Daily Stories, Volume 2
Karen Ashburner
by Dicey Brown Media Productions
First edition chapbook originally published 2003
by Dicey Books, Staten Island, New York
GRADUALLY, UNEVENLY, AND WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY
Daily Stories, Volume 2
Names, characters, places, and incidents of these poems are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
DICEY BOOKS
Staten Island, New York
Copyright © 2003 by Karen Ashburner
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
ISBN Number 0-9723415-0-1
These works were written as a daily story project through “The Daily Dicey,” a project associated with Dicey Brown Magazine.
CONTENTS
WHAT YOU CAN
RIGHT THERE ON THE END OF THE TABLE
HE'D BUY HER A GODDAMNED HOTDOG,
A DOZEN IF SHE WANTED
THEY TALKED OF GOD AND PREDESTINATION
IN THE END SHE MARRIES HIM
UNEVELY, GRADUALLY, AND WITH DIFFICULTY
SHE COULD HEAR A RENDING OF WOOD AND A SPLASH OF GLASS ON THE FLOOR
A MINOR LIST OF IMPORTANCE
A PIECE OF SOMETHING BIGGER
HER BELLIGERENT SPIRIT WAS DIVERTED
TO HAPPIER INTERESTS
BUT, NO, THAT WOULDN'T DO
ONE SENTENCE
WRITTEN BY ONE PERSON AFTER TALKING TO ANOTHER ABOUT WRITING
SENTENCES COMPOSED AFTER READING THE ANONYMOUS POSTS OF OTHER WRITERS ON ANOTHER SITE FOUND AFTER GOOGLING 'THE NUMBER OF BONES
IN THE HAND'
LINES COMPOSED WHILE WAITING FOR A PHONE CALL
SOMETHING INSPIRED BY A SENTENCE FOUND IN A CHILD'S BOOK ABOUT AMERICA
SENTENCES FIRST WRITTEN IN A SLOPPY HANDWRITING WITH A PEN FOUND UNDER THE COUCH
UNFINISHED
BOOTS
November 6, 2003 1:40 pm EST
WHAT YOU CAN
You can start over. You can pack your things into the trunk of your car with no regard to what is breakable and what is not. You can stack your books on the floor of your kitchen and keep your forks in the top drawer of your antique dresser. You can flirt with twenty-year-old college boys on the street corner as you wait for the light to change. You can dart in front of oncoming traffic. You can give out your number at will; take calls from whomever you like, ignore the rest. You can laugh awkwardly, or not at all. You can walk away. You can choose to stay longer. There is no one waiting; there is no one to disappoint; there is only you. And sometimes this is a very good thing.
November 7, 2003 Late Morning
RIGHT THERE ON THE END OF THE TABLE
He can't call because his wife is home, or maybe his dog is sick. That dog is a fucking pain in the ass. What kind of dog is allergic to snow? What kind of dog has allergies? That was probably a lie. His dog does not have allergies. He can't call because he had to go to work. They're always calling him in for some "emergency." Last week it was some stupid old woman who fell down the stairs. Those maintenance women are always moping the outside stairs, and the minute they do the stairs freeze up and you know what happens and then the next thing you know he's called in to work because he has to file some kind of legal paper, some kind of grievance this little old lady has with the resort. She's going sue the shit out of the resort, that stupid old lady, because now she has a broken hip or something. But the worst part is he didn't call because of it. That's why that little old lady got a cherry bomb in her mailbox. She thinks falling down the stairs was bad, wait till she comes home and finds that cake baking in her oven. Wait till she comes home and finds a burning cigarette in the ashtray by her couch and the mission statement of the US Fish and Wildlife Service scrawled on her wall.
November 7, 2003 4:15 pm, exactly
HE'D BUY HER A GODDAMNED HOTDOG,
A DOZEN IF SHE WANTED
He thinks she is funny. He thinks her humor can be used to understand moral judgments. He likes to look at pictures of her eyes and her hands. At night he thinks about her fingers, how they would feel against his neck or the back of his knee. He sighs and moans to himself, contemplating the possibility and impossibility of his situation. When he is alone he reads Nietzsche to the dog. In the morning he recites to himself as he is shaving: "The bloody phantasmagoria of the sacrificial animal." His evaluations are made from the doctrine of schematics and Time. He sends her books she will never have time to read. He tucks handwritten notes in between the pages. "This one is important," he writes. His handwriting is clean and neat, his letters slant sharply on the page. He writes new translations and slightly revised versions of an earlier afterword. He believes correspondence can signify an approximation of her face and the tips of her fingers. He thinks comets are vagabonds from interstellar space. He delivers public lectures on the origin of the artist, and the ever-changing face of the moon. He does not believe in a reliable metaphysical base. To him, there is no new science, there is only she, catching snowflakes on the tip of her tongue. He listens for the giggle in her throat; he looks for the essence of art, and the sideways nature of "yes."
November 8, 2003 11:20 am EST
THEY TALKED OF GOD AND PREDESTINATION
He is a political ally. He wants to help the people, though he does not like them very much, and doesn't like them to sit next to him on the bus. For the poor he will establish a fishing co-op, supply the start-up costs by selling cardboard cut-out tableaus of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as Jesus Christ and Judas eating grapes at the last supper. He will sell them in the subway, walking train-to-train he will shout: “Judas! Five dollars for Judas!” In the summers he will move to Miami and become impossibly tan. He will wear black suits and white hats. His ties will wave in the breeze like a flag of surrender. Throngs of fans and admirers will greet him at the airport. He will make love to the evangelists with his favorite aphorisms. He will invite the people to act in haste and repent at their leisure. He will produce short propaganda films about the career opportunities available within punk rock and anarchy. He will revive the economy by posting overly optimistic quotes on billboards throughout the city. He will keep a running list of things he will abolish once he is elected: cold winters and hot summers, earthquakes, greed, envy, hate and hangnails. He will keep sin, immoral movies, freedom of speech and fear. “The people need fear,” he says. He does not know what to do about death. On question of death he defers to his opponents and waits for them to say the wrong thing. He knows about the daughters who have whispered hateful things into the ears of their dying fathers. He knows they would rather talk of famous actors, he knows they would rather think about film noir than old friends coming to dinner.
November 8, 2003 3:22 pm EST
IN THE END SHE MARRIES HIM
She has no vacuum, so the carpet stays dirty. She has run out of Coke, so now she drinks the Budweiser her boyfriend left in the refrigerator three weeks ago. She has eaten the sandwich meat and the bread and the cinnamon rolls and the cookie dough. There is only canned food left in the cabinets, and she owns no opener. The grocery store is too far away. She has driven around but can find nothing in her neighborhood but empty houses, their curtains drawn tight. She has tried but cannot find the mall or a convenience store. When the food runs out, she will not eat. She has heard a person can survive on air and ice for days at a time. When her car runs out of gas she will walk. When she is tired of walking she will lie down in the road. If she is run over, she is hoping to go to heaven. But in this regard she is not so certain and frequently lies in her bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering about God and the devil, as the people below her window come and go, and the bell in the church across the street chimes hour after hour.
November 9, 8:09 pm EST
UNEVELY, GRADUALLY, AND WITH DIFFICULTY
It is not about his job or his boss or his secretary or the pens on his desk. It is not about the article in the paper or the weather report or the static on the radio as he tunes the dial. It is not about being caught or doing wrong or wishing and acting. It is about the last breath you took in, and the next you will take. It is the pages you turn as you read, the paper sliding between your fingers. It is about the dirty parts of the book you skip to when you are bored and lonely. It is about the lilac bush he planted outside his window last spring and the snow piling up outside his door. It is about the people, clambering below your window for a seat on the train. It is the clack of the wheels on the track and the tick of his watch. It is the package in the mailbox, how it feels in your hands. It is the label on the outside; it is the handwriting. It is the pencil in his hands, the wood against his palm. It is not about what is fair or unfair. It is the waiting; it is the relief. It is how you turn onto your stomach, how he props himself up on his elbows to watch. It is his cheek against yours and his hand in your hair. It is the whisper in your ear. It is the shoes in your closet, his shirt in your laundry and the jingle of his keys. It is the knock on the door, and the song on the radio. It is about your waist and the bones of your hips; it is how your hands move when you are waving goodbye.
November 10, 2003 10:00 am EST
SHE COULD HEAR A RENDING OF WOOD AND A SPLASH OF GLASS ON THE FLOOR
After ten years of marriage she became obsessed with kissing. She would spend countless hours daydreaming about the people she would kiss if she could: friends, neighbors, her boss, the mailman; the boy at the Super Kmart who stocked the electronics department. She didn't care who it was; she only wanted to feel what it was like as she had forgotten. She wanted to feel a tongue scraping the edge of her teeth; she wanted the tip of a finger tracing her bottom lip. At first it had seemed like a good enough punishment: if he didn't mow the lawn he didn't get kissed, if he forgot to replace the light bulb in the kitchen he didn't get kissed. But after a while it started being a punishment to her as well. By then she didn't know how to get it back, it was too late, and he had started kissing someone else. To punish him further she started making fun of the way he talked. She started stealing his words and writing them down on sheets of paper that she left on the kitchen table. She stole his “apprehension” and used it to write a letter to Santa Claus. She stole his “utmost serious” and his “explosive” to write a letter of complaint to Sears. For the most part he ignored her, which only stiffened her resolve. She began carrying around a journal, following him everywhere, waiting for him to say something like “ idioms” or “differentness.” “If you don't quit,” he finally said one day, “I'm going to say only the most mundane things to you.” After that she stopped and began using her journal to write poetry about angels. She could daydream about kissing all day long, but she would still need someone to talk to later, when supper was on the table.
November 10, 2003 10:59 pm EST
A MINOR LIST OF IMPORTANCE,
i.e., a short list of things you should know if you are a clueless southern person from Alabama and decide to move to New York because of some stupid idea your major professor put in your head when you were in graduate school
1) New Yorkers are unfamiliar with the term “Yammering,” as in, “My students were yammering all through my class today, how do I make them stop?” If you ask this question in the education class you take at night, be prepared to be ignored, be prepared also to have your professor and classmates stare at you blankly. Also, be prepared to stay after class and explain to your new, New York friends that “Yammering” means “talking,” and is not, in fact, a euphemism for jacking off.
2) If you are on the Staten Island Ferry and are going to take pictures of things that other, less “arty” people would normally not take pictures of, say a trash can, a mop, or a row of square boards covered with glass, be prepared to explain to the ferry “security guard” that you are not taking a picture of the door that leads to the wheelhouse, and that you are not a threat to “national security.” Also, be prepared to scroll through your digital pictures and prove to said security guard that you were just taking “arty” pictures. Also, be prepared for him to blankly stare at you while you are speaking.
3) It is not necessary to ask if someone is sitting in an empty seat on the bus or the subway or the ferry. If it is empty, no one is sitting there. Also, be prepared for people to sit on you if you don't move over fast enough for them to sit in the empty seat next to you on the subway or the bus or the ferry and be prepared for people to sit very, very close to you. The two-foot rule of personal space that you were accustomed to having in Alabama does not exist here. Also, it is not possible to keep people from sitting next to you by placing something innocuous in the seat next to you like your book bag or a Coke can, they will sit on hat also.
4) It is not necessary to apologize every time you bump into someone on the street. Also, don't expect anyone to apologize when they bump into you on the street, or say, roll over your foot with their goddamned, heavy-ass suitcase.
5) It is not necessary to carry on a conversation with the man who sells you a Pepsi at the convenience store by your apartment. He just wants to sell you a fountain drink; he doesn't care about your life. His feelings will not be hurt if you don't ask, “How's it going?” Also, for some reason you will be asked if you want ice in your fountain drink. You may have thought all your life that this was a given. Apparently it is not. Also, there is no ice for the fountain drinks in the morning so you will have to get used to the following choices: warm Pepsi or hot coffee. If you do not like coffee, or grew up in a town where the average yearly mean temperature is ninety-five degrees and hot coffee in the morning seems gross, and warm Pepsi, only slightly grosser, this will be a hard choice to make. Also, you will be offered a straw for every single drink you buy and every single drink you buy will be put in a brown paper sack, the kind of sack they used to put your forty of Colt 45 in when you lived in Mississippi. This must be some New York law you have not quite figured out yet, that a drink, even if non-alcoholic, must leave a store in a bag, and you will soon develop a collection of straws and brown paper sacks in your book bag as a result because you hate the sound a straw makes when it scrapes against the opening of a metal can, and drinking a Coke from a paper sack makes you feel like a wino.
November 13, 2003 11:18 am EST
A PIECE OF SOMETHING BIGGER
He is mad. When it happened, he was there; he was four blocks down and he saw the people fall to the ground. He saw everything. And now he's mad, only he doesn't look it, or show it. His pants are neatly ironed, his shirt is buttoned straight; he gets out of bed every morning and makes himself a cup of coffee and smears cream cheese around a blueberry bagel. Some days it feels like he's swallowed an orange whole, and he can feel everything sitting in his stomach: the pulp, the seeds, and the skin. After it happened he lost his job, his promotion, and his office with the big window. He was just four blocks down. Now he is going to be a teacher. He will teach math; he will teach the city's troubled youth how to solve for x. He will graph the probabilities on his calculator. He will ignore the questions. When he is nervous he will stare at the ground and straighten his glasses. He will be precise. He will think about the eons of futile combination and recombination. He will think about the spark of life, struck off from the infinity of inanimate matter.
November 16, 2003 6:40 pm EST
HER BELLIGERENT SPIRIT WAS DIVERTED TO HAPPIER INTERESTS
She wondered how many times she could say fuck in a day a get away with it. She wondered if she were pretty enough to say, “Fuck you very much” to the bus driver and describe the weather to her students as, “Fucking cold.” She wondered if she could call her mother on the phone and complain about her “fuckless” marriage and her “fucksome” friends. She wondered if she could tell the preacher at her church to, “Shut the fuck up” without hurting God's feelings. She wondered if she could put on some “fuck me” high heels and get picked up by a steel worker who liked to fuck. She wondered if she could convince her friends that “samurai sword” was a polite way of saying, “Fuck off.” She wondered if she could get in her car and start driving, leaving behind only a note that read, “Fuck you.” But at the end of the day, not one fuck had left her mouth; she had written not one fuck, and she had convinced no one of her resolve by dropping her belongings in the middle of the street and saying, “Fuck it, I fucking quit.” Instead she simply went about her nightly routine, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, and thinking about the grocery list.
November 16, 2003 5:30 pm EST
BUT, NO, THAT WOULDN'T DO
She didn't like him; in fact she hated him. And not the way she hated spinach or green bean casserole. She hated the way he talked, the way his tongue hit the roof of his mouth when he said “bullshit,” the way he often walked on his toes instead of his heels. She hated the way he breathed, and the heavy weight of the air as it passed through his lungs. She wanted to run him over with the car, see his body flattened on the pavement. She wanted to tie his legs to his arms and drop him from a bridge. But she did none of this. She had memories of a fine childhood. No one had ever beaten her down; no one had ever called her names. She had a good education from a university with a noteworthy reputation. She wanted to stab him in the heart with a butter knife, but she did not. She was a nice girl, from a nice family. So she slept with him instead.
November 18, 2003 12:05 pm EST
ONE SENTENCE
She spent the whole day sitting on a hastily constructed wooden bench, kicking at the pigeons and listening to a homeless woman talk to herself about geometrical symmetries.
November 18, 2003 10:13 pm EST
WRITTEN BY ONE PERSON AFTER TALKING TO ANOTHER ABOUT WRITING
She leaned from her window, the one that faced New Jersey, and smoked as if she were still a teenager. Then she called him and they talked about going to the movies. “You will have to hold my hand,” she said, “I'm afraid of the dark.” He said he would hold her hand from beginning to end, and this made her smile. Then a young boy in a red jacket ran by and knocked over an empty trashcan, which then slowly rolled down the street.
November 19, 2003 12:31 pm EST
SENTENCES COMPOSED AFTER READING THE ANONYMOUS POSTS OF OTHER WRITERS ON ANOTHER SITE FOUND AFTER GOOGLING 'THE NUMBER OF BONES IN THE HAND'
Then it was his turn to smile. She rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes drifting toward the river. She told him how she hated to be left out where love was concerned. He agreed, saying she was too fragile to be left alone for too long. In the past she had collected things to keep her mind occupied, at one time stamps, then golf clubs and then baseball cards. Now she collected facts: things that mattered to no one but her. She knows that if a woman's stocking is magnified a few billion times, an endless array of molecular structures will emerge. She knows that the answer to any question can be found in the bones of a hand, she knows not to ask the squirrels in the park about the bones in her own hand. She knows that words can remain the same, and then change, and then sometimes break. She knows that language is like a moving picture in her mind, swinging back and forth, like a golf club or a baseball bat clutched tightly in the palm of her hand.
November 21, 2003 9:28 am EST
LINES COMPOSED WHILE WAITING FOR A PHONE CALL
He scorns reformation of any kind. He does not claim to be concerned with rehabilitation, or the self-regulatory mechanisms of the inmate. He has no constructive plan for improving the human condition. He is serious about destroying the bourgeoisie. He is an attitude toward life, and diametrically opposed: he is a chocolate grinder, a rope dancer, and a blind swimmer. He paints doorways with sayings that are meaningless to everyone but himself: there remains a degree of irrelevance; nothing escapes the sun; the window frame is large. His animation results from his opposition. At home his mother begs the Madonna for help, his wife is in despair, his children perplexed. He has become a dominant theme on the whole. His human figure has been dissected by the implementation of government redistribution. When it is time to eat he will become downwardly mobile; he will arrive at the table lacking marketable skills or knowledge of urban ways. He will become a neo-Marxist sociologist, and blame physical suffering and crowded housing on the invention of the automobile. He will kiss with his mouth open; he will walk down the street with no destination in mind. He will do everything slowly, and with considerable passion in mind.
November 21, 2003 2:48 pm EST
SOMETHING INSPIRED BY A SENTENCE FOUND IN A CHILD'S BOOK ABOUT AMERICA
He lived far away from her, but he called her on the phone every day and told her how much he missed her, how he longed to run his fingers through her hair. She listened, and sometimes said, “Yes, that would be nice.” Mostly she would thumb through her books as he talked, thinking about the words on the page and what they all meant, if anything at all. Sometimes she would consider them singularly, as if she could pick them up and look at them, each one at a time. She thought about steam, and railroads, and cotton pickers, and all the clearing and planting and picking that had to be done. When she became too distant, and the silence on the line began to envelop them both, he would ask, “Are you still there?” And she would say, “Yes, of course.” Sometimes he would ask, “Where were you?” and she would reply, “It was a wonderful thing when Robert Fulton invented the steamboat.” And then he new to call back later, that he would never get her attention back again, no matter how hard he tried.
November 21, 2003 9:53 am EST
SENTENCES FIRST WRITTEN IN A SLOPPY HANDWRITING WITH A PEN FOUND UNDER THE COUCH
She has developed an addiction to cherry-flavored Chap Stick. Yesterday she bought a blue hat from a vendor on the street. She is considering home delivery of Vicodin. She is dating two boys at once; one a rock musician from Afghanistan, one a trader on Wall Street. She met both of them on the subway. She caught both of them staring at her eyes. She keeps both of them waiting; she never calls either of them. She sleeps with only one of them; she loves neither of them. The next time her father calls she will preach to him about Heaven's mercy. Tomorrow she will fashion herself a scarlet letter made from roses. She will pull books from the library shelves and hide them in the corner of the bathroom. She will sit in a public telephone booth and meditate to Pierre Delattre. She will find another boyfriend as she is daydreaming in front of the surrealist section of Art and Architecture. She will needlepoint his initials into her underwear. He will never call her. She will love him like no other.
November 28, 2003 9:54 am EST
UNFINISHED
He had girlfriends now, plural girlfriends, more than one: Traci, Donna, Claire, Becca, Cat. "They are just girls who are friends," he said, "not girlfriends." He wanted her to know there was a difference. She had a friend who was a "boy" but not a "boyfriend." She knew there was a little bit of difference, but not much. And she just had the one. Sometimes the two of them would sit around and drink Crown Royal mixed with Dr. Pepper. They played Trivial Pursuit, they talked about the stupid things they had done as children, the stupid things that had been done to them. The boy who was her friend but not her boyfriend knew to stop her after two drinks; any more and she would get angry, any less and she wouldn't let him spend the night. The boy who had been her boyfriend, but never her friend, had never tried to stop her. He did not know the difference.