| Thunder Sandwich #17
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 dweeb by jeff filipski |
LAST NIGHT In the half light I could make out the tiny translucent hairs standing half aloft along your body with the goose-flesh chill of the air conditioner. When I woke you with my tongue, our bodies beat as skins pulled across logs, pierced and painted natives drumming the ritual thump for rain, women dancing lightly around the fire's blue flame. I felt shaken in the morning as if shifted from ashes. Your shoulder was cool beneath my hand, smooth and round as the surface of an empty urn. MY SUMMER VACATION With my father on Prozac, and my mother on Paxil, and my brother on Ritalin, and me soothed by Prince Valium, my family journeyed down to the tranquil sea. Each day from the balcony I heard the waves lumber in, then ease out, lulling me to sleep. My father and brother remained transfixed by cable television, their laughter sometimes coaxing me awake. When the breeze blew the curtains my mother would shut the windows and hum along with the air conditioner. On our last night shouts rose from the parking lot, drawing us all to the window: a man banged his fist against the face of a young girl. When she sprawled under a street lamp I watched his hand send a stream of blood and spit from her mouth. His foot thumped her torso once as if to begin a cadence. The police came with their endless nods and silent lights. We shuffled past each other the next morning packing our things in the van. Barefoot I tried to walk on the painted lines in the parking lot to keep my feet cool, the asphalt hot already from the coastal sun. I stumbled once and stepped on a dark red spot that sent a shock all the way to my head. I didn't want to leave; I wanted to sleep. But each of us would have to take a turn driving back. PLAYING WITH DOLLS A girl that I know confessed to me her younger brother played with dolls, and that she always thought he would grow up to become a deviant. My brother, I told her, played with dolls- sometimes slept with them- a Barbie, a baby doll, the more acceptable G.I. Joe, and he was fine, as far as I could tell. My mother bought him the dolls, I think, because as a child she never had many. Her favorite was taken away one Christmas and given to her sister, sick in the hospital. Often I stole away to my brother's room and undressed Barbie, admired her blonde hair, full breasts, her pristine pubic region- something I had only glimpsed in magazines on the back of the school bus. Once, in the bathroom, I folded my genitals tightly between my legs, so it looked as though I had only the triangle of brown hair disappearing between my thighs. I imagined what it was like to be a woman, a man's tongue satelliting my nipples as I had licked circles on Barbie's blank dunes. Or to have fingers ribboned through my hair, like the barber's, but different, tenderly, not unlike my mother perching me on her bed, brushing my hair- it was curly when I was younger: in pictures I am on her lap with silky, golden locks, legs crossed in a white cotton dress. After my mother's breakdown, when none of us knew who she was, she would call me to her room, dark, the air thick, and say, Come here, sit on mommy's lap. You're still my baby doll, aren't you? Then she would beg to cut my hair, just a trim, then trying to make it curl again, once even trying to dye it that same soft blond. I was dating someone at the time. I would go to her place and drink and sometimes we'd fuck, but usually I just lay there, listening to her fold my clothes over the chair before sliding into the bed beside me. I tried to want nothing at all. |
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| ISSN: 1534-4037 |
Edited by Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny
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