Skip to main content

Piecemeal


Joseph cut off a quarter of his thumb peeling potatoes. But it’s a good idea to finish what you start. While Joseph’s thumb healed he rode the elevator: there were no hand rails, no mirrored ceilings.
            “Sir,” he greeted Kirby, when Kirby stuck his hand between the elevator doors.
            “How are you?”
            “Pained.”
            Joseph nodded. “I cut off a quarter of my thumb today, peeling potatoes.”
            Kirby frowned and nodded. Nodding is polite, you know. Even if you don’t understand, you’re pretending to understand.
            The elevator shook a little because of the wind.
            “What kind of a pain do you feel?” Joseph thought it might be nice to ask.
            “Piecemeal. Like each piece of me has a different pain.”
            “Well let’s make steak and I can sketch you. That way if you die or something then you can have a sketch of yourself.”
            Kirby thought that would be nice. “I should like to write a will soon, also.”
            Joseph nodded. “Let’s just have a luncheon on the balcony. I’m famished, friend.”
            They ate all types of cheese on the balcony and the sky looked like a colored pencil. Cheese should be crumbly, like souls just before confession. Crumbly like bread tossed out to seagulls on the green ravine bay. Joseph and Kirby spent a while peering down on passing heads, discussing phrenology as a pseudoscience. It was obvious from Kirby’s square skull that he had a tortured past
            the most annoying women were the giggly ones with light feet and small noses.
            Joseph asked Kirby about his loves.  
            “You know what I’ve found,” Kirby croaked, “when someone asks you a question it’s really because they want to answer.”
            Kirby has soul, you know. At nine o’clock every night he hums “moon river” on the patio, then he turns off the lights and goes to bed.
            Joseph sketched Kirby in blue colored pencil, because the monster sky threw up over everything today. The sky tasted like blueberry pie, dripped blue ash wax. It was hard to swallow, like diamonds growing up out of mud. Joseph loved the whole world and none of it, because it didn’t love him back. 
            “How’s your thumb doing?” Kirby asked.
            “It’s fine. It’s pretty scabbed over now.”
            “Did you eat the potatoes after you peeled them?”
            “No, they got bloody.”
            “Cold water does the trick,”
            “Gross, Kirby.”          
            “You’re the gross one with a missing thumb.”
            Joseph finished the portrait. It looked like Kirby. Good.
            “It’s nice, I really like it,” said Kirby. Kirby nodded.

            Joseph nodded and glared up at a milky sky. “Well it’s almost ten,” he yawned and left, saying all sorts of goodbye. He heard moon river ticking in rhythm with the nods.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pulitzer

I. I am reading a children’s book called Hamish and Trieta , in which Hamish is a cow and Trieta is a bird. These two become fast friends. Good pals. Buddies. Sometimes the bird sits upon the cow’s back. Often the cow wishes he might sit upon the bird’s back, but of course this is impossible. The poor darling bird simply flits away, c hirping, chirping, always chirping, full of nonsense, not explaining. They fall apart, like many others in this fickle universe. Separated. I close Hamish and Trieta . What a hideous story. I was seduced by its whimsical cover, entranced by its gilded pages. Mother bought it for me ages ago from some downtown bookstore with cerulean walls.  Pulitzer, declares the cover, in golden script. I do not understand what a Pulitzer is and I do not particularly care.             I am a child, yet I know that horrid things do not deserve Pulitzer awards. Rage, like vomit, pools in my throat. ...
1 comment
Read more

Each other

  I. Orange juice. We used it as a kind of cure for insanity. Greg made it in the morning and then we would all run off to our prospective studios, and sit there in our prospective studios and know that we could hear the air conditioning and that we could taste our tongue in our mouth and that we worshiped all the things. Mostly ourselves. “We should form a jazz group,” Greg said in the morning the other day, and yes, yes Greg we should form a jazz group YES WE SHOULD FORM A JAZZ GROUP TOM. But who has time for that? “Yes,” we said, especially the girl with the very curly very short hair who made me think of the word “very.” I hated her. Jiminy just did not respond to the suggestion about the jazz group because we knew he would be too busy in the graphic design studio doing whatever the hell they do in there, especially being genuine which was something that other people did not do was “be genuine,” and then also drinking snickerdoodle flavored black coffee. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Anatomy of One Particular Newt and All Events Concerning

I don’t understand why you people keep pronouncing me late.  Why, I missed the entire school day, plus a couple more! If my absence can be dubbed “tardiness,” than my dead newt can certainly pass as art work.  I cannot believe that you would be so shallow as to say it is trash. Really, The insolence of some people. My newt was top notch.  No one should ever be allowed to judge art work unless they understand the simple beauty of it all.  If anything expresses the miracle of life, it is a newt’s organs pinned to a poster board. Abstract art, some would say, but not I.  Abstraction is the mystery of life, but functionality of a newt is the proof of it. And what more is art than the celebration and proof of the miraculous world that we all inhabit?   Ah, but that is not the point of the matter.  My tardiness, or absence as I would say, is the matter at hand.  It was a frightening experience, and cannot be expressed in a 100 words, as yo...
Post a Comment
Read more