A History of Something
in Three Acts
Lady Ogre was working out on her Peloton bike when she felt faint and
dizzy and puked up a junkie. Downstairs, her sometime boyfriend, alias Captain
Dread, stood with one booted foot on an alligator skull, preparing to address
his perverted but talented crew of piratical underground cartoonists. “Don’t
let the page be gray,” he growled. “Make it jump! Make it crackle! Blister
their irises!” Nothing came easy. Nothing. Old friends who had drowned while
drunk or high on drugs – Whitney Houston, Natalie Wood, Dennis Wilson – would
turn up at all hours acting sadly like themselves.
Prophecy Is for
Believers
A tree has sprung up from the grave of Tom Paine, patron saint of
outcasts and rebels. We are traveling there to find out if what we have heard
is true, that when the wind ripples through the monstrously large leaves, the
leaves speak in the doom-laden voice of prophecy. There are certain words that
are rightly feared. “Better you cry now than I cry later,” my mother would
darkly say as she slammed drawers and cabinets, searching for a hairbrush, a
wooden spoon – anything! – with which to beat me.
Deep Moaning Blues
They’re traveling incognito, George Washington with a
moustache and Abe Lincoln without a beard. Time is like a river that has jumped
its banks and carved a brazen new course through the ruins of fabled
industries. They follow its many twists and turns, only to find themselves
weeks later cold, ragged, and hungry, and under perpetual ban. Meanwhile,
killers walk around free if they’re white and have a badge. It’s as though the
laws have been rewritten by malignant algorithms. A night of solid sleep is
impossible. The moans that keep waking me up, I finally realize, come from me.
Into the Darkness of
Moby Dick
If you drive slowly and look for it, you just might find it, a faded
little seafood shack named for Melville’s wicked white whale, the parking lot
covered in crushed shells that crunch nastily underfoot, midday growing so dark
with each step the crickets begin to chirp, thinking it’s night.
