What are the messages?”
“The messages are: There
Are no messages.”
“But the light is blinking. I can see
the light—” “Oh wait, yes. The messages are,
Wait here, okay, wait right here, just while
Hold,
I have to dig for just one minute longer—
Would you like to choose your hold music?”
“I’d like a Beatles song: specifically
‘A Day in the Life,’ like when it goes super
Metro—crescendo—and then halt!”
“We’re in it now.” “Okay, thanks, Susannah.”
“You are welcome, dear Avery.”
“First un-left message
—”
I just want to say first, that my note from you made me cry, and I wanted to say too, that, even though
I know
You knew,
I mean,
How could you not sense it? Things were off,
Between Pal and me, and so of
Course you knew, and shouldn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t
Ask me rightly to apologize
(Which you didn’t, and I appreciate) or cast blame
Do wish we had more time to talk—
I’d been preparing some things to say, and so
Now to just say them to you,
Just to be happy, and to know that you’re valuable.
I spent so much of my adult life unhappy, and
With Pal, it was always hard to get a word in edgewise.
Him with that radio going,
‘—always!’ ‘—always!’
‘—always!’ and always speaking to
Everyone we ran into. Never a moment’s peace,
Oh, and I know those things got to you too,
Got on your nerves too, but, Avery, oh,
You are younger!
And my life is … well, you
Understand. I couldn’t spend any more of it
Un—” (doot)
“Are you sure you would like to delete this message?”
“Yes, please. Thanks, Susannah.”
—”
“Hi, Avery, it’s Mom,
Oh don’t mind me, I’m just calling you from
Ha-wa-ii … No, kidding. Well, not really
I’m not ‘kidding,’ because I am in
Fact, calling you from Hawaii, though it might as well be
The Arctic here, Avery. I miss you so badly,
I mean, it might as well be stone-cold winter—” (doot)
“Are you sure you would like to delete this message?”
“Yes, please.
Thanks, Susannah.”
“No more messages:
—”
“Thanks, Susannah.” (She’s really not supposed to play me those, so it means a lot.) “No problem, dear Avery.” (It’s a risk she runs because she cares.)
Night is close, but no closer to nothing, so
Are you speaking my language yet?
To go outside: it’s funny about the streetlamp lights,
And the moths, they don’t, like, get hot?
Burn, even? What is worse than burning,
can you imagine? Being young is like being a moth, or alive I
bet—possibly:
I am burning, if I am learning anything these days, it is that
The flames you keep touching when you’re young, you keep right ahead on touching when you’re older
Look at that one, he goes and tee—
Just a slight little tap on the wings on the warm, off the warm on the wings, and then—
Back on again. Everything in nature
as cyclical as this. Everything in nature
such addiction,
like today, you know how
in the bathroom down
& the screen still up;
& you know, sometimes an insect
will get behind the screen & through
somehow:
Yellow striped & brown orange—
& some red—
so much brighter when you really look
clawed in
combs antennae behind the mirror
That is prayer:
that is mental,
overtaking
the body.
That’s distress for you: externa-
mental, at its base
a physical, a coping
mechanism,
an “everything is fine”-
anism.
so sad,
makes me sadder than anything.
To think how I left it there
all morning.
I get a drinking glass and an old slip of paper—
A scrap on which I wrote the make and model of the toilet seat—
oblong oyster—
when we needed to know.
I carry it out.
I set it on the grass. It clings to the inside
of the glass, it encircles
the rim, doesn’t go anywhere—
“a watched pot doesn’t boil,” I think, “a cliché”
“is a coping”
“mechanism”
“animism”
“mechanism-animism”
“is belief in the soul of the process”
“mechananimism”
—”
When you’re old you die, and no other consolation.
It is true too of the young sometimes—we die. But I’ve been watching too many shows lately where the kids just go out and party
and listen to how I say “kids” as though I’m not one
anymore, like this summer totally rent me of “kids,” like I don’t want to party:
I’m partying now for crying out loud: this orange in my cup in my hand, is light orange, if you
catch my drift. And there are no cars. It is
too late, already, for cars: At 16,
I don’t have to think much about family, at least not
in terms of starting one;
Though, to be fair, my mom was hardly
out of high school when she had me
(in her belly, under graduation robes).
I wonder about how one, say, “gets there”
“from here”—okay, so, for instance
this dad along the way down here,
and I see him on his bike sometimes.
He rides up and I don’t see a mom or
another dad ever, and so he does it
His whole life, parenting, et al., alone, but like
how does he get there? To the point where he can even
Do that? After some kind of shattering?
What I’m asking is, from where
Do you get the strength?
I walk that way to catch a bit of
the light the color inside the house makes.
Lava lamps are making a comeback,
no TV light flickering, so nobody awake, &
The light is dim enough that it
goes hand in hand with noticing. I think:
A body needs to sleep.
I do wish my body, like a schedule, a dad could make.
Sleep at night, work during the day and make a life that
I am proud of?
Having gone through a shattering, it would be easy
to do, I imagine. Deserve
having shattered; it is easy to
Accept.
What I’m saying is that, if I am learning anything
these days, it is that the buildings in the craters of
the bodies of adults are there as a consequence of
a shattering. Which they are then forced to locate,
and then build into, out of, on top of.
And it’s how you make a life, accept a
happiness.
What I’m
asking is: Am I shattered enough already, or am I
shattering? (And when do I start to build?) Maybe
If I keep it at a distance, say,
as far as my hand is from my mouth,
While I’m holding the orange vodka drink,
well, maybe I’ll get struck by lightning instead. When I stretch out my palm, I can feel the potential.
But I contract it again, worried: If I am learning anything, it is that bitterness, in younger years, crystalizes and then sweetens:
forms a rock candy base, which then, when you’re older,
rots your teeth. And then they replace your teeth with,
guess what, more rock. More rot. The logic being to replace
rot with rot, to cancel it out. It is the circle of life. To own
the sickness first. Like with bodies. Antibodies. Fight rot with rot.
I.e., beat it to the punch.
“You have rock candy teeth, old man.”
I saw the nurses’ reactions, pleased, one less thing to clean.
I want pink rock candy for my teeth when I am old,
so everyone will know I’m still queer, and haven’t lost it.
“You are really rough!” Remember
When John Wayne said that in The Searchers
to the young man whose eyes were so blue:
I was falling in love. I was falling in love, and
And I was just eyeing the man with his shirt off.
Replace what rots with rot, and what’s rotten is fixed! It’s ingenious, except it keeps perpetuating: like in family,
Sometimes I do feel like there are two of me in here. I think everyone I know has lost someone, or, at least, like me and Luca, was born missing someone.
Ms. Poss lost both of her parents when she was younger: Can you imagine?
She had no siblings, so it was like she suddenly became the only one to carry all their stories, meaning
The stories they told and the stories they were, but she wouldn’t ever tell them, not even to herself, because they made her sad. She said she barely even grieved. And then in college, she went to this art show, a performance, and the artist said, “Under your seats, there is a lighter. Now, hold it up if you’ve ever lost somebody.”
Ms. Poss held up her lighter, and then she wailed. She wasn’t the only one wailing. She says
She’s convinced that art can heal both the artist and the witness.
She said that my poems might be suffering from over-condensing. I need to let my poems breathe a little.
Well, I have brought this one outside, Ms. Poss. Does that count?
I like a book that makes you do things with your body, like a Peter Pan, when you’re clapping to keep Tinker Bell alive:
“Dear reader, will you clap your hands with me?”
[Keep my grandpa alive?]
Oh and speaking of old movies, “You’re tearing me apart!” That’s from Rebel Without a Cause, speaking of other old movies with a (then) suggestion of queerness.
“You’re tearing me apart!” he roars at his parents. Because they are, but not really. I mean
Jim is a privileged, hot, white teen.
In fact, what tears him apart is the way he sees his dad as castrated by his mom. It’s weird, so then tie that in
To evolution, and Jim’s dad “should have been gay,” as Katy Perry said once about an ex in a song called “Ur So Gay,” before she sang a song later about kissing a girl, which was problematic for other reasons.
I mean, imagine being
torn apart by two
People
Parents.
It’s funny, Rebel starts with Jim at night, in the street. He is wasted and lying on the ground nudging a little toy monkey playing cymbals. And Jim is cool.
People fall in love with Jim.
A queer boy and a straight girl, both.
Before the film ends.
Guess which one dies.
And Jim is in the street at night, drunk, alone, party, like me, when we meet him. I am cool, or at least, I am not doing anything that Jim wouldn’t do.
This street is mine. I almost wrote, “it’s my street,” but that didn’t quite do it. That didn’t quite convey. The streetlamp lights, except for the bold dark square at the end of the block, where a man in a house once raised hell
He had left a city once, already, he explained. He didn’t want to leave again.
“Out of the frying pan,
& into the
—?”
You know, Luca told me one time that he lucid-dreamed. I do not believe it for a second, because of the way he said the lucid dream went.
He had this realization within the dream that he was dreaming and he started to move stuff with his hands, allegedly, like he was telekinetic.
Now doesn’t that seem a little too “on the nose”?
I can’t even remember my dreams most of the time, much less control them. I can control a poem, though. Look:
k !
L
o
o
Have you ever heard the joke, How do
you make a poem dance?
Well, it’s easy but you have to play
some music, so right now, we’ll
Choose “Afterlife” by Arcade Fire, because
it’s about death, and getting through,
But it helps to forget about the lyrics.
Press play:
I don’t know what the instrument is,
but it sounds like tiny car horns.
I can’t teach you and dance to it at the same time,
so here goes:
Ae e
Ae a
Really, it’s not even that impressive.
Nothing cummings didn’t already do,
but it’s hard for me to fully let go when I’m being watched.
The chorus:
eeaabogado
(abogado, abogado)
— swim.
Did you know that there is nothing
after life? ”
Okay, I am really sorry, this is actually a hard song to do.
For what it’s worth, I am literally dancing
In the street now, like a “kid,”
I am shattering. I am thinking
We all tote around a rot, a sorrow—
In our bodies, like a
Puberty.
When do I get mine, if I haven’t—
And I hope (how did you get yours?)
That I have? What I am saying is—
like in Peter Pan—
The issue is not (really) growing up too soon.
You know what the best use of the word “kids” I can think of is? That MGMT song, “Kids,” and they don’t even say it in the song, it’s just the song’s name:
and the song is more about nature like all the best art is: I want to believe in something bigger
Maybe that is what happens when you shatter: a belief in something bigger. You let a light in; you can’t help it. You emerge a sudden believer, and a-sudden, you have the strength that it takes to build.
Hey, look at nature.
No, look at it.
Every time I start to, I get self-conscious: But there are so many things in nature to see, and I’ve not seen a-one, and now
It is dark out,
And everywhere
Are wasps,
and I am living hand to mouth in
the mouth of the dull orange drink.
But if I finish I can set it down.
What I am asking is: Did I shatter my mom?
A cat!
A black cat.
Hey, you’re a black cat, not meant to be a bad omen, I hope—nah, I don’t believe in that.
Though you are the crow of the land.
But, now you’re gone!
Well, that’s why I like cats I guess. They play you.
“You are really rough!” I call after it. Like life,
To laugh,
Or death.
I mean,
I like a text that makes you do things, physically.
Lets you know that you’re alive.
Like, remember in Peter Pan, that scene when the narrator asks you
To clap if you believe in fairies—
To save Tinker Bell from dying?
[Did I ask you this already?]
And you do?
You clap.
I mean, [I clapped].
What I’m asking is:
[Could you clap to save my grandpa from dying?]
But no—I didn’t.
Because what if you didn’t, or don’t.
And what if you felt, or feel, bad for not doing so? Or it doesn’t work, and so you question your beliefs.
No, it is too much to ask,
But I didn’t ask it
[clap, clap, clap away]
anyway.
In high school sometimes,
A boy walks down the hallway
And other boys start clapping.
“Clap if you believe in fairies!”
It’s oft-quoted. “Clap if you believe!”
But I’ll be a fairy,
any day. So long as I never have to grow old and get rock candy teeth.
“You’re tearing me apart!”
That’s just the way of it.
1. Oh another thing I think about, periodically
2. About Peter Pan, is how
3. The mom learns about Peter when she’s arranging her kids’ heads at night
4. while they sleep.
5. But she doesn’t bring it up with them later: It’s
6. Against the code of moms.
7. But it’s necessary because how else is
8. A mom supposed to know what’s troubling her love?
9. Words like “F—”—and “DAD”—and “PETER” appear.
11. And I’m sensing she has rummaged.
12. Because she’s calling me.
13. Susannah rings.
14. I answer,
15. “Hello?”
16. “Hello, Ave?”—and by the way she says it
17. I can tell it’s wrong,
something worse than we
18. “They’re telling me it’s, uh”
19. “he has zero brain, uh, activity”
20. “he is only living”
21. “by machine.”
What happened is he fell, my Pal, and then he stopped being able to speak:
First, confusion of words: his first wife’s name for his girlfriend’s. Then girlfriend’s name for his mom’s. Then “sky” for “water,” “bait” for “breath.”
Then the invention of words: “feefer” for remote control, “REFAMA LAG TAN ME!”—that kind of thing.
“And I, I just wanted to ask you”—she clears her throat—“do you want to come say goodbye? You don’t have to, and I’m scared to leave. But maybe Gia can drive you, or Luca? If
“you don’t want to involve them, I understand. If you don’t want to say goodbye
“I understand. You were with him in his last good days. You may not even feel like you need to. You were
“with him already.” But I want to, I do, to
say goodbye. “I want to,” say.
“So I will call Gia, to come give you a ride.” “Mom, no, don’t worry about calling her. I can call her. I will get there, don’t worry.”
“They said they’ll take him off support around three, and when they do that, he could
he could go instantly, or he could,” she hangs
“days.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And if you could look in his shop for some things, if
you, if you have time, maybe his favorite book.”
He has
two, though. Which one? He has
22. The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton and
23. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
24. And I will bring along “The Fish” by Bishop too.
“… we’re just sitting here,” she explains, “in the quiet, and the sound of the respirator is”
—”
I tell her I will grab the book and be there as soon as I can be.
“It was because of the
medication he was taking.” She keeps explaining. Like doctors are explaining it
all to her right now, as she relays it to me on the phone, in real time: before it’s processed (a shattering):
“It thinned out his blood. It was that
mixed with the alcohol that caused the
bleeding.” It thinned out his blood.
That, mixed with the alcohol, caused the bleeding, the
medication, for
diabetes, McFlurries hidden in the shop freezer, the secrets, the fact of
(“… not just the drinking … the lying, the deceit … inherited … !”)
whose fault? that led to
—”
25. Be honest about how you feel
26. With the people you love
27. Who love you
28. Who are worth it.
29. I am feeling love for Mom right now, and so much sadness.
30. I tell her so, her only father.
31. “I’m so sorry.”
32. She is feeling love for me too, and sadness
33. And helplessness and uncertainty and fear.
34. She tells me so.
35. Even the hard stuff.
36. That’s how it goes, my best friend.
—”
I go to the window—Pal’s house sits empty and dark—His garage door is up—
I spot a mirror-me in there—Faceup on the floor, and what aches in my right knee aches in his left—What’s in the front of my brain is in the back of his—He thinks less about Pal dying—But if I add some weight and age—60 years—I see, it’s Pal there—lying.
How’s my meter? How’s my—
rhymin’?—God, nauseated—from the dull orange—I stagger over—
to the sink—catch water in my hands—swivel it around—Keurig shoots black coffee straight onto the countertop—forgot to put the mug down—I crutch in—
to the bathroom—slide into the tub—burn my eyes with Mom’s face wash—decide I can stand without crutch, so then slide up, out the tub—along, to the gaping rim—
—oblong, oyster—
and fall in—
to the bowl—I forgot to put the seat down.
I’m losing it again.
The phone rings.
37. “Hey, Ave, it’s Luca. I know you’re probably getting ready now”
38. “I’m so sorry about this. I—”
39. “If you want to call me or just come on over when you get this”
40. “I’ve got the car. I’m good to drive you.”
—”
Pal’s neighbor Mrs. Shivens stands by the gutter—with her dog, Banjo—Banjo wears a black bandana—Mrs. Shivens’s husband passed away this March—story goes, Banjo barked as they interred the body—I wave at them and smile—
I’m a little paranoid I still seem drunk—“Going to be a hot one!” she calls over—I pretend I don’t hear—Hard to do passing conversation with a party on crutches—Takes too long to pass—so I stall.
“Going to be a hot one”—Two beats—“Pardon?”—again. “Oh, yes!” I agree finally—close enough.
When I crutch with long strides—I do it to the chorus of
“Chandelier”—hold it in my head while—
“iiiiiiiiii” marks one stretch—“want to
swiiiiiiiiing” marks two—
“from the chandliiiiiiiiier” marks three—“from
the chandeliiiiiiiiier,” four—
—”
41. A spare key is in the clay pot
42. On the front porch
43. Beneath a bed of soil with a leafless wooden stem.
44. You have to grab the stem to release the soil,
45. All compacted in a grainy, soggy block.
46. Then there’s the trick of the lock. Since the dead bolt jams.
47. Harder to do when it’s muggier out, when the wood frame expands.
49. Where he fell.
50. To my left hanging from a metal wire hook is
51. The one hanging planter she left behind.
(what happened is
she left, and
he fell, and
what happened is,
against the corner of the coatrack
my Pal
—”
fell)
“Be present. You have to hurry.”
52. Pal’s shop key hangs from a peg on the wall near the hanging dead fern—
53. I grab it.
73. He is on the respirator
75. —,” is precisely the sound it makes.
76. —,” —,” —,” —,” —,” —”; it’s constant.
77. When they turn it off, will it go silent?
78. The staff is kind. Two nurses do the work.
79. Mom stacks the books in her lap, in order of importance.
80. “This is the one,” she says, setting it on top.
81. And then removing it.
82. And then setting it on the bedside table.
54. The blueberry bush out back has a spanworm
55. Infestation, so no blueberries will grow this July.
56. Paint chipped above the doorknob
57. And the floodlights to his little shop on, like
58. I left them; too sad to leave dark.
59. I unlock and stumble, send the green ottoman
60. On wheels, sailing. Catch myself
61. Against his workbench, the jig molds
62. The shape of little bugs, bodies curved in-
63. To a point, but no sting.
83. Now is the time.
84. The sound of the respirator,
85. When they turn it off,
86. Does quit.
88. His eyes open
89. And mouth.
90. “Oh my—” Mom says.
91. Hands go to her face.
92. A nurse holds her shoulders.
93. “A reflex, a reflex,” she says. She is nodding, “That’s”
95. Mom keeps her head turned.
96. His eyes close again.
97. He settles back down now.
98. “Oh my—” Mom repeats.
64. Pinned to the corkboard, a paper sign I made:
65. Pal-Made Lures! They’re one of a kind!
66. Nearby, an article, “Local Organization Protests ‘Blind Eye’ to Global Warming.”
67. The sun is warming the water everywhere. It’s a problem.
68. There are warmwater fish and coolwater fish, and
69. The coolwater fish are getting confused, their water
70. No longer cool enough, and so they keep moving upward
71. Into the thermocline
72. And dying.
99. There are tubes and things
100. and one of those plastic bags that collects pee hanging off the side.
101. Alibaba brand, of course.
102. Mom slides a chair up next to it.
103. “Okay,” she says. She takes a deep breath.
104. Opens to page one.
105. “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
106. Mom closes the book.
107. She turns to me, red-eyed, and shakes her head.
108. “I’m going to need to take a minute, Avery. I have to—”
109. She gets up and crosses the room.
110. I don’t know if I should go after her.
111. I don’t want to leave him alone.
73. On the floor is an ashtray
74. Filled with plastic jigs he tossed, something wrong with them.
75. This batch brighter colored, for coolwater fish.
76. I stoop to pick it up and drop my crutch.
77. Nudge the cabinet door
78. Open, inside it,
79. A slender blue-neck bottle
80. He squirreled. He drank it.
81. Empty now.
82. Did he simply not want to beat it?
83. I’m oversimplifying, I know.
112. The bathroom door swings shut, down the hall.
113. I pick up the book.
114. “In our family, there was no clear line …”
115. I interrupt myself to swallow.
116. “In our family, there was no clear line …”
117. Pal’s ragged breath interrupts.
118. “In our family, there was no clear line …”
119. I pause again.
120. The breathing is really like his snoring, but
121. Strained, rubbed raw-sounding.
122. It sounds like it hurts.
123. Occasionally, speeds up,
124. Gets louder,
125. So loud it’s difficult to believe
127. I can look at him.
128. He once said, “Sometimes it feels like you been around my whole life, partner,”
129. “and sometimes it feels like you was just born yesterday.”
84. I take the books from the bookshelf.
85. I un-pin a copy of the poem.
86. It is stuck to a paper fishing guide
87. Pal wrote, actually. A little manual with a stapled spine.
88. It slides to the floor.
89. I scoop it up.
130. I can tell by the sounds of his breathing, though he is off the respirator,
131. Though his brain activity is zero, that he is my Pal.
132. There are still the things you don’t normally see in other people, unless
133. You’re like me right now,
134. Sitting across a gray room from them
135. While they’re dying,
136. Such as
137. The way the skin looks smoother, more aired out, against the face,
138. The way the hand sometimes flutters, as though discarding pocket lint,
139. The way the chest and throat and mouth
140. Work to give and give, everything
141. Saying, “I am giving up.” It doesn’t
142. Look effortless, by a stretch.
143. It looks brave.
144. Which I can qualify,
145. Saying he is brave.
146. Someone who raised me,
147. Who loved me.
from “The Angler’s Guide to Fishing with Heart” by Paul Avery “Pal” Fowell
THE BASICS:
CASTING
1. Hold hold the line with index finger to prevent line from flowing off the spool, with the bail open
2. Bring the rod will “load”
3. Stroke release the line midway through toss
4. Feather stop the line with index finger when it hits target,
then flip the bail over the spool
148. Two feet on the floor
149. Board.
150. Pal flicks the blinker up.
151. Old wooden fence posts
152. Turned gray.
153. We ride by.
154. I choose the pop song every time.
from “The Angler’s Guide to Fishing with Heart” by Paul Avery “Pal” Fowell
THE BASICS:
LANDING
1. Land the fish quickly, and keep the handling of the fish to a minimum.
2. Remove the hook from its mouth before taking it from the water, or use wet hands.
3. To remove the hook, use pliers or another hook with the barb pinched down.
4. If the fish swallows the hook, just cut the line. Fish possess strong digestive enzymes, which will dissolve the hook in time.
5. If you need to revive a fish, rock it gently back and forth in the water. It will swim away when ready.
6. When its gills begin to move again, you may then release it.
155. “When you were born, and I went down the hallway, to the room where you were,”
156. “with that big glass window, and all those babies are crying,”
157. “and there you were, and you were perfect.”
158. “And I just cried and cried, because from that point on”
160. “only just been born. And he’d hung the moon already.”