Inspirationing (9 Channels)
* Umbilical cord of gold:
a grey, rich and frizzled infant; greasy lifelong Midas touches
* Chainsaw season
* Intercourse, Pennsylvania, at dusk. Stormy aridity; forget remembering.
* (It was a handful of story that took hold of the reader either immediately or not at all. A pregnant woman skateboarding to the hospital to give birth, each push a contraction. An old man who has used all his body’s pleasure points completely up and now at night listens to the wind grilling the trees, relentless, barbequing each leaf. They meet in a Red Robin. They talk of hope and barbeque.)
* PORT DEPOSIT: Where Each Serving of Attention Gets A Dollop of Shame
* A tamer of boredom, a sayer of soothes
* “I felt so slathered with love,” she said, “that I ended up insisting that smoking cloves alone on the fire escape in the middle of winter was the one place that I felt most alive, and if he took that away from me we were done forever.”
* The emoji
for cow moo
seems to be
broken
on my phone.
Can I borrow
your phone,
dear reader,
so that I can
press it?
* Humanless snow in a humanless meadow. A skirmish of moonlight in the upper right-hand corner of the forehead of the universe.
Stray
after Ray Johnson
I watched a blind woman in the supermarket checkout line with about forty items in a ten-item-or-less line. Maybe 65 years old. There were a lot of people lined up behind her. 6 by my count. This was at 6:20 PM on a Wednesday in July, arguably peak supermarket time. I believe that lofty pronouncements and declarations are things to disparage in life, in art and literature. Morality too. Mostly. Like the stray dog that my neighbor Jim feeds when he wants to and doesn’t when he doesn’t. Jim’s divorced, in the insurance business, and I think he owns his apartment outright. But I have no real sense of these things beyond the unwarranted airs of superiority that manifest themselves in cologne onslaughts, bulbous wrists filled with too much calcium. I don’t know dogs, though, not really, at least not in the way that, say, I know what it’s like to time travel in the 4th dimension, or live underwater for exactly 13 days. It doesn’t have a name, the stray. Or maybe it does, intuits what to be called depending on the offer and situation. Jim calls it Here Little Guy, Here You Go, There You Go, All Of It, Whoa, Don’t Go Too Fast Now, There You Go, That’s Alright, There You Go. Now. That Was. There You Go. Or doesn’t. That July was so hot, especially that night. I could hardly work on my square breathing, deep breaths, peaceful thoughts. The blind woman took the items out one by one, slowly and carefully, and no one helped and no one said anything. Some shift manager didn’t materialize to assuage everyone’s feelings and let us leave or forget. We just watched. Bright fluorescent lights.
Monkey Puzzle Roots
Solitude is earned in a thousand messages in a bottle thrown into the ocean and none answered. Or how with age pleasure becomes a responsibility, not a privilege. The inexplicable pit in one’s stomach at the moment a glass is dropped in the sink after a long dinner party. Love’s emotional trigonometry. Time. Doubt.
Eyes Open, Sneezing Wide
Trying to find a balance
and a distance
away from
and back to
you, I’ve plumb
just been YOLO’ing
my life away, I guess.
It’s raining today, pouring,
suddenly everything an elephant of a problem
that—spoiler alert—
the sun’s rays, senseless,
seemed to yesterday save.
(You ask for a doctor; they call you a priest.)
Forever nestled to the wind,
It’s You vs. You reads the text on a faded placard
I pass by every morning on my way to work.
The gym it originally touted
has long since closed
but that placard yet remains—
It’s You vs. You,
day against day,
champion against challenger,
and, landed or lunged,
moot every punch’s outcome.
(No, no hablo inglés. No hablo inglés.
Pero, voy a orar
por ti, hijo mío.)
A supermodel with cobwebs growing between his legs and daffodils growing at his feet,
I study your indifference.
A mannequin with cobwebs growing between his legs and daffodils growing at his feet,
I study your indifference.
The mind sins
by way of the body,
I guess.
The sound and smell and scent.
YOLO4EVER.
Even my eyelashes feel tired today.
The Annunciation
With her bowel movement my three-year old daughter beheads God, clean, precise. I admire the smell as though it were a piece of dirty jewelry spotted amidst flurries of falling snow. Feeble, my lack’s fortitude mottled with crow’s feet, I smile at the other passengers on the bus. Against the bouncing fluorescence some limpid waste of a moon out the shifting windows covers no one fully except my daughter, her hands absently explaining to her mouth the parameters of sensation. Already she is a slave to her life, shameful desires and desirable shames. Waft—it’s an answer to a question no one’s asked, right? A problem of proximity and degree? What does—she wafts in it. Later I stare at the body, head boundless and sinewed. Pacing without moving, my daughter sits in my lap.
***
Jeff Alessandrelli‘s newest book is Fur Not Light (Burnside Review, 2019)