Friday, November 25, 2011

GUN BARREL CITY, Pop. 5,672


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Torque Tuttle Spread

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There are men that I have seen advertised, where the men make a face like a baby and girls coo themselves to sleep. These men do not come from the city; they come from the bottom of the barrel. They are scraped up and brushed off and shaved within an inch of their life. Where these men are now? Sitting on top of my coffee table, of course. Waiting.

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A pimple of pikes and rips falls over the gloss that speaks to what was formerly considered “bellwether”. This is somewhere else, somewhere that is dry and noisy and not completely lacking in the heat of the moment. The vicious dawn spread out like certainty, blanketed over smaller structures of toss and moot. The dry dusty air supplies instances of romantic tirades to the people cleaning up with a slightly wet washcloth.

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Some girls live in Texas.

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They carry around with them the same images that I do, and others, and others still I would never even imagine, let alone see. This girl holds a photo of her boyfriend after he was shot in a bar fight for defending her honor. They’re broken up now.

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This is the middle of the country, in a country in the middle of the world in a world just slightly left of the sun, beaming and carrying us, along with our silent desires, all the way to the bank and back.

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After I Came I Became the Night

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It wasn’t like she came over just for drinks, not by a long shot.

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Of course we did have drinks, and plenty of them, but once the bottle was empty there was nothing left to do, nowhere to go but the bedroom.

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So we stayed put on the couch instead.

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She went down on me in a way that made me believe that she really liked it, but I could tell that was just the booze talking. She took her time to be sure to pay attention to the balls, which I appreciated, but I found her general technique somewhat lacking in the area around the tip, slobbering over it with too much pre-puke saliva.

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I came and she puked, thankfully not on my lap (though I would have appreciated her making it to the bathroom instead of throwing it all down on my relatively freshly cleaned couch.

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After that mess was cleaned up, I told her she could stay or she could go and she chose to go.

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I gave her a stick of spearmint gum, which she gladly took, and I watched her drive out of my view and I closed my eyes and had a small dream about feathers, finally opening my eyes awake and grabbing another drink from the bottle I keep solely for myself in the back of the cupboard, after which I felt much better about the whole ordeal.

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Buttes and Lumps I Adore To Hear

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A wet slop of brain and the titillating feelings that feeling your hand in the goo gives you: like finches groomed directly into the wall.

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“The marzipan of beef tits, busting strong feelings out or none at all.”

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“This ruined face makes my body feel sour; I sit on the toilet in the dark and bleed the days nothing out as if it were a holiday, something, perhaps, to celebrate.”

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“Texas is the cow that you describe as you, hoping for a few moments at least, that you’re meant for the long-haul, and always dancing grateful that you aren’t veal now.”

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For a dry town, or sorts, there is enough viscera to feel as if the flowers here are all just figments of your imagination, wetted by hidden heat that keeps the town moving, forgetting, moving on.

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