The Prior Names Department

Here come the footsteps from down the hall. Short clomp, long clomp, short clomp, long clomp, short. Footsteps in iambic pentameter. Footsteps with insidious intent.

Inside the office she sits at the desk. It’s 11am. The window washer is outside her window as he always is at 11am. They’re on the 33rd floor, the city from this perspective a tiny version of a city, like a dollhouse or a model train set. It’s sweet, from this perspective. She pretends they’re in a tree house, operating in a world where they make the rules.

The office is a corner office. They no longer live in a world where corner offices matter. She’s in here because it’s the only office that didn’t burn in the last fire and because no one noticed when she took over this space. She’s very creative with her threats, so no one has been too interested in sharing the space with her.

She translates people’s names into numbers. For ease of organization, of course. The New Regime is all about organization and structure and categorizing people by number is so much more efficient than letters. All those crazy names out there—letters hiding behind other letters, sitting silently without pronunciation and still expecting to be included in the spelling. It’s messy. Filing systems get knocked out of sync by a simple missed letter. And the humans. The way they bitch when they see a misspelling: “I can’t log in,” “I can’t get access,” “I can’t communicate.” They seem to feel it’s their right to be seen. It’s madness, really, and quite frankly, it is not The New Regime’s responsibility to coddle its citizens.

The document open on her laptop is a marriage license. The names were changed to numbers one week after The New Regime took power. She wasn’t in this department then. It took her a minute to maneuver herself to this position. The New Regime dissolved her marriage, expropriated their home, and revised her entire history to a column of numbers. She wasn’t expecting that, not that quickly. Now she’s:

10-15-3-5-12-25-14

0 dependents

Housed in Square 42, Lot 365

Square 42, Lot 365 has a bed, a toilet, a hot pot, and a small refrigerator. Her home had a wrap-around porch, windows that pulled in sunlight even on overcast days, a kitchen so comfortable it felt like a warm blanket, and him.

Here come the footsteps from down the hall. Short, long clomp, short, long clomp, short. Iambic pentameter getting closer. Closer.

Outside the window, he pulls the squeegee across a row of dripping water and then there is a row of clarity through which she can see the dim diluted sun in the distance, the gray moody clouds trying to cover it up, the tips of the other buildings on the other side of the city, the tips of the buildings right next to hers, the scaffolding he’s standing on, his graceful hands, his eyes. If these windows weren’t rendered black by the surveillance spotlight that swings back and forth across the sky, he’d be able to see in. He’d be able to see her. He’d be able to look into her eyes.

On the mirror in their bathroom in their warm home on hectic weekday mornings, when he was in the shower, when the bathroom filled up with steam and transformed all the silver surfaces to message boards, she would write with her finger, carving mirror letters into a square of grey on the medicine cabinet:

I love you

I love you

I love you

When she stepped out of the shower into a bathroom filled with steam, on the mirror she would see:

I love you back

x infinity

Over time she shorthanded: x 3

And he shorthanded: x infinity

Footsteps. Iambic pentameter. Closer. Closer. Closer.

The marriage license on the laptop screen is a mess. When The New Regime translated names to numbers, in those first weeks, they used an algorithm that, she knows now, was completely fucked. On her marriage license, her name, translated to numbers, is misspelled. They translated her name and his name into numbers and they fucked it up and this—out of everything—was the detail that flipped her from stunned and scared to methodical and vengeful.

She positions the cursor on the line, clicks the mouse, slowly taps the backspace key, and easily, beautifully, lovingly, the numbers where her name is supposed to be, the numbers where his name is supposed to be, disappear. Into the new blank spaces she types:

JOCELYN

ZANE

In caps. Because in this new world of The New Regime, caps equal fuck you.

The footsteps have stopped outside the office door. The doorknob—old, classic, the kind you find in mansions that were built when they thought about details like putting a lion’s head on a doorknob—turns and creaks. Someone pushes on it. Turn. Creak. Push. An exasperated, “Shit,” slips under the crack between the door and the floor.

She saves the changes to the marriage license. When the pop-up box asks her if she’d like to enter the changes into the permanent archive, she clicks yes. Immediately the alarm sounds. The computers are programmed to sound an alarm that implies they are rejecting the letters. But they don’t, actually. That would cost too much money and The New Regime, at this point, prefers to rely on fear and intimidation. This revision will be stored in the permanent archive, with her name and his, spelled out, correctly. If they want to delete it, they’ll have to dig it out with a melon baller. The alarm is a low moo, like a cow giving up.

A hard slam on the other side of the door. It shakes the doorframe. They’ll be inside soon.

She walks over to the window. He’s still there. Thank god. She likes to imagine he can feel her even if he can’t see her. She imagines he waits for her out there. She breathes on the window. With her index finger, she carves into the grey steam. Another breath. More carving.

The door flings open. Another breath. Insidious iambic pentameter footsteps clomping across the hard wood floor behind her. More carving. She’s writing backwards to he can read her, writing fast. There’s a voice in her ear. Bloviating words that garble together, that she assumes are a litany of her offenses. They slip the cuffs around her wrists. As they pull her out of the office, she looks only at the window:

x 3

x 3

x 3

She watches it fade while they drag her past the threshold. His face is the last thing she sees before they put the bag over her head.

Outside, on the scaffolding, he drops his squeegee. The message was only there for a second, then it disappeared. But he saw it. He knows he did. He leans into the window he just cleaned and breathes. Into the new grey bubble he carves:

x infinity

x infinity

x infinity

© 2018 Tangled Web Collective

Something To Believe In

Performed at The Kates, February 2018

I’m looking for something to believe in. I go to New York. Southwest has airfare at $146, round trip, non-stop and I believe in airfare at $146 round trip, non-stop.

I’m in New York. It’s sloppy and busy and a cacophony of sounds, a symphony of languages. I do what I always do when I’m here. I walk.

Today I’m walking with the intention of finding something to believe in. I took a yoga class once. It was stretchy and relaxing and then not so relaxing and then empowering and then humbling and I learned two things: one, the nap at the end of class is amazing; and two, if you set an intention you can bend your leg over your head.

Sixth Avenue. I like to walk all the way up Sixth Avenue or down Sixth Avenue, depending on where I’m starting from. Today the languages swirling around in the air are silky and incisive, droplets of passion laced throughout conversations that look, gesturally, like a long to-do list that must be followed in a precise order.

It smells like rain on thrown-out hamburgers. The traffic sloshes. I walk into a bodega because they have lemonade there and I believe in lemonade.

The guy at the counter has deep lines around his eyes, which look like stress lines, until he smiles, at which point, those lines become the gorgeous ornate setting for the bright lights of his eyes. He treats me like I belong in New York. I believe in belonging.

I walk by a church because those things are supposed to be filled with things to believe in. But the gates are locked. And the door looks uninviting anyway and there’s a small park outside the church, but it’s closed and it’s a park, that’s closed, and that seems weird to me, to close a park, it seems to subvert the point of a park, but that yard isn’t my property and I don’t recall anyone asking for my input on the subject.

Crossing intersections is kinda like a game of Leap Frog, which I recently played because did you know there’s an arcade in the suburbs that has Leap Frog and Galaga and Pac Man and Space Invaders and Centipede--there is--it’s awesome, go immediately. As everyone knows, the trick behind Leap Frog is, you gotta go your own pace. You can’t just willy nilly jump on any old log. You gotta grab YOUR log. Same deal crossing Sixth Avenue and Houston—you know you’re not gonna wait there on the corner, but you really must know your limits and power particularly regarding lead time in relation to that oncoming moving truck with the driver who is eating a sandwich and about to rip it through the light.

I make it across the intersection. Now. Where was I. Looking for something to believe in. I head east because that’s where the sun rises and I believe in the sun rising.

In Soho there’s a Moleskin store. Inside the Moleskin store there is Heaven. Fine-tipped pens in bright blue, Heaven. Precisely lined paper in sturdily bound journals, Heaven. Tote bags that can take a beating. Backpacks that can fight monster robots in space. I believe in backpacks that can fight monster robots in space, so I go in.

Behind the register is a woman with graceful fingers and a sparkling laugh. She is a believer in precisely lined paper in sturdily bound journals and I’m about to ask about the backpacks fighting monster robots in space, but I don’t want to overplay my hand here. I have found a human and a place that I believe in and this park is not locked and closed but still…Right. This is a place of business and this human is working. I buy a pen refill because I believe in pen refills and I resume my trek.

I decide to take the subway uptown. This is because I like saying the word “uptown.” Also, I have a MetroCard from the last time I was here, and I thought it expired but it didn’t and using what was heretofore considered an unusable transit card is something I believe in.

I subway aim for the Natural History Museum because I believe in learning and also the park is up there and I believe in parks. We roll.

Every now and then I’ll suddenly drop into a daydream where I’m walking through a garden labyrinth that was clearly conceived by Guillermo del Toro and I’ll slip into an alternate timeline where raspberries have gigantic doll eyes and dogs invite you to a table for tea. In this timeline, I wear a top hat and gloves and I have perfect posture. I also have the ability to turn invisible on a whim so I have been privy to some pretty interesting conversations let me tell you, but I’m sworn to secrecy about the conversations in my daydream-Guillermo del Toro-labyrinth and also, the subway has come to a halt.

I’m sitting between two women. The woman on my right has beautiful braids and a Bible in one hand. The woman on my left has a cart filled with what look like cabbages or some other green vegetable I don’t know I’ve been subsisting on crackers and biting my nails since the election. The three us look up at the subway map in what looks like a highly coordinated move.

I’m aiming for the mid-70s and given the halting and the sorry-for-your-inconvenience messages, I suspect I’m either going to have to overshoot my aim or undershoot it but I try to put together the puzzle of public transportation because I believe in puzzles.

I’m still looking at the map when I say, “Are you gonna transfer at 59th?”

The woman on my right still looks at the map and says, “I believe so.” The woman on my left still looks at the map and says, “I believe so, too.”

I lean back just slightly and I feel the space open up behind me. I settle in. The women on either side of me make room and fit comfortably around me, which sounds weird now that I’m saying it out loud but it’s a specific public transportation thing you either stuff yourself into a space or you fit nicely into it but there’s usually some sort of group dynamic happening that swings those moments one way or another and usually it pisses me off and don’t you worry, I have a polished litany prepared that showcases years of writing experience intertwined with foggy metaphors and self-righteous fury that perfectly encapsulates my rage regarding group dynamics on public transportation. Now, however, I fit.

We get off the subway separately. We nod at each other as we do. I follow the signs, hop up the stairs, shoot through the exit at the top and out into what now looks like sunshine though maybe not, although it somehow feels sunnier than it was.

I run/jog along the park because I believe in feeling the feels and I believe in paying attention when it becomes sunnier than it has been.

© 2018 Tangled Web Collective

Road Like Ribbon

Originally published in Word Riot

Chandra is yelling next to me, in the passenger seat, like she always does when she’s tripping balls and seeing aliens—Oh my god! This is sooo awesome!—and I gun it because it’s only a matter of time before Tim realizes where I hid his car keys and once he does he’s gonna chase us down like he’s the starving dog and we’re the meat. I’m so high I’m working on automatic pilot and thank god I’ve been driving this shitty Buick for a decade, it practically drives itself. All I can see is the yellow line down the middle of the road but the rest of it—the white line striping the edge of the black top, the trees on either side—are all fuzzy and blending together. I know they’re there because I’ve driven down this road a million times and I wish to fucking god Chandra would shut the fuck up—Oh. My. God. This is like, so awesome!—but if I stop to kick her out, she’ll talk, and there’s the drugs. And, in the trunk, the guns.

On the radio, Queen, Brian May’s guitar loves me, the trees on either side of me—of us—us: me, Chandra, the drugs, the guns, the anger, the hurt—the trees rising up like zombies, following us like shadows and I can’t remember ever being sober.

Except. Except. I was. I think. At Tim’s. Earlier. That rat hole shit shack three-room house in the woods, cracked porch, never-used fire pit, us—us: me, Tim, Joe—three dudes shooting beer cans off the half-built brick wall in the backyard, the way we always did after partying all night, after the drugs wore off. Joe, stupid, trusting, green eyes sparkly like they got when he was happy—idiot—turned to look at us, “Buds,” he said. And suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, but in reality from the cooler behind us, three beers. Budweiser. Cans. We popped the tops. Guzzled. Empty. Then we had more targets to shoot at.

Tim, grouchy. Scrunched face, like always, like he was squinting into the sun, or second guessing you. Worn out leather skin. Levi’s hung loose at his hips. Gun clenched firmly in his right hand. White knuckled. “Put ‘er up,” Tim said and Joe dropped his piece, grabbed the empty Budweisers, shuffled over to the ledge and placed the cans carefully, like he was setting them up for a fucking Christmas card photo, and pow. Collapse. Pile of bones on the ground. Limp and lifeless. Joe?

Tim stood there staring. In my stomach: acid, bile, beer, guilt. Finally it was done, this thing I was expecting but not owning up to. I wish I told Joe to cool it out. I wish I told him to stop last year when he fucked up Tim’s drug deal, six months ago when he fucked Chandra and told her to leave Tim even though she never would, last week when he stole the guns to trade for that shit car. I wish he understood how good we had it.

Except. Except. Joe told Tim to forget it. It was just some drugs, a girl, some guns. To Tim it was trust, honesty, loyalty. To Tim, it was betrayal.

           You shoulda warned him, Tim said.

            Yeah.

            But you didn’t.

            No.

            Kinda makes you an accessory, wouldn’t you say?

Of course it did, but I didn’t say that to Tim. Tim—who had a suffocating grip on us, always the boss, since we were little. The one who killed the cat when all we wanted to do was dunk it in the barrel; Tim, who latched on to any girl who came his way when all we wanted was to fuck and get out; Tim, who cornered the market on drugs and then guns in this shit hole shit town when all we wanted was to get high and shoot at birds. And miss. ‘Cuz mostly we just wanted to get high.

Except. Except. Tim—whose mom left him, whose dad ignored him, who needed us, his makeshift family, like we needed him. Us: me, Joe, Tim—brothers, desperate, needy, trying too hard, getting nowhere. And Tim—who gave me a place to stay when no one else would. Who cleaned up the vomit when I threw up all over myself. Who rescued Joe from drowning that summer we were fourteen and had just discovered smack and how good it felt to get high and skinny dip. Tim, the leader, the decision maker, the manipulator. The one who bought the food ‘cuz he had the money and now, one less mouth to feed.

So. In the house: Chandra and that stupid friend of hers putting that shit nail polish on their toes, they liked to do that, drop acid then try and put bright colors on tiny toe nails. Girls. Weird. Their laughter floated out the windows like wind chimes and Tim silent next to me, Joe in a heap on the ground, me useless and ineffectual, like always.

Except. Except. Anger, sloshed around in my groin. Sizzled. Bubbled. Carbonated. Fuzzed up through my stomach, into my throat. How could you, how could you, I wanted to scream, but I held it in, tears, hot, almost escaped, but I stopped them, I killed them in their tracks.

           We are a family, I said to Tim.

            Were.

           Were. The word slipped under my skin, plowed through me. I heard my insides shattering. Were. That family was all I had.

Tim sighed and looked out into the woods. I watched the cords in his neck, thick and tight, as he turned his head away from me. Tim was lean and tense. The woods smelled like burning leaves. With the butt of my gun I aimed at his temple. As he turned to look at me, smash. That tender temple space right between the eye and the hairline, crushed, direct hit. He wobbled, about to trip over his own feet. I slipped my foot around the back of his ankle. Stumbled, down. On his back. His eyes: one closed, one squinted up at me. Face: not surprised. I kicked. Work boots. Heavy artillery. I kicked until his legs stopped moving, until he stopped yelling, until I was sure he was passed out. Then: two piles of bones on the ground.

Except. Except. One of them would get up. Quick inventory. Tim’s prized possessions: three shotguns and two .22s, four bricks of weed, three ounces of beautifully pure smack, a sheet of mild acid, Chandra. I grabbed it all, took from him like he took from me. Chandra—plucked off the couch, her dippy friend left there, giggling. Chandra cooed, oblivious—Look at my pretty toes!—toes wiggled in flip flops. It was fall for fuck’s sake, too cold for flip flops. Shoved it all, everything, the guns, the drugs, Chandra, into the Buick. Hauled ass outta there.

The yellow line on the road is spilling out in front of us like a ribbon unspooled. I place two tabs of acid on my tongue. Dissolve. This family has been cracking for months—tiny hairline fissures slithering slowly through us; and me, with no way to stop it, no way to spackle it back up, wishing I was that Dutch boy who stopped the dam with his finger, but here, with us, too many holes, not enough fingers. I should’ve done something sooner.

I don’t know where to go, really. Chandra, quiet now. Something’s wrong. She knows. Guitars marching out of the radio, I can see the music, like silly string, floating toward me, leaving trails each time we hit a bump in the road. I think I can sell the drugs or eat them, sell the guns. Can’t figure out what to do with Chandra. But I’m doing something. Finally, I’m making a decision. King me. Home base. Home free.

This curve in the road, this fucker. Suicide Curve, aptly named. Yellow line too far to my left, white line in my middle vision, like it’s the middle of the road now. This is not right, and then, no more pavement—field, woods, tree, pow. Smash. Metal crushing. Chandra exhales like a balloon deflating. Sudden silence. Wet ground seeping into my back. My back seeping into the wet ground. Legs can’t move, numb. Stars flickering over my head, bright, hovering together, close. Like they care about each other. Like family.

©Tangled Web Collective

I Want to Rock Your Gypsy Soul

I want your fingertips. Your nouns and your verbs. Your twitching eyelid when you're tired. I want your laugh, your righteous anger when someone's been done wrong, the snort that follows your suppressed giggle. I want your eyes when they see a lie, your mouth when it refuses to mention it. I want your profile when we're driving in the car and you're concentrating on the road ahead. I want your secrets and your fears, your 3am worries, your happy breakfasts. I want the crease between your eyebrows, your wrinkled knuckles, your opinions you hold passionately despite my best efforts to change them. I want your smile when you see me in that red dress. I want you, in that perfectly tailored suit. I want your insecurities, your dreams, your best laid plans that blow up in your face. I want you to take this corner of my heart and make a home in it.

©Tangled Web Collective

ain't it funny what you'll do

I wait until the rest of the family walks away from your grave before I pick up the photo. You, sitting on a tree stump, staring at the camera. The look. Quizzical, a swirling prankster galaxy in your irises. I told you when I took this picture if you ever left me I’d hunt you down. And now here we are.

I stretch the opposite corners of the photo so now it’s wider than me and taller. Your face stretches like bubble gum. I step over the photo border, into your face. Once I’m inside the picture, everything opens up—fields of green and blue, yellow polka dotted sky, the ever-present aroma of lilies. Which is unfortunate. Everyone knows lilies smell like death.

When I look behind me, I see your face in reverse still staring out the photo, still stretched like bubble gum. I always wonder what happens to the photo once I step through. Does it snap back to its original size? When the gravediggers come will they set it respectfully against your gravestone?

Step One. I’m in the basement. Your model train set is unfurled along a wood plank balanced on horses. The horses are snorting. Digging their hooves into the cement floor. You placed all your tools in their proper places. The conductor in the lead train car waves a plastic wave. You were here but it’s been a while.

Step Two. Now I’m in the passenger seat of the Pinto station wagon. Bob Collins is on WGN. A half-smoked Pall Mall burns in the ashtray. The driver’s side door is open. We’re parked at the gas station. The gas hose sways languidly out of the gas tank. I see it in the driver’s side side mirror. You were just here.

Step Three. Now I’m in the hardware store. This aisle is packed with things that screw into other things. A spectrum of sizes. Round safety mirrors in the ceiling corners. Buzz of busy conversation fills up the air but no one’s here. Empty aisles. Empty checkouts. Suddenly a flash—the flick of that ratty coat you refused to toss. I follow. I shout.

“Listen motherfucker I told you if you ever left me I’d hunt you down and now. Here. We. Are.”

©Tangled Web Collective

It's the Way You Wing It While You're Figuring It Out

Of course she didn’t use it right away, it was stolen after all, you don’t just swipe a magic eraser then turn around and start erasing shit. She’s not a novice at this for crissakes.

The swiping, you know. The magic eraser—that is new.

This particular magic eraser has been used (rounded corners, scuff marks, residue of pencils once loved now absent), but that’s not really the point. The point is two-fold:

Subsection A: An object from another human can (if you stretch your imagination and spend an inordinate amount of time in a fantasy land where you are not constantly alone and worried and doing that existential question thing that inevitably leads to thoughts of suicide, which lead to a methodical plan to commit said suicide, which is truncated only when you realize that mentally unstable people plot their suicides and you are most definitely NOT mentally unstable, fuck you for even suggesting that) retain that human’s essence and that essence can hold you so delicately you can fool yourself into thinking you matter.

Subsection B: The magic eraser erases humans. She is looking forward to being erased.

The essence of the human the magic eraser holds is from the boy at the shop where the magic eraser once rested and he, like his essence, is sweeter than anything she’s ever known. She will never be good enough to have that.

Subsection B: The magic eraser erases humans. She is looking forward to being erased.

Over the curb and through the alley to Walgreens she goes. By the row of bright blue recycling bins she pulls out the magic eraser—pink, used, like the kind you used in elementary school, to erase all that coloring outside the lines, you troublesome kid, you need to learn this lesson now, you don’t want to end up going through life coloring outside the lines, that’s a downward spiral for sure. She erases her right hand. The eraser crumbs fall like a tiny summer rain shower, leave polka dots on an errant ground-covering newspaper anxiously headlining today’s body count. She splays her fingers. She can’t see them of course, but she can feel them. She is infinitely proud.

Candy: Aisle 3. It’s a double aisle. On one side the imperative accoutrements for the nearest holiday reside. Today there are baskets with blue ribbons, yellow chicks, bunnies with pink ears, something blue with soup bowl eyes and stunningly soft fur.

She picks a Snickers from the candy buffet on the other side of the double aisle. She holds it at her chest. From the cashier’s point of view, she has an oddly truncated, unbloodied stump at the end of her arm and a floating candy bar at her chest. The cashier believes in the restorative powers of hallucinogenic drugs, so a floating candy bar, especially a Snickers (his favorite), is not a problem.

She registers the non-problem, does not associate it with a passion for mind-altering substances, and plucks three more Snickers from the front display because juggling.

While the card reader decides if it will accept or devour her debit card, she surreptitiously slips the eraser from her side pocket and erases her left hand. No bag, she says, carries the candy bars out the door

and to the intersection, where she keeps one eye on the DON’T WALK sign and the other on her erased hands and candy bars. Now she is juggling. She is juggling with erased hands. To the people standing at the corner with her, there are candy bars popping up and down in front of a woman who is inexplicably controlling them without touch. They are intrigued and slightly sickened. The city is becoming too weird a place to live anymore. These fucking arty types.

She makes it to the el, still juggling, and this is a personal best for her so she is superhero proud: her longest run of juggling and erased hands and possession of a magic eraser. Things haven’t been this good since she stole the electric pencil sharpener from her last job.

By the turnstyles. She hands out the unopened candy bars to randos. They are not quite sure what to think of unopened candy bars distributed by a suspiciously happy handless woman. It’s chocolate, though, so: duh.

She erases a few more parts of herself on the way up to the platform. Left arm. Torso. Eyes. Train to Loop: 8 minutes. Fuck it. She could just erase herself completely. So she does. And it is wonderful. No one can see her. She can blow in someone’s ear. Twirl another someone’s hair. Tap a shoulder. Lightly punch a bicep. Perform the drum solo from In the Air Tonight between shoulder blades.

On the train she sits. By the window. Contemplates what else she can do. Sit in on a secret meeting in the mayor’s office. Blow off security at O’Hare. Sneak into Wrigley, switch all the Budweiser products to Miller products, replace the Cubs flag with a Sox flag.

He sits. She only looks when she smells his smell. He smells like summer and acceptance. He smells like the forest and understanding. She wonders what he would say if she told him she stole his eraser. What he would he say if she told him she did it to be closer to him.

She reaches out to him. Touches his hair. He doesn’t react. He’s listening to headphones. He’s holding a book. His hand covers the title. She runs her hand over his, feels the ridges of his knuckles, his smooth shell fingertips. She’s about to wrap her fingers around his when he jolts and swipes his face a scowl and he

leaves. To the door. Looking quizzically back at the seat he just left, like it betrayed him. At the next stop he gets off.

Subsection B: The magic eraser erases humans. She looked forward to this.

©Tangled Web Collective