“I know what I’m looking at,” I thought, and continued to stare, even though I couldn’t make heads or tails:
of the crows in clouds of cauliflower, the war hero, written off as dead, a fester of roaches in the hospital cafeteria, the 4am phone call, the unlit cigarette, 20,000 leagues down your pants, the empty train station, the bomb shelter, now a guest cabin, the miracle of immaculate contraception, say, now that you mention it, fuck work, the unnecessary journey and the dirge of car alarms beyond the Castlegar Super 8, the unrelenting suspicion that nowhere
is everywhere now, a missing earring and the fucked-out couch, the fear in everyone, Crazy Horse, The Enduring Mystery of Bedside Manor, the first lurchings of the train, New York’s fateful romance with the hotdog, Dillinger’s death mask, baffling receipts for high-end cough syrup all over the floor of your mini-van,
the aisle in the drug store, where they stock the home pregnancy kit: unconsidered, ignored, or otherwise avoided,
Your hair, everywhere, bits of it, like moss or the rain on Lasqueti that falls sideways, the wild animal noises fleeing your stomach, naked imprecision as we approach the fabled town of Make-out, a fandango of flamingos, high noon in Angry Twat, the way it’s been evening all day long, the gallows humour of the not-enough-to-get-us-off, the hospice
on the edge of town, the shiny black porcelain panther in the window, always judging, with never a decision brought down, the old woman who resembles my Mother, the night they drove old Dixie, that bottomless fount of youthful folly, the 1920s hangover, still with us, now a migraine, the dead celebrity, once a staple at the Minnit Mart, the novel that wrote itself, Ugly City, Beautiful Sky, the irremediable stains on the Constitution; the undead thing
at the bottom of the bay, the blight in the mayonnaise, a psychotic rage some have termed “masturbation,” the carny, breaking parole, with an innocent dalliance in the Bonnie & Clyde death car, the ashtray vs. strike anywhere – our hearts are with you, the scourge of other people’s kids, all the sincerity of your voicemail greeting, the discarded furniture your wolves call home; the wealth of inorganic
plastic adrift in the seas, the wind sometimes. The false scansion of St. Patrick’s Day, the unholy farts of the G.O.P. and how they’re sure to sweep us away, match-stick house vs. atom bomb, the morning they hanged Ned Kelly, the ineradicable lipstick stain, unfathomable (at this hour, anyway) murmurings of Glenn Gould, Nina Simone, and Keith Jarrett, as they hunched over keyboards innumerable, the smoke from the pyre
of burning slaves, the pub with all the chainsaws, the way the Quathiaski ferry just appears, like a massive parlour trick, the singular concussion of arousal, and the fatal blows, by axe and hammer, in love’s departing, the uncomfortable rash we call “the long weekend,” the labyrinth known as your cell phone plan, the night the lights went out in Mormon country, Houdini’s unpaid dry cleaning bill, the smell of cordite from Doc. Pfeffer’s chivaree, the love-handles of Perestroika,
the horrible swelling, the time your ex locked himself in the car at the PNE, weeping over your indiscretions, the cheap, white-washed plywood that was our Parthenon, then our Necropolis, and finally, our Detroit, the bearded lady, dead now, who worked the front counter at the Baker St. Sally Anne, the moon’s astonishing rise, mediocre mayoral career, and crepuscular fall, the vicious tarantulas of casino capitalism (cannabis, anyone?), the wanderslut years of Freddie Mercury, powerful antiseptic known as today’s murderous cops, Oedipus Rex, LAMF, the unbroachable precipice of the first time you stayed up all night, the broken teeth of crust punk (with dog), an insipid act of sugar coma, the dead weather here, there and
everywhere, the night I “slept” in your Firefly, the crap they brought up from the Titanic, the dime you swallowed on a dare, unaccountable lights in the night sky over—well, now that you mention him—Laguna Bob Fosse, the maraschino cherries from Lenin’s autopsy, the Living-wage Manifesto, the spaghetti-string catastrophes of Wayne King Jr. and the chain of misremembred Charles Manson ghost
stories, the always-drunk aunt and her dances molestic, tequila soda tailgate in the parking lot at Hemingway House, the bog people of the lower Slocan, carfuck anthems that come of a cherry red ‘53, the interval known as contempt, the twin engines of boredom, and lust. “The Donger needs food,” the flats of shit beer that unerringly find their way, like sex workers, to the heart of Saturday Night, envy and it’s unblinking clarities, what Betty saw
and then told Sally. A pleasing cocktail of gin and methyl hydrate, the thankful demise of the bongo, helicopter dick, and the mimicry that passes for poesy these daisies. The more you spice it, the unyielding comma in Renata Adler. The shocking half-life of the moron isotope, the war on the war on the War on Drugs, the night you pulled a knife on your step-dad, and the unenviable cab ride home, the car you got out of and wandered away from during a traffic jam, the goddam Medici, the eel-infested horse head from The Tin Drum, the 8 months we spent in the windowless crypt that you insist on referring to as “Our Gatsby Year.” The tick that bit Bikini Kill, the bewildering manner in which Man Way permitted
us to sit in his darkened kitchen, sipping beer. The Seventh Seal’s unnecessary blacksmith, when you demanded we acknowledge that you are hardcore. The sash weight from the Snyder-Gray trial. The theft of our commons. The unbelievable mountain of porn in your uncle’s shed—discarded handbooks, verstehen, for the St. Antony in all of us. The invention of recreational sex, and how it spread like
poison ivy. The shrimp shit in the better Jambalaya. The unblinking elsewhere of horror vacui. The pure green-black velvet of the creature, as it drifted beneath our treading feet:
“What was that?” you asked, startled.
“Weeds,” I said, “just weeds.”
As if that might calm you.
clay mccann 