The Summer of Dead Birds

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The Summer of Dead Birds Page 4

by Ali Liebegott


  if the gift shop had been open I would’ve bought a postcard

  postcards and birdcalls are the only things I ever buy in

  gift shops

  IX.

  thirteen years later I’m still trying

  to figure out the things Rorschach notices

  we pass a car dealership and she looks back

  at a long string of balloons

  You want balloons, I’ll buy you balloons, I want to say

  I follow out the window the things Rorschach’s watching

  until I’ve almost driven off the road

  the sound of my tires crossing the ridged shoulder

  startles me and I swerve back on the highway

  Rorschach’s weak back legs can’t hold her up

  and she slams into the windshield

  I’m so sorry, I say

  which is quickly becoming our mantra for the trip

  X.

  the car dealerships and fast-food joints disappear

  deeper into the red desert

  everything’s red and white for miles

  I drive next to a red-and-white rickety school bus

  filled with farm laborers

  a bright-white water cooler tied to its bumper

  the bus tows two outhouses that bounce up and down

  kicking up cyclones of red dust

  Rorschach’s head follows the spinning dust like a

  dipping bird

  XI.

  I’ve been loading an imaginary gun

  in my head for hundreds of miles

  I’m pushing a bullet into the chamber

  that same action repeats itself in my brain

  as often as every thirty seconds, I started timing it to see

  why does my brain keep doing that?

  I was just petting Rorschach’s ears or lighting a cigarette

  the image pops up like the terror of forgetting an

  appointment

  sometimes I’m wiping my pants

  and the way my thumb moves to get the chocolate off

  is the same pressure I imagine I’d use to push a bullet into

  the chamber

  it’s a black revolver, the bullets are gold

  I’ve loaded many guns but never a revolver

  mostly I’ve loaded double-barrel shotguns

  you slide two bright-red plastic shells into the barrel

  the red plastic looks like the torsos of toy men

  my father used to sit in the garage with thousands of

  empty shells

  he had a machine that held gunpowder and buckshot

  when he pulled the handle, the torsos folded up neatly

  on top

  like tiny origami envelopes

  there should be a trophy for people who still show up

  for work

  even though the whole day they’re competing with images

  of their own enormous hand, sliding gold bullets into

  a revolver

  XII.

  I never understood people who said the desert was beautiful

  but now I see they’re right

  when the sun is going down

  and all the cactuses stand tall and independent

  I purposely didn’t use the word cacti

  the fact that cactuses isn’t a word

  is definitely an indication of what’s wrong with this world

  XIII.

  it’s late when I try and pinpoint

  when we began our drift from one another

  remember when we drove across the desert

  at night with no air-conditioning?

  the only station that came in was wing-nut talk radio

  water had just been found on Mars

  and all the kooks were calling in

  Call in, you said, call in

  miraculously I got put on the air

  the best question I could come up with was

  Were there ducks paddling around that water on Mars?

  the wing nut talked excitedly in circles never answering

  my question

  but we laughed so hard, a late-night exhaustion cackle

  that lasted long enough to get us home

  XIV.

  I want the emotions of coloring books

  each feeling to remain perfectly contained

  inside its own thick black line

  grief, utterly grief

  joy never seeping into anger

  here I am, not forgetting you at all

  like a dog I drag our corpse from room to room

  in the bedroom where your mother died

  a tiny bit of Fresno light always seemed

  to sneak through a fold of curtain

  how does a person dislodge the scenes

  that burn inside them like arsoned cars?

  XV.

  I’ve never seen cremains but I’ve been told sometimes

  finger-sized bone lies among the ash

  it’s these pieces that upset families

  who want to sprinkle their loved ones like fairy dust

  not have them plunk, heavy, like nickels into the sea

  the cremains of our marriage shift grotesquely inside me

  good and bad memories mixed in different-sized pieces

  sometimes when I can’t sleep I think

  irrationally, with my whole body

  You’re almost forty now, you can’t be smoking

  even if I’ve smoked myself that day

  in my absence, I still want to protect you

  XVI.

  the best thing about the desert is there’s almost always a train

  going by

  shipping freight cars stacked like colored blocks to the base

  of the sky

  I wish the gap between those boxcars was my birthplace

  I understand the risk of losing legs to hop a train

  and that horn, who doesn’t want to fuck to that sad shit?

  I drove for a long time beside a boxcar with doors open

  on both sides

  a moving window

  I stared through the window to the rest of the far-off desert

  I wanted to stick my enormous hand through that gap

  and touch the other side

  to throw the revolver through, then the fistful of bullets

  the gold bullets would scatter like sparks

  like the beauty of driving behind a tow truck at night

  dragging nothing

  the chain hanging off the bumper, all those sparks

  flying up

  I could hide my most treasured things on the other side of

  that moving window

  my most treasured things aren’t mine yet

  Rorschach’s taxidermied ears, neatly wrapped in paper

  XVII.

  on the motel bed I do leg lifts hoping to recuperate

  despite my failed knee surgery

  it’s when I’m falling asleep that I feel you gone completely

  like someone’s removed a bone from my leg

  and the flesh has collapsed around its absence

  XIII.

  a few days after we broke up, I went to an old friend’s house

  the only thing I could do was weed her tomato garden

  I pulled and pulled until the back of my neck was

  bright red

  she lived near a train track

  the horn kept wrapping itself around the bay

  after we were done she put the sprinkler on

  and went inside to cook dinner

  I stayed outside

  a hummingbird came and sat on the wire tomato cage

  at first it flew over to the water hovering in the air

  dipping its long beak into the stream, then coming

  back out

  XIX.

  Become nothing,

  my friend says every time I start to cry

  I don’t understand

  Don’t become the thing that tries
to overthrow the grief

  she draws me a map to the suspension bridge

  a few-mile walk to the scenic view

  the whole time I walk, I try to become nothing

  the wind pushes hard into my face as I cross the bridge

  boats with boarded-up windows fill the bay

  a new pier is built next to the old one

  a broken boardwalk bows gracefully into the sea

  the planks lead right into the bottom of the water

  XX.

  towns can get abandoned just like children

  the town built next to the prison shut down

  now there’s no one left to buy a hamburger

  everything is exhausted

  the cactuses and the closed-up gas station

  hover in the dark in their deception

  weeds grow at the feet of the gas pumps

  trash bags caught in cactus patches and barbed wire

  what goes up must come down

  down with the prison that took all the money to build

  push the lever, let it fall

  XXI.

  in our beginning, we were writers from San Francisco

  driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains

  lost and speeding, late to our show in a rickety van

  still, we pulled off the road to roll down a hill into a meadow

  all twelve of us lying at the bottom giddy and dizzy

  you came toward me out of the laughter

  one hand behind your back holding a bunch of wild flowers

  I’d seen you pick them and more than anything

  hoped they were for me

  XXII.

  I hate that everything dies, marriages and dogs and mothers

  each death its own snapshot, sweaty in my hand

  it’s astonishing how long the body can remember grief

  I turn over in the night and there it is

  pushing hard against my rib cage like a doorframe

  stretching its agitated shoulders

  a galaxy of grief swirls inside me

  I’ve become the cavern I want to visit

  each loss begins as a single drop of water

  struggling to roll off the ivory edge of a rib

  until it begins to harden

  and hangs, a stalactite tomb

  XXIII.

  on a dirt road that runs beside the paved one

  an ambulance winds through the mountain to

  the power plant

  no services forty miles

  a Border Patrol truck hidden behind a bend

  waiting in case someone manages to survive

  crawling through the desert in hundred-degree heat

  in Texas every mile I pass a sign that says drive friendly

  an important reminder in a state that allows drivers

  to carry firearms and open containers of alcohol

  for twenty miles I get stuck behind a truck trailing

  a prefab home

  I stare at the back door of the house imagining sullen

  teenagers smoking on the steps

  the problem with burying things is

  even if it takes millions of years

  the buried thing always finds a way to emerge

  XXIV.

  what if I don’t even know the beginnings of forgiveness

  it’s elusive like a word on a billboard in a foreign country

  the same word next to a picture of a flat tire,

  a gear, or two crudely painted ovens

  I guess at repair

  I could repair a tire or an oven or a gear

  right now, the only words I understand are

  the dust, the barrel of nothing

  XXV.

  it’s Rorschach’s birthday

  we wear birthday hats and I sing to her

  in the motel room we eat pizza and watch TV

  someone told me Dalmatians are the only dogs that smile

  Rorschach was born with a jet-black patch over her eye

  as she got older the white hairs slowly overtook the patch

  now the patch is almost white

  the tide line moving farther up the shore

  tomorrow we’ll start our journey home

  wherever home is now

  Rorschach walks in a few small circles on the bed

  then finally settles down, her body alongside me

  I close my eyes and concentrate on her head resting on my leg

  I want to remember the exact weight of it

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve been blessed with an exceptional, loving writing community my entire career. Many friendships and fellow writers have sustained me during the writing of this book. Thank you to all of them. In addition, thank you to the San Francisco Foundation and the RADAR Lab for supporting early drafts of this manuscript.

  Thanks to the following people who directly helped me during this book’s many incarnations: Justin Chin, CAConrad, Marie Howe, Kevin Killian, Robin Coste Lewis, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Ariana Reines, sam sax, Michelle Tea, Karolina Waclawiak, and Matthew Zapruder.

  Justin Chin, rest in peace. You are so missed.

  Deep thanks to my agent, Kristyn Keene at ICM.

  Thank you, Lauren Rosemary Hook, and everyone at the Feminist Press for your thoughtful support and hard work on this manuscript.

  A second thanks to Michelle Tea, for championing all my books into print. I am forever indebted to you for over twenty-five years of literary friendship.

  Lastly, to my better half, Beth Pickens, I love you so much. I’m sorry you have to live with an insane writer. Thank you for supporting ALL my artistic endeavors.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Credit: © JEN ROSENSTEIN

  ALI LIEBEGOTT is a poet, writer, and artist who has published three previous books: The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, and Cha-Ching! She is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards and a Ferro-Grumley Award. She has written for the Emmy Award–winning TV show Transparent, and currently lives in Los Angeles.

  ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

  BLACK WAVE

  Michelle Tea

  It’s 1999—and Michelle’s world is ending.

  Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it’s officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird.

  While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she’ll have to compromise her artistic process if she’s going to properly ride out doomsday.

  MICHELLE TEA is the author of numerous books, including Rent Girl, Valencia, and How to Grow Up. She is the creator of the Sister Spit all-girl open mic and 1997-1999 national tour. In 2003, Michelle founded RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees queer-centric projects.

  WE WERE WITCHES

  Ariel Gore

  Cashing into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, the phallocratic story of “overcoming” permeates every subject. Creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag’s pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker.

  Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother. She’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming odd women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles t
o graduate—often the triumphant climax of a dramatic narrative—the question lingers uncomfortably. If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt: What is the true narrative shape of your experience?

 

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