STORYTIME!
by Swan
It’s time! You know what time it is. The sky darkles, stars wiggle out of their gross little starholes, I have my whiskey/water, my kitchen crickets, my living room nickels, and I’m no longer feeling sick. Storytime!
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David one morning was eating soup and he lost his tooth! He must have accidentally bitten down on the spoon and lost his tooth! His mom said, David, put your disgusting tooth under your pillow and maybe the Tooth Fairy will come and leave you a cure. (David was terminal.) That night when the backward rooster began to crow, David placed his bicuspid or canine (all his teeth were the same) under his jelly-stained pillow and went the fuck to bed. In the morning his tooth was gone and in its place was a note.
"Dear David,
"I have your tooth. Please pay me twelve dollars in consecutive, unmarked nine-dollar bills. Put the money in an Adidas shoebox and leave the shoebox by your non-soft bed. I’ll be back for it tomorrow night and I’ll give you back your tooth.
"Whatever,
"the Tooth Fairy"
#
Oh!
But I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it. One must orient himself, so to speak.
Now the modern age and contemporary thinking has killed off the nine sisters to whom the artist used to appeal. And seeing as they were water nymphs and bodies submerged in fluid are said to decompose more aggressively and attract more adamant insect activity, I don’t imagine much of their magic is left for the having. And that is a pity. I would sooner be rid of the Fates. Not all of them, not Clotho, I have no beef with her, and Lachesis and I have no problems as of yet. As for Atropos she could pick up and run and have an accident with her scissors, for all I think of her.
One trick I’ve learned is working myself into a kind of egomaniacal passion.
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I’m the orange knight, the black feather in your pool of swans. I’m the horse that no one rode in on. Beware. Hotblooded, pleasured by breezes. Watch: I climax dandelion spores. I juice coconuts in my hands. I’m from the future. Hear me. I jump out the window onto a trampoline and bounce back into the room.
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Christine was a joy. She was a sunbeam. Everyone said so. She laughed and laughed and for a time they laughed too and then began to wonder on the quality of her health.
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Better, I think, but wee. The kind of story you can hold in your hands, pink and hairless, barely breathing, like a tiny newborn mouse.
You want a story, something you can stalk like big game. Something you can skin. With a big booming heart you can hear with your stethoscope, Doctor. If I harpoon a livingbreathing story and am dragged into the horrible deeps, all that matters to you is I bring you the whale. Whale on a platter. Everyone gets a fork.
Here is a list of the girls I’ve dandled, so to speak, on my knee:
1. Tara
2. Sarah
3. Holly
4. Haley
5. Katie
6. Sierra
7. Katie
8. Rachel
9. Amanda
10. Ashley
11. Whitney
12. Madeleine
13. Katie
14. Katie
15. Katie
So one Sarah, one Amanda and about half a dozen Katies.
The day Katie got her new car she was so happy. She beamed. She drove it out of the lot, loving it, then went to pieces when it transformed into a robot. Vehicle sometimes, robot others. He seized Katie and took her to the mall and set her down and said I’ll be back to get you in an hour. He knew what she liked to do and did not really need her during the day. Lasers are shooting everywhere. Katie buys a pair of jeans and some seriously cute shoes. Her naked writhing body.
I just wanted to end on a high note.
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My name’s Swan. Watch me play. I do the electric staircase. I’m a cherry. You might spot me on the curb outside the video arcade with my big champion poodle Mercury I dyed green. Because fuck you, that’s why.
It’s my dog
It’s my life
I’m the drawer’s
sharpest knife
Forgive me. Let’s you and I be friends. Let’s go lie down on a lake. Let’s run and go up a rainbow. The night is barely started. Let’s wag our tails at God. Let’s turn the angels’ stomachs. Let’s do the indescribable. Bring the baby oil. Strong coffee. I’m ready, are you?
Where are those stars again? Out my window. Reminds me of a song. Twinkle, twinkle little – wait.
I’m feeling frisky. Autoerotic. The drink is working. I shimmer. I feel old drugs crawling in me like earthworms pushing through my veins, like one of those farms.
Once upon a time was this curlyhaired cutie called Goldilocks – you remember – who entered uninvited the residence of the Bears, sampled three porridges (hot, cold, tepid), slept in three beds (hard, soft, lumpy) and probably did not hesitate to relieve herself, wherever she damn well pleased, of every conceivable form of waste (solid, liquid, gas). Don’t get me started. To not only partake of their supper, complaining all the while, but to pass the perfectly potable porridge through every thankless inch of her grimy girl guts, large and small intestines both, all performed in the unearned comfort of their beds – outrageous.
Here’s another something:
Wrinkle wrinkle brittle car
'87 Aerostar
Merely matter in a void
Not created nor destroyed
Wrinkle wrinkle brittle car
Wasteful wrecking auto horror
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Do you enjoy? I am writing it just for you. Notwithstanding your recentmost letter. Hurry: it disappears. It’s written in dishwater. I used crayons before, remember?
"Dear editors,
"Please consider my story, 'Dale.' Please consider all this peanut butter in my hair, on account of all the gum; one supposedly corrects the other. Please consider my poor dog Aldous. I am mailing you him. He's suffered a dreadful accident. Someone upstairs is practicing – all day he's practicing – what might be a French horn. I am busy with the gum, the Jif. Someone upstairs is crying, in another part of the house. We all have suffered accidents.
"You bet,
"Swan"
#
Which brings us to the curious case of Ann. Ann was born with a rare problem – too many ears. She hears everything!
Does she hear a pin drop? asks someone shrewdly.
Yes, she hears every pin drop. We took her to a factory, there were many seamstresses, dozens of pins were dropping, and bits of thread. She shrieked and shrieked, highly affected.
Does she hear the movements of God?
She does.
Does she hear the pond scum screaming?
Always.
Does she hear your tie? (Chuckling all around.)
Yes, I imagine she does.
Does she hear my fear of furs?
I will have to ask her.
Does she hear my ray-gun? my coat buttons? my small, discreetly carried cakes?
I assure you she does. But why don’t we ask her. Ann?
Ann comes out. She has nine or ten visible ears.
Ann! Ann! Everyone wants a piece of her. Ann, is it true you hear almost everything?
I hear the roof. I hear the panting of the sea. I hear the tensing muscles of the wide lonesome plains. I hear the movies.
Ann! Ann!
She whispers in the moderator's ear. He nods. Everyone, he says, from here on, the patient asks that you address her as Red Comma.
Red Comma! Red Comma!
Too loud! she cries, muffing her ears. A candle topples over and the whole wrestler rips up in flames.
#
I am going to go do something now. It’s not part of the story so you can’t know what it is I do.
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Picnicking one jazzy day on a blanket with her mother and father and sister Mandy, unpacking from a basket the hippopotamus sandwiches and egg salad and pumpkin seeds and banana pudding and thermos of Red Bull energy drink, Allison discovered herself, like an insanely oversized crumb, being carried off by ants. Her sister Mandy was being carried off by snails. "Help!" Allison squeaked. "Oh no!" her mother exclaimed, with a mouthful of hippopotamus sandwich. "Seriously, stop!" cried her father, pouring a glass of Red Bull, dropping a shot of Jagermeister in it and imbibing the incredibly delicious potion.
Now Allison was good as gone, borne away on the backs of ants. And it was possible they’d never set eyes on Mandy again, if only the snails would discover some urgency.
Along went Allison, carried off by ants. Black ants – not that that matters. I mean who cares if they were black ants or red ants or blue ants or green ants, they’re all still ants. And carried her away and somehow squeezed her down to their ant kingdom, down the anthole in their anthill to the antking in their antworld for their own antreasons, communicated each to each between their spasming antennae.
Allison never worried so much about ants. About loneliness, infamy, infertility, bombs, poverty, acne, yes. Never ants. She knew that they work in mysterious organized ways and mobilize as a unit and colonize in raised abodes resembling puny hills of dirt, but the real essence of their threat never crystallized in her imagination. No one told her. That they carry on their backs pianos, suns, pumpkins, motorcycles, hellfire, yes – but children? No one told her.
Her sister Mandy was carried off by snails, but snails are only snails. They took her gradually, gradually, to an overturned wheelbarrow, that shade and moisture beloved by snails, and squeezing her underneath, crawled slowly, slowly all around, chanting: "WE ARE SNAILS. NOW YOU DIE." But Mandy had only to stand with a mighty holler and turn the wheelbarrow onto its legs, and she crushed them underfoot and left.
Allison’s ordeal was different and afterward she was not the same. In her nightmares she was carried off by ants, and in her day terrors she was carried off by ants. She couldn’t scatter them from her mind. How they marched her to their world and marched her to their king as a singleminded team, and their streaming in and out of her, how her innocence was lost. And to rid her of the memory she replaced them with anyone handy. She let Farmer Ed have a go at her, and Glen the bricklayer and Don the barber, Zachary Smith and Steve Milano and all the brothers of Phi Kappa Sig, zookeepers, disc jockeys, morticians, moonshiners, optometrists, Greco-Roman wrestlers, the village idiot, trombonists, mathematicians, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
Mandy one day was carried off by snails, but snails are only snails. Allison one day was carried off by ants, and now she’s not the same.
#
I’m back. I’m Swan. I’m who? You know. The dreamboat that never docks.
Swan was born at the bottom of a sliding board, four months early, to mother Caitlyn, age 10. Much to her surprise. His daddy was a policeman, now incarcerated, like the baker who went in the oven. Swan has orange eyes, pudding pies, blue jeans, baked beans.
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At this point some of you have noticed your birdcages broken wide, your canaries and finches and what-not missing.
Oh!
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What fun. I am drunk now. What next. Maybe a poem.
Hey there Tomcat what you doing?
Nothing you can’t probably ruin.
Hey there Sexy what’s your name?
I don’t want to play your game.
Hey there Sassy let’s get busy?
Requires wine so I get dizzy.
Hey there Peaches, getting hot?
I don’t know but maybe not.
Hey there Cupcakes want to try it?
I wish you would be more quiet.
Hey there Pumpkin got the time?
It’s a shame you’re not a mime.
Hey there Sunshine are you lonely?
Over my dead body only.
Hey there Pretty come her often?
Over me inside my coffin.
Hey there Feisty want my number?
I like guys with heavier lumber.
Hey there Foxy want romance?
I meant the lumber in their pants.
Hey there Kitty what is cooking?
Keep on talking, Average Looking.
Hey there Baby what’s one kiss?
Not if you were all there is.
Oh!
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"Editors,
"Please consider, again, my story 'Dale,' about how Dale peeped on his brother through the wall and immediately covered his eyes. Tear it to pieces, reduce it to manageable bits. Reorganize the bits. The new story will go like this:
"Dale one day climbed up over the wall. It was a short wall but one he had never climbed up over. On the other side – covered wagons, brother. Far as the eyes could see.
"In other words the story will have changed, making for quite another story, about the great migration west. Choose whichever is best.
"Totally,
"Swan"
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"I am here to pick up Jen," says Ben.
"And you are…"
"Ben. For Jen."
"Ok, I’ll get Jen."
"Tell her it’s Ben."
"Ben, here’s Jen."
"Hi, Jen."
"Hi, Ben."
Ben and Jen take off, don’t look back. She dons her makeup in the rearview.
"I have to remember to call my bank. I have some savings I need to protect."
She tilts her head to either side, brushing out her stringy stuff. "We’re almost there," says Ben. They can see the simple cottage-houses dotting the landscape.
"I can't remember how to remember."
Ben takes her under his family. He shoots wood over the hill. They play forever. New cones, fire.
"Did you ever think it would happen?"
"I am gradually growing a mind."
"I am six owls."
"I am drums."
After the grand-candy ends and the dirt returns to normal Ben gives Jen a standing ovation. Jen blushes, secretly dino. Lost in boyland. Castling vivid, vintage yarn.
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Do you like it so far?
_____ Fuck off _____ Not at all
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Getting droopy. Here on my computer. Out my window: stars. Burning all the brighter. I had to get up to look.
You remember me.
"Dear editors, please. I am grasping at parallel lines. I beg of you. I am living, so to speak, in a basement. Awfully cold down here.
"Big gorgeous white pond bird,
"Swan"
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I’m Swan. Who? Try and find me. I exist inside a gloomy little cave called Drunkenness I built to get away. Dug out of the side of a mountain. What mountain? We shall call it: The Place My Cave Is, asshole. Stop asking questions.
Come and find me
Let’s begin
Not behind me
Let me in
Not too kindly
But with a grin
Come and bind me
But let me win
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Once upon a time the DarkLord’s black snake-eating bunnies swept down and flooded Amanda's village. Everywhere, bunnies. Amanda ran to Leslie’s hut and asked, Can Leslie come out and play? The bunnies watched her from the grass through rosy unblinking eyes, twitching their whiskers, dreaming about money.
Leslie could not: her hair was falling out.
Amanda ran to Whispersong’s house and knocked and asked, Can Whispersong come out and play?
No. Whispersong was bit by a mouse.
Amanda ran to Tabitha’s house and said, Can Tabitha come out and play? The bunnies regarded her icily from the grass, flopping about and wolfing down snakes, now deactivated, dreaming of luxury automobiles.
Tabitha could not: she had warts.
Amanda ran to Mitsubishi’s house and knocked and asked, Can Mitsubishi come out and play?
No. She had the gum disease gingivitis.
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The Darklord – for his witching, his terrors – the men from the village came for him with torches and dragged him out of his lair. They killed his hyenas. They spooned fishfood into him, sewed his eyes closed with needle and seafoam-colored thread. It was a warning. He’d become alien to them, untrustworthy. Some of their livestock had been cruelly murdered. The whole kingdom felt lost.
"I think we’ve done something good," ventured Byron, and the other men agreed.
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Still the Darklord’s bunnies remained, silently crowded in the grass – larger than bunnies, more like goats, or some unimaginable compromise made at gunpoint. They squatted watching the houses, dreaming of high fashion.
"They've disposed of all the snakes. They’ll soon move on," said Amanda’s mother.
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But village children began turning up missing and livestock to perish of unexplained causes, women were having their bleeds three and four times a month and the men shitting clumps of radioactive metal.
"‘Darklord!" called the men outside his lair, their torches drooling firelight onto the ground.
The Darklord was putting the final inspired touches on his evil book of spells when he heard them calling, promising more of the same, merely a changing of his sutures, the newest color. They shouted for him to emerge and bring his book of enchantments with him. The Darklord gasped and a shudder of excitement flowed through him. Closing his book and removing the thread from his blinded eyes he hurriedly sewed a title on its cover and exploded from his lair and broke their lines and escaped into the swamps on a sled driven by barking autistic children. Swamp gases sickened him. Some of the children drowned. Lions attacked him, enraged by his scent of hyena.
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Here’s how I do it. I type, fingers flying, then I sit for a spell, dreaming with my eyes open. A flurry of strokes and I grind to a halt, staring numbly into the screen.
Outside the sky is starry. I am humped for you over these keys. For you! The monitor glows on my face. Mine!
The cursor sits blinking, panting, like a small terrified animal, then scrambles across the screen as if chased by a ghost and stops on a dime and sits collecting its breath again.
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"To whom I may concern:
"Jennifer can’t stop bleeding. Ever since a day ago when she rode the mechanical bull or whatever her father is called she’s been sick between the legs. Her womb is broken?
"Notice how in that story I made a joke about Jennifer and her so-called womb. Even her father was treated roughly. Here’s another story you’ll probably agree to hate.
"Tina woke up one day and farted bubbles. She was passed out on her face and woke with a need to fart and raised her rear just slightly off the bed and farted twelve or so iridescent spheres or baubles of liquid soap what lofted and floated round the room popping on walls with small kisses of grease, twelve or so stains of grease.
"Here’s another story you can fashion into some manner of cone and insert none too gently in your magazine’s ass…"
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Stars! Nighttime’s famous rash. They’re there, I checked. I’m safe. The house is quiet and suddenly huge. There is only the keyboard’s chatter.
You remember I used to use pencils. Pencils are not exactly crayons and not exactly computers, but they are something in-between. I mean mechanical pencils. They hurt your hand the same, but rather than shedding a magical dust you puff away (and always make a wish), the lead tends to snap and you must pump the device in desperation to produce a fresh amount. Before them I liked to use your nonstandard No. 4 pencil, of a defective lot if possible, that would surely have destroyed my automatic sharpener were the machine of sorrier substance. Feeding them to the machine was useful in that it gave me time to think. It woke me up and made me feel alive, their screaming as the machine reduced their length in exchange for a finer point. And all the while I used my drugs, whatever I managed to get my hands on, which had something of the same effect on myself.
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Presently there are four or five maybe birds in my pockets, strangely quiet, possibly joyless, broken, with heads on swivels.
Canaries and finches and what not.
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I’m the incurable bird burglar. I’m the guest who sticks around, eats the stuffing out your teddy bear. I speak garagedoor. At my voice the littler critters tremble. Curtains blow in a faraway room. Flowers open. Someone wakes up in the middle of surgery.
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"‘Swan’,
"You are the foulest of creatures and none we would hope to encourage. Destroy your writing utensils. We advise if not solely examination of your head, removal of the frontal lobe. Stay away from our editors. No and no and no."
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You had a crystal.
It was the luckiest darnedest crystal.
I have a pistol,
I have a street sign your neighborhood’s missing.
I have vegetables.
The kindest form of broccoli.
I have this elderly lady.
You had a crystal.
Take that poem and hang you with it.
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The stars are fading, through my window. My mouth hurts. My skin is flaking off. I’m a goner.
Suddenly I'm up. The apartment stumbles around me. Hello? A closet door. Bathroom next, the door unusually heavy. It sticks. Reeling, dumbfounded, confined in the kitchenette. Spinning cupboards. Apartment sickness. Hello? A closet door.
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Brinnnnnng! Coyfish. Give me limeade, harder. Ok, never minds. Drop it like a drink-drink. 7-mink. Prams.
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I’m the ever-rolling credits. I’m violet. I make pianos slink away. Hear me. Now applaud. Encourage my worst behavior.
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Roaring rascal, wants his toy. "You must believe," says the sugar. Shining. Grandpa drops like a sack of puddles
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My nose bleeds. Beware. I swell up on the balls of my feet and shake birds out of my branches. I’m disappearing – a narrow seedless piece of earth where nothing grows and few would choose to picnic. I am but a voice, the moaning of a seashell; whatever was living is long departed. I’m done crossing t’s, I dot my i’s with lanterns. Harlequin, fool. There are kids in my cornbread. I am yesterday’s tennis. I am that which no Katie resists.
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Sky pales. The soil loosens. The stars dig themselves back in like crabs. The hurt is coming back and the drink is making me nod.
Allow me one song, before this ink disappears. Before you leave me for your swashbuckler friends.
Cottonmouth, sodafountain
(Everybody dance now)
Pillowfight, slumberparty,
(Everybody dance now)
And one story before the hideous morning and the birdsong knock me flat on the rug.
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Peter snowed to the combat to buy a resister. Slap, slap. There he major partied, bumped falcon and nano tuna. Who keyed Spacey? She was happy, only cleverer. Teeth, bones, calcium, bravo. Coupon? she fuzzed. She boated. To his mega glam apartment. Alive the cancerous chandelier. Can I egg your munitions? said Peter, ne’er poltroon. Wine. All went up a mountain. Wagged her liver spots. Got his dunes lacquered. Salted compost on the deering pone. Dirt road! In theory entertainment was grown. Ecesis. Nuliparous all her hand saw, hands down. Peter snowed to the cabinet, frogged a theory, gift of gladness. "I’m sad," dropped the candle. Outside it don’t stop planning: gently falling plans.
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I’m jail shampoo. I’m plush. I’m some disturbing berry-flavored marshmallows in your cereal. I’m the evil ham. I go to byebye now. I pull the floorboards over me and sleep.