Aglow
Smash Journeyman
WWYP XII ENTRY (1584 words)
Converter
By Aglow
I
Windows are opening.
People growing nervous. Hurting for a purpose. Unable to stand still. Like your dogs when the wind of your dead grandfather blows through the apartment complex. Do you remember him? He broke noses in the freight yard and his wife smelled of damp orchids. You felt his hand pressed against your shoulder the other night.
Now you see the morning sun through a high catch of branches; it is white like ice is not white. You shiver from the illuminated cold, watching her pull her legs into the jeep. They are like the shadows flitting in the corner of your vision. You should not be looking.
But you did the night before, as she rolled her leggings into a ball, and rammed them in your mouth. You wanted to choke but didn’t, kept it cool, melted into a heap. You wondered why every woman you ever remembered felt like a weapon. The moon was a burning sail over her arced shoulder-blade.
What were you thinking? Where did the child go? What spirit calls you its home?
Two nights before that you meet your plebeian wife for dinner outside of the airport, imagining what her face would look like in a bloody spatter across the pavement. It wasn’t the wine which you drank in excess, not the intense sweetness of the crimson gush you spilled to the floor, not the beauty of this small loss.
You imagine these things often: those whom you care for dying in a sudden fire, in a plummeting plane, obligation removed from your life as by the hand of God. You kissed her later in the night like you would turn to a dog-eared page. To console yourself you began smoking and turned on Rachmaninoff. You were afraid that you were born with Amusia.
Why is this music?
What else can gild? Carve pleasure from bone? What turns blood into wine? What hears sirens in the darkness and from them forges music?
Converter
By Aglow
I
Windows are opening.
People growing nervous. Hurting for a purpose. Unable to stand still. Like your dogs when the wind of your dead grandfather blows through the apartment complex. Do you remember him? He broke noses in the freight yard and his wife smelled of damp orchids. You felt his hand pressed against your shoulder the other night.
Now you see the morning sun through a high catch of branches; it is white like ice is not white. You shiver from the illuminated cold, watching her pull her legs into the jeep. They are like the shadows flitting in the corner of your vision. You should not be looking.
But you did the night before, as she rolled her leggings into a ball, and rammed them in your mouth. You wanted to choke but didn’t, kept it cool, melted into a heap. You wondered why every woman you ever remembered felt like a weapon. The moon was a burning sail over her arced shoulder-blade.
What were you thinking? Where did the child go? What spirit calls you its home?
Two nights before that you meet your plebeian wife for dinner outside of the airport, imagining what her face would look like in a bloody spatter across the pavement. It wasn’t the wine which you drank in excess, not the intense sweetness of the crimson gush you spilled to the floor, not the beauty of this small loss.
You imagine these things often: those whom you care for dying in a sudden fire, in a plummeting plane, obligation removed from your life as by the hand of God. You kissed her later in the night like you would turn to a dog-eared page. To console yourself you began smoking and turned on Rachmaninoff. You were afraid that you were born with Amusia.
Why is this music?
You think of your voice when you finally came with the dark figure on top of you, sweating and panicked. You sounded like someone you didn’t know.
II
Windows are opening and you think of the World War One diplomat (Choate?) who was shot in the back of the head, through an open window, on the ground floor. You shudder as you walk by the giant windows of the grocery and out into the air, your lungs crackling with some infection or another. The mucus is dark amber, almost a marble-y violet; it hurts when you pull it from deep within you. There is a certain taste to getting sick, like bitter meat.
Mount Mitchell occupies most of the horizon, haloed in the autumn mist. At the red light a cough erupts through your aching chest, purpling mucus spatters the steering column. You are still wiping off the shining mass as the light turns green. You fumble; hesitate; reach for the gas pedal – a screaming semi sails through the intersection, the airstream rocking your small car.
Yes. Had you gone, you would have died. You would have been the burden removed from your plebeian wife. She would have called to the dogs and failed to turn her head as your ghost blew through the apartment complex. You would not have put your hand on her shoulder.
In the distance you hear something strange.
III
But yes, you were concerned about Amusia. A region of the brain known as Broca's Area is responsible for the musical development of your syntax. Or was supposed to be. You are not sure. When Brubeck comes on in the grocery store no part of you wants to dance. No foot tapping.
But some women are attracted to this. There, behind the soda machine. That red sundress made of gauze. Tight, soft bandages. Like she is covering the wound of her body. You want to put your fingers into that wound; you imagine tasting the sea-salt of her pubis.
She sees you seeing, and yes, the windows are opening. She sees you not tapping your foot to the not-music your brain doesn't recognize. She sees and is enamored with your absolute stillness. Your stony man-ness. You meet her eyes but don't smile and don't blush and a wave of smoked lemon pepper chicken smell fills the air between you. You stumble out of the deli, blind with embarrassment. You cannot wait to flee. Good God, you think, fried chicken?
This is not the first time such a thing has happened. You are chronically damaged by the mundane. You see a woman whose eyes are like the dark underside of leaves, then a Country song comes tromping through the loudspeakers: “ID LIKE TO WALK YOU THROUGH A FIELD OF WILDFLOWERS; ID LIKE TO CHECK YOU FOR TICKS....”
….you backtrack. Did that song mention ticks In a field of wildflowers? You are terrified. You know that it did, because the planet you are living on is earth. Because you walk among men.
There is no solid ground on which beauty may stand. Your brain cannot relate the biology of a Nocturne to any known animal. You cannot trust that the glowing tusk of her naked body on the black sheets won't turn into packets of ketchup. Won't turn into your wife.
IV
Your wife, your wife, she found you, found you pounding a girl on the kitchen counter, back three days early from her conference in Georgia. You are both brutally naked, naked as the accidents you are, naked like unsheathed knifes on the green marble surface. The girl tries to push you off. Your wife just stands there, face agape, looking sick. She runs out of the kitchen. The girl is screaming. Then the wife is screaming in the next room. You see your face reflected in the wonderfully polished linoleum floor. It is a white mark on olive, out of focus – you imagine your head like the little flame of a candle. You vaguely feel the girls fists pummeling your back; (what fine wrists!) smell the tangle of her tears and ***. But you won't get off. Still she is pinned to the counter-top.
V
Think back to that night at Webber Cinema, a few Decembers ago. When the snow was falling like gray ash. You were walking from the theater with your brother when a car speeding through the lot hit a woman, not seven feet in front of you. Folding double, her skull bounced off the hood; she fell to the ground in front of the car, hands swinging upward, as if in supplication. In utter reverence.
Drive, drive it did, over her small body, the front left tire, then the back left cracking her sternum. It drove and drove and drove, a shaft of lightning gone horizontal: never before had you seen a parking lot fled so elegantly, with such a raw sense of purpose. She was twisted at an angle which disturbed your aesthetic sensibilities, her face to the ground, her gurgle soft; a baby's mumble. People ran screaming: some towards, some away.
With that moment, you begin to hear it. The snow like gray ash. The soft, aquiline curve of your brother's face. The woman with the distinct impression of a tire across her sweatered back. The screams and curses streaming past like bright kites behind children running: you heard music then. I knew you had it in you. At that point in time, you were not the gawker. Not the rubber-necker. Not the Channel Five News Team. You were the one in awe, the one who could recognize the value of the particular beam of streetlight which pierced the puddled oil in prismatic flourish, you were the one who heard the woman's blood gurgle and tried to make out the names of her children she would not see again. You wanted to know them for safekeeping. In the vault of your spirit. You wanted to encase the names in your pleasure.
VI
You now understand the task; you hear the music as you lie there, naked, pressing some slu.t's body to the marble. This sl.ut you think is the masterpiece. This very one. Your wife screaming at you from down the hallway. The scratch marks on your back. Yes. The roach trap by the toaster. Even that. It is all more than you deserve.
“Look,” you want to say, “look at the reflection of my white face against the olive floor, like spilled milk. Like something cold and sweet for no good reason. Look at your face, its astonishing texture, slogged in tears, the steam of your misery rising off of your body in molten waves!”
You want to say these things but you know they will not look. Nonetheless you recognize why these elements have been brought together. You know why you only hear music now that the pummeling and the crying and the shaking is happening.
You get up off the weeping girl, weeping yourself, naked and born. Aroused. You walk outside, out the front door, into the inch of crisp, popping snow. The cold is damaging. You loose feeling in your toes in seconds. You are wild to fail your hand at everything.
Look at the moon, trembling like a drum-head! The clatter: a raccoon brings the garbage can down on top of itself and flees into the pine. You smell woodsmoke and ozone on the mountain air. Believing that desire and anguish are one. What else can gild? Carve pleasure from bone? What turns blood into wine? What hears sirens in the darkness and from them forges music?
It is you, believer, and it always has been.
