Three Stories
Steel Lattice In A High Voltage Place
There's a place I stand in the woods with tree-lined eyes. I stand there sometimes below several high steel bodies. Electrical towers humming--six arms and long cords attaching like long thin sperm poised to eat each other's ends. The towers need these bonds. It's their kissing and talking. When humans want to communicate they just open their mouths and whisper hello and they scream goddammit and they say I love you and they yell touch me and they spit out their tongues and lick each other into puddles. The towers are locked into a constant intercourse--static sock-choked nights. It's hard to forever suck lightning through straws that span for miles. It's hard to imagine B. Franklin spending more time with a kite than a woman. He wanted the towers trapped in a hillside orgy. When I look at the towers I know what they're dreaming. Franklin wired up to a transformer--metallic cables flowing out of his mouth and ass. If towers could talk, I'd listen. I'd lie down in the night's grass and listen.
Mule Corpse
My friend has a portrait of a dead mule framed on a wall in his bathroom
it attracts an actual mule that sometimes works in the neighbouring field
he leaves the door open often permitting the actual mule bathroom access
when he invites the mule to the shower it often declines the invitation
my friend forgets the mule will only bathe if accompanied by buckets of
oil and it must be American oil and it must be warm and it must be black
once appeased the mule will coax my friend to watch it lather its coat and
oil paints the mammal and drips down from its ears and blots out its eyes
I will not begin rinsing until the bucket's empty says the mule with focus on
the dead mule portrait above the bathroom's spit-stained 2x4 ft. mirror
it must keep itself a barnyard tractor
Suggestive Adjacency
In third grade he saw his first vagina. A yellow book on the bottom shelf near the back of the classroom. He recalls the boy who pointed it out to him and he remembers feeling afraid. Ten pages into the book and he finds a photograph of a chubby little girl standing in a 1970s abstraction--black & white. Silver hair and nude. The chubby little girl looked only a couple years older than the boys. They grabbed at their shoulders. Should we tell anyone? They agreed to remain silent if asked about the yellow book with no text on the cover. No text on the spine. Just captions and photographs.
In sixth grade he saw his first blowjob three blocks from his house. A neighbour's garage and a torn-up magazine near the entrance. Page fourteen with half a cock thrusting itself into page fifteen. Page fifteen with the head of the same cock driving itself into the mouth of a woman. He drops the book and runs from tepid smegma. Baked skin. Puberal amenities. He cannot comprehend the moment. No text on the pages. Just captions and photographs.
In ninth grade he saw his first striptease. His mother worked long hours after moving to Detroit. He took long walks after school to pass the time. He always passed a poorly-maintained motel. Time went by faster after he met a woman working at the motel. Her name was Renee. She would undress in room 305 on the bed furthest from the door. He would tell her to stop but she'd insist on showing off her breasts. She'd tell him to play. She'd tell him her dream was to be naked in films and in books. No text in the books. Just captions and photographs.
In twelfth grade he dropped out of school. He became a moaning telephone. A woman living alone in a house takes a moment to stretch out on her living room sofa. She dials a number and he answers the phone and she tells him she's never done this before. And he says I'll bet you've always wanted to do this. Don't consider yourself needy. I bet you're a pro. Do you have a picture of me? Do you have the ad where you got this number? She nods as though he can see her. Look at that while you listen to me. I'll do all the talking. Do you like my body? A moaning telephone. She listens with her fingers. Do you read dirty magazines? She closes her eyes. This will be better than a dirty magazine. Better than just captions and photographs.
The moaning telephone does what he can to keep from crying.
P. Edward Cunningham resides in Western Pennsylvania. He co-edits Radioactive Moat and serves as the Asst. Managing Editor of SLAB. He writes screenplays and poems and some of those poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Open Thread, DOGZPLOT, Ghoti/Fish, and wtf pwm. A book of essays, This Boy / This Broom is forthcoming from BatCat Press. He blogs at yellowlightbulbs.blogspot.com.