Six-Eyed Kitten

@andrewkozma.net

2818 Followers 352 Following

A writer of poems, plays, stories, novels, and essays. Rep'd by Jessica Sinsheimer. Edits for Reckoning http://www.andrewkozma.net/ http://patreon.com/thedrellum

A picture of a water heater in an attic, loose pink insulation scattered around like sickness, water dripping heavily from a towel-bandaged pipe into two pots.
A doll head hanging upside down from a hook embedded in polished wood above a doll head right side up with a ribbon tied around it obscuring one eye. This is part of the bar decor at Poison Girl in Houston.
Two baby white goats relax together on a wooden deck in sunlight.
Two demolished houses are now just lots filled with trash. A small tree marks where the front of the homes once stood. Two either side are other teal houses waiting their turn.
The remains of a house sit behind a small tree. The wall of a teal house can be seen to the left of the wreckage.
Two teal shotgun style houses are seen behind a row of recycling and trash cans and a worn telephone pole.
An excavator sits on top of a pile of rubble that used to be a house, pounding down to break what remains into easily trashable chunks. Teal shotgun style houses flank either side of the ruins.
A yellow violation notice from the City of Houston regarding the houses being possibly abandoned. It is lying flat on the grass, knocked over and forgotten about.
A teal colored shotgun style house seen from the front. A tree covers half of the photo. The house doesn't look in great condition, but is whole, with no obvious damage. To the right is the beginning of the evidence of demolition of other houses.
A teal colored shotgun style house seen from the front. The porch railings have been half torn away. A yellow city violation notice lies flat on the ground.
A teal colored house with a wide porch out front. It is clearly older. Windows are boarded up. Larger apartment buildings are in the background.
A poem in an open literary magazine. Darkness is a Body Whether the heart or the left hand or the eyes or the bottom of the foot There is that place light refuses to touch where the unboned squirm and wriggle I have felt the darkness grow, a sore weeping on the skin, a tattoo of scars The bathwater turned to blood with a touch the ground salted beneath my footsteps Imagine the sun a single, unblinking eye and the darkness its lungs and genitals The better to scream your name, the better to fuck you all up inside of it Night with a moon cataract blind a bonfire between us, an x-ray of light Bones visible in a blankness of flesh shadows sewn through skin
A white man standing at an angle against a white wall, wearing blue jeans, a short sleeve shirt with MOBY DICK written over a linocut of a whale breaching the water, and a cardboard box that is long from side to side, with holes on either end that kind of look like eyes. A fool, in other words.
A quote by James Baldwin that reads: If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own - which it is - and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a group of people on a spit of land at low tide. Several hold crosses and one is dressed like a priest. They all seem to be black. On the other side of the spit is a forested land, while the shadows of palm trees drape over a few onlookers close by. Above the texture lies the text Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and below the picture lies the text love (a recent Afro-Baptist tale and 'tory). The back reads: We gathered beside the ocean and the ocean pulled away from us. That's when we knew we were doomed. From just off the newly revealed shore, just a crashing wave or two beyond the edge of the water, we saw the new versions of ourselves we were being called to be. They looked back at us, those water-logged husks, and their eyes were imploring, asking for forgiveness or understanding. They would not come to us. We had to go to them. They were evil and ugly and yet there was a draw. Evelyn went first. We could have gone back to town easily, but she instead stepped out onto the wet sand and disappeared under it. Her new body smiled, all its teeth so visible, so sharp.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of the Northern Lights (text along the top reads Northern Lights, text along the bottom reads Alaska). The picture is of a night sky with a vast swath of greenish-blue light across it, the dark silhouettes of treetops in the lower left of the photo. Stars are visible on the rightmost non-lit side, while they just peek through the bright Northern Lights. The back reads: The sun scattered itself across the sky, leaving the entire world in mostly darkness. The sun priests (they called themselves scientists) explained that the sun had thought there was enough of it to provide day everywhere with just a little thinning, but it had been wrong and the sun priests were sacrificed because how else does one take revenge on the sun? Once the sun priests were gone, no one had any ideas on how to get the sun back, so instead we took to the darkness. We stopped describing things visually and turned to our other senses in hope they'd make up for the loss. They didn't. We cried and smelled salt, felt the moist cold. Our skin heated with embarrassment. We heard smiles and treasured the clack of strong teeth. When the sun came back, we were surprised at the sudden warm balm, but we'd gotten out of the habit of vision, so we sewed our eyes shut.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a black and white picture of a bridge in Paris which is apparently Le Pont Neuf. The photo is taken from one side looking over the river at an angle to catch the bridge and the trees and the five or six story buildings beyond. There are some streetlamps, but no people. The back reads: This is the bridge we do not cross. On the other side of the bridge is the other half of the city and we do not go there. From this side of the river, that far part of the city appears empty -- that is, until you step on the bridge. People report seeing different things, but the most common are these two: 1) a glory of warm light and sidewalks full of people so happy, so content, you can see their smiling faces clear from two blocks away, or 2) a maze of emptied streets, light harsh as a dissecting table, and the feeling of being watched, of being judged worthy of further study. Those who have stayed too long on the bridge -- unmoving, entranced -- lost themselves, becoming unresponsive, taken home by loved ones only to vanish days or weeks later. Some are found washed up on the banks of the river. I myself have seen a few in that lit city.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a faded, black and white photo of a landscape that seems barren and covered in scrub grass. The top of a cliff seems to be at the bottom, and low, rolling hills lead up to the horizon. White posts are stuck into the ground in a weaving line up from the left and to the center top. Text written in white on the photo says: Site where troop e skirmish line was annihilated. Horses and horse holders for troop c and d were trapped in deep ravine in foreground battlefield montana The back reads: This field is where we all died. I will tell you it was in my dream and you will discount it, but the dream was real and our deaths will be, too. White sticks were planted in the field, and when I approached I realized they were bones. They were spines, fused into immobile poles, each marking a death. So many spines, and so many deaths, even though it is just you and I who died, who will die, who have already died. The two of us are sewn into the seams of linear time, holding it together for all, each stitch another body of ours laid to rest.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a beach with the water to the left side and the forest to the right. A few people stroll along the beach and there are umbrellas and tables in the distance, as well as a few boats close to shore. Closest are the stump and other remains of a palm tree. The back reads: All of the rest of the world was drowned, the island the last place above water. It was a big island, and yet still most of the population of the world had drowned trying to reach it or waiting to be admitted to the island. There was only so much room and the most insistent, the rich, were the first to arrive and the first to be refused. They'd had so much of the old world tight in their grasping hands, and what use had that wealth been, what use for it now that nothing could be bought? All the artisans and engineers and poets crowded the shores, and the rich were left to rot.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a picture of Paris down La rue Royale from to the side of the street facing what looks like a museum. Cars are parked along the side and driving down the road. People are eating food on a streetside cafe. And one man stands just beyond the parked cars, looking as though he is about to cross the street. The back reads: The man in the street prepares to cross the cobblestone road. This happens every day. And every day the old men and women eat their lunch at the counter facing the road and watch him. I sit with them now, even though I am not old and I am not hungry. The man is tentative where he stands, just beyond the line of curb-parked cars, always almost just stepping into the gaps in traffic. Except there is no gap, not today, just as some days there is no traffic. His actions are the same. The old men and women bet amongst themselves as to whether he'll make it across today. So far, he never has. Some days he gives up and some days he dies, but he always returns, and tries yet again. Who cursed him? And why does it give me such pleasure to sit and watch?
A postcard, front and back. The front is an old illustration of black on yellow with a little child holding a branch of something in front of an open door with a cat at their side. Above the picture it says Christmas and below it says Greetings. The back of the postcard reads: The Christmas little girl and the Christmas cat are at your door to wish you a Merry Christmas. Please, do not open the door unless you are certain you have been good. They are cute and friendly and very deadly to those undeserving, teeth and claws and fingernails strong and sharp. Keep the door closed no matter how cold it is outside, no matter how much they shiver. They will not die. They can not die. The holidays are littered with doorsteps now dressed in gore the color of mistletoe berries.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a sign with a background of trees as though posted in the middle of nowhere (though it is actually Uvalde, Texas). The sign has a drawn face at the top of it of an old man's head looking at the viewer. The sign reads Garner Museum Memorial Home of Former U.S. Vice President John N. Garner Open to the Public North 3 Blocks. The back of the postcard reads: Dear M, can you believe that even the employees of the Garner Museum don't know who Garner was? After his disastrous two-week stay in office, his name was stricken from the record, all our knowledge of him erased not just from written history but from our collective memory. What John Garner did was certainly deserving of such a punishment, we can only assume. And still this museum, where, upon entrance, all knowledge of Garner is held, in its absence, walls of blank portraits, unsigned documents, the signifier emptied out.
What is the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the American Constitution? The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering.
At an international medical conference, a group of physicians shared their experiences informally between the delivery of scholarly papers. A French physician lamented: "Our problem is that we successfully treat a patient's rheumatism, yet he dies from cancer." A Canadian physician agreed: "The same thing happens in our practice. We treat a man of jaundice, but he dies of a heart attack." A Russian physicians angrily interjects: "Everything that you say is nothing but bourgeois ambivalence. We, in the Soviet Union, treat our patients, say, from pneumonia, and I can assure you that they die from pneumonia."
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of an island in the middle of what appears to be a lake. The picture is in black and white, taken from one shore and looking over a veil of trees. The island is a hump covered in trees. On the horizon is another coastline. The back reads: There was no treasure on Treasure Island, the locals said. They said the island itself was the treasure, and yet that didn't stop the treasure hunters. Though the locals invited them in openly--their money was a boost to the local economy--the hunters often snuck onto the island at night, believing the locals purposely deceitful. Yet the locals were only telling the truth. There was no treasure on the island because they'd removed it themselves long ago. The island was the treasure because it turned those sneaking hunters to profit, transforming their trapped bones to pure gold.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows two pictures in front of a light blue background over the words Fairbanks, Alaska. The right pictures is of a statue in the middle of a flower bed with a person looking at it from the flower bed. The left picture is of a column that reads Welcome to Fairbanks the Golden Heart City. The back of the postcard reads: Dear S, we hide our faces here not because of who we are, but because of what we might see if we left our eyes unblindered. It is a strange land I find myself in, a strange land I now call home, if only since I can't imagine readjusting to the life you call normal. The thing is, I never realized how much there is to see, that we are FORCED to see, our eyes pumped full of so much information we have no control over and no way to verify. Just as a computer can ingest a virus simply by opening up a PDF or a phone can be infected by scanning a QR code, we can be modified simply with a glance at the wrong thing, an object or image designed to hijack our minds. I write this through a careful window of vision. I have forgotten what you look like but don't dare chancing your picture. Safe in darkness, ~A
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a forested wilderness with mountains rising in the distance. Running through the picture is an oil pipeline right along a road, a giant metal worm-like structure cutting through the otherwise empty wilderness. Along the top the picture is labeled Alaska. The back reads: We built the country for the oil. We established laws for the concept of supply and demand. We paved roads for the pipeline. We let the trees establish a border so the pipeline did not have to see those that protested its existence. We gave the pipeline AI so it could voice both its thanks and its discontents. We believed oil was what the pipeline was transporting, but none of us could recall the last time we saw oil or even a gas station with a ready supply. Highways grew into graveyards, all the cars abandoned where they'd died and left to rust into benevolence. We'd thought we'd built the country for oil, but maybe we were wrong. We put our ears to the pipeline and it was warm as breath. From inside we thought we heard something, something like screaming, but it was too late, we admitted.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride, Colorado. A large waterfall pours out of a solid rock face with a building on the cliff above it and forest-covered mountains rising further up, and forested slopes angling down toward where the water falls. Text along the bottom reads Bridal Veil Falls, Telluride. The back reads: The old tradition of removing the bridal veil has been discontinued. It was fun and exciting, yes, but there were several injuries and several more disappearances which could either be because of death by drowning (the bride's body caught on a rock or current or drawn into an underground stream) or runaway bride syndrome, which is simply another kind of death. In this tradition, after the vows, the bride would jump from the top of the falls and, mid-descent, would rip the veil from her face, revealing herself fully to her husband/wife and the entire wedding party. And many a time it was revealed that the bride was not the woman everyone supposed, but it was too late, the leap had been taken. Sometimes, the revelation made, the husband/wife would follow, letting fate determine their fate.
A calendar titled authors and cats with a sepia-toned drawing of Mark Twain and a cat with a book that looks AI generated.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a statue in the middle of a large pool that I assume is a fountain. The photo is in black and white and beyond the edges of the pool/fountain are people walking through a park with trees and two tall pillars in the distance. This is in Paris en flanant place de la nation (according to the back). The back reads: Do not go to the fountain for answers. Do not pose your questions to the statues crawling over themselves on their island in the middle of the fountain, that pedestal of concrete they've been exiled to. The fountain is in the city center and many use that public square for exercise or to eat their lunch and you have undoubtedly heard the statues then, the way they exhort those around them to ask a question, just one question, please. The first thing is that the statues take payment for every answer, and that payment could be a coin or it could be your ear. The second thing is that the statues tell the truth, yes, but they make the truth true. You must not trust them.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a mountain covered in snow rising up from foothills covered in pine trees. The light is purple-pink. Text along the bottom of the postcard says Mount Hood. The back reads: The snow was pink. No one would admit it was because of the blood. When the government began asking for volunteers to climb the mountain a few years ago, they claimed it was to keep the trails clear and trigger obvious avalanches. Many volunteered because we are a people who care about our environment. Many never came back from the mountain. When people stopped volunteering, lots were drawn. The military and the police collected those unwillingly "volunteered" and drove them to the mountain, forced them up the slopes at gun point. There were no screams. Those responsible could tell themselves it was painless and their sacrifice was surely worth it. The mountain was quiet. Its slopes blushed deeper and deeper. It would all be okay.
A tiny black cat curled up in a lap with the edge of her face visible.
A postcard, front and back. The front is an ad for a fish boil in Door County, Wisconsin (as shown by large text on the right side of the card read: Fish Boil - Door County Wisconsin. On the left side of the postcard are three pictures. One is of a boiling cauldron over a bunch of burning logs, the water white and frothy so you can't tell what's inside. Another shows two men in white shirts and jeans carrying the cauldron from the fire. The last shows the cauldron entirely bathed in flame. The back reads: Sure, boil the fish. Saute the fish. Fry the fish, even, but what really brings out the flavor of the fish is just to set that shit on fire. This is why water/fire was invented. Just one tablet in up to fifty gallons of water, one lit match, and BLAMMO the water is gone in one fell swoop and the fish has been flash-cooked to perfection, skin crispy, flesh tender, and tasting clean as if burned through on logs of air. This will be the cooking of the future. No reliance on fossil fuels or batteries or the fickle whims of nature. All you need is water, and you better have that if you want to live anyway! A joke, but in dire circumstances blood serves, too.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the San Antonio Riverwalk at night, the photo taken from above the river, maybe over a bridge, so that the river centers the picture as it flows away. The trees are covered with lights, as though decorated for Christmas. The sky is a dusky rose as though the sun is just setting. The back reads: No one warned the tourists that it was the river that walked. Sure, there was a walkway along either side of the river, lined with restaurants and bars and shops, but the walking river was the real draw. Or, more exactly, the walking river was why residents wanted to draw tourists to the riverwalk. The river walked. The river stalked. Locals drank coffee riverside and eyed the swells of the river that kept pace with out-of-town visitors. So many people come to San Antonio, and so many people walked the river, and so many people, late at night, drunk off their asses, fell into that river, and so many people climbed back out that it was easy to overlook the few who didn't. In the midst of the happy crowds there were always people with tear-stained faces, inconsolable, until, they, too, found the river.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a pictures of a young horse sitting on the grass so only its front two legs are visible. The pictures is in an oval frame with the the rest of the postcard having a brown background with Corolla written across the top. The back reads: The horse had two legs. It had only two legs. The CEO of Horses R Us told us this was the next big thing. Two legs are hot! Every animal's doing it! In fact the majority of animals in the world walked on two legs! Tom from accounting pointed out this was simply because humans had wiped out most other animals. The CEO thanked Tom for his input and then fired him. Uniformed guards removed Tom while the rest of us tried to concentrate on what the CEO was saying. Turned out, it was nothing that important. A spotlight shone on the two-legged horse. Slowly, awkwardly, painfully, it stood and we clapped, clapped as it fell over, such a miracle, a miracle.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a two-story building with a low-angle peak with letters over the front door that read Honolua Store. The building is dark brown and the roof was red, but is mostly stained brown. A large tree hugs the left side of the building, with more trees and hills in the distance. A verdant green lawn fronts it, no signs of cars, streets, or people. Text in the bottom right under a stylized butterfly reads Kapalua Maui. The back reads: The store was in the middle of nowhere. It was a general store, without even gas pumps to excuse its absence from a town. It had a parking lot, yes, boy it had a parking lot as big as a football field and not a car to be seen on it. Who worked in the store? Why didn't they have a car? Was there a separate employee parking lot? How could the store even justify itself? The building wasn't gigantic, but it wasn't a corner store. Think of a Trader Joe's tucked into a strip mall, minus the strip mall. Aisles and aisles of groceries. A full-blown freezer aisle. A butcher counter already stocked with meat. Walk up to the windows of the store and you'll see happy faces inside under warm lights and shelves that are full to bursting with all the goods you need, all the things you want. The store is here for you. Park your car. Go inside. Buy. Eat. Be consumed.
A pencil dripping blood against a black background with text in white reading Write a horror story using only 3 words
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a man and child in an inflatable boat paddling through white water on a river. A label in the lower right reads White Water Rafting. The back reads: When the water finally rose, it was sudden and inconsolable. The ocean was crying and I found myself crying with it, no matter that I'd never cared about climate change before, couldn't give a damn whether dolphins were caught along with the tuna I craved. The water was at my doorstep, a glassy plane of it flatting out the driveway into the sidewalk into the street as if every house was floating just barely by the grace of god. When the house down the street vanished, dropping straight down into the water and leaving barely a ripple in its wake, I cried again. Not because I knew those people, but because I felt what was going on in my heart. The ocean didn't want to swallow us up. We'd forced its hand. This was for our own good.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a pair of boats in what appears to be an enclosed body of water trapped between steep mountain walls. The photo is taken from up the side of one of those mountains, in a cleft that looks down on a town that rests on the edge of the water. The green is vibrant and it must be spring. The back reads: When the president claimed he could trap the ocean inside our local mountain range, no one believed him, of course. No one even considered asking why anyone would want to trap the ocean, much less a country that already had command over the seas with its navy, both merchant and military. And yet, despite no one except the president expressing any desire whatsoever to "trap the ocean," the ocean was trapped. The water and all that lived or floated inside it vanished only to be, so the president claimed, enclosed within the mountains, filling a valley that had been, up until that point, dry except for the smallest stream. Now the water rose a third of the way up the valley's walls, though that was still clearly not enough volume to contain the entire ocean. "Ah, but how deep does it go?" the president countered. Those dark, salty waters were never plumbed. For years, dead things kept floating to the surface.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a large yellow building taking up an entire city block. It is night and the building is covered in yellow neon lights and has a number of onion domes rising from the roof, each with a flag flying from a pole on top. Various murals, indistinguishable from this distance, line the walls. A sign above the movie theater like entrance reads Mitchell Corn Palace. Text at the bottom of the picture reads 1987 Corn Palace. The back reads: Overnight, the Corn Palace rose up from the middle of the corn field along the highway into town. All that corn the Jempsons were counting on selling to make ends meet, suddenly gone. Alice Jempson came into town personally to complain to the mayor and the police chief, but neither of them knew a damn thing, or would admit to knowing, which is what the Jempsons figured to be true. That night they took it upon themselves to solve the problem, if revenge counts as a solution. The Resnicks in the next house over saw their torches approach the Corn Palace, Alice and Richard holding a brand in each hand, their three girls with one torch apiece. The torches glowed in a line along the front of the Corn Palace and stayed there for a good while, before the flames flared up high and then went out, reminding Bess Resnick of the fire eater at last year's county fair. The next day the Corn Palace was still standing and no one saw the Jempsons again. At night, the lights of the Corn Palace glowed with a welcome that no one trusted or could resist.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a girl being pretend locked up in the stocks outside in Williamsburg, Virginia. She is smiling while a jailer locks her in and her brother watches. Her dad takes a picture from below. The back reads: Dear S, it is a joy to be locked up. Is it me being a hypocrite to say so, having for so long been an advocate for freedom of all kinds and in all ways? Even the freedom to choose imprisonment, if that's what's wanted! But I didn't choose this, and telling myself I chose this after the fact is the worst kind of sophistry and self-deception. Yet I can not deny the pleasure of a barred window looking out onto a green meadow. The sight whets my longing to a razor-sharp edge. Everything is ever so much more beautiful when denied to you. Last night I found the key to my cell. Today, I threw it out the window. ~A
A postcard, front and back. The front has photo of a river with four lines of ships crossing almost half the width, the ships attached to each other side by side. Text along the top reads Benicia's Moth-Ball Fleet. It's sunset so the ships are seen in silhouette. The back reads: The ships attach to other ships like barnacles. Like barnacles, they grow, they weigh down, they cut the hands of the unwary. Like barnacles, they filter, but in reverse. Oil and grease and paint and metal all go, bit by bit, glob by glob, out into the ocean. The scientists say they think the ships believe they are reproducing this way, these small fragments of themselvles sperm or eggs drifting through the ocean for the perfect place to land, to ripen, to sprout, to forge themselves a hull, a crew, weapons, a purpose, a war, a wreck, a raft of corpses, what dreams our creations have.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the Williamsburg Inn in Williamsburg, Virginia. The view is from the edge of a curving driveway in front of a three-story colonial style building framed by trees on either side. A man stands directly in front of the building as if waiting to valet incoming cars. The back reads: There is only so much waiting that can be done. Only so much waiting before one has to accept that no waiting will do, that there's nothing that will summon the past back into the present, by which I mean the hope for a better future. I'm here now, we all are, and the present is not better than the past. I waited, we all waited, and yet the future turns out to be just as fucked as the present always was. It makes the past look good by comparison. And yet, all we can do is wait.
A postcard, front and back. The front is an interior photo of the Sanctuary of Knock in County Mayo, Ireland. Three ranks of pews lead towards an altar backed by statues of Mary, witnesses, and a lamb under a cross surrounded by angels. The back reads: In my dream, we were all there, all of us just waiting for the animal to speak. What animal it was, I'm unsure of. I think that's partly why we were waiting for it to speak. We had gathered there to ask it for help, obviously, but you ask different things of an elephant than you do of a frog. The animal refused to speak, though, simply shook its head on its too long or non-existent neck. We were impatient. We had other animals to get to and ask for favors. We couldn't wait forever, so we decided to take the animal with us, in our stomachs. (oh, how it screamed)
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of The Apparition of Our Lady statue in the Sanctuary of Knock, Mayo, Ireland. It is a white statue, ovalish in overall shape, with a golden crown on top. She is floating above the ground with her hands cupping the air in front of her. The back reads: I am knocking at your door. I have been knocking for hours, or maybe days. Every so often, I pause and put my ear to the door and think I hear your shallow, anxious breathing on the other side. I don't say your name. I don't speak at all. I simply begin knocking again. To tell you the truth, I'm no longer sure that I want you to open the door. To be completely honest, I am scared of what I will find behind that scarred wooden surface. Is this prayer? Or is this fear? What I've become convinced of is that if I don't stop knocking, you'll never die.
A postcard, front and back. The back shows a catty-corner view of the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is built to look like Native American pueblos, with soft edges and blocky faces, for all of its three-story height. The streets are lined with old-style cars, the picture having been taken in the 50s or 60s. The back reads: Dear B, I've moved in to La Fonda. I realize you were only paying for a review and so this sudden increase in expenses was unexpected, but I would argue that a review is only as good as its thoroughness and so my living here is the most thorough I can be. People who stay at La Fonda live here their entire lives. When you check in, it is not simply for a day or a week but for all time. Once I signed my name on the guest register, I realized I had always already been here. I was born here. I will die here. It is hard to explain, so I encourage you to visit and see what the fuss is about. ~A
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the Apparition Chapel in the Knock Shrine in County Mayo, Ireland. It is night, and the Chapel is lit up behind the altar, three pure white statues glowing to the left of a cross surrounded by an arc of angels. The back reads: Everything became miracles. Buying what you needed from the grocery store. A knot staying tied on your shoes. It was inevitable that miracles would lose all of the glamour we associated with them, not to mention the church grew overwhelmed with the business of it all, not realizing they lost a little bit of their own power with every verified miracle until it was too late. They became the Jiffy Lube of religions. They made house calls. A five-dollar donation to the kiosk out front of the grocery store was enough to get a miracle verified simply on the basis of your verbal account, no matter how sketchy. Soon, every pair of shoes walked on water (as long as that water was on the sidewalk). I never realized what a miracle it was, your eyes.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a castle on the top of a layer-cake-looking hill in a green landscape of mostly fields with mountains blueing the horizon. Text along the bottom names this castle the Rock of Cashel. The back reads: First they found the rock in the shape of a castle. They they found the rocks in the shapes of people. When they started looking, really opened their eyes, every stone ended up being in the shape of something else. Yes, all these rocks and stones were small (though proportional to each other), but that didn't make things any better. There was an entire world around them that they'd never even noticed. If they'd been so blind to this, what else had they missed? That was the question they refused to ask themselves. Not that they had time, as pretty soon after they found the rocks and stones, those rocks and stones started to move. Were they coming to life or had they always been alive? That was the question they refused to answer as they collected the rocks and stones in bags and threw them into the sea.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of the Governor's Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It shows a low, one-story building made of adobe that is the length of an entire block. Logs are used as columns and logs also poke out of the wall at ceiling height, apparently used as beams. A few people hang out under the overhang and some trees loom over the back of the palace. A flag hangs limply on its pole. The back reads: The governor ruled from jail as it was, he said proudly, the only secure place in the state. It was clean and safe, especially after all the prisoners had been released in order to provide room for the governor and his staff. The food wasn't great, admittedly, but there was plenty of it, and contraband could get you the good stuff, the governor quickly learned. It was only then he regretted giving up smoking. The prisoners released went back to their lives and the country, as a whole, prospered, every other state taking inspiration form the governor's bold plan. The leaders put themselves in prison and sent out their edicts daily. The messages were ignored. It was a time of joy, for a time.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of La Placita Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque, new Mexico. One long, single-story building takes up one side of a street, with trees glancing over top of it. The building has wooden pillars running along the overhang, and a number of people are walking under it. Text painted on the building reads La Placita Dining Rooms. The back reads: We all want to live in the old town. The old town is simply better. We all remember it that way. Too beautiful to be real. The sunlight soft like honey on the tongue, sticky in memory, all the nostalgia melting in the mouth and the mind like cotton candy. We all want to live in the old town, but the new town is all we have. The dust doesn't glow in the sunlight. The air is empty of taste or feeling. We breathe our yearning. We pay for parking, and still our cars are towed away.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a series of three pictures around text reading Troldhaugen Nina og Edvard Griegs Hjem. The pictures are 1. A wooden house in the woods surrounded only by greenery 2. The inside of that house, a corner of a room with a piano, a desk, a window, the wood all natural and 3. A metal statue I assume to be of Edvard Grieg also surrounded by greenery as if abandoned in the wilderness. The back reads: Dear F, you remember the old man who lived at the end of the lane, just where the land started to drop into the valley choked with thorns, nameless because everyone refused to go there? Well, when he died, he decided that instead of burial or cremation, he wanted to be entombed in a statue, forever standing and looking out over the property he once owned. Where his eyes were, they put heavy-duty glass, though the rest was bronze, a metal replica of his body reproduced to his idealized specifications. Now, he looks down into that thorn-choked valley. Now, every day on my walk I come to stand by his body in its new home and wonder at what rate he's rotting, forever denied a kind return to the Earth we've all sprung from. The statue has already cracked in the first freeze. At times, I can hear a moaning as the wind passes by. ~A
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the famous stairway chapel of Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The picture is of an ornate church, all white, with pillars and hanging lamps and statues. To the right of the room is a spiral staircase leading up to, well, whatever it is leading to isn't pictured. The back reads: The way you pray is by climbing the stairs. The miracle is that the stairs never end. Climb the spiral steps until, near the roof, darkness consumes all light, and your climb, step by step, takes you into a cold void. You will shiver even during the hottest day of summer. And after your entire body shakes with the chill, you will find yourself climbing up those spiral stairs from the basement of this church that has no basement. Once you pray in the church, climbing anywhere will express your devotion. Often, through prayer, you will find yourself again climbing up into the church, as if you always meant to be here.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a large ship (painted with three horizontal red, black, and stripes) inside a giant building in Oslo, Norway. The ship is the Polar Vessel, having gone both to the North and South polar as far as possible. The back reads: With the oceans gone, there was no place left for the ships to go, and so the sanctuary was built, a ship-sized aquarium (for lack of a better term) for a ship. Just one ship. Only one. See, the builders wondered why they should save more since, without oceans or even lakes, there was no need for ships except as a historical marker, a curiosity, a remembrance of where we had once been and never would be again. The other ships, boats of all sizes and purposes, they rotted on the exposed ocean floor, or became homes for people trying to escape the hungry sun. They kept the flags flying, hoping beyond hope it would rain again.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of Belfast City Hall in Northern Ireland, taken from an angle so it shows the front and the side. The building is in a large grassy square surrounded by a metal fence. Various people are walking the sidewalk. The building is white and classical, almost Grecian in style, with several towers. The back reads: No one lives at city hall. This makes it less of a city and more of a ruin, but no one wants to visit or work at ruin hall. And, yet, a ruin it is. Cold, musty air flows out from its cracked windows and the doors resting on broken hinges. From a distance, city hall seems whole, as flawless and perfect as the day it was completed, white marble not yet pitted with holes, copper accents still unverdigrised. Distance puts a shine to any object, whether a building or a relationship, whether faith or duty, whether sin or sacrifice. The ruin hall is all of those for us, for me. All of us who live here have left so many bodies behind us to pave our way. The ruin hall reminds us, oh so gently, that we are next. Yes, we are next.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the inside of the Our Lady of Light Chapel, specifically focusing on the "famous stairway." This is a spiral staircase going up to the balcony at the back of the church. The light is amber. The church itself is ornate, with sculptures along the walls and various other decorations. The back reads: To join the church, you must admit the light. You must open the light up to your body by opening your body up to the light. You can use a knife--many do--but you can also use metaphor or other indirect means. Simply by attending service, you will find yourself bathed in light. It will not blind you, no matter how bright it becomes, and you will feel it all over your skin, no matter how thick your clothes, like oil rubbed into your flesh by a loved one. Knife or simple openness of thought, or even self-immolation, there are many paths to the light. Don't just admit the light. Become the light. Admit the truth that only you can reveal the darkness hiding behind everyone else's body.
A middle aged white man in a black canvas jacket with an I voted sticker on in reverse so it reads Detov I.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows various murals around Belfast in Ireland. One takes up an entire side of a building and shows a couple and various kids walking a sidewalk in a forest. Another says Release the POWs now Saoirse with a silhouette of a man that seems to be blended with a prison. The last shows a man in an orange and black shirt with a live man walking in front of the mural. The back reads: We paint ourselves into the walls with our brushes as fingers. No, our blood isn't paint, though you would wish it so--the dead artist easier to bury than the live one. Underneath your gaze, we steal what was always rightfully ours, the oil that makes this world go, that you've stolen for your own. Through alchemy learned from banned texts, that oil you so treasure echoes our thoughts, reflects us onto surfaces you can't ignore, liquid money now worthless to you, but treasured by us. The voiceless become voiced. The unseen, seen. To rid yourselves of our memory, you will have to destroy the walls, tear down all you have built--no, what we've built for you--and start fresh with your own sad hands and empty heart.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of a four-poster bed made out of dark wood, very intricate and almost medieval. It is in a bare white room with a worn, stone fireplace. Though the walls are white, they are textured with intricate patterns. A chest is in front of the bed, a chair beside it, and a table next to the chair. Windows let light in, but show nothing of the outside. The back reads: Marriage bed, death bed, day bed: the wooden relic built by our ancestor takes all forms. When we sleep, it chastises us for not living up to expectations and exhorts us to do better. Or else what? we asked, but all we got was silence. The bed was made of all old wood, entitled with its age and the care given it over the years, all that careful sanding, those precious oils rubbed into its surface by hand, bare hand, not even cloth to soak up some of those priceless drops. The bed spoke when it wanted to, fed us dreams when it had something terrible to commit to our memory. Family legend had it the bed was built from a tree grown over the corpses of our family's dead, and so that tree, and the bed, were a part of us, and we a part of it. With my brothers and sisters, I hacked it to pieces, and we burned our remains.
A photo of a fundraising envelope for the DNC that reads Important Notice Enclosed: DNC sues Donald Trump.
A water-color poster advertising the 4th Annual Halloween Reading at Basket Books & Art in Houston, Texas, on Saturday, October 2th at 7 pm with Glenn Shaheen, Tracy Jo Barnwell, Kelly Moore, and Andrew Kozma. The poster depicts a green forested landscape at the top over ladders leading down into the purple-ish earth where cats and bats swarm around. The cat says, Costumes encouraged!