WORD

S A L E (poem as a local sign critique)

I saw a sign like this in front of an Aldo shoe store on my way home from work today. I figured it was set up that way because the store had relatively narrow windows and they wanted the sign to be in as large a font as possible. I haven't been able to find a single image anywhere that matches, by way of design. But I couldn't help but think that there was more going on than just size constraints, and the sign itself was significantly effective mainly because I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the way home (26 Street blocks and 1 Avenue later, or twenty minutes, depending on how you count and walk). I was taken with how the splitting of the word itself made it totally foreign, with the "Sa" whisper followed be a French-like "Le" which should technically be first to make any sort of sense. Or, it could be something like a broken sentence, cut of by the sheer notion of the thrill of thrift: "Sa--lut! Le ---temps est grand!" for instance. The possibilities seemed relatively endless.

Also, the switch from red to pink on the "L" seemed distinctly of note. The "l" in the word "sale" is the part that kind of pulls you into the word, the "ull" sound, if you will. By making it pink, it pulls that part out further, not to mention making it more characteristically pleasing to the feminine cliche. It was a subtle color-shift, but still noticeable enough from the window of the back of a bus as it passed at a normal clip. I imagine, if walking past, at a closer angle, it would have been more pronounced, and more prone to draw attention enough to signal a stop. Midway through an avenue, the bus wasn't going to stop for anybody, let alone a sale on shoes.

Regardless, it made me wish I needed a pair of new shoes.

Three Simple Book Covers for Three Short Novels (and the contents - in their entirety - therein)

Novel #1: You Were A Put-On

It was daylight, and Jonny Shade was spreading his ass wide for the two girls sitting on his bottom bunk who dared him to do it. Hey, he's high anyway so what the fuck? They said they'd both fuck him if he did it and make out with each other while they did it. They both had big tits and kinda flabby arms and one had a big mole on her arm that had hairs sticking out and was kind of distracting and not in a sexy way but a way that make you think about your mom. He was worrying about his dick getting hard because of all the drugs he was on but figured that once one of them touched it it wouldn't really be a problem. He could hear them laughing behind him and whispering to each other and the strange feel of cool air on his asshole, which was new, but nice. He heard the girls whisper more and one say "totally" and then laugh really loud. They both told him to spread it wider, so they could see inside, and he said that that was pretty impossible but here goes. He pulled his cheeks further apart and could feel almost like the air was farting into him. One of the girls asked if she could stick a finger up there to feel and he said why not, if you're nice. He could feel her nail scrape against his hole in a way he couldn't tell if he liked or not. He flinched a bit and she stopped and then started in again, only harder, digging it in like she was fishing for a clam in the sand. He felt like it was dumb to let a girl with nails do it, that, shit, at least a guy wouldn't have nails like that. He heard himself say cup my balls, willya? and that made her laugh. She grabbed them with her other hand and yanked on them hard, making him go a little weak in the knees with surprise.

That was when one of the girls gasped and said ok, are you ready? and he blacked out.

Novel #2: If I Told You The Truth, You'd Be Dead By Now.

Dear Diary,

Outside, the rain drops like bombs and I hate Tina and her stupid face. A week away will be good, but two would be better. I don't know what to do that won't make me cry so I make salty cookies and sit on the couch and watch Erin Brockovich 3 times in row cuz Albert Finnly makes me think of a happy dad and that makes me happy.

Dear Diary,

If I said I hallucinate would you look at me funny? Would you even notice?

Dear Diary,

I want to sell all my stuff and sit in an empty room and write with paper and a pen I stole from school. I wouldn't make a mistake because there wouldn't be any way I could. I wouldn't let anybody come in and bother me and I wouldn't bother anybody but you and I don't bother you because you don't exist. I would sleep next to you, with my hand on top of you, so you wouldn't blow away when the wind would get strong at night even though you'd try.

Novel #3: Lesson Learned

buy batteries.

The Darwinian Evolution Of A Fish (Female)

Fig. 1 Original

Those aren't tails, they're legs.

Crescent moon cesarean scar - flippers like fountains. These are the forms of the Western written word.

Siren song left silly made packing unfortunate distortions. Institutions for the production of help for the sleeping body.

Fishing, not passing, like imaginable indifferent because. Prison-buildings waiting for a bar code.

Display stands mistake the theatre marquee and xerox nature by sitting down.

Fig. 2 1971

Barely cleaned up, but augmented fuller. Architecture like television. A Warhol head in happy relief. There are no memories of remnants like the spice of life. Landscape extracted as necessary. Filters, eternity, bookends like bodices. A preface to erasure: awakening the beautiful generic. An appear to catch a code on ice, at home, now just another one. Somehow the contents of space and lines merge to a fleeting method of sustainable symmetry. A wind like dry humps lumped against the screen that screams for more, and we pour another, off the menu to wash my car.

These feelings think they have their own emotions and cry like babies when wet.

Fig. 3 1987

A loss of eastern influence is confinement to proper nouns and grounds. The girl still spreads her fins (though waves for a cunt can't be entered like the surf). The pleasure of those not considered mawkish. A dummy from memory more alone.

You look terrible in that terrycloth symbolism.

I hate the smell of tuna in the morning.

It's hard to be a bottom when rubbing stubborn.

Manage the residual reality like myth controlled functional fragrance. Where the differences are tagged for reality. Numbered abandoned boundaries increasing for content of course. Restaurants of the future, within reason. How many things can be read in the span of an afternoon? Is there a way to be discreet while shopping?

If I lived on your street would you see me more than you do?

Fig. 4 1992

Everything is a form of losing if you say it is. Addiction like trademark'd stars and different ways to be furniture.

The loss of a navel made more naval only unable to sustain.

Two feet, flipping you off.

Fig. 5 2011

A lack of name as lack of selfhood, hiding, only known, hardly questioned, only known. Still, my friend says the underlying redundancy is like sleeping.

Only spreading, lacking, covered, unbelievable bend by being what isn't there.

There's barely anything left to take away.