clip.3

Unnee met this boy named Scott in PreSchool. Unnee fell in love too much. He had brown eyes and blond hair and was just a boy. Unnee wanted to play with him all the time and I just rolled my eyes and stayed in my room with my pencils. One time, Chin Halbujee and Chin Halmunee came over to stay with us. I remember Chin Halbujee's movements, but not his face or his body or his voice or his smell. Unless you count the smell of smoke, which was not his own smell but the smell of the fire he held between his fingers. Chin Halbujee moved like he had no joints. He moved like he could only go on for a little while longer and he moved in silence. His head nod was his language. It could mean - change the channel, go get me coffee, sit next to me, sit still, more rice please, and yes.

Sometimes, Chin Halbujee would forget about us and lock us outside. Then, Unnee and I had to amuse ourselves for hours until Uma got home. Sometimes, we would make boobie traps out of jump ropes, hula hoops, baseball bats, kick balls, sticks, string, chalk, and rusty nails.

Unnee and I were sitting in our room and I grew tired of us. Let's go outside, I said. Okay, Unnee said. We tried to crawl down the stairs on all fours like dogs, but that only worked when you were going in the up direction and could propel yourself forward with your arms. Going down, you had to use all your arm muscle to support your hanging weight and soon, it all ended up badly with both our bodies piled on the wooden floor. Unnee and I grabbed our swishy jackets - hers pink, mine green before I stepped outside to the wind world. When I turned around to say something - I forget what - I saw Unnee turn the lock.
"What are you doing?"
"Locking the door."
"How will we get back in?"
"We won't need to."
"Why?"
"Scott is coming to pick us up."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Unnee was holding onto a rubber ball and I was holding on to nothing. Chin Halbujee was inside watching old Westerns on television. I could hear the sound of the gunshots and his mucus-coughing when I pressed my ear an hour later against the cold metal door. He watched a lot of TV. Chin Halbujee liked to watch TV and smoke, even though he was a genius. As a genius, he should have known better. I learned about smoking in school one day when everyone got an aluminum ash tray, a needle, and markers. Draw happy things on the ash trays, said Mrs. Klindenst. I drew a girl - me - with long black hair and a green dress. I had a big smile on my face because we were supposed to draw something happy. After we were all done, Mrs. Klindenst told us to turn the ash tray upside down, take the needle and poke twenty-five little holes onto the bottom. I counted, even though it was hard. Twenty-five holes.
Alright, Mrs. Klindenst said after I sat there waiting for everyone else to finish. Take this gift to a friend or family member who smokes. Smoking kills. Everyone, repeat after me. Smoking kills.
"Smoking kills," we all replied.
I turned my ash tray right-side up and looked at my picture - my body and once-smiling face was punctured with tiny pricks everywhere, my eyes poked out into two gaping holes. This was not nice. It was the first time I was frightened of myself. But I gave it to Chin Halbujee anyways and he kept it by his real, stone ashtray.

Unnee said we had to wait on the street next to our mailbox, 1386 Doe Trail Road. Scott would come to pick us up.
"But he doesn't drive."
"His mother is coming too."
"When did you talk to them?"
"Before."

I sat on the curb for a long time. The world was light and then became darker. I did not know what time it was - only that my legs hurt and my toes were cold. I was getting very warm in my jacket, zipped up to my nose. I was very warm when the air began to glow around us. It smelled like the moment before rain, when two fractured parts of the day clasp together in dry upheavel. A thunder battle was about to occur. Though my sight told me that the crash had not yet happened, I knew in my mind that the battle was fully under way. The darkness so bright, and the light so dark - both were sharp and present - so completely present in every single vibrating molecule that the world shook in its fullness. I could feel the shaking. To this very day I can feel the shaking. That's how I know when to hold my breath, plug my ears, stand still, and only use my eyes and nose to sense everything, even the dust, outlined in glowing blue.

The concentration of these living colors made part of me want to bleed so I could see what blood would look like in this moment of the world. I wanted my eyes to never let go of the wet colors, of the shades of blue and white and light. But I also knew how the world felt - yearning to be deeper - so that I could contain and be a part of such things. Just as I was about to stand up because I could no longer sit, I heard a car approach.

"Is it Scott?" I thought, but Unnee had her head on the grass and her eyes were closed. Blades of green fell between her lips and shivered with each passing of breath that came from Unnee's mouth and moved deeply into the dirt below the stone, the street, and the roots of any living thing.

I looked into a face that leaned out the car window. He was not a boy. His skin looked pale and translucent and his hair looked so shiny-black that it turned blue - as if the night sky had transcended onto the yawn of morning. He saw me and knew what it was like to live a few hours of each day in dreams. We drew one breath. I did not blink- but in the next fracture of time - he was never there - and in that moment I found out that, at the age of six, my dream mind had found out how to escape the cage of sleep.

clip.2

I am on my hot pink Barbie bike and all the world is moving together in the opposite direction as me. The year is turning cold, and in order to compensate for the world’s nakedness, people are turning out more and more layered.

I think that in such moments as these, human expression falls short because of what we lose in each layer of translation. The soul takes the first, sharpest bite. Sometimes, if we are lucky, this lasts for more than a fleeting second. Then the twist-bang hits our hearts, which, mercifully, can only handle so much and acts as a sponge-octopus interpreter, with its six strip tentacles attached to our sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and breathing. Or it runs straight to our minds, which, made out of millions of tiny swinging axes, chips and chops at the liquid sensation pervading each air pocket of brain tube, sometimes spilling out of our ear and nose holes, into the wild outside air, to be caught by a passing stranger or friend who is then drawn out of his or her dazed walk and, for the first time in months, notices the trees. These pieces which our brain processor makes, then falls from us with the soft tapping of our eye lashes or lips, each blink or syllabic movement loosening crumbs of what we have in ourselves, like the nodding of a cigarette butt spitting out fragments of ash and fire. These molecular inadequacies are never again our own, and, in a whirl of shouts and bangs and screams, it whispers into the soul of someone else in order to try again.

I woke up from this dream

You and I, we, all of us, were hiding in a large room above a restaurant. It was dark and quiet and we were frightened because all of Philadelphia was being overrun by demons. We heard the high pitched echoes of running feet hit the thin metal stairs of the fire escapes outside. There were also the softer, heavier sounds of feet hitting the floors above us. Though we did not know if the demons had found a way in, there were a thousand and ten floors above us, and two windows to every floor.
We told eachother, if you see one, keep your eyes closed. The demons possess you by spitting into your eyes. Sometimes we could also hear the echoes of desperate knocking on the side doors, or the rattling of windows. At first, we would go, we would try to help, I promise, we tried to help. But when one girl tried to help the little boy staring through the window, she herself was almost taken.
I thought of Sue and my parents. Where else is this happening? I asked. Someone turned on a radio, but only very very softly. On the news, it was reported that nowhere else was this happening. Maybe only in some parts of central United States. But the West Coast was free and all of the East coast except Pennsylvania was free. Philadelphia was where it started. Philadelphia, the radio voice hoped, was where it would end.
Almost everyone believed. We were all in our twenties and that made us old enough to know how to be like our parents or like our older folk and knew how to feel relieved when our loved ones did not share our doom. But I had my ear against the speaker, I pressed up against it hard so that the metal holes left small, circle, impressions on my ear. Layered behind the reporter’s voice, I heard screams. The uncertainty was horrifying, but I could not tell anyone because we all had family and the best, most hopeful thing at that moment was that they were not us.
There was a man in the room who loved me. In two minutes after I found myself in this place, I told him that I loved him too. I could not help it - I had to make up more hope because there was so little of it left. He grew confident and told the group that we all had to move downstairs and try to leave this building instead of waiting. It was our only chance to escape and there was a forest to our left that we could make our way through. Only we did not know what was in the forest or if the demons came from there. But we did all know that it was dark and there was nowhere else to go.
Our feet were quiet but our breathing was loud when we moved downstairs. It was a wide space and the room was perfectly round. There were heavy curtains hanging on golden rods and round tables with round chairs that had long, round backs and tiny, round feet. We each took a chair and lost ourselves in thoughts. But only for a little time because soon there was the sound of many loud whispers, of people planning and asking and cursing and crying and, perhaps, praying (I know that I did not pray), I began to think of how one man in the room had a car and could take me to my sister’s place. It was parked outside on the street, right in front of one of the windows. It was an old white van and if it still worked then we could drive away quickly. This was a better chance than running into the forest. I got up from my chair and went to he who was sitting on the floor. Will you take me in your van to see my sister? I asked. “Do you love me?” he asked. That’s when I remembered that I had forgotten two years of knowing this person, and then there was a thread of stories in my mind about myself and that person that I had not known before.
“Yes,” I told him. “Then we will go,” he said.
The first man I loved since the beginning of this story was tall and had dark hair. I remember myself sitting cross legged on the carpet floor and looking up to see him walk by me quickly.

Suddenly, we heard heavy knocking on the side door leading to our room. Mariya ran upstairs. “Where are you going?” I whisper-yelled. But she was already moving and I had to get up and follow her to try and make her understand what was happening so as not to let the demons in. But Mariya knew. When we got the second floor she walked towards a small door on the wall that I had not seen earlier and turned the knob. Inside, it was dusty. She climbed onto a stool and looked out the small, barred window, which showed us the side-entrance below us. Standing there were two men, talking. They were calm.

They are too calm, Mariya said. But how do we judge such things, I asked. They will always be too calm or too scared or too excited. There was no point in coming up here and pretending to be fair.

When we came back downstairs, all the curtains were down and I did not ask what happened. One of the windows, I noticed, was opened a little bit. I ran to the man with the and told him that we had to leave soon and to tell no one about our plan. Then I left to tell my two friends in the room to come with us, and telll no one, otherwise not one of us would get away. I think they agreed. But there was no point to all this because the two men Mariya and I had seen from uptairs were at the open window. I ran to it to close it but one of the men leaned forward and spit. I closed my eyes and felt wet on my cheek. I opened my eyes to struggle with the window when the man spit again and again and again and I tried hard to avoid my eyes. Then the second man smashed open the window. We all began to scream.

I ran. I ran to the other side of the room and went outside. I looked behind me and saw one woman become possessed. I ran around the corner with the hope of finding the van. But around the corner there were more demons or people who were pretending to be possessed. I could not tell what was real. So I ran back to the door of the building . It was locked. I cupped my hand above my eyes and leaned against the window. Inside I saw the circle room. Everyone was sitting in circles. Their clothes were dirty, torn, and bloody, but they had beautiful lined napkins on their laps. There were waiters holding trays of food. People were laughing and looked happy and it was the scariest thing I have ever seen because my mind knew that it was time for me to run. But there were people in the room whom I knew. And the thing that hurt my heart the most was that some people in that room were not possessed. And they would have to sit there and pretend forever. Just as my hand formed a fist and I almost knocked on the window, a face appeared. He was a waiter and smiled at me and wanted me to come in and dine away from the outside chaos. I saw his eyes and knew that I must go. So I began to run towards the forest. I heard the waiter call for help and I heard myself being chased towards the forest. I knew there would be no hope for me there but I had to run because there was nowhere else to go. What overpowered me more than the fear from running from demons, was the horror I felt when I thought about those left in the city who were not possessed. They would have to go on either pretending to also be possessed, or sit on their knees forever with their eyes closed, only hearing their own screams until their throats became bloody and the mystery of the sounds around them would force them to open their eyes. Then I saw in my mind these people curled on the gravel, screaming, and a dark figure crouched over their face, waiting and never leaving.

I ran. I ran and left this all behind and I felt terrible and I remembered seeing a tall man with dark hair sitting at a round table with glass through his chest. I ran. I ran and had started earlier than the two waiters coming after me.
My stomache was hot and I could not breathe but I was running and approaching the forest. I could not breath and it was hot but I was almost to the edge of the forest.

Though there was heat on my body and I was suffocating, I knew as the co-author of my dreams, that there was something ahead that would save me. And this why I did not give up and ran. I ran and reached the forest. I reached the first two trees. So did the demons. I ducked. They ducked. I felt their breaths on my neck and cried out and cried out and cried out. And though sometimes we do not receive answers and though sometimes many are left to continue to cry out, my cries were immediately answered. A woman appeared and stood by me and would not let the demons get me. The demons would try but she would not let them.

Soon, the prince demon showed up and tried to get me too. But she would not let him and she reached out behind her and encircled her arms around me. She stood in front of me as we turned around and around, she, trying to shield me with her body from the rotating demons. Keep your eyes closed, keep your eyes closed, she said.

ThePrince demon spoke. He rose from the ground and threw a scroll in the air and the woman caught it. “Begone,” the woman said. And the demon prince left. “Follow me,” the woman said. We left the forest and I followed her and her people. We walked slowly up a hill and I looked back. And what I could not see weighed heavily on my heart.

clip. - Chpt? - an end to the famine.

Abba began to feel bad for us. Especially when we began to quote Oliver Twist which we had seen with Abba the day before the whole fiasco. Unnee and I would put on our dirty laundry, position ourselves in front of the door as Abba came in with his briefcase after work, smelling like the indoored outside; like paper and carpet and coffee and the interiors of cars.
“Please sir, may I have some more?” we’d cry in our terrible cockneyed English. “Please sir, just a little more!” “Us poor paupered children” “nothing to eat but a bit o bread and cheese.

Unnee and I fought over who got to sit in the shotgun seat so we both ended up sitting in the back. And then when we got the bright, giant orange sign, we fought over who got to sit in the cart.

“Jean-a,” said Abba, as he lifted Unnee up and pulled each of her legs through the metal holes in the cart. “But why, Abba?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. Last time I tried to force my legs through the cart, I got stuck, and they had to call a guy in blue overalls to come to the store and cut open the cart with these big, thick scissors so I could get my legs out.

Unnee smiled as she gave herself an elevated panoramic view of the produce section. I was sad because I did not fit in the cart. So I held on to one side of Abba’s jacket and walked from the warm outside into the exciting cold, fruity, mist. The happiness of wet fruit was contagious. Soon I was imagining different dishes with the raw goodness in front of me transformed.

Not all fat children are fat because they like to eat. I was fat. And I loved to eat. I opened my mouth at the cold grocery store air and pretended to breathe in all of the red, green, orange, and yellow peppers. “It has truly been a long time,” said a pile of overriped avocados from a small bin next to the stacked cherry tomatoes. “Indeed,” said the kiwis, their high pitched voices blending in three-part harmony. “Where have you been?” they sang. “Where have you been, where have you been?”
“A long way off,” I sang back. “Over the woods and through the mountains to grandfather’s house, a long way off.”
“But why so far, but why so far?”
“Because I had to get away and there was nowhere else to go.”

I wandered to the strawberries as Abba walked over to the plums. He picked up one of the brightest ones, and gave it a little squeeze, which made it giggle and giggle as it tumbled into an open plastic bag where it would surely find death by suffocation. The strawberries were not any better off. Their appearance was truly alarming, and reminded me of Puzzles, the giraffe with a tumor whom I had seen at our class trip to the zoo last Fall. I couldn’t bear to watch them suffer so I moved to the next section, where all the organic red, purple and green grapes were engaged in a full scale war. I must have walked in after the end of a particularly epic battle because the few grapes which had not tumbled onto the floor were either crushed or completely pulpified. All except one.
“What happened?” I asked the small green grape.
“Death to all insurgents!” he cried.
“But what does that mean?” I asked.
“Follow me, the most powerful of them all! Or prepare for death!”
“But you are only a grape.”
“Prepare for death!”
“But you are only a grape.”
“Prepare for death!”
“Were you the cause of all this?”
“Follow me, or to prepare to meet your maker!”
“Who is the maker?” I asked.
“The one who…makes…things.” He said.
“Did he make me?”
“Indeed, you insolent fool.”
“did he make you?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“So wouldn’t that make him more powerful than you?”
“…prepare for death!”

I placed a finger on either side of his curvatures and squeezed. “Eeek,” cried a small voice from the bottom of the bin. “You have killed our poor little Freddy.”

I ran to the bakery. “Wait, Jean-a!” called Abba, but I was already gone, a fugitive grape killer, running to the haven of the glass windows shielding the sweet green dinosaurs, the dark brown mice, and, my favorite, favorite friends.

I leaned my right cheek on the cool, clear plate, and sighed. There they were, all of them molded with butter, sugar, flour, and unformed chicken babies.
And there was a fresh new tray of my favorite, favorite friends, the cupcake panda bears. “Would you like one?” asked a lady behind the counter. I nodded my head hard.

The panda bears’ bodies and heads were made out of Oreos. The Oreos were perfect circles, every single one of them. I held one up to my eye, in front of the brown clock on the wall. Then I pressed my middle finger and my thumb together and snapped. The smooth sharp movement, separated the Oreo halves. “Goodbye, friend.” I whispered.

When we got the checkout aisle, all that was left of the panda was a cupcake wrapper. I looked up at the white-haired lady at the cashregister, who wore blue circle glasses. Only she didn’t look as old as halmunee. She didn’t even look as old as Uma. But she was definitely older than me. I did not understand why her hair was so white.
“Why is your hair white?” I asked.
She looked down at me through her blue owl glasses. “Was that from the bakery?” She asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“What was it?” she asked.
“A cupcake friend.” I replied.
She quickly punched in $1.30 on the tab.
“What is this?” asked Abba.
“Your daughter has a cupcake.”
“Jean-a, where did you get that?”
“The bakery. My cupcake friend.”
“Your what?”
“A panda.”
“Who said you could get that?”
“The lady at the bakery. She is very nice.”
“No Jean. I never said you could get a cupcake.”
“But she gave it to me.”
“For free?”
I actually didn’t know for sure whether she gave it to me or expected me to pay for it. I really didn’t know for sure.
I nodded my head.
“You sure?” He asked.
“They don’t just go about giving free cupcakes to all the…” – she eyed my belly –"hungry children in the store, you know,” said Owl Lady.
“My daughter says she gave it to her. But I will pay for it.” Said Abba.
I began to feel ashamed because I did not want to make Abba sad and $1.30 was a lot of money. But I also felt less guilty because Abba was going to pay for it and that would make everything better because we would not be almost steeling. Though Abba would still be sad.
“Well if she said she gave it to her, then she gave it to her,” said Owl Lady. “I will just have to talk to Barbara about it.”


In the car, I felt sick. That was the only time I ever skipped dinner.

I fall in love about
3 times a day.
Once, with a gray hat -
thinly striped, not checkered -
that skates straight in the air
and into the light spots outside
Once with a brown leather bag
and black glasses
and scrub pants
And once with
a soul that runs up the
stairs, holding onto the metal
railing that sighs ice
through and through.

Jibberish, that's what
Jibberish and hair and
and mouths
and shoe bottoms.

Seeing Things

Out on the porch landing,
My eyes reached towards
traffic,
windows, and cemented pits of water.
Laura talked about pessimism
as my mind swept up the light -
so pessimism became large and gray
and soft and damp
and it nibbled into the cracks of
street one crossing street two crossing
nerves and winks and
washed out synapses.
It fell through these hard things,
past minutes and sleep sighs and
onto yesterday, onto the moment
I believed that all
would be like the pointing hand -
moving - but only in
side side
tick
rounds.

I saw her and I saw the need and I
promised to her that I would pray.
In the moment my eyes stepped past these
frames, in between one stop
and the next, they grasped a shadow
that immediately slipped away
but in such a manner that it
moved past and through the human
face and neck and bust
and then left - to the next or
to the nothing.

I felt dis eased,
for I saw and knew
that I could not dwell on it
And I could not allow for that
one swing movement
to overtake the settled, rising mist.

God's Journal entry #6

Today I grew frustrated with all the
Philadelphian orphan children asking for this and that
So I sighed hard, blowing the clothes off of all the
surrounding trees.
"We are naked!" cried the branches.
"Sucks to be you, huh?" replied all the trunks.
I am a good God, I said. Social equality for all.

This Blows

Why am I so selfish and why can't I
go happy lucky?
Where has everyone gone
And what happened to the
Women like Gertrude, Virginia,
And terrible terrible Amy?
Man, I'm really depressed.
The rain runs horizontally
both ways at once. And
the force of the water is
pushing my face together in
permanent worry furrows.
Sometimes I call out but then
I hear my own pathetic voice, and
then I think - I wouldn't even
answer myself.
I see a man sitting with his legs parted
Over the sewer. The steam
dampens the bottom of his black coat,
and he's holding his hands to the sky
And laughing.