by Jones, Nath
2000 DECIDUOUS TREES
~
NATH JONES
ISBN: 978-1-9-37316-05-1
Copyright © 2012 by Nath Jones.
All Rights Reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Book interior by Gin Y. Havard
Cover Design by Ryan W. Bradley: www.aestheticallydeclined.net
For Chris
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Any Pile of Wood
*
My Chambered Nautilus
Pay Grade
Give Her What She Wants
The Mobile
For the Man Who Bought Me Coffee and Was Shot in the Head Soon After
Hollace and Some Girl
Meaning-Making
On a Sweltering Summer Evening
Dateline ’99
Grand Prix Parallels
*
Empire Quarry
Lamellar
*
Newlyweds
Dress Up
*
Just So
New Orleans Sidewalk
*
He Proposed and Then
Sad Asian Face
Monday Night Rain with Football
You’re Sierra Leone
Pay Day
*
The Sound’s Edge
Riverhead
Lingerie Hangers
Fighters
Ciara E.
After Hours
Anthem
Last Year My Sister Drove Me Up a Mountain
*
Whistling Woman
Acolytes in Tennis Shoes
Dissatisfaction
Circadian
Life with Frat Boys
Internal Struggle
*
Too Much Sugar Twang in Voices That Sometimes Get Choked
Sunday Morning Hangover in a Smoke-Darkened Corner
Eight Weeks They Told Me to Call Hell
Life Under the Trampoline
*
Dollar Stores
Divided Cultures
Suicide
Bird Song & Oyster Pearls
The Mission
Definitive Article
He Asked Me How to Light Up Love
In a Turquoise Tank Top
*
Reactions to the Broken Heart: a Monthly Planner
*
Mr. Beat
Dew
End of Good Things
White Trash Glam
*
The Pilot
Prophet’s Rock
Bear Bells for August
Love Near a Fireplace in Winter
Burn Victim
Orderly
About the On Impulse eBook Series
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
There were only four issues of The Skirt—one of those reality-bite kinds of zines—before 9/11, which, for me, changed everything about the grungy apathy and artistic incapacity of the 1990s when we had endless potential and the freedom to do absolutely nothing with it.
We were a generation on couches. We had a fuck-all attitude and considered this a luxury. We wrote what we wanted and stapled it together for friends.
Of all the moments of Scotch tape, scissors, darkroom chemicals, cardstock, sketches, fonts, stacks of paper on the carpet, heavy-duty staplers, cool pens, trips to the copy shop, coffee, and collages, my favorite production memory is of my boyfriend taping the black, duct tape bindings of that first hot pink issue. He was so precise about something bound to be informal.
Hundreds of copies of The Skirt were mailed from my little apartment at Purdue. The zine was sprinkled everywhere: Chicago, Madison, Indianapolis, Austin, Grand Rapids, Lancaster, Alameda, Poughkeepsie, San Antonio, Boston, Santa Fe, Brooklyn, Rochester, Denver, Athens, Springfield, and to the guy upstairs.
Issues of The Skirt went to a friend stationed on a military installation in Korea and also sat in a Sarasota hospital waiting room between checkups when another friend was having her finger reattached.
The Skirt was the subject of academic discussion in Poland and was read with late-night laughing cigarettes by the cool kids in New Orleans. A friend teaching physics for the Peace Corps received issue number 4 in Kenya while another copy traveled across thirteen time zones with a dear friend who told me in a letter, “I went to a native island in Indonesia where all the natives wear loincloths, etc. I missed a perfect chance to get a picture of them reading (er looking at) The Skirt.”
It’s strange to look back at this writing. The maw of one’s twenties is frightful. But I’ve left most of the pieces intact with all the embarrassing vigor and hope of their careless origins.
ANY PILE OF WOOD
Alone isn't one day of sitting on a rock exactly the right size for you. It isn't the deep furrow in your father's brow. It isn't Mother’s giving-up and watching the window eternally. It isn't the neglect of the community or a lack of friends.
It's a force, an emotion, like love. It's wanting someone to come in the door when you're naked. It's talking to a dinner guest who wasn't ever invited. It's noticing that the grout between the tiles in the bathroom is black and taking the time to paint it deep forest green.
It's crying when you see a mannequin being dressed in a storefront window. It's endlessly arranging the furniture in your mind without the strength to move your arm or your feet or your back to move the couch or the bed or the furnace or the recliner. It's waiting for the phone to ring and pretending that’s what you wanted. It's throwing yourself at an illusion. It's nothing. Nothing but you. And that can mean anything at all.
Alone is petrification in the bed in the morning, finally giving up inhibition, imagining what the cat feels as the whiskers escape slowly from her head, or wondering what the dog’s collar might feel like, choking on your own happy leash-length run.
It's showering with a mirror between your legs. It's building an altar over the sink. It's asking that the clothes you buy for yourself be gift-wrapped. It's patience. It's a beer belly. It's strong lean muscles. It's repetition and it’s divorced from reality. It's faith, a religion of constant prayer. It's worshiping beauty without pursuit. It’s learning. It's understanding the world and falling through reason over yourself.
It’s memory with or without regret. It’s pain.
Alone discourages living in the present. It is dreaming of an unattainable future and it’s a consumption by a hole somewhere inescapable but often postponed. It is the electric bill and late-night television. It's Jesus, I guess I have to and calling that other fool from work. It's compromise. It's knowing your body and fearing the mind's retreat. It's nothing to be fooled around with. Alone is the impossibility of fire as much as any pile of wood and a wet match.
It’s the soul's house—and often you’re not even welcome there. It’s void of sensation. It's deafening but drowned by any in
teraction. It cannot be staved off by music or art, no matter how collaborative. It’s the knee against the breast. It’s the arch of the foot on the edge of boredom tipping over the furniture. It's forgetting about children and death, dismissing both in confidence or contempt.
Alone is never having to wash your hair on an island named by your mother. You are used to the smell of yourself. Until you get sick. Time is measured by what's outside the window. And one is reminded to inhale by the cigarette and tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick, breathe, says the second hand.
Alone is never without vice: knitting, ice cream, brandy, pink plastic margarita blenders on the credit card, and empty bowls lined with popcorn grease, with slippery layers of understanding and self-pity enmeshed, entangled, one pleasing the other, the other wanting more.
It is input and recognition. Alone is the time one has to change the world and to think, or integrate, or study, or believe. It's not too bad for a little while. It is forever until someone's eyes meet yours.
There’s a time before the choices are made when we can all be friends.
MY CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
Haven't you begun to believe
in the twisting fate of this wet
world? Always between building
up, breaking free, and starting
again. That's love swim, you know,
you and me beginning.
Brown striped cream. Your hair,
your skin and eyes. And I
watched with such admiration as
you neatly sewed the bubble day's
film onto the walls of your
circle world. You take such care
with the sunshine of things.
People may be barnacle fools and
cut your feet with their parasite
quick kind of (open close open)
habit world, eating their surroundings.
Snatching up the world’s
fastest times and making
your irregular life so hard.
But you have moved on again, haven't
you? On to the next little room.
I can't imagine in there with you
learning me. I can only see the
afterward. Broken open and dry.
But I'll bet it's all fleshy pink
joy, inside. Filling up new
between the getting-harder walls.
Boys and girls have nothing
thoughts between them all the
time. You know. Just like us.
And there is slippery understanding
there, in the Between, and the Around, and the
Just-where-you-can’t-quite-reach place.
And then I begin to know a you having
nothing to do with me. A you so
resolute and confined. A you still opening
in tolerable nacre carrels, which harbor
your broad Everything.
No such skin for any of it. Spirals; or
words falling short from the way
it all could be. And then that's
good enough for a while.
I'm washing the dishes and
listening to a bit
of the evening
news on a Tuesday, I think.
PAY GRADE
I found a sealed manila envelope addressed to SPC Nathalie Jones. SPC is an army rank that means specialist. I’ve never understood it. But there it is in the chain of command between all the sorts of privates and sergeants. I opened the envelope and found three pieces of paper. The first was a letter of apology from the personnel section of my unit. Apparently I had been awarded, but there was no time to acknowledge me personally. So I was getting my award in the mail.
The second piece of paper was a bit thicker and was embossed with the bright words, "Department of the Army Certificate of Achievement." This decoration, although flattering, had very much the same appearance as the ones that are given to third graders after spelling bees or to the bad swimmers after a year of unsuccessful but dutiful competition.
The last piece of paper, dated 4 October 1998, was the most interesting. It was a thin piece of vellum with boxes, lines, numbers, and important people's signatures. This, DA form 638, Nov 94, was the proof of my award intended for addition to my permanent record. Most of it is bureaucratic nonsense so I will spare you. But the last part is interesting. And if you don't mind my bragging a bit I will recount what my superiors have written in their recommendation for my award:
Part III -- Justification and Citation Data (Use specific bullet examples of meritorious acts or service)
Achievement #1
Soldier's knowledge and experience helped maintain the high state of readiness during Operation Scout, even against incredible odds for a potentially "Unsuccessful Mission."
Achievement #2
Soldier's professionalism and sterling personal example set the pace for the entire operation as demonstrated during an unfortunate accident involving an M939, 5-ton truck rollover.
Achievement #3
The mission could easily have been scrubbed if not for soldier's tireless efforts and dedication.
Achievement #4
Soldier received on-site verbal communication by the 88th Regional Support Group BG [brigadier general] Bauerle, for the most outstanding static display out of nine displays.
Proposed Citation
For dedication during Operation Scout. Her actions demonstrated high morale and characteristic courage to drive on against incredible odds. Her devotion to duty is in the finest tradition of the military and reflects great credit upon her, this unit and the United States Army Reserves.
The commander did downgrade the recommendation from the Army Accommodation Medal to a Certificate of Achievement in spite of the whole brigadier general thing, but I feel as though I have been recognized. The military has a long tradition of glorifying those individuals who come nearest to death, and I was plenty close enough. Still, it seems odd that I have been honored for being in a vehicular accident and then going back to work, which that day meant showing up at a recruiting tent for the Boy Scout Jamboree. None of this is logical to me. Of course I went back to work. I had nowhere else to go. But regardless this award has given me much pride.
It certainly does make up for the fact that they never did figure out the paperwork to reimburse me for the medical bills. It was unnecessary but precautionary medical treatment involving being picked up by a gorgeous beefy-armed fireman, a ride through two counties in an ambulance, one four-by-four-inch piece of gauze, a small packet of Betadine, and a few good hours of eavesdropping on the guy next door who had fallen out of his wheelchair during the Indy marathon and kept screaming for his plastic surgeon.
GIVE HER WHAT SHE WANTS
Foot Foot Foot Foot Foot Foot
Footfootfootfootfootfootfeotfeetfeetfeetfeetfe
"I want an emerald," she said. And he began to run, the miner not the thief. Bare feet chasing the forest floor and his blood running after him. One fist with his livelihood, the other to protect his life. Feet of running and roving through density, green and soft-soiled.
And here he is with a knife against my throat and the blood comes dark red. It's too hot for this. The insects are here already, swarming me. I'm covered in slag from the mine and my feet are cut scars from the sharp chips of rock. He stands above me, heaving. He's too fat to run so fast. Too fat to mine himself. Not like me. I'm tiny and quick. But tired and hungry. And sick of running.
I cannot swallow the blood at my throat. I look up past him to the canopy of trees and wonder if there really is a sun.
The worn leather bag falls easily from my fatigue. And he snatches up its contents. Fourteen this time. Not as many as I've had before. But plenty more than usual.
He knew it. He knew I did well in the mines last night or he would have chased someone else.
I cannot breathe through the blood at my throat and turn over to let it drain onto the forest floor.
And he leans over to watc
h me die. Maybe he feels bad. But this isn't personal. This is business.
The business of adorning pretty, stupid girls with their Walgreens hair and their thick asses and the lines, with emeralds.
Emeralds are a dangerous business. I knew that.
But, even though she is so very far away in her southwest suburban household, I heard her, pouting, say to him at Christmas, "I want an emerald." And so someone had to get it for her.
breathbreathbreathbreath breath breath
breath breathbreath brea th
THE MOBILE
I woke up with the world folded in half and wondered what to do. This could not have happened at a more inopportune point in time. It was on that day that I was to receive a visit from an extraordinary friend of mine. She lives in New Zealand. I have been in love with her for quite some time now, I suppose. Embarrassing as it is, I am quite attracted to the fact that she spends the greater portion of her day with sheep.
I have not been able to fully comprehend what it is that she does. She is something of a mystery. It seems her work is half shepherd, half art. Well now, I suppose the term art might be going a bit overboard, but just saying that she makes things from fleece is an understatement. The last time she was here she brought me a sphere of the stuff. It was rather hefty and upon first receipt of it I could not in any way discern what it could mean.
She was rather offended, pointing out the striking—no, I believe she used the word vivid; yes, she said vivid because I remember thinking it stupid or maybe native to New Zealand to say vivid resemblance where I most certainly would have employed the very familiar striking resemblance.
Now what was it I was saying?
Oh, yes. She was rather offended when I did not immediately see the object for what it was: a model of the moon. But okay, once she had indicated this I was rather amazed to find it so accurate. Somehow she had taken the wool of sheep and created the moon complete with darker fleece for the dark side and the Sea of Tranquility. I suppose it was then I knew I was in love.
But of course she had to return to New Zealand almost immediately. Her art, in particular her beautiful herd of sheep, could not survive outside New Zealand. She returned, promising only that she would think of me often—never enough, you know—and making me promise the moon's security.