Introduction
Getting on track with my releases. I’m working hard to stay on top of my schedule for this newsletter. More time indoors with all the snow piling up outside allows for more creativity. Or, more movie watching. I tend admittedly toward the latter. Hope you’re staying warm. Thanks for reading! ♡ Luke
Spur Line Hustle
Part 3 of an ongoing series | Previous Parts: 1, 2
rare calls. boys, self-titled, out on the weekend. calls of the rare. raring to go. those nights, after 9, wandered down to passyunk, up and down the avenue, hopping between what was adobe cafe, then cantina, the pope, other small bars off the beaten path. anywhere, though, where a pool table in the back under a dim piss-yellow light, the sticks bent or beaten, had to roll them on the table to see which was straight. chalk on the table edge, broken into bluish chunks, like toner powder. beers poured, sloshed, emptied. poured again. d-boy could win any game with his knack for hard shots, strange angles, advanced geometry like the kind i didn’t pay attention to in high school. feeling more than logic. ghost of the ball travels in the head, secret pathway only the player can realize. stick slide. chalk on hands. smooth pacing through the fingers crux’d, crossed. follow through. beyond the act. the stick has a journey as much as the ball must. two journeys of motion meet to form a third that is neither the ball rolling or the stick moving but the contact. how they meet and kiss. the kiss over trajectories.
bar light made me tired. so dim i shut down. things dimmer as the night cascaded deeper into darkness. d-boy and jay talked about their dream trip to south america. boys on the coast, lavishing in sunshine and lime’d coronas. i was tired from the bar light. boys on the coast, feet sanded, pure carefree laughter, watching each other’s reflections in big black sunglasses, the kind of gazing laughter that comes with old retired men swimming in money. that bar light dwindling at the corners, less than dusk, the squeezed juices of light gone to void. tired. big visions, one day for the chilean coast, maybe stay down there, sell long hot dogs on the beach, crisp refreshing cokes for a wash-down, an extra 800 clp gets you pumpkin fries. meet their life’s loves this way, maybe, down at the beach. sand cruisers and sitters, beach ball hitters and metal detectors. waves roll in, chatter all day and night. never stop talking. learn to surf. not commanding the wave, but letting the wave command you. live in a thatched roof house, a ribbed tin shanty. something they can build with their hands. well out front. outhouse in the back. dry, crisp weather. but i was tired from laughing, clanking bar glasses, a pitch not quite crystalline tinkle, still with all the potential for breaking. tired from the dull light stretched across the table, the refractions in the glass as n-poor lifted it to his lips. seeing his mouth up through the glass bottom, stretched and skewed, distorted into pieces, two faces swimming in the piss we drank. just tired.
i went outside into a windy fall. leaves and trash scratched and scraped at the pavement, making sounds much bigger than their actions called for. i didn’t smoke, but the smokers looked at me, gray-eyed in the silver night, from beyond messy hair under their jacket hoods and carhartt caps. someone offered me a winston but i shook my head. they hesitated, asked if i was sure, and when i shook my head again and said that’s all right, they slowly pulled it back to their jean jacket pocket, a little confused. the others around them laughed, but i didn’t know if it was toward me or the one who offered. they went on talking, and i stood a little further away from them now, the incident like some small needle being slow pressed against my brain, knowing it would arrive to me again in the form of a dream or another like it: laughter out of darkness, searing through distance between us to arrive urgent with explosion. as if needed, certain energy accruing in the universe demanding expulsion.
tired, but i wanted to walk to stay warm. i decided down passyunk but thought better of it. it was a nice stroll, but the sidewalks were small and barhoppers crowded the streets and outdoor restaurants tightened passages with their outdoor seating and heaters where bolder patrons ate in their coats and hats. not feeling the street’s movement, i walked up to the bright-lit acme on the corner, suburban grocery store with asphalt parking lot amidst old brick and mortar, plaster and lathe rows. warmth radiated inside the store as i went through the sliding glass doors. fluorescent piercing, i could almost feel my pupils shrinking to tiny black dots, the smallest of squeezes inside my eyes. at the bakery, a few straggler donuts crusted stuck behind the glass. the bakers behind the counter were gone for the day. nothing greeted me but the gray shiny steel and white tile wiped down for the night. slight tang of cleaner in the air. i opened the glass drawer and tonged out a half-crushed glaze donut and wrapped it in the thin gauze paper. went over to the dairy section and got a small carton of chocolate milk. paid for them, walked outside.
i texted the boys i’d gone a-wall. i walked west toward 13th street, eating my donut and drinking my milk. i liked to eat and walk at the same time. one of those childhood habits from when my sister, playing around, would try to steal my snacks, and i’d leave the table and run off down the hallway, sister behind me, trying to reach over my shoulder and snatch at my twinkies or gold fish, her hand like a snapping turtle or the claw of an owl descending on its prey. i ate fast too because of this. a donut was one bite. but remembering my father also ate fast, and had eaten that way since he’d been a child and the family of four kids fought at the dinner table for food. my father ate with a veracity and speed that came from the sheer competition of hands and silverware glinting in the dining room light, clamors over mashed potatoes and pork roast and veggies, over mounds of spaghetti, fork fights above jiggling islands of jell-o.
i walked until 13th, went south toward the christmas lights strung across the streets. miracle on 13th. a yearly event with lights and snowmen and rain deer, white christmas props next to every stoop for blocks. too early in the season yet. the skeletal tether of christmas lights crossed high up above the street, through the trees, and hung from the rows facing each other. from these lines, unlit snowflake lights dangled and blew in the wind. the stoops were empty, but for a few pumpkins or statues. i passed lit windows with televisions, flashing as brief strikes of lightning flash in the night sky. i passed a couple sitting down for dinner, the steam rising up from hot plates of food entangling their heads. i passed many other dark windows reflecting the houses across from them. downed my chocolate milk. the donut gone in two bites. my stomach hurt and i was suddenly shivering and cold.
i’d turned somewhere, several times now, not paying attention. found myself on tasker, heading west toward Sandra’s. her front light was on so i knocked and waited in the creeping cold that ran up and down my arms. when she opened she nodded, not surprised to see me. held the door open and let me in. her apartment was dim-lit and cozy, drawings and woodblock prints on every wall. her living room, a thrifted couch and a set of chairs, a newer rug with fancy jig-saw patterns she’d gotten from a neighbor who’d moved to california. Sandra was always home, busy freelancing, and when she wasn’t home she was working part-time at a print shop.
we’d been decent friends since i moved here. met at the abandoned pier up near port richmond. far more than a wooden rickety contraption, the pier was a two-level concrete structure jutting into the delaware. decades ago, it served to load coal onto ships. two parts to the structure, one lower and one higher. in between them was a big middle wasteland of concrete and weeds. at the base of either section, concrete pillars hold up a second level. through the graffiti’d pillars, a trodden dirt path emerges, tangled trees and shrubs from either side. a jungle of industry and nature and trash mounds, bloated garbage bags busting. abandoned but teeming with life. always scrappers with bright lights, their chains wrapped around a rusted artifact, gas-powered winch pulling it up from some murky sloshing depths of delaware water. or sawing or blowtorching, their sounds carried through the concrete darkness like a wounded animal. further down, fishermen sit in camp chairs next to their white coolers glowing in the dark. another guy, seen him one summer, with climbing gear had reached an impossible part of the top level where he lived till winter. others just there, drinking, smoking at the edge, looking out across the water to Bruceland’s white refinery tanks bathed in harsh sepia light. i was one of these others, Sandra too. my group and hers sat at the very edge watching the massive cargo ships, metal dinosaur whales, so big, so quiet, float up and down the river. the groups mingled, shared smokes. Sandra and me, we connected over our fascination with the cargo ships, and i told her about my first time there, about staring at the water, seeing pure darkness, and then watching the horizon transform, a formidable slow sliding movement, like the kind in sci-fi movies where the spaceship traverses ever so slow across the universe, and then the molasses motion reveal of sepia and refinery tanks. and i realized what i’d been seeing, that a cargo ship had been there the whole time blocking my view of Bruceland, and now crawled down the river without a sound. ▨
Helen
Her white wisps
The tapioca color of her skin
lost to time that flayed it
as if the surface of
a glacial retreat scarred
wrinkled the depths of darkness
in the undue gathering of flesh
seen in dim moth light
from a window with a view
no more than the building
looking at itself
a filled parking lot
metal gleaming
dazed light
She could not account
for being
that it all went to cloud
the decade prior
when the whimpers began
when words jumbled
fell to sounds corralled
in fits of laughter and
crying without tears
So small, her body
near the end
pulling toward the ground
a golden idol
this sliver of foil
that so quickly sheens the world
one forgets its source
And her body washed by others
bits of herself drained down
not to grow again
In her bed tucked as a doll
for someone else to sleep next to
so small
Her eyebrows dark sword lines
Hair pulled back with pins
that at night loosened
scattered as bugs from sun
What dreams she had
with her gone
with life’s secrets filling ground
growing gravestone flowers
fortunate enough to withstand rain
as those enduring
seek what isn't there
find it through whispers
the small replies of other worlds
salvaged in her clothes, lined there
that lay folded by other people’s hands
Whispers pressed into dust
Coming Up…
Next Release: End of February (hopefully)
As always: If you missed anything or can’t find an email, just visit the website to read through the archives.