On the Forest Trail (ROUND 4)
Let's workshop this poem (Matador Review 2016) that explores, through unsettling scenes in hidden locations, a morally-complex relationship between the narrator and a developmentally disabled girl
scent of the day: Molecule 01, by Escentric Molecules (a sterile and cold, even somewhat metallic, minimalist fragrance of velvety cedar; more of an scent-boosting aura than a scent in its own right)
On the Forest Trail 1 Even by our high school years she found core purpose lying among her hoarded Tootsie Rolls and glomming them down in those nooks hidden from the fat chance of a parental eye: under the piss-ringed and forever sheet-less mattress, its reek riled to belligerence as she would bounce her bull-necked self so high the wobbly fan blade would bash her flat round face; in the closet ripping out cat shit crusted in the shag, gobbling and gobbling it up while eyeing me (as if in threat) with those cross-eyes—far-set, up-slanted—beneath self-scissored bangs; in the galvanized drain pipe under the street near our bus stop through which would rage the winter-melt stream she loved to plunge her mega head in, glaring me down for my reaction; in the earthen-walled cellar whose workbench-mounted vice she had me tighten on elbow flaps, barely-opposable thumbs, until—straightening lordosis her only reaction—I would cave; under the vagrant-haunted overpass amid the discarded 40s that we would smash and stomp once she swigged their slosh, her tongue protruding more than usual as she gimped about neck-less in drooling concentration—all these times, images, savored (if savoring is, in fact, what it amounted to back then) but a moment, avalanched as they always were by more, more. 2 How good it was not having to think or speak inside her cat-piss scent bubble on the forest trail, her sour musk of mouse droppings warm on my side; she in her hypotonic element among the ahistorical, appearing each moment exactly how she is, honest as gulping goldfish, tied (knees stiff, block feet outturned) closer than a vaudeville drunk to the peg of the present— no expectation of Christmas ever flickering to life in those deep inset eyes below a Frida Kahlo stripe. Who, I ask, has never envied such a tight tether— that of the low and receding browed (“da da da” and “bah bah bah”) clouded in larval imbecility? How good it was not having to coax her—coax her odd ligamentous pliancy—into enjoying, into seeing the undeniable innocence of, me pistoning out— head to hilt, head to hilt, beyond head to hilt— that rotten gourd’s every horse-foamy hole: that shitty asshole and pissy pussy; that mouth replete with rows of rotten teeth, its cracked lips chocolate-crusted at the corners from pudding. No sound save that of one shaving-cream hand struggling to clap itself—that, yes, intermingled with giggly boar-grunts, the crinkling of leaves, the rustling of her rash-vector windbreaker. 3 Too large, secondhand, pink neon faded—to this day it haunts me, that windbreaker. Once a year I search “80s neon windbreakers.” I envision her in it, forever jockey tall, mouth slack in that facility where she is still likely to spaz out whenever it is peeled off for washing, for heat waves—where, by now, she might have died. It—the vivacious specter of it, reposing—is what leaves my wife and children, my co-workers, wondering where I am, where (finger snap) I have suddenly gone. It is what tells me how spineless and sick I was, how spineless and sick I still am, letting concern with how others perceive me come before love.
Much love to Matador Review! All these bullshit magazines say they want something that "punches them in the gut" and "does not hold back" and then--in the next damn breath--there is an extensive list of content that will get you banned, chief among them being scenarios where BIPOCs or trans people or animals get injured (a doxxable offense).
So much love for Matador Review for publishing an earlier draft of this poem. It was right before the safe-space ideology reached hysterical heights, but still . . . GOOD SHIT.