The Street with Sinking Houses (part 1)

Roman’s house was the stooping puke-green one at the end of the street.
After his grandfather ventured out one winter and suffered a stroke,
Roman’s mom, Zladka, started drinking more.
The walls absorbed the sick man’s shame
And his crooked mouth’s prayers for death
And pressed harder on the aging foundation.
Roman died in a car accident on his way to England,
where he worked as a cook.
He and his granddad were buried around the same time.
Grieving, Zladka drowned herself in hard liqueur
and the house spun, rocked,
its floors groaning like a wobbly boat in a storm.  
As shadows pooled,
she smeared the cracks in the walls
with clotted blood from her vomit.
Her bloated belly made Zladka wonder if she was pregnant
though she only rubbed herself raw
with spit, cigarette butts, and dry weeds,
plucked from the lonely sidewalk outside.
The house grew heavier,
its foundation a hungry root,
drinking in darkness for the cirrhotic, petrified fetus.
When the ground covered the mailbox and the house number
Zladka crawled out through the gap between the wooden porch
and the top of the door
then smashed a big hole in the coppery red tiled roof
with an ax.
As she settled in, the smoke from her cigarettes
rose in the air like from a second chimney.
Bottle of whisky in her chubby hand,
a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth,
Zladka sat on the creaking floor of the attic
barfing dust,
waiting for the mailwoman with the welfare cheque
and for her water to break.  

The Pregnant Sinkhole

Rain was coming down hard and my plushies were on their period.

I chewed on the fingernails growing like fungi from the soil of the TV screen,

and sucked their grit into my cavities.

I tasted wet pavement and rotted rubber.

My beggar's eyes were fixed on the round clock on the wall,

but its exhausted hands and crooked numbers

had succumbed to the turmoil.

I had carved a pleasure hole into the grimy mattress

after my pregnant wife had been committed,

and now squeaks and whispery movements came from inside.

My wife was in a padded room, I thought,

just like her growing fetus,

just like the things crawling inside the sticky foam.

A deep chill washed over me,

and I squeezed my plushies so hard their zits popped.

I looked out the window like through a gutter opening.
Torrents came down from the towering clouds of concrete,
and the tall, gray building across the street started leaning, sinking.
People dropped from the top floors like sprayed roaches.

Trembling, far-away hands tossed the plushies in the basket,
and clockwork legs walked me to the laundry room.
My neighbor, Patricia, sat naked in her wheelchair
in the middle of the flooded place.
The washers and dryers were silent, cubical buildings without power.
As she rocked back and forth
murky water as high as her knees
lapped at the brown nipples of her sagging, tubular breasts.
Thick with clownish makeup,
her moonface prayed to the blurred face of the clock.  
Diapers floated around like drowned babies.
Perched on top of one
two soggy roaches were stuck in a chitinous embrace.

Patricia’s eyes rolled toward me, her drawn eyebrows a mask of surprise.
“I’m waiting for my date,” she says with a brown smile.
“Came to wash my shit!”
I meant to say: can’t you see our building is sinking?
I meant to ask: how is he gonna pick you up?
I meant to say: the roads are closed.
But, when I opened my mouth no words came out,
my atrophied vocal cords went stiff.  
A solid, massive object came up my throat and invaded my mouth.
My frantic tongue tasted crawling rice and bitter bile.
My eyes bulged and teared up
as my mouth opened wide and my nostrils flared.
I dropped the laundry basket in the water
and grabbed the edge of the protruding object.
It came out and dropped in the water followed by a jet of vomit
as if from an unclogged pipe.
It was a newspaper bundle, maggots writhing over the faded print,
a floating landfill of words, now moving toward Patricia,
on whispering ripples of filth.
Patricia watched my buoyant discharge,
her swirling tongue smearing her dark lipstick.

Through a blur, I saw her lifting a skeletal leg
over the arm of the wheelchair,
exposing her hairy cavity.
Bloated hands grabbed the festering bundle
and rubbed it against the crooked crevice.
Patricia’s head spasmed back in ecstasy,
breasts dropping on the sides like sacks of sand.
Ecstasy crumpled Patricia’s face,
as she uttered a low gargling moan.
Fidgety fingers lubricated the hole with worm paste
and pushed the newspaper inside,
my rot hugging her rot.
 

 

 

Ascension through Sterility

Deteriorating Substance,
by Brendan McCarthy

"To have committed every crime, but that of being a father." 

Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born 

As I walked down the street with a spring in my step, 

hands deep in pockets full of sticky, dead seeds, 

a glorious, sunny lightness unfurled behind my smiling eyes. 

Bloated rats scurried through the downtown landfill, 

trapped in the 9 to 5 maze. 

I wiped the crusted time from my eyes 

with the secret, white manna of my fingers,

and looked up at the bright blue 

above the gray mounds of concrete, steel, and glass. 

The sudden buoyancy reminded me of skipping school, 

but it was much better,

as if I had whited out my name from the class roster altogether,

saving myself from the teachers’ wooden mouths, 

those holes filled with pubic hair soaked in flat coffee,

and drizzled with chalk dust. 

It was as if I only had to go to school during recess 

To smoke with my buddies and plan the weekend debauchery. 

As if I had snaked the wormy tail of a sperm 

though the eyes of my slingshot,

knotted the ends tightly, 

and stoned the school’s windows, 

smashed the teachers’ thick myopia glasses, 

and broke the chalk of their teeth. 

The anonymous, ghostly rebellion lifted me, 

my sneakers stopped touching the pavement,

and I found myself pedaling through the air 

toward the infinite sky

and the dark waters beyond. 

A beatific smile split my lips, 

Why not go all the way? 

Isn’t the one whose steps leave no trace, free to go anywhere? 

I remembered when I was but a wriggling proof of my dad’s fall from grace, 

digging in the shell of the egg, 

only this time I puked inside,

A violent, black jet 

that smashed the egg, and filled the womb, 

oozing from the lips,

and sealing them into a pious silence.

The Primal Exile

Picture by Brendan McCarthy

I’m slapping band-aids on the cracks in the pavement,         
and gluing my dead skin mask
but the tremors already spread too far, too close,
and I have to reach inside my head,
and stitch the eyelids of the foggy eye.

The neighborhood hobos sense my fear
and burst into my apartment.
I stand tall and tell them I live here,
but the “I” is faded,
it comes unglued like old wallpaper.
The intruders push me aside,
Defacing my silence with
growls, groans, moans, and grunts.
While some collapse on my bed
like exhausted zombies,
others stuff my food
into toothless, ashen mouths.
I curl up in a corner, a sick dog,
Squeeze my eyes shut,
And summon dreams.
 

The bus is full of kids,
Chattering, chanting, pointing to the woods outside,
The nauseating green rushes by,
And then I see the distant top of a mountain,
chocked by swirling fog.
I sit at the back,
Small and ashamed,
Toxic exhaust fumes thick in my nostrils,
The puke bag I clutch in my lap
as white as my skin.

The beach is cold and empty,
the closed umbrellas like frozen ghosts
stuck between the gunmetal sea and the leaden sky,
the sand as heavy as my hangover.
It starts raining,
and I grab my vodka with a distant waxy hand
and run for shelter on wobbly legs.
Squinting through the torrent of spit,
I step toward the entryway to a seedy motel
but my approach alerts a mangy-looking yellow cur,
and its frenzied barking calls the whole pack
and they’re on my heels
as I run cursing this metal morning
of rabid teeth and celestial spit.

The train picks up speed
chugging in the rhythm of my galloping heart,
its whistle mocking.
I get hammered at the redneck tavern near the tracks.
I’m broke and the owner asks me to dig a hole in the backyard
to cover my tab.
The yard is choked by blood-splattered weeds;
I dig the pit next to the rusted carcass of a car
And fill it with shards of broken beer bottles,
as the boss said.
The sweaty labor sobers me up
And I hear the whistle of an incoming train.
I run again through the gravel toward the trucks
But my legs feel heavy, scraping against the rocks.
I gaze down in terror:
the stumps of my upper legs were stuck to sand hourglasses,
the heavy sand gathered in the lower bulbs.
I fall head-first
and fists of stones shatter the windshield of my face,
and the glass of my legs.
A bitter axiom occurs to me:
strewn glass trash can never catch a train.

The seedy motel room reeks of stale guests,
cheap bug repellent and cigarette smoke.
The wallpaper is vomit hardened on plastic flowers,
and the bed is a brick of moldy lasagna.
An anemic, insectile buzz comes from the nightstand.
I pick up the receiver with a waxy hand. “Hello?”
“Hey, sweetie,” my mom said, “we were looking for you everywhere,
dad and I.
How are you?”
I put on the broken mask of words, “Not good. I….I want to come home.”
A hesitating break followed by fake enthusiasm, “Of course, what a great idea, honey!
We’re here, waiting for you.
We moved from the last place, now that it’s only the two of us,”
strained laughter,
“We’re right across from the cancer in your uncle’s eyes
on the street with sinking houses
we rent a roomy basement just under another basement.
I’m here knitting blankets of dirt
while your dad is racing roaches on the bricked windows.
He’s petting his tumor while we watch the news on the cracked screen,
he likes how the stomach growth is purring.
Just follow the chatter of dentures, my angel,
and the buzz of pacemakers,
right by the dumpster with a broken couch on the side,
crawling with stray dogs ripped in half,
you’ll be sure to find us, sweetie.

We’re here holding our breaths, missing you deeply.”  

Not All There (poem)

I’ve never touched anything hard enough to leave a fingerprint, 
my blood is too stale for DNA,
and my seed is the rusted urine
darkening the foul corners
of underground train stations.

 
I dwell in the crawlspaces beneath being.
One time, a woman pushed me in a stroller,
And then sat on a curb by my side
And began eating apples from me
Biting into the red and green skin with her loose, yellow teeth
And then shrouding her tears in cigarette smoke.
Hurting as if disemboweled,
I crumbled over the last bruised apples
Heard the cigarette butt hiss in the rotten juice,
And the clap of a dumpster cover,
As loud as a gun but not as final.
Another time, I was there in a pile of clothes
On a bench in a frozen bus station,
Near a cart filled with empty bottles.
I was there for a few seconds,
If someone looked inside at that moment,
They would have seen me I think,
But it was a gray day heavy with absence.
I almost stood up,
But the clothes were too many, too thick,
Intertwined with my muscles and organs,
heavy like corpses.
My knees crumpled.
Defeated, I glimpsed myself in a broken mirror
sitting by a flattened can of Monster drink.
I was almost there, a cataract eye like a glob of phlegm
a few lethargic thoughts trapped in it
like bugs in a glue trap.

I see they’ve built new suicide barriers on the bridge.
But who has the stamina to jump in the first place?
I can’t even stand up in my dreams.
What I’m good at is falling through the cracks of the pavement
and dissolve into the pale, angry scratches of a pen out of ink,
or those of a razor on dead scars.
Last I heard,
my partial baptism has been postponed
until after my tentative funeral. 

The Underground Tavern (poem)

The boys were sharing a tampon     
as large as a crepe,
one of them had found in the dilapidated washroom,
earlier, when they still bothered to use it.
They cut the tampon with scissors,
chewed bits of it, sucking on the gem of the menstrual blood,
chasing it down with beer, vodka, rum,
whatever came in handy.
At this point of the night
they stopped using the john
and pissed freely on the dirt floor,
shriveled dicks hanging out the flies of the jeans
of the ones who cared enough to unbutton.
On the floor littered with dog noses, tongues,
and mandibles with rotted teeth,
The urine mixed with coagulating blood.  
The waitress paid no mind to the wasted customers
this was an underground tavern,
no pigs.
She played a crossword puzzle
and rubbed her bean in the flickering light of a lamp.
The youth in the corner
hung his head between his hands
and started puking
the dirt floor in front of his shoes bubbling like a yellow volcano.
The alpha grabbed the gun next to his bloody machete
and shot him in the head.
The crumpled face lifted
only to catch a second bullet.
One eye popped on the soiled floor
and the snoutless dogs tried to eat it
but only managed to push it around.
The waitress stumbled to the middle of the tavern
lay down on her back and spread her heavy legs wide
her clit was a wrinkled plum,
infested by lice from her black, wiry bush,
growing between things stained with feces and blood.
The eye wormed inside her warmth
and she threw her head back
and gave an ecstatic, guttural moan,
sagging tits shooting jets of milk
the mangled dogs tried in vain to suck on.
Tongues hanging out
the teens laughed and barked,
beating themselves.

The Defective Animal (short poem)

Out of boredom, I trick my dog:
I knock on the wood of my desk
and pretend it came from the door.
“Sic Rocky!”
The dog jumps from the couch,
tail rigid in the air,
barking savagely,
raised hackles,
barred teeth,
ready to tear the invisible intruder to shreds.
There’s no doubt clogging the wheels of this perfect machine,
as they keep turning inside the placenta of causality.  
A dark thought hits me:
The dog barks at nothing thinking it’s something,
But us humans, we bark at nothing
knowing it’s nothing.
us lowly humans,
we’re only capable of
barkings of sighs
and resigned charges.

 

Dry Winter Spleen (poem)

The winter holidays are here, 
psychiatrists are booked solid. 
My co-worker told me
his radiation treatment went well
but that his wife was diagnosed with cancer;
Liver, late stage, spreading.
As if his fear has spread the sickness to her.
He escaped only with diabetes and no thyroid,
no energy.
I looked at him thinking:
is man just a knot of nervous ticks and rotten entrails? 

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!
A customer told us,
The elderly woman who complained about the price of groceries
was pushed by a junkie in front of the train
and cut in half.
She was wrong she’d die of malnutrition.
On my way home, at the intersection, a collision.
A woman puked in the bag of her face
Spread on the frozen pavement,
Inert lips scraping against the grit,
One dangling eyeball iced in panic,
The other missing.

The winter wonderland is here at last!
At my neighbor’s place,
under the plastic Christmas tree,
the kids counted their bills
smoking, grunting, hissing,
like feral poker players,
while their parents snorted white lines
from unemployment lines.
Back at home,
The eggnog tasted like a long January hangover,
the only buzz was a drill through my skull.
Through my window, suffocating grayness, brown grass.
they reminded me there was no snow this year.
No whiteouts blasting forgetfulness,
no shrouds of ice
to hide us from ourselves. 

Trailer for Strangled Epitaphs

The Mourners

Raining,
people in black were gathered
in front of the house on the corner.
A man died by suicide,
One or two days ago,
My mom told me.
Poison? Hanging?
I couldn’t remember.

Later that night,
I woke up to a cacophony of screams,
bangings on the doors and windows,
and crazed dogs’ barking.
The mourners were trying to get in.
My parents were asleep upstairs.
Couldn’t they hear this bedlam?
Was the outside door closed?
I couldn’t move.
The uproar stopped abruptly,
they found a way in.
Stealthily, dark silhouettes moved toward my bed,
holding candles,
their faces pale blurs,
feral small eyes shining with hunger.
Their whispers rustled
like wind-blown autumn leaves.
I wanted to tell them I wasn’t dead,
that they must be looking for the suicide
in the house on the corner.
But maybe I looked dead to them?

The old hag in the lead
had her gnarled hand closed in a fist.
I opened my mouth to scream
but only a throaty hissing sound came out
and my jaw locked open.
Dirt trickled from her fist into my mouth
like sand through an hourglass.
My tongue fought the falling soil
like a cornered worm.
The mud choked me,
and I burrowed deeper
into darker slumber. 

Dog Days Attack

Summer is here, and all your teams have lost;  

your jerseys are but shrouds in the dusty closet.
Summer is here, the sun spits its venom,
chicks show more skin,
those coltish legs and round buttocks
are bitter poison down your throat
spreading paralysis.
Even the diabetic woman with a cane
and a cesarian scar,
has ghosted you.
Your overdrawn account puts a toothless bj
beyond your reach.  
These dog days have ambushed you,
and stole your breath.
The sweet stench of fresh-cut grass
turns your piles of movies and video games
into distant graveyards
suffocated by hazy loneliness.  
Summer is here, the vast blue sky
is a noose around your neck.
All your teams have lost,
nothing left to cheer for,
no bullets left.
It’s time to wipe off your anxiety sweat,
and throw in the towel. 

Neighborhood Morbidity Watch

                         

Picture by Chris Mars 

 

The two obese brothers cackled 

as they threw bricks at each other.
On the street, some guys played soccer with a cat
filled with sand,
while others used sparrows and rocks
as tennis balls.
Cars kept passing by, now and again,
a monotone procession,
driving the faceless from work.
Car horns and swears slashed the dusty daylight.
 
On the playground, George stopped swinging,
and injected mud into his forearm.
On the front stairs to my cubical apartment building
John was getting a frantic bj
from his chubby girlfriend
as he stroked his favorite stray dog.

 

At the place across the street,
Tudor and his gang were gathered
around a broken cellar window
throwing in firecrackers
and lighted cigarette butts.
Screams and guffaws
cut into the evening’s
jaundiced underbelly.
Up on the second floor,
Mr. Sharp took long puffs from his smoke,
face twisted in a scowl,
soccer game commentary
blasting from inside.
His wife-beater was stained with blood.

 
I walked to the gray building next to mine.
Old Dick was doing his thing
Climbing between the opposing walls of the two places,
Hands against one, feet against the other.
He got to the first floor, shaking,
Face red with strain.
A small group of fans looked up,
Mouths agape.
The ponytailed girl with a short leg
counted for hide and sick
as the Siamese twins
hid behind the abandoned car on bricks.
Inside, Andy “Fathead” went “Vroom-vroom-vroom.” 

 
Angela was at the usual spot,
On the stairs around the corner,
Talking about a telenovela
with the brown and chubby midget woman.
Angela ruffled my curly hair.
“My handsome lil’ prince,” she said.
I sat next to her, began eating sunflower seeds,
and caught glimpses of her generous cleavage,
and the tender skin under her flowery dress.
Her hairy warmth was as salty as the seeds in my mouth.
Angela’s husband was in jail,
and her boy was subnormal, housebound,
with a leaking eye.   

To the west, beyond the tops of the drab buildings,
the sky was bloodied and bruised;
the night would be warm and wet
like a festering wound.

 

    

Deep Down Necrosis

Dysmorph by Brendan McCarthy 

                    I scrape off your face,                      

your plastic smile,

like tooth decay.

Through the cavity hole

I press on the wormy tangle

of upchucked nightmares

and leftover words,

but those nerves are too spent

to carry electricity.

The impulse floats

like a dead fish in a murky pond.

The yellow, fermenting pus

of your resignation

stains my gloved fingers,

And it reeks of abandoned theaters

turned squatter houses.

You’re but a wrinkled mask

stretched over a swamp,

bubbling with rot.

Your screams gargle like clogged drains.

Your gums are mush,

no bone, no story.

All we can do for you is cover the gray ruin deep down

with a waxy ruin,

and hope for a good embalmer.