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What It Profits a Man
Today I didn't go to Sunday School but to the cemetery above and behind it and hung out on my father's headstone, not that he's dead yet but when he is then he'll be all set and death won't have to wait any longer than it has to which was awfully nice of Father but then he's a nice guy, he's a plumber, they don't come any nicer even though some folks complain about the high bills but he just smiles and shrugs and says that he's as fair as it's possible for him to be and still make the least little profit and that usually does the trick, Mother's headstone they're still saving for but it looks good for them in the afterlife and lead -ing up to it and all the time that comes after it, eternity it's called, one day I'll die, too, and meet up with them but I'm only ten years old now and I want to live a while longer, I'll be ready after my team wins the World Series and the way things are going that won't be soon so I guess when I'm croaked and wake up dead I won't worry too much about how much life I missed, it'll all be behind me and I won't get to go back and after Sunday School last week I told Miss Hooker that sometimes I think about just killing myself and saving God and Jesus and the mortician and for that matter both Mother and Father some time and worry but she told me not even to think it, that's a sin as sure as really doing it and that whenever I think such thoughts that I should pray for forgiveness right off the bat and not delay for a moment else I might die right then and here in sin and find myself in the furnace of Hell and then I asked her what I thought Father would ask, Would that be gas or electric, and then she laughed and laughed and it was good to see and hear and when I got home I asked Father what would be Miss Hooker's fate if she dropped down dead at that moment of sin--would her immortal soul head up or down and he said I'm not sure, son--let us pray, then he smiled and closed his eyes and fell asleep. That son of a bitch is crazy. Burned After Sunday School I slink back in the classroom to see Miss Hooker one more time before I never see her again until next Sunday. Could be her red hair draws me back to her fire again. I'm just 10 and I don't know why I feel this way but I like it even though I hate it. I mean, she's a grown woman and I'm not a man yet but one day I will be and be a husband to boot and get married and start a family, which means babies, and though I don't know where they come from yet I'd like to learn and Miss Hooker's a swell teacher and I'm a decent student if I'm interested. And she has green eyes, one of them lazy, wandering like God, if God wanders--I sure would if I was God. I'd get pretty bored up in Heaven just sitting on my throne all day. Maybe that's just me, whether I was made in God's image or not--I think that's the Bible. And freckles, she's got freckles, Miss Hooker has about a million freckles. Sometimes I try to count them but have to give up, it's like counting stars and of course there are the ones you never see, far away or behind the clouds like Miss Hooker's freckles underneath her clothes. If we get married I could count them on our honeymoon if there's enough light in the dark. I suppose that my eyes will adjust, or maybe they'll shine like real stars, even twinkle-twinkle, to make my summing easier. I'll use a calculator to keep track of them. And I'll hold her close and kiss her and then we'll fall asleep and wake up pregnant, or she will, and nine months later name our son after me or our daughter after her, but for now I don't know Miss Hooker's name, her given name, I mean. Her Christian name. I guess I'll find out at the latest when we get married. She'll wear a long white gown sort of open at the neck to show off her chests, or the tops of them, and I'll wear a tuxedo, which I'll rent and take back, or my best man will, whoever he'll be. Right now it's a tie between my father and my dog. I stand in the doorway and watch Miss Hooker stack the hymnals, and think of stacking dishes in the kitchen sink. I should help her, or at least help her dry them. I think I've seen enough. Maybe I've seen too much. Now I'm feeling like her red hair made me feel. I'm sort of looking forward to, and dreading, something at the same time. It's like thinking of Jesus, too, Who died on the Cross, Miss Hooker says, to save us. All I can say is I'm glad that He did but sorry that He had to all the same. Maybe if I die to save Miss Hooker she'll fall in love with me. But that's too late. Buttocks I don’t want to die but I may as well is how I look at it, death I mean, death is the end of life or at least of mine no matter when it comes, I’m only 10 now and my Sunday School teacher tells us that God can call us back at any time, call us back to Him, that is, He has such power, nobody gave it to him, He’s always had it, the power to call us back to Heaven where, I think, He made us and then shipped us out, our souls I mean, in -side our bodies and between them and out mothers’ labors, that’s the mysterious part, the in-between-ness of it all--well, I forgot what I was trying to say and yet I believe every word and yet I never even knew it, the start, save I went through it myself but I’m damned if I remember what it was like. I told Miss Hooker so after Sunday School this morning, she’s our teacher, and that damned slipped out, another sin and a heinous one because I said it in church, Sunday School is a kind of church, an affiliate, like the local NBC station to the larger network, I like TV and we don’t have cable, cable’s a sin says Mother but I think she just means the cost but anyway that slipped out of me and so Miss Hooker had to sit down right on both hips I mean, buttocks I think they’re called, that’s a funny word and like I say she plopped smack down on both at once and made that sound like an inside-the-armpit poot, another sin I guess, but I helped her up again, no damage done that I could see though of course I couldn’t see much nor to the chair, neither, it’s that tough plastic that will never rot in a million years and if you try to torch it it likely only melts, but anyway after she got her legs back, so to speak, Miss Hooker told me to run on home, she knows I walk and yet that wasn’t a figure of speech, she wanted me the Hell out of her hair so I said, Yes ma’am--see you next Sunday but she just grunted, I guess I hurt her after all but if we ever get hitched, forget her age, which is 25, we’ll both grow into husband and wife if only for a few years, there’s free cable down at the County Motel, just perfect for our honeymoon, unless I’m dead first or otherwise bored. And remote control.
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Carson Pytell is a poet living in a small town outside Albany, NY. His work has appeared in numerous venues online and is currently available or forthcoming in print from such publications as Vita Brevis Press, The Virginia Normal, NoD Magazine, Blue Moon Lit & Art Review, Spank the Carp, Crack the Spine, Futures Trading, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Gideon Poetry Review, and Children, Churches & Daddies, among others. His debut collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020), and his first chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020), are available on Amazon.
Hell Horsemen held, sleeping scroll, stumbled still into judgment from a fickle christ who coughed: "Depart, I know you not." Reticently I returned to a clean room, big windows meant only for looking in. It is no dream. Fishbowl
Nineteen and the men are buying me illegal drinks in a smoky pool hall the city will shut down within the year. I’m wearing my navy blue airline uniform. I’m told the shade is a color people trust. I don’t acknowledge him until he won’t stop. Desperate to get my attention, I give in, sipping from my fishbowl of a cocktail, buzzed but still sober enough to know better – even at that age. Later, when I leave with him, I see the empty child’s car seat sitting in plain view in the back seat of his Subaru. I see the crumbs of graham crackers, boxes of juice, the finger paintings tossed aside by a working mother, hurried to get somewhere on time, to get to the grocery store, to get through another long day. I don’t question him about his life or his wife because the answers will illuminate my own guilt in this crime. I look for evidence in the front seat, clues that other fatherless boys have been in my place before. The night soldiers on. In a rented motel room, the military career comes up. He tells me he was a hero once. I ask him who he saved. He can’t remember their names but don’t worry because his wife is getting on a late night flight for Baltimore to give a speech in a carpeted hotel ballroom, waiting for a text or a call – reassurance that everything is fine at home, that she’s missed. In the motel bathroom, I wash him from my skin, knowing a passenger is fastening her seat belt, preparing for takeoff, going over her speech. In her mind she is safe and fearless and wise. For more great work check out: WrenValentino.com Goodreads YouTube Channel Three of t.m. thomson’s poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards. She is co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky (2017) and author of Strum and Lull (2019), which placed in Golden Walkman’s 2017 chapbook competition, and The Profusion (2019). Her passions include kickboxing, playing in mud, and savoring art.
Feeding Klimt Saw a photo of him holding a cat. He wore an old smock and his hair was artist-wild except in the center where his scalp held one little curl-wisp. He wore a slight smile and his eyes were earnest and almost crossed like the eyes of the masked cat in his arms. If he and his homely but kind face were to show up at my house I’d check his ribs to see if he was too skinny. I’d run a comb through hair and beard to chase out any fleas. I’d say there there you can live here among the poppies and sunflowers reposing under the apple tree when it gets hot. They are undoubtedly much like the ones you’ve sown elsewhere on other canvases—bold and clustered with baby’s breath and sun and shaded by a green and gold mosaic of trees. I’d give him the run of yard and field the shelter of eave and even my house with an open door policy. He’d rub against my ankles smile up at me speak a language I could not understand and soon miss his rambling ways his starry-haired mermaids his wild-eyed Athena. I’d send him on his way with a kiss and a hope he’d be back for dinner sometime. Good Friday (for Ben) What a holy day-- drift of hydrangea mud the color of an eye grey pearl sky brindled with clouds. Wind stirs me-- sigh of still-bare branches pulsing others weighed down by magenta- opal-vermillion an embarrassment of petals then raised sharply by snaps of gales. That shock of gardenias-- a holy ghost of fragrance fern fronds— supplicants of soil and the leaves of daylilies-- breeze thaws them so that they ripple green flames promising. And all those years ago on a day such as this you and I sat at Perkins and you charmed me by knowing the name of the table’s pattern-- rossetta boomerang you said. Something holy in the red squiggles always turning back on themselves as if chased by breeze amid a roseate spring. Oils
Exotic delights touching skin like soft roses blowing kisses. the brushing of love’s tender wings, the tingling of their romantic touch, the feeling of heaven on earth, creamy liquids in their soothing, their lovely touching and probing, rolling down the breathing hills, seeping down into the crevasses, cooling off the fiery nerves, rescuing the screaming desiccation, the abandoned moisture that once was, the comfort of a rose like feel, the soothing breath of the rain like a rainforest in the desert, the tears in the soil, the flowers in the sun, the embellishment of the naked earth, the glistening of the reborn skin, the fruited limbs that shine in the sun, the glowing that reaches into the groin, the racing of the heated blood, the flaunting of the undulating hills, the secrets of the forbidden valleys, the words that get lost in the viewing, the sensual lines that parallel the rivers, the oils that drip down the banks, the softness that calls for a touch, the nervous fingers with lusted eyes, the thunder that runs with passion, the taboo that lost its voice, the sensual rites of the exotic oils, of beauty that emerges in the sunlight and shines into the heated loins and the craving to keep that feeling. Floating Embers Skyborne magic approaching from the corners of the east, embers drifting in space in the wake of the journey of the sun, the daughter of the blazing sky, a rendezvous with the tides of yesterday, when she ventured forth, racing along the firmament in a fiery chariot, cursing the sting of the darkness and chanting hymns of the Sun Gods on her pilgrimage to the western lands, her adorning the clouds with colors of a deep crimson, an artist with sensual strokes, turning herself into a cool globe of orange before she dove through the cracks of the earth into the bowels of its home in search of the lava field, the same one she found last night, to thaw her frigid hands and feet and sleep in its comforting warmth, as morning came and her eyes opened, she rose again through the cracks of the eastern corner of the earth with her fiery body igniting the wooden clouds that formed above, peeking through the smoldering embers, the charred sky riddled with pink and yellow holes, the beauty of the new day, the journey of the daughter of the skies, the dancing with the winds of time, and the way she chose her colors that embellished the face of the firmament, her handiwork of the earth and sky. Self-Driven
...... 1. I’ve owned five vehicles at different times of my life, all trusted companions. The first was a cough syrup green 1971 Toyota Corolla, but for me, it was verdant, a two-door standard sedan, four-speed manual with a radio and a large trunk. I adjusted the seats and viewed the world through a clear windshield. As the story goes, my parents had left me a few thousand. I walked into a Toyota and talked to a salesman. Now I had to drive back to my apartment by crossing the Whitestone Bridge, but had only driven a few times before then, including the test to get my license. Somehow, I managed. Shortly afterward, I packed up my things and drove across the United States. The Corolla took me to Pennsylvania down to Cape Hatteras, through Appalachia and into Atlanta, Hannibal, Gunnison, Four Corners, the Rockies, and Las Vegas, almost like I was inside Woody Guthrie's head. I drove my two-door years more until the floor in the back seat rusted out. The car registered 200,000 plus miles on the speedometer. My neighbor bought it for $200 and crashed it several months later. I thought she deserved better. ...... 2. I know, I know. She was just a car, but we’d spent so much time together. Newer cars had automatic windows, not handles that you had to roll up and down like a store awning, automatic shifts, and cassette decks. My old car was no longer. Buying a new one was out of the question. I scanned Craigslist and located a cheap Honda Civic Wagon four-door automatic with low miles, not green, but a sparkling cobalt blue. I made an appointment and eyed the owner suspiciously, strolled around the car to ascertain if the doors wouldfall off the moment I pressed the gas pedal. The man read my look. “The car’s in good shape,” he said, and handed me the keys for a test run. I got inside, the car was beautifully clean, not a fingerprint on the steering wheel, not a speck of ash in the cup holder. It drove without a hiccup and sailed like a blue flag. I handed the man my envelope. So began the blue Honda period of my life. ......3. I’ve owned three other cars since then, all sedans, pre-owned, or as we used to say, “used,” four-door automatics with low mileage, hunted down on Craigslist, car lots, or dealerships with their guarantees of free maintenance. All cars were in it for the long haul. A few had names. One of them was Lucinda named after Lucinda Williams, a black beauty that I’d bought in the South where I visited Louisiana bayous and ancient Indian mounds before driving back to California. Within miles of home, smoke rose from either side of the hood in nasty-looking wisps that exploded into flame. I exited the highway. Workers in a machine shop opened the hood and used a fire extinguisher; my mechanic did the rest and got her running. I became protective, kept dirty tissues on her front seat to discourage a growing tide of break-ins thinking that people don’t like to wade past germs. I believed that cars are imbued withresonant life: if we take care of them, they do the same. Now I’m hearing about self-driven cars powered by robots. That would change everything: I want to have a peer relationship with whatever is driving me forward. Author Page The Glimmerine LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lweiss Twitter: @lenka |
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