Leif Haven,
Notes Toward Fiction
Reader, I can’t remember if I went out to smoke because it was raining or if I went downstairs to brush my teeth and decided to smoke because it was raining. Reader I’m not sure that addressing you is more arbitrary than Mother Theresa, but Bloom said that Stevens was addressing the text in his poem and what would you have me do? Tonight, reader, the scenery is garbage. Listening to Suicide’s second album. Committing it to memory.
Things keep happening, like a cat in the garbage; let me snuff out the scene. I want you and only you-hoo, under my bed, even though that and everything else is on the ground, I have horrible dreams alone, but worse, I don’t wake up at the worst moment, or I do and what’s worse? Tonight the scenery is garbage reader, wrapped around my head, garbage, that I can only just see when I look sideways into the mirror, with another mirror, while finally. Brushing my poor teeth. In the course of the poem
I’ll ask you to take the ear cone and pose for me on the window sill, think Jovian, in a weird swanny way If you can only hold it ‘til morning it’ll be ok. A dress form against the dirty light. I’ll be waiting for you reader, to plug back up my heart. I’ll promise to look at your eyes not your chest. I’ll chisel a curtain for you. Come visit me in the beer garden bathroom. Do you want to hear about my dreams? I didn’t think so, Reader.
In the course of the poem we will both get flat tires and have to walk home through the Industrial Zone. In the course of the poem we’ll sit on the fire escape and drink wine. You will start crying and run away. When I catch you by the arm in the street you turn around and scream at me. That’s when I realize that you can see the future. In the course of the poem you will be addressed, dressed, and undressed more times than in the average day.
