LITMIR.BIZ

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and gin and laughter.

      At whose center obliqueness coded warnings. Wisecrack semaphores. Paper napkins in an origami of crushed animals. Messages tapped by silver on crystal. The reflection of a face on a butter knife. Two knuckles a bare bum on the bowl of my spoon. Ha ha. Abrupt silences. The taste of vinegar and olive oil. Of safety. Of betrayal. Of sea brine rising to the walls. The implosion within meeting the explosion without. Without passion but efficiently. The uncharitable love of Eros. Sucking the beach like a vacuum.

      Standing wave about to wipe out the happy colony on the beach.

      “God damn it over there I said.”

      Slam.

      “I thought …”

      “Shit.… ”

      Silence then renewed clatter of utensils.

      “… just put it down and get the …”

      “… wait …”

      “I have been waiting for the last ten years for you to figure out the fucking …”

      “… Daddy? …”

      “Watch yourself go back to your room your mother and I are …”

      “… but this one didn’t we …”

      “That one over there not that one by the …”

      “But that was …”

      “Now the rice is burning.…”

      “… it seemed …”

      Slam.

      “‘Seemed’? If you’d open your eyes and shut your mouth for once you’d see what it is. But you never have not fucking once!”

      Sound of breaking glass.

      Alert frightened silence.

       “Forget it!”

      A rustle of angry steps and cloth being torn from a hook then a door slams. Then a sound of water in a sink. Then sobbing.

      Like hands drawn behind his back manipulating objects in the dark to a background music of incomprehensible bitterness.

      (Yet in the ring of darkness the circle of light. At the center of the light a crystal spinning. Shimmering. Seeking the level where it can come to rest. At last. The level of its flaw.)

      At that time. At this time what is known reflecting back on that. Though what is known now is still uncertain. If known. Hardly believed. Guessed. Uncertainty revealed as never more than that. Again.

      Impenetrable vagueness.

      No relation whatever it seemed of cause and effect. Post hoc ergo propter nothing whatsoever? No comprehensible thing. Only a flickering of images in the dark. A very strange movie.

      And the slipping of the blade beneath the nails.

      Tell me. Tell me. What? Again.

      Not the physical bluster only.

      No the undercutting that slipped unseen from afar.

      That with a single well-placed desire blew the castle to kingdom come.

      Wait. Are you remembering accurately? What? How can you remember what you did not understand? Do not understand. You are inventing. True. I think. Again. To reduce it to grammar seems after all unavoidably to. It did not happen grammatically. Almost nothing was spoken until it was too late. And what was said. Inenarrable. Yes. In memory all of it happened at one time. The only time.

      Once.

      How describe the trust he did not know could not know he had and could not believe he had lost. Had lost. Even before he lost it. What it meant. Means. Shall mean. Picking the pieces of glass from his skin. For years. Astonished at the blood. And the unending pain. That ended. Would have ended. Caused by that? That that? Doubtfully. Layers of pain. Once one is broken a deeper revealed. Down and down. In. Proceed gently here. For the subject tissue is yet living. And quivers at the knick. Tell me. Again.

      The betrayal happened swiftly and lasted long. A slug that kept slugging. Years and years. How much can happen at once.

      The face of the father frozen in prissy triumph.

      A face he had never seen behind those eyes.

      I loathe you loathe he loathes she loathes we loathe you loathe they loathe.

      That face had helped make him. Had been the north star during many an uncertainty. Given guidance through perfect and imperfect storms. Given value and measure against the credulities of disgust and of love. Given an example of wisdom courage devotion virtues we laugh at now you and I. Given a mold for the sand of the future. Given an image and a target for the long-breathed arrow of adulthood.

      It now spat him indifferently behind.

      Dared him to live. Now. Without love.

      Father. Abba.

      Dropped like an inconvenience into the trash of a life.

      3

      What ails you? The vertigo of the streets.

      Like a spiderweb that sticks to your feet.

      Nowhere to fly to.

      As if patiently waiting to be eaten.

      There was the compress of flowers in the morning. — Will he ever be happy again. — Not impossibly.

      There is the setting of jaw and the grinding of teeth. Classes to wrestle with. Classmates to spar with. Wars rising from the horizon in smears of TV gray. A decade of hatred in front of him. Had he known it was to be a decade. Or had it been only a decade.

      The solitary one raises his teeth in a smile for the camera.

      Hold it.

      Hold on.

      Hold.

      Educare. To exfoliate what is coiled within. To meet the blaze of the other ignite and burn. With oh what new fire. Learning! Yes.

      Euclid to Einstein add carry divide Columbus to Bird Tigger to Heffalump beneath Charlotte’s web to run Dick run to Caesar to Hitler monster saint genius Joan of Arc Gandhi Leonardo Voltaire Beetoven Edison Morse Bach Whitney Bell bacilli radium uranium plutonium pandemonium cotton gins telegrams telephones television the Wright brothers Goddard von Braun the air electric with signals wings rockets from the Straits of Magellan across the western Rockies beneath the beckoning moon and the dare of the stars by the Arno and Athens through Paris and London through the gates of ivory to Jefferson’s quill. Rapping the seance of schooling. All those noble ghosts.

      In the loose fist the scattered straws.

      Rain in the schoolyard. Random shouts and orange jackets. The squeals of the swings. In pendulum the squeal of time they heard with a giggle it seemed so old who could take it seriously. Everything took place behind its back.

      The squeal of the chalk against the blackboard. In fact green. The chalk yellowing the fingers of the teacher. As he frowned describing the depradations of Simon de Montfort against the pays d’oc. The squeals of the girls during recess. Shrinking before the invasion. From sacking to slaughter. Stakes flaring like matches at random lighting the heretics in the naked southern fields. Their screams. Resolved to teasing at the back of the class scuffle in the corridor the boring lecture waiting for the last buzzer. Homework to come. Then television.

      He wonders if there will be a quiz tomorrow. Reread the last chapter. Stare at the plate of knights in armor the shield with its cross the fish-scales of chain mail. The text floats out the window. Lies down in the wraps itself in dew. Worried by a deer nibbled by a fox dragged by an officious raccoon into. Is unreadable

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