faces
Portugal
domination
whether
warn
The phantasmagoria had no fanfare because it happened at a time when lubricant was not abundant. What was abundant was manikins. They saw a woman undressing and dressing a manikin in a window. They saw milk. They saw testy people arguing in the park. In the park, old people waited for young thieves. The thieves had stolen things, and they came to the park to sell those things to old people who lived off very little.
She found a key. She did not know what lock that key went to, but she tied string around the key's teeth and said something as she did that. She knew that the key would make her fall in love. She wanted to fall in love, so she numbed her ears with ice and poppy juice. Her grandmother held a needle to a flame.
She ran the needle through her ear lobes. She put string through the holes. Wire through the holes. Cable through the holes.
The phantasmagoria passed a family 500,000 years ago. The phantasmagoria passed my grandfather. It passed by me when my son was standing on a trash couch, crying.
We flew. We were crabby. We begged each other to leave each other. We lit firecrackers. The child was angry because a dark thing was following. His grandmother told him that that dark thing was his shadow. She said everyone had shadows. She had a shadow! The little dog they were walking had a shadow. But he had gotten to the age where he no longer trusted her.
She said she would not suffer fools. She could not suffer fools.
He was afraid to be near her and to speak around her because he had heard that she could not suffer fools. Suffer, fools.
He would not succumb to the waste. The grapes were poor this year. The roof had caved in. She learned to make preserves, and that was her way of endearing herself to the neighbors. The neighbors' son had been abused by the dogs they bred. Many black dogs had jumped on him as he floated in a pond. He could not get out.
An ache came with each parry.
His father had warned him that if he ate the herb he found in the nest he would lose his tongue in his sleep. His tongue crawled out of his face in his sleep when he was sleeping in a sack he could not stand.
There was no herb in the nest. His mother had been pushed into a fire. She learned to deaden her face. That was a skill her husband had taught her. She finished her bath, and when she stepped out the door of the bathroom, she was met by her husband's hands, which fumbled in getting around her neck. He complained that she had hid his guns from him. He wore no trousers. He attempted to develop a paste that could get you drunk but that wouldn't leave you feeling pungent or concrete the next day.
They warned each other to leave each other alone.
To fold yourself up for no reason other than to find yourself in a canoe with your brother. You are on the Passaic, and you are both drunk. He tries to throttle you, and you kick him off. Your son is standing on the trash couch, squalling. You were supposed to be watching him, but you have left him crying. You have left him to see a phantasmagoria. But there is no fanfare for it. Many things are in it. Taking the lead is a portrait painter--followed by a bear wrestling an angel. Next, it is a fast piece of hair on the lip of a sleeping woman. She slept on a bench. There is a warm plaque.
I felt no glee with the person with whom I saw in the hole. I had a carnation. I had an olive in a carnation.
My son and his sense that he should not like his shadow. He shakes his head at it. He won't wave to it, even if his grandmother asks him to.
She was inconsistent in the ocean. Sometimes the bottoms were on, and sometimes they were off. It was not such a bad thing to be spat on. It was not such a bad thing to see a man pushing a rock far larger than he into the ocean.
To be far larger than he he had to eat much meat. He was the person who sold it. He was the person who picked fruit out of the backyards of other people.
It was a neighborhood where no one walked dogs. You would see the dogs in frontyards or backyards, but no one walked dogs. It was a place where people would cut off dogs' ears and dogs' tails. She was inconsistent in the ocean or when she drank water. I could never be lighthearted because I ate too many chicken hearts. It came out that I enjoyed them, and I did.
I was commended for spitting on my son and on my wife. This, after she spat on me and on him. Our child squalling on the couch.
If you had had a video of it, you'd say it was an abused child. But if you had the video and our explanations, then maybe you'd have something else. Or if our threats came with it.
He had a plan for the winter. After the first big snowstorm, he'd pretend to shovel out his drive. After doing that for a bit--enough for the neighbors to see--he'd pack his tailpipe with snow. He'd sit in the backseat of his car, pretending to take a break from shoveling, and, sure, the cab of the car would fill with neon light and seawater and dust in brownian motion, which is a form of dust that, if inhaled, can get you to fall in love so long as you have the key with the string wound around it. As you wind around the string, there are prayers to say. Incantations. Not the argot of thieves but the prayers of sham humans.
Humans who deny a phantasmagoria passed by them when it did. It passed by the prehistoric family. The mother had killed a sick baby mammoth with an atl-atl. It passed by my grandfather, who made a point of being abusive with his wife and three of his children but not with my father. Because my father was not the abused one, I was certain to pay for it.
I was certain to eat quince. I was certain to smell mint because someone had driven a riding motor over it. I was certain to have my tennis balls stolen by kids or to have my eye poked out with a spear because I was part of an experiment in which, as a control, a spear is put in my eye. It's supposed to touch the part of my brain that makes me smile and dream.
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