artpiece by Kevin Anderson

Chewing on Angels

Mark Tursi

Sex should be a frightening experience like a dirty joke or an angel.

                                                -- Jack Spicer

No one remembered the colors, so perception was doled out haphazardly at best. The lost time made us cagey and full of our own progression, and our hearts have become as cold as the old, ragged moon filtering through your murky conscience. Splash them with twilight like a wet bat. To know yourself means you’ve mistaken God’s wet dream for your own dreary biography. The vibrators run all night, as if the horizon was another lesson in magnetism, but these metaphors are useless without music. Stigmas become unattached when the liberty fabric slips off to reveal the curve of your shoulder and your slight but meaningful suspicions. The overwhelming fact looms like an umbrella covered in circumstantial evidence. This is your dream after all. Was that a silhouette or another naked eagle in your throat? Chewing an angel when her wings still flap scares the beauty right out of you. This poem, just like that. Just as one must imagine Sisyphus happy, we must imagine the words turning against us. It’s the vocabulary that did this to us. The space between the strings of a mandolin is a kind of possibility that can never be played. The morphemes stumble onto reality as if stitched to neither. This poem, just like Jack. Was it the skeletons that made us this way? Was it the spices that made us rumble into our own selves? Was it language that avoided our promises this whole time? 

Fences

Mark Tursi

No one screams out in despair or yawps in pleasure. Our mutual crucifixions are a festival of color. It’s raining daggers and even Lady Macbeth would have the sense to dodge these and wash herself clean of the whole kit-and-kaboodle. This is the neighborhood of blind windows and poppy-sized ekistics. We must be weak from the altitude. Who could imagine the unseen through all this rising cumulonimbus? We’re surrounded, but who cares? This bridge of eyes can barely sustain us. The comic book desperados cling to the semantic dawn and sexual anesthesia. Pay now or die without the prophet’s eyes. Here the tongues are dry and cracked. Here the words fit in a single womb.

Our neighbor had a baby, but instead of celebrations and a big balloon in the front yard that read “It’s A Girl!” or “It’s A Boy!” there was a quiet kind of myopia. It turns out the baby was a hermaphrodite. They felt compelled to decide. They thought about it for days and decided to go Boy. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Now their love is all strung-out, flapping like soggy towels on a clothesline that someone forgot to bring in before the rain. Lucky for us there are visible things like mountains. 

Contrapasso

Mark Tursi

Ed elli a me, come persona accorta:

Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto;

ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta.

-- Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III

-- What you need is a reminder, I say. And mean it.

He doesn’t seem to care anymore. Barely registers. His hands are cuffed behind his back and he knows he’s going to die. I told him so.

-- Stop please, stop. He mumbles this almost indecipherably, and means it in a way that bothers me a little. I shoot him in the ankle just to shut his face. This is a mistake. He really roars.

He never saw it coming. The tire iron on his face when he was searching my trunk. Your kind should not be allowed, I say. I mean anywhere, but I don’t say so. 

I ask him questions: 

-- Do you believe in God?

He says yes, so I shoot him in the foot. 

-- No! No! he cries. So I shoot him again.

God is the brainchild of this establishment. I tell him so.

I have a plan and I work it through my head. Slide my fingers through my hair, which helps me think. As I work with the body, I work out the plan in my head. I can do several things at once. The body is heavy. Death brings about a weight that wasn’t there before, as if gravity somehow got stronger, the body heavier, when the soul up and leaves. I try heaving it over my shoulder, but drop it several times. Each time I curse and brush the body free of all the sand, pebbles, and pine needles – as if the extra weight lay in these objects. 

My plan seems to be failing. I rub my head harder and make fists with my hair. This lifts my scalp a little, which feels good, alive. Small fists of hair. This helps me relax. I sit on the bumper and stare at the body. I’d like to say that there’s blood everywhere, but there’s not. Just spots here and there. I kick it in the gut to see if anything will spurt. It doesn’t.

I try to heave it up once more, but finally give up. I think of a chainsaw at that moment, but then laugh at how stupid this thought is. The mess, the noise. I think of Jesus carrying the burden of the cross and this gives me strength. I try again and am able to pull his torso just over the edge of the trunk. The trunk is a dark abyss. I say this to myself, which makes me chuckle. I wonder how a chuckle is different than a laugh. I wonder if a chuckle can be sinister. I try to make it so but feel stupid. The body slips off the trunk.

-- Goddamn it! I shout and realize my mistake. So, I punish myself by whacking the tire iron onto my left knuckles. This works since the pain brings a rush of redemption. 

-- I feel it. I say this out loud as if the body knows it and feels it too. 

Now my hand hurts. The work I have left will be even harder. I almost curse again, but I stop the words just before they reach my tongue. I wonder if thoughts are the same as words. Does my thinking mean a saying? Is my mind as impure as my body? I whack the tire iron against my thigh, just in case. Another rush.

The body is speaking to me. It gives me instructions. I listen. The instructions enter me like thoughts without words. I let them drift in and out with my breath. This is the redemption working again. I don’t know if I say this out loud or just think it. 

I can’t lift it, so I pull out my spade. 

-- Should I dig him in right here? No. 

His limbs split off easier than I thought. Just like breaking a big tree root when you’re digging for fence holes. The head is even easier. Now there’s blood everywhere. 

-- Returning to the earth where it belongs, I say. I think on this some and like myself for doing so. Thinking on this. The return of the body to earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. My memory is still good.

After he’s disassembled and in the trunk of my car, I cover the blood spots with sand. I stay there awhile, watching how the blood seeps in, then just stops. The sand darkens and turns into a sticky goop. I roll it in my hands and then throw it to the ground. The shapes can be dazzling. I think on this some. Some shapes are dazzling and others are just shapes. 

The sky is heavy and the clouds seem lower than they really are. Hiding the moon, then letting it show its face again. Showing some light, then being overwhelmed by the darkness. There’s no moisture in them—just a dry heat that brings lightening and thunder—but no rain. The sky seems phony and artificial. I almost don’t believe in it. Even the movement seems motionless, suspended, as if the shadows from the moon buoy everything and hold it there, then let it fall because it grows too weary to hold on anymore. 

The body cooperates now that my work is finished. I drive off and imagine the movement. An elbow to the left as the wheel spins right. The head lolling and bouncing lightly against a leg, trailing blood and sinew as it rolls. I roll down the windows and the smell of sage fills the car. I drive through the darkness. A ceaseless drift bounded and disassembled. A lightness because I have done the work of God. I drive faster. Pushing through the darkness, before the boredom sets in, before I’m reminded of the ceaseless turn of events. I move through the darkness, because there’s no other way. 

Giusto Sdegno

Mark Tursi

Quei fu al mondo persona orgogliosa;
bontà non è che sua memoria fregi:
cosi s’è l’ombra sua qui furïosa.

-- Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto VII

She comes to the door in a lavender nighty. Thin, threadbare. Smells like liquor. Bourbon maybe. No, gin. A cigarette smolders in her hand. The walls and ceiling, yellowed from tobacco, eye us with disdain. The tip of the smoking-end from her cigarette glows with red lipstick, mimicking the burning coals.

“You’re too fucking late. He’s gone.”

“Where to?”

“How the fuck should I know.” She turns so we can see her ass. It’s firm, shapely. She knows we’re watching. I try to look the other way but can’t help myself. This is what she wants. I know this and try to resist, try to find refuge in the only place refuge persists. I say a prayer in my head, but I know this is not enough.

“We’re just trying to help lady. A neighbor called.” My partner is ‘gung ho,’ as they say. He wants to make a bust and gets fidgety when he can’t. I think about his idea of help and realize it does not match my own.

Someone called in a domestic disturbance. Said dishes were flying and blood was going to spill if we didn’t get there soon. There was no blood, but the place was a shambles. Dishes flew, glass broke, furniture tipped – but no blood. The mention of blood and my partner inflates. It’s not redemption he is after.

“Fuck the neighbors and fuck you too.” She’s impudent. We enter the apartment like we have an edict. It’s another performance. We make like we’re looking for drugs, or any sign of illicit activity. We don’t have a warrant, but she doesn’t seem to care and makes no attempt to stop us, so we keep poking around. I take the keys off the coffee table and stuff them in my pocket. It goes unnoticed.

The apartment is not what you would expect. It’s not a crack den or a whore house. It’s a regular apartment that’s been tossed. A flatscreen T.V. at one end of the room, plants and hanging plants in the windows and by the porch. A pillow chair with a reading lamp and a bookcase full of old college textbooks and slim volumes of poetry. Pictures of friends sticking out their tongues and holding up bottles of Corona are pasted to the refrigerator with word magnets. One of the magnetic sentences says, “tonight the other inside was a dream.” There’s a framed print on the wall across from the T.V. I walk over to it: Jackson Pollock, Lucifer. How appropriate.

“He’s gone for good this time. You can see for yourself. He took his clothes, his CD’s, everything. Now maybe you’ll leave me the fuck alone.” She has an accent that I can’t pin down. Maybe New Jersey , maybe Long Island . Maybe just poor education. She seems tired, resigned, but still in control. Somehow this makes her more beautiful, seductive. We’ve been to her place several times over the past few months for domestic abuse, noise ordinances, gun shots, suspicion of drugs, but we’ve never made an arrest. It’s all minor stuff—cheap, dirty business—like the girl herself. Her man has a crime spreadsheet as long as Webster’s Dictionary, but he seems to evade prison every turn. He used her just like he uses everyone else, then he moves on. But, she’s no less guilty. She gets what she wants. She knows what she’s doing. Her face and body belie what’s inside.

The shoulder strap of her nighty slips down and her breast shows a little. The skin, predictably, is lighter than the rest of her body, and, like her ass, firm and shapely. I feel a wave of blood rush to my groin. She catches me staring and looks up but makes no move to cover herself. I feel caught, trapped. There’s no way out of this. She has control. I pretend to look under the coffee table and drop to my knee as if genuflecting. I think about the image of Jesus on the cross but this doesn’t work. I only see flesh and blood and become more engorged. I rise and turn the other way. I rub my hands across my gun and Billy club. This is a mistake. I’m more turned on than ever. I become flush, flustered. I go to the bathroom and pretend to search for drugs. I shut the door and splash water on my face.

“Let’s go. There’s nothing here.” My partner has had enough. He sees there’s no bust to be made, no heads to bash.

As we leave, she says nothing.

When I return later that night, the noise and light seem resigned to the inevitable darkness and quietude of after hours. The apartment is dismembered, pieces scattered and splayed as if rejecting order itself. The air conditioner, a window unit, runs in the bedroom. I think on the impossibility of this world, the nonsense meaning of a word like “runs.” But, the air conditioner will make everything easier since the white noise drowns out almost everything, even thoughts. I open the door, then creep to her bedroom. I enter her room with a flurry and hope she wakes with surprise and fear. It’s a fear that brings silence, so sudden, so fast.

To play it safe and Taser her anyway. While she’s twitching I drag her to the living room and drop her on the coffee table. I flip her on her stomach so her ass is in the air and she’s hugging the table. I crawl underneath and handcuff her wrists together. I gag her mouth and wrap a bungee-chord around her torso and pull it tight so her skin reddens. Then I strap each leg with plastic cuff ties to a leg on the table. They dig into her skin a little, which pleases me.

I wait until she comes to. When she does, I turn the lights on. I face her and I make sure she sees that it’s me.

I’m immune. No one will believe her story. Her eyes show terror. She deserves this and must be told so.

I lift up her nighty and have my way. I penetrate her again and again. Her body is tense at first, then it slackens. 

“This is the way of the Lord.” I say this as I push in. She needs to be reminded. There’s no other way.

After I finish, I let her stay like that until I’m ready again. By the time I’m ready, she’s so weak and resigned I can untie her without using the Taser gun. This is the first step to repentance and I tell her so. I flip her on her back this time so I can look into her eyes while I do it again.

“He who sins is destined for hell.” I say this as I push in. “The Lord God is almighty God.” My sweat drips onto her breasts and rolls off. Just like holy water I think, but don’t say. I watch it drip as I push in again and again, harder each time, until I’ve succeeded in showing her the way. 

I cut her loose and she flops on the couch. Her eyes seem glazed with death, milky, like an old dog with cataracts. Her body is no longer the body of the woman from earlier this afternoon. Once tight and firm, seductive and powerful, it has become, thanks be to God, the body of a slaughtered lamb. The meek shall inherit the earth.

Mark Tursi is the author of The Impossible Picnic (BlazeVOX Books) and Shiftless Days (Noemi Press). He is also the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, Double Room and one of the founding editors of APOSTROPHE BOOKS, an innovative press devoted to publishing poetry that intersects philosophy and cultural theory.

Kevin Anderson spent the last decade in Louisville working film, theatre, and television production.  (Lawn Dogs). He also did a stint at the Actor's Theatre for Humana Festival. He’s been a stage musician for 25 years, currently billing solo as Anderson, and also with the avant funk/blues band, Project Redbook.