perry

An urban legend.

back

Young girls, middle school girls, matching patriotic bikini tops. They are slouching, nervous, happy, yet to understand the mystical qualities of the shadows under their own shoulder blades of which they cannot see. Skin stretched over spines, told too skinny by their mothers, browning in the sun above the amusement park.

And boys, boys who travel in herds, remove their shirts in herds, swing them over their shoulders in herds, hair short and wet, eyes grinning. Backs straight and tall, lean and proud, some flexing uncomfortably as they approach the backs of girls.

And the backs of children, in the backseat with the windows down. Children running towards the water rides unsupervised, all ribs and spines and healthy hunger, hunger which cannot be filled with the food stamps keeping them alive. Hunger to run and chase and catch and throw, to laugh and cry and shout and scream, to bend backwards, to break bones.

The backs of pennies in a dirty fountain, backwards wishes in the water where a dead bird floats where birds do not belong.

Nine years old and the boys stand up straighter and the girls slouch shorter; the boys get louder, the girls get softer; and you notice the backs of them in the crowds, watch the gradual realization of bodies, the gradual stretching of spines.

From the back of the line, backs of men beneath t shirts, some soft and padded, muscled and slouching under the weight of family backpacks. Backs of girls in crop tops, above the hems of faded jean shorts, soft and dimpled and they know what they're doing though they know not what will be done. Backs of women, seemingly burdened, shirts that hug the skin and bra straps of infinite variety all consistently more interesting colors than the clothes that cover them.

And all of them move to the front of the line, and all of them lean back in their seats, and you are looking at your shoes, looking for something you want to have back, something you left here in middle school. Something in the scaffolding, something in the framework, something in the chipping paint. And you're waiting, searching for words abandoned in this place, words of great significance, and you want them back somehow. You want them back.

Backs of hands lifted in the swirling blue sky, screams tossed backwards and hurled into the air behind, you want them back, you want them back, you want them back.

Backs of nickels, backs of dimes, backs of quarters collected at the bottom as the bird is fished from the surface of the water, floating on its back. The wishes are more expensive these days. You wonder how much they all add up to. You wonder how many came true.

You wonder how many wishes were never asked for, lying on your belly in the grass during the homecoming picnic last year. Unnoticed freckles on your back. Unnoticed beauty on the undersides of leaves dancing above you, everything backwards, everything wrong, everything alive and holy.

And you want that wish back like the bird wants its life back.

Everything alive and holy.

unholy underwear

When I was maybe eight years old, I discovered slips.

I call it a discovery because it happened entirely on my own. I noticed these off-white silk skirts my mother and sister wore under their church dresses, and asked nothing about them. But when I found one in the laundry room, I figured I should wear it.

Because that's what people do, right? They wear slips under their church dresses.

I had no hint of understanding as to the reason and function behind slips, and I wasn't about to ask. I just slipped it on (ha ha) and got my books and went out the door.

As I walked out of the car and through the parking lot outside the church, the slip -- much too big for my frame -- slowly fell from my waist and eventually gathered in a small silk heap around my ankles. I looked down, stepped out of it, and put it in my bag.

My aunt, who had witnessed the whole thing, approached me laughing. I asked blankly what it was she was laughing at, and she stopped and looked at me, puzzled.

"Well--" she tried to explain, "your slip fell off..."

I looked at her.

"And slips -- slips are kind of like underwear. ... So, it was, you know, embarrassing."

I looked at her.

"...Since I could see it." She was beginning to feel cruel.

"Oh," I said, and looked at the undergarment in my bag. I blushed, and laughed, immediately embarrassed. On command. Feeling exactly as I had just been told to feel, as it had been explained to me.

---

Since then I have, of course, learned the function of slips, acquired ones which fit, and worn them appropriately, careful that they are not noticed, simply because of what I was told that one unfortunate evening when I was eight.

Children are only ashamed of what they are told to be ashamed of.

And proudly so.

They hide what they are told to hide, and they do not really think of how the slip must feel to be kept so carefully from public view -- every edge of lace, every small seam. The children are proud of their proper embarrassment, and why shouldn't they be? Undergarments never ask why you are embarrassed of them.

You hold no obligation to them.

Everyone wears underwear, and so everyone knows that everyone else does too. But whenever you see it in public (outside of the purposeful sagging-pants look, or maybe not), you are immediately embarrassed. Because underwear is meant to stay under whatever you wear.

Do you hide what you're ashamed of, or are you ashamed of what you hide?

Is it only the function of the slip -- the purpose of residing under a proper skirt -- that produces embarrassment? Or is it because of embarrassment that the slip must belong under a skirt?

You are proud of this shame. You are. You're supposed to be.

---

People aren't like underwear. That's what I'm saying.

cigarette daydreams, cage the elephant

The milk aisle of a Safeway in Old Town, Fort Collins.

Empty florescent lights and hollow aisles, slightly stained off-white tiles, rows and rows of pristinely packaged food stuffs, neat and clean.

White gallon jugs and white cartons and white bottles, almond and soy and rice and dairy: like a little refrigerated city stretching down the back of the store, and there was no one else and the young girl sat cross-legged on the floor with the city of milk behind her and I sat in front of her.

Something was in love. Something soft and humming like the moths in the lights, something sleepy and beautiful but it wasn't young love between people, it was something more. Something louder than a shadow of wet floor signs and something rarer than the vomit beside them.

The same feeling occurred then that occurred in the music store: the feeling of childhood. Of fragility and safety and calm. Void of responsibility and consequence. And somewhere in the empty superstore a squeaky cart moved down an aisle and somewhere a restroom door closed and the lights hummed down in a softspoken splendor over the milk, the milk, the milk.

And it was love, all of it love, whispering through the music in the car. Familiar and warm, without the repercussions of being held in human hands, it fluttered and flew in and out the car windows, in and out of our lungs. It rejoiced and it told no lies.

And remnants of this love stuck to the kitchen sink, and it was smiling and laughing and holding on to the edges of light and happiness and sound as the music played while music could be found.

An enormous weight removed itself, if only for a moment. A hand of love on your shoulder. Refuge in the milk aisle of a Safeway, holding a ninety-nine-cent bag of off-brand marshmallows, laughing in the afternoon.

Moments of believability. Small glimpses of bliss, shouts from the other end of the void. Caught in the milk net. Tumbling out, laughing. The humming of florescent friendship.

Moments.

Take pictures. Write notes. Sign 'love' before your name.

Pain does not make joy. Objective perspective changes no substance of these theocratic moments held suspended in space and time. We hold a responsibility to touch the beauty of our lives, to hold it where it can be held and to watch it as it leaves us.

I hold no obligation to edit this post.

Poetry makes no difference to the recorded occurrence of love in a Safeway milk aisle.

anticlimax

Cool beans.

Why do you have a thing
against cool beans.

New number?

No, just the one I use at night.

Oh lord please don't tell me
you have a whole separate
nocturnal life

...

Dude, like, several

I am not a fan of your life choices

I am aware

I have a thing against cool beans because 

you use the expression in times of great 

anticlimax thus resulting in frustration

Because I can't stand reaching for 

something and finding nothing. 

That's the worst thing, holding onto 

nothing.

Ah

Wait no

I'm not going to argue philosophy with you tonight 

Okay

...What else am I here for then?

How are you?

Debating whether or not to restart therapy

How are you?

Terrible

Goodnight

Goodnight

I care about you greatly

Cool beans

summer and a leaky roof

Something happens in the summer. I don't know what to call it.

Something sleek and spineless and dangerous, something very dangerous. It crawls out of muscle memory like clockwork. I don't know what it is. I don't even know if it's good or bad, but it's bright and slow and foggy and every memory of it disappears as soon as it leaves.


The roof was dripping into a trashcan in the middle of the floor. The music store was dark and quiet, the ceiling covered with hanging half-translucent plastic sheets where cloudlight shone onto the dark green carpet. Barely anyone was there.

I sat on a speaker beside the guitar counter, where a man I almost recognized re-stringed the resonator I brought in after trying to do it myself and breaking a string, along with a good section of mental and emotional denial and blockage.

My lungs felt new and tired, like the streets after rain, and I realized the music store held the calm protection of a nursery. A nervous-looking old man thumbed through records. Someone somewhere tuned a piano. A mother and young girl opened the door where the light fell softly on the carpets, and their footsteps made no sound. The water from the plastic sheets dripped and dripped and dripped, and I wondered how heavy the trashcan was.

"So you play the cello, huh?" the man asked hesitantly, remembering what I had told him some minutes before and making an effort at quiet friendliness.

"Yeah, yeah," I said.

"Since you were real young, or...?"

"Since I was eight." He spun the stringwinder around the peg and looked up at me briefly. "My grandpa taught me," I added.

Within this conversation we had both gratefully concluded neither of us wanted to talk, and so we happily continued in silence. He worked, and I watched, and learned through watching.

In that dimly-lit damp empty music store, time had slowed and settled, and the world wrapped around it in a tumultuous echo of struggle and chaos.

From where I sat on the top of a speaker, tapping the soles of my shoes on the carpet, I was a child. Everyone was. Frowning in their sleep, twitching their toes, breath catching inwardly every few minutes from all the crying it took to fall asleep.

The man behind the counter would not hurt me, nor would I hurt him, and I watched his face carefully as if in awe of this fact. He fine-tuned the last string and picked up the instrument and rested it on his knee, and I watched as he played something blues-y and beautiful and the both of us enjoyed it and I paid him in exact change and thanked him and he wished me a good day and I wished him likewise. And I walked back out into the soft sunlight, where cars rushed into brightness and brightness rushed into sound and the asphalt all around sucked up the sky where brightness sang.

discovery

On a warm afternoon last autumn, Charlotte brought her dog to school.

She was supposed to be in history class, but couldn't bring herself to the classroom that day. Roonie and I didn't have a class to go to, and so we walked out to the parking lot, where the spaniel, Lily, sat in the passenger seat of Charlotte's car, wagging its tail.

The first thing Roonie said when she saw Lily was,

"Dog!"

Lily wagged her tail and pawed at the window, and Charlotte opened the door and brought her into the parking lot on a leash, where Roonie crouched down to pet her. "Dog!" she said again. "You're a dog!!"

This was all Roonie could think to say for a very long time as she sat ecstatic in the school parking lot with what truly was a dog.

And the dog licked her face and wagged its tail with every word, as if joining in on the discovery. "Yes! A dog!! That is me!!!!! I am dog!!"

I remember a time that autumn when I was sitting in the grass by a tree, and Charlotte looked at me very seriously and studiously, and with what seemed to be utmost amazement said softly, "Your eyes are so green."

And I nodded.

That is exactly the color of my eyes. They're not rimmed or freckled or striped or centered with any other hint of color. Nothing left to the imagination, nothing for metaphors to work with. They are constantly and completely the color green, and Charlotte marveled in this fact, like holding a single crayon from an eight-pack of Crayolas for the very first time.

The amazement of this commonplace simplicity was held as if of great significance, as if the color of the grass and trees and fences and highway signs has never been seen nor will ever be seen again.

And there were other times when she would state, astonished, other amazing facts, such as, "You're a girl."

The funniest part of all this is that, every time she would say something like that, I would feel almost exactly like the dog in the parking lot. "Yes!! A girl! That is me!!!! I am girl!!" 

As if I had never noticed before.

The familiarity of a silhouette on a stage is so stirring and powerful because of its factual actuality. It is as sure and simple as the glossary of a seventh grade science textbook, made no less astounding in its certainty. 

All that is is all that ever will be, and yet never will be again.

And so these small moments of discovery must be reveled in, closely and passionately, every dog and every color and every feeling ever felt. Nothing is new under the sun, this is true, but no sunrise is the same. No morning. No moment.

Everything is dying all the time, and so its worth is held in its entropy.

This has always been true, and has always been known, and yet is at this moment and every moment after discovered again and again. So I write it and type it and read it over again. And again. And again. 

And the dog wags its tail and paws at the window and barks at the knowledge of its name.