A l e x T r e t b a r —

DRAMATIS PERSONAE (in reverse order of disappearance)

The Spokesperson..............................The Speaker of the Poem / Winch / Pullstring / “I”

Ripjohn.........................................................……….The Beloved Antagonist / Love Interest

History..............................................................…………………..............................A Hitchhiker

Patches............................................………........Has Money Duct-Taped to a Suburban Tree

The Requestor....................................……………................................The Reader of the Poem

Ibid......................................................………………………..................................................A Dog

Countrypeople, Cops, Bluehairs of Acumen, &c.

           Honey you aren't making sense. He slapped me so hard that a star saw me. I woke up in a bluebird's lung, many televisions there. Violence will be your etiquette, my assigned nurse told me, a spoon of pulp between us. On movie nights we were fed fake takeout. Much pageantry about it, needlebouncers cosplaying as deliverygirls, the whiteboxes ideogrammed darkredly and held alltogether by important warbond information crumpled into swanmeat. History once more my cellmate. Etiquette my hive, a mannerplay. Ripjohn slapped me again, then, morelightly this time, because we were about to crash, and because he wanted to show me the spoon he now held eyelevel between us. As though I were hot bunnyslope, as though I were not asleep again, I upveered and shifted. And looking the present in the mouth, crashing through a quarter-dry rainbarrel into the lot of the hammer, I spat a tooth at Ripjohn. Need a shutdown.

And Ripjohn listened. Gosh an angel tonight. Do you suppose? He was loving his carfolk sure but also admiring of decay. The gunrests of his gunrests were resting on the gunrests. Weaponful he sat in darkwindowlight. He was I. He had been well evening-paid, so he felt again like laughing. Doorflungopen he went out begging for a tissue. The beautyghouls parted, singing allthewhile and out from between dull laserbeams a white coalcloud floated, turning. Over the barrelfire a beautyghoul's arm was suspended in leatherlight, to aid the infirm tattooist. Ripjohn just wanted goodmusic, tomakethenightmuchbetter. Salt for the censer no longer smoking. Told our parents we’d be good, but goodwill dryup. I could tell by the far yellows of his eyes, we would angel tonight. Go. Upmusic.

Back inside, Winch! he yelled into my face. History and Patches were knifefighting. That girl walking away says to me I'm always just looking for madeleines nearerer the sun, you know? Dead ribbons competed among her silverlocks. Asbestos already gauche in bordertest. I cough to death in arenas, unable to explain myself. Tell my sons I love him.

[DIEGETIC LEAFWIND MUSIC]

[The guards would come up next to us, listening to our songs. How even now we miss them, before they were ever born. Sometimes shared tobacco with us. Wand of brownspit. Telephoned our intentions. Dialectical behavioral therapy. Macrostatue of mountain twelve miles out. Plural highway, important, do not deliver. Wrongly taught it was easy. In the red peafields we welded peashooter parts to peashooter parts. A smokestack just five pixel, the spire above our home. Cloudvultures gasping where they had fallen, bamboo soonly shooting from their eyes. The physical plant, codified holdout, our nieces buried there. Godgrass we grow in the greenhouse. Lay it at their graves, a semiannual visit. Little youngbeam of headlamp, this our barreled heliotrope. Mark its bruise, and mark its lazy sunwalk. A thousand umpires are on the way, and spit looks into my mouth. Field of pearl, and vein a violent macramé. I am gone-gone garden. Gosh an angle tonight.]

           The territorial dispute provisionally and uneasily settled, allwounds healed, our ur-ash reduced to post-air, the beautyghouls still clacking their teeth against the windows, the leatherlight dimmed and ninth navy booming riverwise, tattooed party back to base, Patches having entered from a mourn, maybe mercury, History reset-setting the settings of their scythe, new time signature, glyph childrencarved upon their eye-mullion, and as it spun alarmclocklike, ocean picking up steam again, waxing the whitecaps for it, new law but old wavetax and ebbcrash, laying in beanstore for winter, Ripjohn spoke as he always did into vacuum: Shall we folks and we did. I.e., brimstone. I.e., further further future-pyre.

But my life behaves as though it is a farthing, neither here nor I. Trained to recognize dead languages immediately, History’s toothpick was also good for ice, now that I rereremember it, fit only for gianter mouths. Having endured Ripjohn’s slaps for roomcenturies, it was very much to witness Patches bleeding out from where their body had apparently been trying to caterwaulclimb to reach the gardenlevel window as though they had been trying to climb the cavewall of a tulip, as though they were bleeding out, as though they were trying to escape from the partyroom. History’s lodgèd greatpick lodge-lodged in Patches’ memorybank, and thus it ended, all was pitchpitchpitch pitched in darkness, a fat vein siphoned of glitter, debt unsettled, breakfastplans embossed for tomorrowtomorrowtomorrow evening, the armored evening then-then repopulated and resupplying the opera-fields, blessings behaved as though they were blessed, and the partygoers goned the party. I shook my jewelry at myself in a smoked mirror. The hundreds of not-gone goers stood by in mo[u]rning, everdeep in molt, with bark and a nub of coal. It was hard core music. A tuff dogwhistle—as though, embossed, a goner, I showed up to work. Hyphen-hyphen.

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