Monday, December 4, 2006

Signora Rubini

       The night was like a lot of butter. Butter through repeated street-lamps and the butter pushed through a net but the net made of leaves and the butter spread through all the holes in the leaves making fluttery orange cutouts all over. Blotchy shadows cast by bunches of leaves and held up by great snarled branches. Stretched over the building and street.



       "Ci stanno tante cose da voi che non ho mai capito, there are so many things of you all that I have never understood. Like......I mean....l'internet, che vuol dee? What's it wanna say "net"? What the dick's it wanna say?"
       She was perplexed and at this the shadows cast over her face boldened and the deep ruts in her face buckled in the strain. Her face pulled tight like a fist and he could only look at the great bags under her eyes. Smoke fell like lace from her cigarette and tickled his nostrils. He paused to think and to prepare words.

       "Allora e cosi semplice, it is as simple as this, it wants to say...in other words...ok. For example, when there is a sack of computers, quando ce sta un sacco dei computer," and in his saying of computer his accent shone right through and to her ears it was bitter and that bitter taste stuck to every word that followed. "Ed i computer son' collegati, they are all connected, like when one does the fishing, and one takes the fish with a big thing, this thing you put in the sea to take the fish, very big and made of---"
       "----Siiiiii!---" and like sparks the crackle and whine of her burnt voice hit him and the bags under her eyes pulled tight. She had understood. "Siii! Now I have understood! Un rete! Nick, you say 'un rete.'"
       She rolled the r in this word like a boat motor so that the whole word was like a motor sputtering and coming to life and he said to himself goddamnit that r you just can't touch that goddamn r no matter how the fuck hard you try.
        Having understood the word 'net' and having connected to him through this word, a brightness had filled her eyes and she was smiling. Her smile was a stretching of furrows and a pulling and crunching of skin from either side of her face. It was a comforting old-woman smile. He smiled in response. She brought the slender cigarette to her lips, in the crux of two fattened fingers, propping it between pursed, crumpled-paper lips. She pulled in.

       He could see that she had once been beautiful.




       He paced and he smoked and made conversation with ease. He spoke in a slang that that was his native tongue. He liked the open way it held his mouth and how easy and muddy the words came and overall the slang pleased him. He thought it a miracle to speak so poorly and be understood so well.
       He let his mouth hang open and the let words flop out of it like when you first wake up in the morning and trip and stumble out the door.
       He moved fluidly through the party, staring at her like she couldn't see him. She could see him. She was golden in the soft and yellow lights. She was golden because he prized her. He talked to many but she was the only one to whom he paid a damn.
       I will be blatant I will be blatant almost every girl at this party has talked to me. All have made it out of their way to come to me and talk to me except this one and I will be blatant.
        He was getting attention and this went to his head and then suddenly he knew that he would have her.
        He imagined her sweating. He imagined her gripped at the waist. He imagined her tan. Placing the lip of the bottle to his mouth, feeling the small clack of the bottle against his teeth, he imagined her. Scalding lips in place of frigid glass.


       "Can I bum?"
       "Dude, this one's my last, but I'll give you a drag."
       Placing foam to the lips and pulling in the smoke and the tar coating his lungs and feeling a certain power. To exhale was to do so into Death's face and to inhale said that you didn't believe in Death and exhaling was denying His existence and exhaling again was the power to bring Him nearer. All of these pulls and breaths out of the smoke made him high and that he could have so much power within view of others made him higher.
        It was the image that he loved and nothing more.
       Life is not a thing to be built but a thing to be burned.




       Orange and grimy like withered, pilling upholstery. Pushed through dark shadows onto pavement. Butter spread about and flickering and breaking part, like flecks of gold on the bottom of a stream.

Saturday, December 2, 2006

To Ms. M--

the prelude of broken sidewalks
wrought-iron fences
private property

dodging glances to the shopping district—
the glass façade of the pizza parlor

where patrons
on barstools

stare at pedestrians
who pass the restaurant

towards evening,
the features NOW SHOWING

glow from spots below
the neon of the Avon marquee—

pink, blue, white
under which you stood

the University Orchestra was pleased to present its new Steinway Grand Piano for its Grand Fête on Friday night in Sayles Hall during its rendition of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, op. 73—

her face all a harmony
in black, gold, cherry—
the pronounced cheekbones

of the violin
with its delicate neck
all dressed-up

in black, a black suit
with polished brass flaring

the night silent for all measures
across which peels the trumpet—

the night between immediacy and

drunkenness

foreign films with

subtitles

adagio un poco mosso—
after the show was over

you walled yourself in your coat
I walked home alone

trying to recall anything
from practicing piano

for years and years
in the Japanese school.

uppercase "b"

Thank you to LA for putting this blog together, and fighting for Blackletter even though he is REAL busy with school work. I will try my darndest to stay in the game with this from my post in NC. I miss you all, and am honored to be a part of this.

cheers,

-able

Ephemera

When you say tonight
That we will talk in whispers and gestures,
I realize that I'd forgotten
How I revel in small details.

Mine:
A slip of the heart
A tick of sincerity

Yours:
A premeditated glee

We hold hands walking in opposite directions
Passing pea coats and scarves,
knit gloves and bricked heels.

Perhaps we'll stay blind
to the same that we see.