The wisdom of the winding path is that there are no shortcuts.
June 7, 2020
Month: April 2022
by Elijah M. Newton*
The woman in white dress lives in the hole walls come in groups of four I’m sure the man in the mirror told me so he wears my face not me my face like Halloween but children love Santa more. Mother says boys behave rewards are given Mother wore white and was ladylike Father was gone told to look in mirror to find him Mother never made sense. Money is found at the bank had a roommate once a frog perhaps poured peroxide on my hair Chicago now Albany frustrating really it was bleach a total mess the mouse laughed with me he wears a top hat lives in hole with woman in white. They’re married I think. Virgil lives in my veins pumping through my heart like faucet feeds the hunger to share secrets are meant to be kept it’s ok to share dream though. One day words being hard to find he came out the mouse not Virgil told me he was magick magick exists in the minds of children pure imagination left me. There was a potion was not free but mice don’t need money he was after my heart cheese “NO!” shouted me at the mouse ran no scurried to the hole haven’t seen him since. Woman in white is nicer whispers to me at night darkness hides things 'specially secrets. I love woman in white reminds me of Mother she told me great many things but Mother made no sense woman too. Work is work not meant to be fun friendly woman at bus port smiled I liked that wanted to make her steak that night steak comes from cows live on farms went there once a park too. Woman didn’t want steak I didn’t like that decided to make in-spir-a-tion She lives now in between the blue lines pen broke can’t clean stain from carpet broken useless it sleeps now in dumpster. Sat at the desk wrote until the sun woke up long page I felt better went to work work is work boss told me he needed more from me “I’m poor not much to give!” shouted at him. He didn’t like that it wasn’t my fault. Told me “start making sense can’t understand me" “im not Mother. Mother she never made sense. Father left money.” this confused me but he gave me number to magick woman just mouse in disguise offered me potion capsules. I don’t take them can’t afford them mice don’t need money. Persistent ran home but he beat me there now in mouse body with top hat smiled at me reading my paper. Snatched from his tiny paws hated it told me so I believe him me too kept paper though told me so offered tiny hand in important task. “Mice don’t need money! No cheese, go home tell woman in white!”
July 4, 2020
* Originally an unfinished short-fiction piece reformatted by Ajax.
Why do your keys make so happy a jingle on a dull day in March? like a puppy dog at the door, welcome! welcome! it's a good day! hello! you're home! Forty-eight years old and I slouch with my knees apart like a cowboy if a cowboy was a middle-aged woman in artificially distressed denim and dirty hiking boots. What's important? Love and art. Forty-eight years old and I swagger with my wallet chain chiming against my box-cutter like spurs ching! ching! like a cowboy if a cowboy was a rejected product of the unraveling American middle-class. When did I last watch the sun rise? decoupled from time and space because it can't be rushed, can't be squeezed in between errands and dishes and feeding the cats, because there's no app to replace it, because every single one is unique, because it'll never come again. Forty-eight years old and I sigh when the weight of old pain and everyday grief feels too heavy on my back like a cowboy if a cowboy was a bird-beaked old woman trying to do the right thing without a guide, a tutor, a mentor, a helpmeet. Who am I isn't a question I can afford to answer when nobody is good enough to earn a living. (The interest would kill me.) Forty-eight years old and I'm finally the person I wanted to be at fourteen. If I'm invisible it's because I choose to be invisible. If I put up with someone's shit it's because I choose to put up with their shit, for love or money. I don't have to, I choose. I survive. like a cowboy if a cowboy was more than an old-fashioned symbol of self-reliance, independence, substance, courage, and strength, more than a man whose character, in accordance with stereotype, was honed by adversity, a man who doesn't care about the show but about the story it tells, a man who understands that it's not about the having of it, but the earning of it, a man who lives in no man's shadow, a man whose cares are etched into every line on his face, in his limp, his swollen joints, in every gray hair, every wrinkle, every mole, a man who doesn't complain, but keeps on walking, keeps on working, a man who shapes his life with his hands, if a cowboy was an American ideal that even a forty-eight year old woman can aspire to in a dusty dry-room shifting banana boxes from one place to another. It's not that I wanted to be a man, it's that I wanted to live up to masculine ideals.
April 3, 2022
when you're asking only one crisis at a time when you wonder will i ever be enough when you're asking can i make it one more moment one more hour just today just let me get through today and that primal glittering star reaches through black branches and it's enough for one moment it's enough to lift your foot and take with you those downy white feathers layered over smeary purple bars and it's enough to get you in the door it's enough to get you through one more moment one more hour just today
April 3, 2022
my poetry keeps me company in fragmented moments that slide around like empty tin cans useless used up can't be retrofitted refilled empty moments chained together like shoreline wrack broken shells foamy salt spit hiss and rush whatever it takes it gives back at the end of the day
April 3, 2022
how fast does a sparrow's heart beat that frantic drum in its tiniest breast pocket of life that springing leaping spark chirruping competing with the roar of diesel brakes and afternoon traffic in a hungry frenzy to claim some self- enclosed space driven by ancestral flight feathers to hold on hold still remain in danger a target a morsel for some other ancestrally driven pocket of protein dragged toward the same destination as the white-knuckled primate at the helm of the machine one after another green yellow red endless march along a wandering path of despair and con- fusion and con- templation and mythology beneath the frantic sparrow's heart bursting with a song he sings in the name of relief in the name of one brief moment unbowed by the crushing weight of natural selection before the alarm triggers monday morning for a dime a dollar a song a poem for the acquisition of resources for power for a cardboard cutout opportunity for a moist pair of eyes transfixed by a dancing mobile spinning spinning overhead tracing contrast by contrast a sizzling flood of neural pathways lighting up with animal urges disguised as heavenly imperatives in the hearts of bipedal apes at a bus stop for one brief moment beating in time to bird- song on the first of april.
April 3, 2022
I listened and it changed me. I spoke and remained the same.
April 3, 2022
