dear weeper: “the communications problem is a dual-faceted one,”
states the foreword to An Executive Briefing on the Control
of Computers. in other words, I’m sorry for having cursed you
then traveled hard miles to this desolate place with the gaudy
name. remember Hugh, the old-timer who stood in front of the post office
with a jug of purple moonshine and shook his fist at the ground to damn
the dead wife he loved in hell? Gloria was it? well, one like him
was witness at a hole in the wall in this town where I’ve landed,
where lost Pataskalan men like him end up when not even green-eyed
Indians brandishing our last names are left to wed. the dive
had one of everything: beer, no liquor; venison jerky, no nuts; a girl,
me β and a Sam Cooke only jukebox whose slot I nightly fed
coins to summon one of his kind from a bedroom cave
in the hills. this the bar’s niche. when he arrived, the men parted
so I could get to him. him to me. Debbie Desario from sophomore year
swore she’d plucked enough to know their hearts were like ours:
pockmarked like the face of Mercury, punctured by a universe
hurling objects with no atmosphere for defense. but she failed
to mention the dream after taking one inside: peeking over the vessel’s
nose to an ocean so dark and so blue it could only exist in the minds
of children; and the acquired taste for the water’s odor trumping
what wafts from bowels below. the sun here is bright and warm
and we are healed before I wake, and I curl him into a ball against walls
I’ve spent real muscle scraping clean of others like you. I really am
sorry. the good news is we’re on our way back to Ohio. will you
meet me where we parted last, with a jar of your father’s homemade
grape and acoustic hymn about a prodigal’s daughter’s triumphant
return after being branded so carefully a whore at the inception
of her breasts? if you sing, he’ll crown an appearance and offer
himself as emolument to our reconciliation. let’s speak, then,
the language of old men and women while we still have tongues
of currency and corn. joy cometh in the morning, remember β
and every fever ever been had, too, shall pass. yours forever. cierra.