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Peacocks and Oblivion Powder
I Lost Cybelle’s Whisker
Afrique – l’heure bleue
Cat’s Paw
Is This the Beginning or the End?
Peacocks and Oblivion Powder
You are new here, Henry said. You smell like the powder my mother used to have in a sky blue box decorated with peacocks. He touched my face. I froze. Cold fingers stroked my cheekbones and brushed my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, I saw a tear clear as a perfect diamond slowly rolling down his cheek and falling onto his faded hunter-green nightgown.
I was loved once, he whispered when I put him into his bed and wished him good night.
Published in Anemone Sidecar 2006
I Lost Cybelle’s Whisker
Bye, bye NYC! Bye, bye soft paws and melancholic eyes, airless mattresses, turquoise rooms and China red dragons with fluttering nostrils, flying between closed windows. Bye, bye those so urgent mouths full of loud words filling rooms, cascading over glassy wide-open eyes soothed by Cuba Libres and potato vodka, delivering stanzas short and choppy – and so urgent. We got it all, and all this had to be said… No, shouted, and heard. We got it now because there is no time to waste.
When we had heard every word, registered every gaze from endlessly begging eyes, brown, green, blue, we said yes. No… we shouted yes, yes! We do love you, we love you even when it’s raining, maybe even more when it’s raining, and when our shoes are wet and sour and our faces are running off. We’ll love you forever.
Published in Anemone Sidecar 2006
Afrique – l’heure bleue
Brittle white bones, they are everywhere. Heaps of hipbones, leg bones, fingers pointing at the sky. You turn away in horror but you can’t escape, you find rows of skulls, broken like egg shells, smashed with machetes - without a human thought - by men with cold hands and eyes of hyenas.
All this you see under a monkey tree while the whole world is turning violet and soon blue – and after that – nothing.
Memories are erased, shaved off with sharp objects, medicated with powerful potions, shredded and thrown away. Only you can’t forget. Still, you wish you could sleep - if only one night - breathing calmly like a baby cheetah.
I’m holding your shivering body while you keep repeating you can’t make the movie. Can’t I see how impossible it is in this evil country? But then why are we here, I keep asking. You can see it all so clearly through your magic lens but you close your eyes every time a silent baby dies and a man without legs begs for food. Didn’t you know what kind of hellhole you would find here?
During the blue hour you drink whisky and cry. You say I don’t understand you because I’m disconnected and lost. You don’t believe me when I say the world will listen to you. We both know I’m lying.
Published in Hackwriters 2007
Cat’s Paw
Patrick and I were lying under a maple tree in an old German cemetery looking at the golden leaves falling down. I thought it would be the last warm day that fall, and I was right; the next day the storm came and tore off all the red and yellow leaves and left the trees naked for the coming winter.
I told Patrick I was always afraid of winter; it reminded me of death. I told him about the dead black kitten with a white spot on its chest, which I had found in the barn one cold winter morning when I was seven. Its cold, stiff body fell down from my hands and I ran away, crying.
Curious squirrels came close to us, standing on their hind legs looking at us with their dark, shiny eyes, their bushy tails moving slowly in the wind.
Patrick was like a homeless kitten, following me, having a sad look in his eyes and his trembling lower lip. I couldn’t leave him, but I didn’t know what to do with him; he was neither a child nor an adult. He rode his motor bike like a man, but his eyes got misty and sad when he told me about his father, who had moved to L.A. with his new girl friend and about his mother who had lost her mind.
Soft, hazy sun touched our faces when we were lying under the maple tree in an old German cemetery. The grass under us still smelled of summer, but the dying leaves on the ground had a strong bitter smell that was the final signal - the winter was coming.
I didn't know what to do with Patrick. I had told him I wasn’t his mother, I couldn’t even adopt him, and he was too young - or I was too old - for us to become lovers. But he continued to follow me like my own shadow, and his sad eyes and his trembling lip made it impossible for me to ask him to go away.
Patrick turned to me, laid his hand on my breast and let it rest there, light like a paw of a cat. I saw a sudden hasty smile on his face. I felt sleepy; I had no willpower to think about what to do with him. Golden leaves continued to fall down, covering our bodies when we were lying under the maple tree in an old German cemetery, the last warm day that fall.
Published in Hackwriters 2007
Is This the Beginning or the End?
June
It's noon. It's Friday. The clouds are not going away today; they are here to stay until tomorrow or next week. The wind is blowing from the south... No, actually the wind is blowing from the southwest, a heavy wind, like a wind before a storm. The pine trees on the island bend and bend again like servile maids. Waves hit the stones on the shore making a rhythmical sound like a huge waterbed of an indolent lover - a sleepy, monotonous sound that makes you distant and absent-minded. The sun is there somewhere hiding behind the clouds, but only for a few moments the light comes through and makes the silvery lake shimmer like the scales of a white fish.
September
The most crazy art-directors were working in the last three rooms at the end of the long, white corridor. The first door was open; this was the largest room with a white drawing table full of sketches. Also, the second door was open. The room was small, and on the wall was a black-and-white photo of a young, naked man holding a big fish - probably a pike - in front of him. The third door was closed; there was a yellow sheet of paper attached to it with brown tape with the words: GO TO HELL YOU FUCKING MACHO PIGS, AIR-HEADS, AND NOUVEAU RICHE MORONS.
November
She said: "I can stand almost everything but indifference."
He said: "You are so paranoid."
And they went on and on until she cried and he went to the bathroom to snort some coke and to call his mistress.
July
He came and asked me if I had been waiting for a long time. I said I had no idea because I had fallen asleep. His face was unshaven as usual, and his Adam's apple seemed to be bigger than ever. People used to say we were alike. I suppose they meant our eyes; we both have wide, wild, colorless eyes with small pupils. I told him that I liked his place, and he smiled and made a gesture toward the house and I understood that he wanted me to go inside. He said that the rain was coming soon. I thought so too. The sound of the waves had grown louder, and the wind in the bending pine trees made hissing sounds.
January
Can you imagine this? The new art director, who started two months ago, she made me totally crazy today. She kept the window open all day, and, as if that wasn't enough, she turned the fan on, too. For Christ's sake, the temperature outside was 10 degrees! I asked her why she did it, and she said she was suffocating because her best friend had died the day before and she was so upset that she was sweating and throwing up all day. OK, I said, I'm sorry. That's really sad, that's terrible. I mean, I really felt sorry for her because her friend was dead, but I tried to explain to her that we ALL would die of pneumonia if she didn't close the window.
December
He said: "Can't you stop crying? Please... You are crying in your soup."
She said: "It's my fucking soup and you are fucking the Japanese girl on the fifth floor. What do you think I am? A moron?"
January
The window was huge and heavy looking. It was not supposed to be open. The new art director kept it open and it looked like an enormous hole in the wall into the darkness outside. The fan was on, blowing away white sheets of paper through the hole. All the sheets fell down on the ground. Then the wind blew them away. It was time to leave.
August
I went back to the island, but I wished I had never done it. It wasn't the same island. He wasn't there, and the house was painted a color that reminded me of rotten turnips. Through the open door I saw people sitting at the table eating fat-dripping sausages and fried eggs - a man and a woman - wearing only their underwear. Their thighs were white and enormous; her breasts were lying on the edge of the table like two huge lumps of dough. Two fat children kicked each other under the table and repeated the same sentence over and over again, but the man and the woman didn't listen to them.
Published in Mad Hatters’ Review 2004
Updated:
March 11, 2008
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