Black Friday Confessional

Elimae hound dog and I sit
waiting in our Honda behind
a pearl Impala with white
out-of-state plates at the Bank
of America ATM. For amber
waves, etc. The weather is
brilliant and biting. Some
kind of cold. A fine day to go
out and come in again. Elimae
draws on the window with her
hound dog nose. A good three
feet from the banking machine,
a woman leans out of the rear
window of the Impala. She's
up on her knees, fingers flying
over the keypad, pausing, folding
her hands together, closing her
eyes, bowing her head. Then an
eye opens. No luck. She begins
again. Three times before snatching
her card and a stream of paper
away from the machine. After
the Impala pulls away, I inch
forward, as close as I can to the
keypad, punch the buttons slowly,
keep my eyes open, steady my face.
Elimae hound dog watches a van
pull up behind us and bites at her toe.

Found Text Tuesday

What Do You Need To Know That For?

We wasn’t living together at the time.

I came home in excruciating pain and crying and vomiting

By the time the ambulance got there I was on the floor

The next thing I know I was in the bathroom on the floor with no clothes on, just throwing up and vomiting.

I had gone, you know, to try to get help for the spider bite.

He said for me to come back in three days so he can cut it out, cut the venom out, the germs out of me.

I had a child support case.

Why do you need to know all this pertaining to this case?

So did you do a background check on me?

I don't go around going to court and I don't go around getting cases to go to court.

I graduated from the university.

A B.S. or a B.A.? I don't remember all that. I'm 50 years old.

I didn't have any benefits.

It started ‑‑ I started having like a little bump on my ‑‑ my butt area. And then it started growing real, real fast, but big. It started feeling like a mountain or something, like a big knot. It just started growing fast.

I seen a spider and I also seen, like, big bugs or ‑‑ laying down, you know, just dead.

I told him I would be there, you know, waiting for him to come on the exact day he told me the spider man was going to come.

The spider man never came and knocked on my door. Never came and knocked on my door.

He had those 99 cents round stickers, the round deodorizer, he had them all outside the apartment building,

There was a foul odor in the apartment that he was covering up. And then you didn't know the odor was there until you moved in. And the odor was loud.

The odor seemed like it was bouncing off the walls.

It was just a foul, bad odor running around there.

I had to kill the spider.

After I got bit by the spider, I jumped up and moved.

He cut the poison out of me.

I went and I got cut two times. Right here in the buttocks. That's what they called it. That's where I was cut.

I didn't have any of that. I didn't have no blocked hair down there. I don't have no hair on my buttocks.

They cut on me and patched me up and sent me home.

They had commercials on TV saying two things you can die from. It says spider bite, spider bite, snake bite, and cigarettes.

The fire department came to $775.

Evidently there was some -- some babies in there somewhere to come back and bite me.

He didn't come knock on my door and that just crushed my whole life.

It was the most miserable time in my life.

Poetry Reading at Grand Opening of MCA

Michiana Center for the Arts
113.5 East Lincoln Avenue
Goshen, IN 46528

Grand Opening Extravaganza

Friday, December 3, 6PM - Midnight

Jolly Jesters & Marching Band of Mirthful Miscreants
Poetry by Literary Arts Collective
(featuring Clayton Michaels, Nancy Botkin, Jen Stockdale & Charmi Keranen)
Short Films by Mid-America Filmmakers
Live Music by regional bands, including: Ivory West & Escaping Yesterday
Lasers by Chrish Wood
Discussion on socially-responsible community-oriented banking by Common Good Bank
All 12 MCA artists on hand to talk one-on-one about their work

Gulping It Down

sent away

Why They Need Me

Q. Are pneumatic tourniquets generally contraindicated in people who are morbidly oh geese?

The Rut

Tom & I stumbled across this fine fellow yesterday in Kalamazoo.

After awhile he bounded off, but Hello Ladies!

His scent was quite overpowering in the place where he had been standing.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Lost In My Thought Forest

Mary startles me as she walks
into the room. She's a looker,
by God, that one. And smart,
too. She'll have a Bachelor
of something someday. I turn.
I have traded pert breasts for
a plump ass, two children, an
oven full of scones. Mary is
taking my firstborn. I like her.
I offer her a scone. We speak
of the ins and outs of baking.
I ask her, How much do you know?

You Can Use The Colored Pencils Any Way You Choose

for Tom

It's a crap shoot, baby, which puts me
in mind of the drunk you saw at
the Kentucky Derby, reeling at the
door of the Port-A-John, a woman
helping him with his exit, his fly undone,
his dick hanging not nearly as spectacularly
as the way he fell head first into the waste
water runoff. The crowd groaned. In the
spirit of frankness I will say I approve
of shit in poems, of collective groans. I'm
tired of sighs and shufflings. Tell me again
about how Remy shat himself in the kitchen
and stopped drinking for three entire days.
I've got my colored pencils sharpened.
I like the color brown.

The Choices Are

The mom:

Q. What do you do for a living?
A. Working.

The son:

Q. What grade are you in?
A. First.
Q. What's your favorite subject?
A. Animals.

The Weather

Apparently, we've turned the corner. The weather feel more like pre-winter that delicious fall. The birds are all in a tizzy. Five bluebirds found their way to my walnut tree, four guys and a gal. She had it going on. Fourteen coots were swimming in Baugo Creek. Red bellied, downy and hairy woodpeckers have returned to my suet feeders. The juncos are back, and the mourning dove, and the house finches. I saw the blue heron in Baugo Park. This is my consolation prize sent to counter the impending snow. Today on my walk I wore my gloves.