BONGOZ
#23

One Sleeping Cardigan

Somewhere between the day I stopped smoking cigarettes and the moment I
screamed out gravel, there was a sign. As far as signs go, this one was subtle,
damn near translucent. And I assumed that it had some sort of meaning, like
many of us do. Something divine, and honest, and mindblowing,
and earsplitting, and heart shattering, and eyebrow raising, and and and and...

My room is colder than any other in the house. I refuse, out of sheer masculinity
and stature as a native Minnesotan, to turn on a space heater. Instead I'll
swig whiskey and wear layers to sleep. The drawback here is that in my dreams
where I used to swim, I now drown smiling.

This reminds me of the time I told my mother about the dream where I was talking
and all my teeth fell out. She cried, and I asked her why, and she told me that
in her country this meant that I, or someone else, was going to die. I laughed,
because I sounded funny with no teeth. We agreed to disagree, but she still said a thousand Hail Marys and I smoked pot and fell asleep.

I didn't tell her about those dreams.

Brazz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8k4CspcDzA

#22

Bongos

I think I might like to slide right under the table and through the floor. The story being told is I’d like to take him out fishing. I suggest it. “Wouldn’t you like to go fishing with Gramps sometime?” He looks up at me from some game he’s playing. We might have the skatefish blues. I’m lost. I’ve missed my train. That’s how this always begins. He wants to take us fishing. I have to go to the courtroom, answer a few questions in front of the District Attorney. A close friend of the family. We get up early to feed the pigs and we zero in on their eyes. My grandfather turns into a fish. She calls to tell me she’s pregnant. She arrives in a rainstorm. I take a book of poems off the shelf in a foreign bookstore. This is overpriced, I say. He takes it out of my hands and puts it back on the shelf. Three hours later we are drunk in a sweaty café and he takes the book from his back pocket and hands it to me. I make him wait outside while I make the call. I am trying to note the spelling of the name of a train station while he is standing in the rain staring at me with the gloomiest look he can make on his face. When I call my father he says he needs a catscan on his stomach. They take the men elsewhere. Leo suggests that we smoke a joint. Her baby is much older now. The dog had cancer in its left kidney. She found a typewriter in the swap shop, which is next to the dump. They liked to throw old glass bottles to see if they could make it into the base of a broken refrigerator they found in those woods. He left the letter on my front porch. Just to say, I hope it’s okay if I date her. I didn’t care. I saved the letter anyhow. Sometimes when I’d help my father by cleaning out his cabinets I’d come across official documents I should not have read.

Brass