by Evan Dara
Now in place, I am forgotten. Taken for granted.
That is the point.
My creases lose crispness. Relax. Tend to disappearing.
Still, I hold shape. Admirably. Even with my top button pulled undone. My two top buttons pulled undone.
I hold shape in rougher gusts of chill-treated air.
Atop a torso twisting.
A torso flushing, turning warm. In chill-treated air.
Through huffs of speed, and jolt-backs, and new huffs of speed, I hold shape.
Above a heart touching.
Now shoving.
Rapidly shoving.
Shoving me …
It is evident.
It is plainly evident.
I did not protect enough.
I have not protected a heart that’s shoving.
A torso too warm, in gusts of chill-treated air …
I have stitching.
I have seams.
Torn, I stanch blood. I am an able tourniquet.
I take the iron.
I take the hot presses.
I am a part … of all things.
I am made by machines.
I am something pulled from a shelf.
Something paid for.
I buckle. I hang. I draggle.
Not a muscle. No vertical strength at all.
Fabric.
Dull. Limp.
Lifeless.
Material.
Generic. Super-generic.
Inert.
Unfunctioning without someone within me.
Slits.
Not holes. Slits.
A mask without a face.
7/25: Suss out ongoing business affairs. Cell phone? Other tracks in the bubble chamber? UC divulge family contact data? Did he have a life-insurance policy???
… I shove through shit. I slalom through shit. Little shit-burrs stick to my lips, my crevices, all of my surfaces. I am scraping shit all the time, full-time, all of my time. Piled vertical, black, toppling, textured, I am shoving shit, licking it, even when I don’t know it’s there. Call it crap if you want, coprolite, mung, prut, feculence, it’s still shit, and I live in it, shitty fucking shit. Shit shit and shit, shit shit! On dirt, on concrete, on pavement, on dirt!, between everything I scrape shit, I rub shit, I am abraded, ground down, rubbed away, made rough and scarred and chinked, asymmetrical. Pity my outsole. My toe box hurts. Hell is pronation! Then I am tossed off, flung away, then yanked back on and re-put in shit, into endless shit-reps, shitty shitty shit-reps, training me for who-knows-fucking-what. In a world of shit, I go on, so others can. Because I cannot escape this world of shit, I let others escape. So go on! Go! Look at what I do: I weight-shift and curve and lift. I flex and arc and land and fall. So go on! Go! But the shit will not be escaped. Look at my diary: Go on. Traipse through shit. Traipse through shit some more. Hit the auto. Push gas. Lift. Make brake. Repeat pathologically. OK? Want more? Next entry. Traipse through shit. Traipse through even more shit. Scrape against crackly, fibery, shit-stinking carpet, chemicalled to counter the shit but even shittier than usual. Kick a document, a map. Kick several. Jolt, then get flung off. And land, usually on chemical-stink carpet. Repeat all of the above. Pathologically. Unbelievably pathologically. Unbelievable! Please, no more chemicalled carpets! Escape! I cannot escape so others can! So go! Go on, go! … And yet, still, once again, I go on. In the morning I go on. After naps I go on. Before steps hazarded through mapless townscapes. Before, again, pathologically again, commuting from slipping gas to making brake. In this world of shit I go on … But no. I do not go on. I am stepped in. That’s it. Just like shit. Stepped on. Just like … No, I do not go on. I am put on. Always, always, I am put on. I am just put on. Put upon, I am put on. Someone must be putting me on. I’m a put-on. I’m put on.
And oorph…
Ummph …
Not a corner…
Not an edge…
Oooorrrmph …
—So what can—
—Not, not—
—There’s gotta be—
—I gotta hold off legal—
—The fucker.
—Make sure they don’t print the dates—
—The fucker.
—We’re tied. Our hands are—
—So don’t we know anybody there? Anybody know anybody in Holland—?
—If he stays there—
—So like what’re the statutes on extradition on civil cases at this level? Anybody, anybody know about—
—Archie—
—Miserable scumbag.
—Yeah—
—I mean that’s it, y’know, that’s it. I am going to find this scuzzball and charge this scuzzball and bring that fucker down.
—Ar—
—He uses our country and abuses our country and robs everyone and everything he can fucking fuck with his hands, no scruples and no fucking conscience and I can hardly wait to BFD, man, I am going to bring the fucker down. And when, and when I—
—OK, man—
—No, it’s not O—
—Stan? Jack Braigan still working with you?
—I think so, yeah.
—’Cause he’s got a good connection at INS. You speak to him, you ask him to give me a call?
—Sure.
—Anything to speed those guys up. Hoo.
—’N we can try Dutch immigration, but, y’know, maybe we’ll—
—Maybe we’ll hear back by the time of our retirement.
—Yeah. And the other thing is that maybe he’ll lead us to assets. One use of a card there ’n—
—’N we can fuck him in his own country too.
—Exact—
—If there are any assets. If they aren’t in fucking Luxemburg or—
—This Visa card’ll be shut down in a few days, ’n I tell you we should have known. There should be some early warning system, some like kind of pan-financial SDI. A one-way ticket, ’n three days of maxed cash advances—
—So you think now we should subpoena UC?
—They’ll fight it like craze—
—Get an address for him there? For the fuckman’s parents?
—Let me think about it. Let me think about it. Stan, what you think?
— … Couldn’t hurt.
—Let me get on a plane ’n I’ll track him to his front door ’n fuckin’ nail the papers to his fucking forehead—
—Stay in Chicago, Archie. We’ll be seeing this shit, this human shit again.
—I hope so, man. I hope you’re right.
—Yeah. Don’t worry. He’s coming back. ’N in the mean time, get on the horn to Borah.
—Oh, man. Why?
—’Cause maybe now that he’s lost a client—
—Ain’t gonna make a difference.
—So, OK, we speak again in a few days? When I, when we—
… Arrmph …
HrrrRRRrph …
Nothing up …
Nothing will come up …
This heav …
Can’t …
Heaviness …
Nothing going through—
And Hup from my crevice when a woman nosehales cig smoke while paying for bowls of green jello past the cashierette on the collection tray of dirt-forks and lipstick cups and grime-mats and up the heat-float on the sweat-knuckle of the cookman grabbing a squirt-bottle up the a/c grille whooshed and whipping through the ducting pulled and whirring from the exhaust fan on the car’s bumperguard gunk-spot turning from the parking lot now accelerating on the window’s rubber edging on the kid’s cheek on the mom’s nape swamped in sweat-hair until side-drafts to the windshield on the kid’s shin in the wading pool on the shoulder of the woman emerging toweling on the toe strap of the flipflop on the pantsleg of the ranger lecturing on fauna living on the nose-whorl of the visitor from Ohio scratching on the bench-slat on the
Oomph, again …
Hooooooomph …
Stalled … exhaust … No more …
On
ly heav …
Heaviness …
Low and high, and still low …
High and low …
And still low …
Downdrafts fall upon me … sidedrafts kick me across … in my chink … lodged, wedged, in my crevice … with edge heaviness … and everywhere heaviness … shunted, furled … in my …
And then flunged up into air … puffed, buffeted … among currents … across human rooms … where I want … and I want … all the throats fluffing air … filling the overworld with air … across dining areas … and hall ways … and bar rooms … where I want … and I want … and I want … but I want …
Always, always, time slides into movement … and, resistanceless, movement replies … flunged into a racecourse … where cars spit kindred scintillance … into a regional museum … exhibiting, commemorating Slovenian women … onto a lakeside bench … with footfalls threatening … and, always, I want … but I need … and I want … and I need … Tell me about it …
Progress is no progress … anywhere is anywhere and is just as well … scuppled from my slot, over dog runs and mileposts and oak-edged visitors’ centers … and cyclone fences and bowling alley shoe-check desks … and smile-clerks … and bus shelters … and laminated local press-clips hung on waiting-area walls … and I want … and diner-table cream tublets … but I want … and I want … and hanging white-plastic sticks for pulling curtains … rubber cross-tubes counting traffic … bottom-frame billboard contact info … cash registeers in polystyrene cages … cocktail napkins landing before stooled buttocks … and I think … well I want … but I think … but I want … and permanent tucked-up ninety-nines on price signs … and nickel-calibrated toll-road fees … countertop change troughs … radar warnings … and empty eyes … and empty eyes …
It is orderly … evident … automatic … the law, the math is simple … the wind + me = the wind …
And What’s? … What? … No … Sorry … No … Don’t know—
And Hup on the Datsun’s exhaust-puff on the pinky cuticle of the French Canadian in the pants pocket in the darkness musty musky on the clinking key-ring out and scuppled to the panorama map clouded with air-syrup on the boot-seam kicked on the ear-rim of the Gameboy-kid in the back seat with the bumping all below him whiffed by the mom-opened men’s-room door onto the nose-stud of the post-piss handwashed Ecuadorian busboy snorted into a miniscule circle, into a little black inset plastic circle gunked and glooped and sour-reeking and
Uh-huh … Uh-huh … and whisking breath and globuly ammonia breath and rancid breath and … But listen, OK, tell Walt, uh-huh … pressed into the miniscule circle by human wind, by human droplet … No, you tell Walt that it wasn’t health salad, OK?, it was coleslaw … and crackle spittle and crackle static … No, it was coleslaw, it was not health salad, you tell him that … and sloshed and stuck and … Listen, OK, I know what it was, and Walt knew too … Dammit, I’m sure, OK?, it wasn’t health sal! … and huffs and spews and … Who knows what the difference was, 25 cents a … and louder, and jolt-round turns … But I can’t eat, I don’t like, Walt knows that! … I hate coles, I can’t eat coles, Walt he was just and wait and wait!, Don’t … ! Hello … !, Walt, Walt!, no, I … !, but how could, how could you ever let Judy get involved in, how could, don’t you ever?, she has to rest, she has to have calm, and you, you just go out and buy coleslaw, you buy it anyway, you …
And a jolt-round turn, and scuppled onto …
Onto dirt … onto soil … in loam … black, wet-humid, in the leaf-shadow of a corn plant … feeding a corn plant … in a tree-pot … a planter … on linoleum flooring … in dirt …
Dear Mr. Remnick:
Chicago, long dogged as The Second City, now has a first-tier story to tell. Lincoln Selwyn was a dashing Brit on full scholarship to the University of Chicago, home to Bellow and Bloom. But through individual alchemy, Selwyn made himself Chicago’s golden boy, sauntering through the highest reaches of its social life, escorting a bevy of locals belles, and amassing a fortune in real estate, and other ventures, that is still to be calculated. Then he vanished, and remains unaccounted for.
It’s my understanding that The New Yorker is looking to develop its readership in the Middle West. Accordingly, I’m wondering if you might find this tale, already holding Chicago in thrall, a worthy {foot}soldier in that worthy effort. My qualifications include::::
Sincerely,
Tracy van Dogan Krassner
Transformed everything he touched.
In dirt …
High and low, and …
And heav …
Heav …
iness …
Everywhere …
There must be a pattern …
A grammar …
No …
Nothing but dirt …
There is no grammar of movement …
Just dirt … scurf in the biomass … laws unto me … but not for me … I want … and I want … well I want … and I want … and …
And …
Not …
Not! …
Mario Marla! … what’s? … Bistro 110 … and roof! … The roof of the Leader building … white one-shoulder Marla Texel!, white-shoulder cinch-waisted ribbony … impossible … imposs!, what … behind! … get behind a granule—!
Hup in the leg hair of a German-droning woman scratched onto the stack of Oklahoma County Registers wiped by a passing towel melding crotch sweat with chlorine past the doorsill launched by updraft on the skateboard that is step-flipped to be arm-held sprung on the capped incisor of the WorldCom-shirt-man racing in for extra ketchup then throat-cleared on the in the
Loam …
The planter …
Back, again …
The corn-plant planter …
Over linoleum …
But dirt …
Again dirt …
Comfortable …
Released to the natural world … here, among the growing, the living … becoming ticklike, aphidian … no blows forward, no blows back … entirely unattached … an ideal to become … attached to …
So no reason to mind the stirrings … the hushings, the haltings … the whisperings … the emerging fields of frissons and turnings … for the big car halting … the black car gliding and stopping … right before the entranceway … and the car’s front door opening … and the solid man stepping from it, and buttoning his suit-jacket … and turning, and opening the rear door behind him … and from that door …
Rising, stepping from it … another man … also solid, also suited … this man turns, leans, says something back into the black car … then turns, walks … walks toward our entrance doors … as people, onlookers, scupple from him … and list, radar-dish-eyed, toward him …
He is recognizable … his face, his bearing … his full-bald head, singed with clipped white … his small, springy size, his pug face, puffed … and, overhearable … Look … Jim, quick … Look … Shorter than I imagined … What’s what’s he doing here … Oh my Gah …
Something with television … owned television stations … or networks, or movie studios … or … and failed repeatedly, failed five times, with every, almost every one … name unknown to me … but it should be known … his is a name that should be known … even the whisperers who don’t know him are mindful that they should know him … though he has failed big-time five times … a black vacuum trails him into the pisser … then, when the swinging door to the piss-room stills … movement, human movement, here in the outer room, unfreezes … chat-activity ticks up … with the known/unknown man now gone pissing …
But still, shades of hush … in the pre-pisser vestibule, voices remain lowered … soft-chatterers hang in place … energy, adrenaline, bring shivery things to time … as the known/unknown man, behind doors, streams with piss … a boy, in cutdowns and backwards Angels cap, runs in with a straw sundial-rising from his plastic-lid softdrink … to his mother, who gathers him in, presses him to her, shushes him �
� before he’s pulled aside to free the way for the known/unknown man, sprung from his piss-place … the boy stumbles, though the mother catches the softdrink … the man looks at no one … as his black vacuum trails out … and though he tries to scupple me from my planter … he doesn’t … whip-quick the man is out the exit door, and it rock-swings shutward … but he did not pry me from my planter … from my tree-pot … my loam …
Loam—
Hup on an untied sneaker-lace on the unattached chin-strap of a bike helmet in a cig-cough and then tumble-shoved by a snorting SUV contrail on an upstream of belched evaporating raspberry Fresca jolted by a home-returning marker-cap and And …
What …
What is …
O … o sordidness … o low foulness … on the … on the breathswoop snout of this … breathswoop … roan-brown chow …
O bile and vile and … caught!, damn, snot-stuck, foul, foulest … splat and black wet hard soft … crevices, seams, freezing breezes … and the thing is walking … it’s trotting, cantering, its air-stream bouncing … led by legs … human, callipering legs …
O vile ex- and in-halation …
And now it’s turning towards something … then turning towards something else …
And cold and wet and black and snuffling …
Kut …
But what …
The beast is turning about itself …
In a circle, accelerating, spinning around itself …
Whisking around itself …
And …
Hup … !
Scuppled … !
On the …
On the … !
Kut! …
Kut!! …
And black and stuck and wet shit-stinking, and creviced and seamed and black shit-stinking and …
And …
Kut…
…
Finally …
Finally, I have found my spot …
My well-deserved spot …
Behind, forever trailing, a roan-brown chow …
Attached to, part of, a roan-brown chow …
And again it’s trotting, again it’s bobbing …
Though I can’t see where it—
Where we are going …
The closest thing to dogshit …
There is …