:
"
"
"
Like pop songs that have overdosed on camera cleaning fluid and pills, Matty Byloosʼs short
stories are most definitely NOT traditional ideas on the subjects of love, daydreaming, and the
psychological dramas that have become an unavoidable part of the human condition. Donʼt Smell the
Floss, Write Bloody Booksʼ first collection of short fiction, includes 14 of the funniest, darkest, densest
stories to hit the planet in a long time!
**DONʼT SMELL THE FLOSS CAN BE FOUND AT http://writebloody.com/store/index.html
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NEW OLD
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LAURA YES YES
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ACTION JACKSON
Schoolgirls write letters in cursive to President Andrew Jackson.
Heart-dotted missives sent skyward to radiant Andrew Jackson.
First time I met him, I couldnʼt stop trembling. Was I a wave, then?
Particles dancing? Or was I a filament, Andrew Jackson?
Roaming, I index the races—Lakota and Choctau, so on.
One displaced people makes all of us transient, Andrew Jackson.
Glory, he kissed me, and had me go weeping as far as twilight.
How can I hold this desertion, this banishment, Andrew Jackson?
Michael went mad, and Mahalia unthroated her torrid orchids.
Jesse exploded; you wooed us with punishment, Action Jackson.
Choose hypothermia, smallpox, starvation, or reservation.
Flee us or fight: we take both as encouragement. –Andrew Jackson
Borders are savage constructions; nothing stays sealed forever.
Crowbar to casket, Iʼll animate indolent Andrew Jackson.
Sorrow, inherited sadness, devours us down to marrow.
Who will admit that a tear is her sacrament, Andrew Jackson?
Laura writes letters to no one: America, love unrealized.
Under the promise, weʼre true to the rudiment, Andrew Jackson.
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BLACK HUMOR
Sometimes Iʼm a black. Not everyone realizes
blackness has to be conferred upon you
again and again. Itʼs like getting your nails done.
Or being pantsed. People assume Iʼm cool.
They also open car doors for me,
when Iʼm a woman.
Many of my boyfriends have been black.
Most of my boyfriends have been white.
This is perversion. My parents are perverts.
My siblings are vanilla,
except they are black. They teach me slang
so I am less embarrassing around their friends.
Sometimes I wonder how black my friends are
when Iʼm not looking.
The whites are growing bigger asses,
so I buy pants off the rack now. Progress is possible.
Look how much poem Iʼve made
without mentioning lynching.
Say it loud.
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HYDRA ISO HERO
For that hot thrill again
of trailing our venom
over the open hills,
the grass crumbling to dust
in deference before us—
for living muscle twitching,
flesh in my throat
as we gorged ourselves on children
too young to outrun us—
for the orchestra of screaming,
buildings cracking into flame,
the glowing ash and embers
mimicking the heavens,
I would surrender this
eternity of tourmaline,
this cold geode womb
where nothing happens.
We are the godsʼ lapdog now,
more rumor than terror.
Even with nine of us,
conversations run aground
when no one knows the news.
But when itʼs my watch
and the other heads sleep,
the lake carries whispers
from the Underworld,
secrets the wise dead unfurl
like banners: he is coming
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with muscle and hunger
for the glory our death will bring.
I welcome the battle, the blood.
Itʼs been too long since Iʼve seen fire.
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FOR MORE LAURA YES YES CHECK OUT:
"
"
Laura Yes Yesʼ sultry, wry first book, How to Seduce a White Boy in Ten Easy Steps, dazzles
us with its bold exploration into the politics and metaphysics of identity. From fierce and funny sexual
fantasias to cutting observations of interracial dynamics, her work asks us to fully consider what it is to be
human in an age of fragmentation and double meanings. There are no easy answers here: the voice of
the liberated woman rings clearly as a man-eater in one moment, and shudders under the weight of lost
love in the next. Laura skillfully navigates the trauma of being Other while ackowledging the absurdity of
our perceptions of race. With precise craft and breathtaking imagery, How to Seduce a White Boy blooms
as a ferocious celebration of life.
**HOW TO SEDUCE A WHITE BOY IN TEN EASY STEPS CAN BE FOUND AT http://writebloody.com/store/index.html
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MINDY NETTIFEE
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ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
I would like to thank first of all my asthmatic lungs,
my inadequacy in the bedroom,
my dark Texas reckless streak and waning night vision
that make awareness of my own mortality possible.
Next, I would like to thank my constant nightmares
for their vivid, arresting creativity—
their cheerful execution of ritual disembowelment,
their lifelike rendering of flesh-eating animatronic bunnies,
and their resourcefulness in general with symbols for personal failure.
I must thank my inability to balance a checkbook
coupled with my whimsical attitude about money
and my magically disappearing work ethic,
without which my debt would be nothing.
And while weʼre at it, thank you Blockbuster Video
for ruining my credit with $17 in late fees from 1996.
Next: a big thanks to my father, the pathological liar
who, in his way, taught me to be a poet.
Thank you sanity for being a finite natural resource.
To my crippling self doubt: thanks.
To my weak left eye, my squishy arms,
my smaller right breast, misshapen as a Tijuana coin purse: thanks.
Thank you allergic rash.
Thank you pens which run out of ink when Iʼm finally being brilliant.
Thank you humiliation, with a special shout out to Brad Carlson.*
Thank you to my guts.
I love your red twistyness, your endless judgmental bullshit,
your fleshy gears, your broken alarm bells
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that look like little French knots.
I trusted you.
Finally, I would like to thank you
for sleeping with that other woman
who was so much prettier than me.
For a moment, you really had me going—
whip cream puppies, slippery cloud sex, forever and ever and all that.
There was so much sweet hope in my plastic farm heart,
the ants were building sugarcastles in my ventricles.
There was so much dopamine sogging my brain
I thought we had invented flying.
Itʼs so much better here on the ground,
where the morning light tastes like asphalt and swing set rust.
Where everything has teeth that glow.
Where I can afford large grains of salt
with the money I save
buying into nothing.
* Brad Carlson you know what you did.
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THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GOD AND NATURE
BEATS ME OVER THE HEAD WITH ITS EARTHY
MALLET
I woke up an atheist today
and it is definitely connected to the “Chakra Magic Lunar Calendar”
pinned by my kitchen window,
its daylights punched out with black xʼs
marking the nights Iʼve gone without stars.
The Long Beach sunsets are trying to help.
They are massaging my temples with their melted romance calming me down with the blood pressure
medication
of their mellow collisions with the sky.
Thanks.
But I could really use some starlight.
The unadulterated kind.
The canopy of brash burning asterisks
illuminating the vast deep.
My back crashing its shares of gravity to the earth.
My entire field of vision a complex astronomy,
the universe glittering its jewelry,
my mouth hung open like a starving fish-hooked-breathing shallow in the cold damp midnight.
This is day 3,042 of my inner struggle with city life.
I am staring dreamily out the kitchen window,
watching sunlight smelt and sweat in the steam from a cup of tea.
I am picturing myself ranching, if thatʼs even a verb.
Later I will pause in the hallway of my apartment,
having just bruised my hip on broken bookshelves,
and fantasize about the sexy promises of open space,
like high school girls in farmhouses must fantasize
about being crushed in the wasted pulsing crowds at rock concerts.
This distance from the land:
itʼs a sacrifice you make, however temporarily,
to live huddled with the other artists and smart alecks,
to go months without being called a liberal hippie
by someone who says it like itʼs a cancer in his mouth.
Itʼs a choice that makes itself for me
every time I am rescued by the warm clotted glow of art galleries,
by the imitation of Django Reinhardt that is really not that bad,
strumming rakishly out of the mood lit punk bar,
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or the old David Bowie juke-boxing the punchy patrons
at the cheaper bar down the street.
In the absence of starlight
you start looking for the shine in everything:
the sparkle of fresh paved asphalt.
The glinting litter of crinkled candy wrappers.
The gold fillings in a smile so big you could live in it.
With no forest of trees for comparison,
the smallest signs of life are magic.
God refuses to be outdone by the metropolis.
When you are most homesick, inexplicably,
for some place youʼve never even lived,
an unexpected ocean breeze salts the heavy air,
stirring everything.
It says: your happiness will return to you
like the prodigal son,
having spent your inheritance of expectations extravagantly,
but ready now to do the work of joy.
Have faith.
The signs of life gather themselves in any darkness.
Itʼs rebirth, a rebuilding, of what was never really destroyed.
In what is its own kind of starlight,
a thousand bright minds flicker on,
our imaginations like flashlights,
searching for a path,
blinking in the dark.
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WHAT COMES AFTER
All night I had been drinking the edges of your face away
with an old friend whose cola eyes could spark wet matchsticks
and who still laughed with her entire body,
even though she had just discovered her husband neck-deep in
the stiff ruffled panties of her 22-year-old nanny.
We were both broken and stinging
in that way that trust with its stuck blade
will turn and cut you open without your permission.
So we drank until we were righteous and gorgeous again.
We drank until we spilled guts
like we were subsidized gut factories.
We drank until our metaphors got fat and ridiculous
and toppled over themselves,
and we could no longer agree
whether the war on women had had its Hiroshima
or whether the “test” or the “tost” in “testosterone”
turn men into weapons.
I got so belligerent on this point
that the goth girl bartender at the punk bar
had to ask me to “settle down.”
"
Screw you, Bettie Whatever!
!
Hereʼs my number.
!
Call me when youʼre finished fashioning chopsticks from
!
eyebrows.
!
Call me when youʼre finished sewing Dear John letters to
!
your bed sheets.
!
Call me when your angst has expanded to outer space,
!
and youʼre piloting your hopelessmobile to hell,
at which point I fell off the barstool.
Our money having lost its cashiness at that particular bar
we sat on the roof of her parked car
scheming for more booze and watching
the 2 a.m. womenʼs liberation parade
stumble past us in miniskirts and purple lingerie,
purposefully torn tee-shirts with girly power slogans,
all clambering after lanky blonde boys bruised from bar fights-the kind of cheap display of irony from all of us
that makes you sympathize with burqas,
Or want to burn your Victoriaʼs Secret bra
on the doorstep of a local strip joint,
even if you loved that bra,
even if you loved bras in general,
which is precisely what would happen later
after weʼd found and finished another bottle of rum.
Hey, she asked, in a voice reserved for lovers high on worship,
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you want to see my scar? and pulled the waist of her jeans down
to show me where her daughter had been cut out of her.
I traced the smooth crescent of raised skin with my fingers
"
reverently.
She began humming a tune I had never heard before.
It sounded like a love song to mangoes and butcher knives.
Like a hymn for daughters and rebels and killer wives.
I donʼt know how we made it home.
When we found my doorstep,
we were laughing so hard the quiet night frowned.
We could barely stand,
so we rested our foreheads together in praise of gravity.
I swear I could feel the dawning of something-what comes after bitterness,
low in the stomach like sick bees.
I could feel the soft thing that replaces it,
that makes a body ask for forgiveness
by turning slowly to the song.
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AFTER WE SAW KIDS POINTING
AT THAT DEAD BABY WHALE ON THE BEACH
DURING THE MOST ROMANTIC SUNSET EVER
AND YOU SAID “I GET IT” ALL BITTERLY
AND I SAID “IʼM NOT SURE YOU DO”
Now that Joni Mitchell lyrics have started to make sense to you.
Now that your beard is no longer a fashion statement,
but a crude three-dimensional graph illustrating
the number of years you pictured her lips while failing her.
Now that youʼve cried so hard and long the 4th Street
beggars are pressing quarters into your palms.
You know how good it can feel, in its own way,
to be so profoundly disappointed in yourself.
How strangely magnificent, to be this demolished,
to have taken it, as they say, like a man—on the chin, to the testicles—
to have tried to take a bite with your last dangling tooth of dignity
and come away starving and grinning and sobbing.
ʼCause really, how much worse can it get?
Short answer: a lot worse.
Donʼt think about that right now.
Youʼve broken all the promises you never made,
and few that you did, and they turned around
and broke you right back.
So be it.
From here on out you donʼt have to pretend
to be perfect, or whole, or even right.
Your eyes can take a vacation from being windows to your soul.
You can hang out with the other war torn countries,
who you suddenly share a language with.
Poland will show you her scars.
Croatia will teach you card games so cutthroat
you wonʼt be able to speak for days.
Iraq will start accepting your apologies.
It may not feel like it just yet
but youʼve stumbled upon a kind of freedom.
Your stomach now full of pride,
you can take your expectations off like clothes.
Stand outside in the cool night air and show off your brand new shamelessness.
Howl if thatʼs your thing.
Scare the neighborʼs cat.
Breathe easy.
Notice the Moonʼs gained weight.
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FOR MORE MINDY NETTIFEE CHECK OUT:
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“Mindy Nettifeeʼs Rise of the Trust Fall is an intimate cartography of the poet that is at once lush
with emotion and sharp with a bright, raw edge. This beautiful collection of poems will make you rise, rise
up.”
~Roxane Gay, PANK Magazine
“Mindy Nettifee is destined to be the next Dorthy Parker.”
~Poetic Diversity
"
Mindy Nettifee is featured in The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival anthology alongside
poetic powerhouses Derrick Brown, Andrea Gibson, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, Shira Erlichman,
Mike McGee, Cristin OʼKeefe Aptowicz, and Brian Ellis.
**BOTH RISE OF THE TRUST FALL AND THE ELEPHANT ENGINE HIGH DIVE REVIVAL CAN BE FOUND AT http://
writebloody.com/store/index.html
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