179. Lacan & } The Crystal Geyser

Early this morning I found a cardboard box full of books on the sidewalk near my office. “Free” in Sharpie. Lucan’s Civil War, translated by Susan H. Braund caught my eye.

In my office, I flipped through—an eye out for notes, bookmarks (I’ve found pressed flowers, foreign currency, family photos). I found, on page 61, a single note in pencil. It’s difficult to read. I think it reads, “put on muzzling, as it quoth of.” This note is beside the underlined phrase, “he unlocked his throat, but no voice” (book three, line 738). There are no other notes in the entire book.

[This reminds me: last night, while reading an article about the thylacine, I found a single word circled: “Booth.” I said, “This is so strange. In the whole magazine, just this one word is circled.” My eldest smiled and told me she circled it. I asked why and she said, “I thought it would be creepy.”]

Aside from the single note, I found two pages where the corner was folded: pages 21 & 44. I read page 21 (“Why war without enemy?” & “him I recognize, lying on the river sands, / an unsightly headless corpse”). I read page 44 (“and where Pomptine marshes are divided by a watery road, / where the lofty grove is”). And I read page 61 (Argus’ father, distraught at his son’s death, drives “a sword through his entrails” and dives “beneath the deep waters”—“he trusted his life to no single form of death”)  And, on page 61, I read how Argus’ father’s wound becomes “the crystal geyser.”

The phrase “put on muzzling, as if quoth of” makes (a sort of) sense in context of an unlocked throat without a voice—the lack of voice is the muzzle, “put on” by Argus and by death. “As if quoth of”—as if Argus spoke? Or: is the muzzle itself what was spoken? Argus speaks by not speaking (instead he seeks his father’s embrace, only to be denied by his father’s desire to die ahead of his son).

But it’s the phrase “crystal geyser” that electrified me. As in, The Crystal Geyser! I haven’t thought about it since I received pages from a copy of the book (a book I’ve yet to identify as real).

Why would you describe a wound as a crystal geyser? A geyser, sure. But crystal? Was it a sunny day on the battlefield? Would sunlight cause a geyser of blood to resemble crystal? I was reminded—inevitably—of my former student [x], who died in 2012, supposedly of a motorcycle accident, and about the story another student told me, that [x]’s organs were found crystalized.

The Braund Civil War offered no explanation. No endnote. I looked at other translations—the phrase “crystal geyser” does not appear.

Another dead end. And why should it be otherwise?

156. Mookie & Pookie & } the White Hands.

Yesterday I received an email from Erin Laine. The full text of it—“Now you’re in a wilderness, Pookie.” I replied—wrote, simply, “Erin?” As you know my last contact with her was in 2014, at a coffee shop where I prepared notes for a lecture on Mark Samuels’ short story “Colony.” What she said to me then was cryptic. I sensed she was distressed, and I subsequently made fruitless efforts to contact her. Inexplicably, my reply was sent to my phone as a text, though garbled; it read: “Exin?”

Pookie, by the way, is not a nickname anyone called me except Erin. When she first called me Pookie, while we waited to get into our MIT weekend courses (mine was “Homer’s Odyssey”; hers was a computer programming course), I thought she was teasing me—you know, Sally calling Linus her “Sweet Babboo.” When I said so she said, “No, dummy” and explained to me about a television show she saw called “Mookie and Pookie.” Go ahead and Google. If I’m Pookie I’m Justine Bateman.

None of this adds up to anything but it did remind me that I published excerpts from the lecture notes I wrote about the Mark Samuels collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press, 2012). The notes appear in Supernatural Tales 34. What follows is from the first lecture and does not appear in ST:

Students, As I prepare these lecture notes, and in addition to the Samuels, we find upon my desk a thermos of coffee laced with rum, this notebook, and a blue, paper packet that contains a single human tooth. [...] Alfred Muswell calls for a literature opposed to realism. His model is the stories of Lilith Blake. We’re told Blake is best known for her collection The Reunion and Others, but best known to us is The White Hands and Other Tales. [...] We may as well note here that the title The White Hands and Other Tales is very similar to the title of the Samuels book we hold in our own hands, The White Hands and Other Weird Tales. Similar, but not the same. Will the Samuels effect us as the Blake did Muswell?

Now I'm in a wilderness. If anyone hears from Erin, please let me know.

126. VERA SHEVZOVA } frond 1 - 37.

Monoton‘s Monotonprodukt 07 was properly reissued in 2012 (Desire Records) and Craig Leon’s Nommos and Visiting were reissued in 2014 (Rvng Intl.), but still no one has brushed off Vera Shevzova’s frond 1 – 37. This negligence causes me to ask: does the album even exist?

Occasionally, during our print pre-history, Shevzova would get written up in ‘zines dedicated to early 1980s arcana, but no one seemed to know anything—there was a cassette, it was written, produced in Poland (then, without fail, a lament about the production value of such objects)—but no one actually heard the music. In '89 I saw a tour poster stapled to a telephone pole in Boston, but I was too young to get into the club.

Recently, I uncovered on the shelf of a used bookstore, the sleeve of Shevzova’s frond 1 – 37. Thrill and disappointment. No record! Inside, typed on a yellowed sheet, a bit of a press release.

Either Shevzova is real, and a crate-digger needs to find her and upload frond (or whatever)—or there’s no Shevzova, just cardboard and paper.

I posted the album sleeve at Jeff Crouch’s Famous Album Covers.

107. Reading } Brookline Booksmith

A former student of mine told me she works with nerves insensate. She took my hands and said, “You know about the mineralized heart, don’t you?” I nodded. “You’d think,” she said, “it would be ruby or garnet. Maybe a red diamond?” She looked past me, straightened up, released my hands and said, “Professor. So good to see you. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.” I said, “No, really—” but she was gone before I could say anything to reassure her.

I didn’t chase after, but watched her go—hoped maybe she’d come back. She knew something about [X], whose organs were found partially crystallized after she was killed in a motorcycle accident, and maybe something about the Crystal Geyser? The more I thought about it—how could she? That was another campus, another state.

Perhaps a practical joke? Could she be one of the handful who reads Little Stories? If she is, I include her in this open invite: A week from today, that is Friday, June 13^th, at 7pm, I read with poets Matthew Klane and Alexandria Peary at Brookline Booksmith.

Not such a while ago, Matthew directed me to Delete Press, where his book from of the day was published as the first in their Delete-E series. from of the day is more lighthearted, I think, than his previous books Che and B. He writes, “Consult / yr skeleton’s / raucous hollows.” Though my sense of what’s lighthearted may be sickened from years of laughter. Alexandria Peary is not a poet I’m very familiar with, but I’m reading her book Control Alt Bird Delete and finding much to like. The first stanza of “Lilacs as Chart”:

The purple & white bars

rising and falling

are on mute

around the cellar hole

There’s a lot of this mixture, bar codes and nature.

Bash is hosted by Janaka Stucky. He hosted the reading for Elisa Gabbert’s The Self Unstable that I took my eldest to see / hear. When he read his poetry, my eldest asked, “what does ‘Thus I perish in amazement’ mean?” To which I replied, “I have no idea.” After perusing Janaka’s Wikipedia page, what amazes me most is we’re the same age yet I’ve accomplished so little.

98. Followed by } anonyma, pseudepigrapha, & apocrypha.

March, 1953, The Hall of Fantasy, a weekly radio series broadcast “an original tale of fantasy by Richard Thorne entitled,” “The Masks of Ashor.” The story begins when Marsha’s Uncle Harold sends two gold masks. Marsha’s husband, Bert, says that the masks are “…beautiful, except grotesque at the same time”; his wife adds, “well they look human, and yet….” In spite of their uncertainty about the masks, they decide to hang them up on either side of the mirror that hangs above the fireplace in their living room.

Accompanying the masks is a letter from Uncle Harold. The masks are from Istanbul, they’re gold yet the seller sold them for very little—was eager to be rid of them—and, “there’s some kind of story connected with them, I don’t know what it is….” When Uncle Harold finds out, he rushes to save his niece and her husband from  the true owner of the masks, Ashor—but too late.

Last year—in March, as a matter of fact, I received a pair of masks in the mail. I have no Uncle Harold, but an Aunt Eileen. One of the masks is pictured above.

During my Color Plates book tour, I was handed a play, properly, a masque, by an actress leaving what I presumed was an audition taking place in the space above the bar where I read. I transcribed some of the “Black Masque” here, in the hope someone would claim authorship. No one has. Though I am not the author, I tend to think of it as mine.

My copy of Transactions of the Flesh arrived a little ahead of Christmas. I’ve only just started to poke at it, but see it includes “Indescribable,” an excerpt from M.O.N.’s ObliviOnanisM, a “profanely mystical work of hyperpurple theory-porn”—a description provided by ObliviOnanisM’s publisher, gnOme. The connection I made between gnOme and the masque handed me in New York City is gnOme’s aesthetic toward anonymity and an authentic kind of falsehood, the sort of truth that lives in, as gnOme has it, “pseudepigrapha” and “apocrypha.”

I believe the “Black Masque” is more than just a script; it’s a transcript, and when performed, a liturgy.

Does Anonymous make contact with gnOme, or does gnOme contact Anonymous?

86. Shane Carruth } encrypts buckle-pan with data.

The machine they build is a ramshackle box, kind of like the movie Crammed.

Months passed, then years, then the lanky guy who’d left film-found odd voice recordings says, “And if you look, you won’t find me.”

The trees open up to reveal a slight deviation in his parents. Flashes of data, barely seen at all. “So, that’s work, Dad?”

Rooting around dirt forts, he’s hard-pressed to recall the name of a single co-worker from his engineering days. What he really wanted was a belief that they could find new truths in the account. People fill up message boards and YouTube videos and multi-part, critical exegeses with their thoughts. “But some of that stuff, I just get spun up.”

To see it, a lot of people stopped paying attention to him altogether. Enthused confusion about data bracketing.

78. Readings & } reading.

A week ago Wed., attended the Catenary + Convulsive off-site reading at Outpost 186 in Inman Square. A hailstorm kept me in the car a few moments. Yoga students stood on a porch with their mats. Just enough time for a slice of pizza / to work on a few pages of Afton Wilky’s ms. Just hours before, at the MFA with my family. Massive sculptures of Bad Baby. Poet Margaret Ross started the reading and impressed me most. Read as if wearing braces and held my attention absolutely. Bought her chapbook Decay Constant. Read, from “Of Late,”

…Walls bare between the hooks
from which starched whitecoats plunge like so
many ruined candles in a row that once could
light one’s passage in toward
innermost enclosures. Labmice there glow
green and beautiful, infected shades expressing

Sat with Jennifer Moxley, author of There Are Things We Live Among, from Flood Editions. We talked about George Oppen for a second.

Next night I read from Color Plates. Haven’t read from CP in ages. I like the story a lot, but I dropped a simile and cut the phrase “God’s hands”—an improvement. Everyone who read, without exception, proved to be excellent readers; a fair number were good writers, too. Harold Abramowitz read from a Not Blessed-esque work in progress. Liat Berdugo read from The Everyday Maths. I bought a copy. She inscribed it, “to Adam, the first book I’ve ever signed.” Cole Swenson wrote, “this is a book truly like no other”; in fact, it reminds me of a book I loved as a boy: Science Made Stupid by Tom Weller. Read that book over and over. A diagram illustrating tides accompanied by the caption, “To observer water level appears to rise; actually, land has sunk.” I still find this hilarious.

Fri., sloshed through Harvard Sq. to the Advocate reading with Song Cave, Fence, etc. Jacob Wren, in spite of his performance, convinced me his book Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed was worth reading. Rebecca Wolff tried to keep me from buying a copy, but I persevered. I insisted on telling Wren how good his book is. He aggressively did not care and inscribed my copy, “I hate you, Adam” No matter. In a few years I’ll believe I inscribed the book myself and all will be forgiven. I haven’t finished Wren’s book yet, but thus far, aside from some minor tics, it’s brilliant. Wren’s technique is complex and satisfying.

Already wrote about Sat. reading at the Burren. I didn’t buy a book there, but Sarah Suzor generously gave me a copy of Highway 101’s latest chapbook. Afterwards, an excellent conversation about the borderlands between fiction and non.

Wed. night at Real Art Ways heard Sueyeun Juliette Lee and Natalie Lyalin. Lee's reading was fun, Lyalin's wasn’t, quite, but her poetry is good; bought Try A Little Time Travel. Instead of page numbers, left-facing pages are “past,” right-facing “future.” Read from my collaboration with Anna Eyre and Kaethe Schwehn’s contribution to Ghosts. I shared a table with a tall, slender woman. She said I am an eccentric. Watched her walk to her car. Once inside and safely buckled, she burst into a brilliant white flame.

73. Her heart turned ruby } a reading.

[ X ], a former student of mine, was supposedly killed in a motorcycle accident. As always happens when an unremarkable young person dies, the lost potential of her life was lamented. “[ X ] had such a bright future ahead of her.” Who knows? I recall the last time I saw her. She came to my office, ostensibly to discuss an upcoming exam. She didn’t seem to care about the exam. Something else worried her—so she said. What, I don’t know. She sat in my office and stared into space. Even when she spoke, she stared. Finally, she said, “Something’s coagulating.” I said, “Do you mean, ‘coming together’?” She said, “Thanks professor,” and left. She was absent the next class and all the following week. The registrar informed me she was dead the week after finals, but everyone knew by then about the accident.

At the beginning of the next semester, I overheard two students at the college bookstore talking about [ X ]. One said, “…what was weird was some of her organs were found partially crystallized.”

How can that be true? It can’t be true. Nonetheless, I find the image of an organ from her body, her heart, say—turned crystal and lit from inside—often recurs.

A current student invited me to read with her creative writing class. She said she thought I was a poet because of the way I talk about poetry and lo, I am. Wednesday night I’ll read poems from The Rescue in the Central Connecticut State University Student Center. The reading begins at 7:30pm and will be over before you know it.

70. Crystalline blood and } "Terrible Things."

My contributor’s copy of Shadows & Tall Trees #4 arrived a day before the hurricane. Tucked at the binding was a page torn from a copy of The Crystal Geyser. I assumed editor Michael Kelly was playing a joke, that he’d found another copy of the book I mentioned here in June and thought it might spook me to see a page from it turn up in my mail.

Finding the page did spook me, especially when I read it over—I’d read the weird little book through but I didn’t remember this: “…is presumably flint crystalline blood, brilliantly clear, but red-hued, found during the Regime of the Flood, caught in its scrub of ugly useless trees and in the animals sheltered by those trees…”—or any of what followed. And I discovered that the page Michael sent me was missing from my copy.

I emailed Michael—who lives in Canada, who has never visited my home—and asked how he did it, and he wrote back to tell me he had no idea what I was on about. He added, “and according to the almighty Internet, there is no book called The Crystal Geyser. There’s a bottled water called Crystal Geyser. There’s an actual geyser called Crystal in Utah—but no book. I’m sure, since you have a copy, that there is a book called The Crystal Geyser, but I don’t own a copy. You got me curious,” he continued, “so I emailed the other contributors and they didn’t get any mysterious pages with their copies, and none of the books I pulled from the boxes sitting here in my living room have extra pages. Maybe you’re playing a joke on me?”

Of Shadows &Tall Trees, I haven’t read all the issue yet—I just finished “Senbazuru” by V.H. Leslie. The most exciting story in the issue so far is “Terrible Things” by David Surface. If it doesn’t end up reprinted in a best-of anthology, or on the final ballot of one of horror’s little literary awards, it’s time to reconsider the worth of those institutions. Excellent “Senbazuru” is an echo of horrors, of hydrogen bombs and internment camps and of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”—a story that goes round and round in my head as a favorite.

63. Reading } The Poetry Institute, New Haven.

A black bank clock read 98 degrees and a bit past 6pm. Too late to revisit the museum. I sat in a line of shade outside a bar and drank rum and ate a tomato while adding a few lines to OUTLAND. At 6:30 I climbed up a steep staircase to The Institute Library (founded 1826). The a.c. was on full. I drank red wine from a plastic cup and perused a copy of I.E.S. Edwards’ The Pyramids of Egypt.

Twenty-plus attendees formed a half-circle in the reading room. I stood by a heavy, round table, beneath a lamp that hung from the high ceiling and read from OUTLAND, an untitled story, and from Green. After, I sold out the Color Plates I brought. I owe a copy to Alice-Anne, co-host, and I owe thanks to both her and to Mark for inviting me to read.

From a book sale cart by the door of the library I bought a book called The Crystal Geyser. In it is an anecdote about living men and women who are able to crystallize the blood in their veins when they picture a certain hill and the stone long ago placed at its top.

62. Reading } The Poetry Institute, New Haven.

My youngest and I strolled downtown New Haven on Mother’s Day. We spent a lot of time at the Yale University Art Gallery. There’s a lot of open space on the main floor, where she wandered between a Sol LeWitt and a cuneiform tablet from the palace of Assurnasirpal II.

While I stood by the glass doors leading to the museum’s barren sculpture garden, one of the staff—a young woman—asked me, “How old?” My youngest tapped the covers of all the books faced-out on a low shelf behind a green couch. “A year,” I said. “She’s so cute.” I thanked the woman. She said, “Have you seen the horn?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly, but before I could ask the woman to repeat herself she added, “Sometimes it’s a very bright red.”

A big photography book fell from the low shelf. The noise startled my youngest, who cried. I swooped in to soothe her. By the time all was well, the young woman was gone. I didn’t think about her or what she’d asked till now, now because I’ll be back in New Haven this Thursday.

I’m on to give a reading at The Poetry Institute. Doors open at 6:30. There’s an open mic at about 7 and then, after “a short social break,” I’ll read. I gather after that there’s a “feature poet Q&A.” I have new work, and hope to write more between now an then.

Maybe I’ll have time before the reading to revisit the museum. I’m almost certain the woman wasn’t asking me about an exhibit, but what else would she’ve been asking about?

51. Fantasia and the } here & now.

After non-fiction night at Inescapable Rhythms, I stood out in the parking lot with Meghan Dahn and Kristin Kostick, talking. We heard an animal move through the tall grasses that grow alongside the nearby railroad tracks. We stood silent for a moment, then a breeze swung down through the tress, and we decided to call it a night. As I drove down Park Road toward West Hartford, I slowed for a group of police cruisers, lights flashing, that made a circle around some crisis. I swear, lit by the red and blue lights, I saw a big animal, either asleep or felled.

The temperature dropped from forty degrees to twenty. I took my eldest daughter to see Fantasia at the Wadsworth. I loved the film as a boy but I really didn’t remember most of it. I thought, as I watched with my daughter on my lap, This is a mature movie, in the sense that it’s grown-up. Whimsical, even silly at times, it never panders. The formation of life on Earth, all the way to the end of the dinosaurs, set to the Rite of Spring? (Is this the Disney movie creationists forbid their ignorant children to watch?) The pagan, at times mildly erotic bacchanal set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68?

Watching the selections from The Nutcracker Suite, I wondered if maybe Fantasia is the reason I enjoy those pieces—"The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies," "The Chinese Dance," "The Arabian Dance," etc.—so much.

And there, nostalgia combined with a deep pleasure in the present. My memories and the light weight of my little girl, and her delight, and knowing that after the film my wife would be there with my youngest and the four of us would enjoy the rest of the day together.

47. “I could play all day } in my green cathedral.”

The storm came two days before Halloween and left the city dark. My eldest and I read by candlelight and watched lightning strikes.

During the bright morning that followed, I walked from the house to the top of the street. Fall leaves torn from trees—red and still green, bright against the snow. A power line sagged low it touched the road. A tree’s limb had flattened the chain-link fence in front of the house where the Crown of Glory van parks every Sunday morning.

In the backyard, I discovered the storm cleared much of the vegetation that grows in a fenced-in no-man’s land between my property and the neighbor’s. A plant my size—I’m a tall man—was now exposed growing from the center of a vernal pond. An odd plant. Its stem looked like bone, like a spine. Its flower, which undulated even when the air seemed still, was like the fronds of a fern. The leaves were orange.

May still be. I’ve yet to examine it more closely. Then, the fence kept me from it—though I could easily hop the fence, there was much to do. I needed to find a place where my family could stay—20 degrees the predicted temperature at sunset.

We were without power till Thursday. Today begins a regular week.

43. Bookstock and } the Dire Literary Series.

Alone in a miniscule Vermont town, alone for days, wandering around in a French-cuff, white dress shirt, gray trousers, and black, leather boots, lost off a trail, I ended up at a post-and-rail fence, looped with barbed wire. There ahead was a field. Horses, all of them white, grazed. One turned to the noise I made when I stepped on the bottom rail of the fence to test its strength. Green plants dangled from the horse’s mouth. Looked more like seaweed than grass. We stared at each other.

With minimal damage to my clothes I managed to hop the fence. The horses mostly ignored me and I did my best not to look at them, as if they’d recognize me later when they were questioned by the rancher. I’d been out all night, and the sight of a road—a real, paved road, with route numbers on signs posted alongside—was a huge relief.

Just a few feet from the fence that closed the field to the road, I felt a sharp pain between my shoulder blades. Very briefly, the road ahead of me turned red, and flowed, and all over the banks of this blood river were pale white flowers, blooming, and the trees withered white, and the sky, white. Beside me stood a horse, but not a horse: from between its nostrils was erupted a horn, its tip bright red. It snuffled—I felt its wet breath on my cheek. I made for the fence and got over it, started up the road, and finally found my car.

This weekend I’ll be in Vermont again, but with family and clear goals to keep me from late night bacchanalia. I was invited to present at Bookstock, “a Green Mountain Festival of Words.” I’ll read from Color Plates, and talk a little about writing short fictions; I have it in mind to talk about Angela Denstad’s as-of-yet unfinished collection of shorts, maybe read one or two. I’m also on-call to workshop high school student writing.

If you’re in the neighborhood of “the beautiful village of Woodstock, Vermont” Friday and/or Saturday, July 29-30, come see, “Over thirty authors of national and local renown will speak, read from their work, offer interactive programs and mingle with the participating public.” There’ll be book vendors and music, too.

The following weekend I’ll go Cambridgeward, to read for Timothy Gager’s Dire Literary Series, August 5, 8pm. The evening begins with an open mic, which means I get to meet you, and then features, Anne Ipsen, Ray Charbonneau, me. Timothy asked me to participate after I read at Ron Goba’s. I hope it’ll snow.

36. A song heard } through the ceiling.

At the end of winter, I dream of an ice-buried, primeval landscape.

Freshman year of college a storm came through Boston that shut down the trains and stranded me in the city. Geoff, a German who sat next to me in sociology, offered me a couch for the night. His place was “a couple miles” from campus. Snow whipped across my face. The walk across the Mass. Ave. bridge was brutal, but the view of the frozen river and the city lights—ample recompense. Geoff turned occasionally to shout encouragement. We stopped in a bar Geoff knew. The bartender didn’t card either of us, Geoff was a regular, the Irish bartender a pal who liked to give Geoff shit. Except to ask questions, I kept my mouth shut.

Geoff worked on an off-shore oil rig and a cook’s assistant. He told us about the time the cook cut off all his fingers, how he was ordered to pick them up, pack them in ice, and bring them to the infirmary. He told us about an accident with a pipe, it swung loose, crushed a crewman’s head.

The walk from the bar to Geoff’s—a large, empty apartment behind Central Sq.—took a drunk minute. I flopped onto a couch by the window. He brought me a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol. Boston was a dream. I woke. I reached for the army-green blanket kicked to the end of the couch and saw out the window a man, standing in the tiny yard, dressed head to foot in fur. He roared, and rushed the glass—I shouted and tumbled off the couch. Geoff staggered out of his room, clad only in bright tighty-whities, cursed at me and staggered back to bed.

Numbness the aftereffect of my fright, a fine hangover cure, I stood in that stranger’s living room and stared out the big window. The yard was lit by a flood, mounted on a blank of gray plywood. Snow fell, blurred then erased the man’s tracks.

Next morning, classes canceled, we at omelets Geoff made. 

32. Weird AWP } the glass mannequin.

Kristin Kostick sent me a text, told me I had to go to the Book 12 reading down near Eastern Market. I read the text, then deleted the text, and flipped the numbers in my head: instead of 1337 St. George I walked to 1373. Since the street entrance to 1373 was dark, I ventured down the cobblestone alley that ran alongside. There was a velvet rope and a sign (an illuminated human heart), so I figured I’d found the place. There was no line. I was late. I asked the bouncer, “Is the reading in here?” He nodded, shone a little light on my ID and waved me in.

Nothing was going on inside. It was an empty bar. No bartender. No bottles of anything on the shelves behind the bar. But: I heard voices and applause. Coming from above. I found the stairs and climbed them. There I found a big open room, a stage with drawn curtains at one end, and dozens of round tables on the floor and lo! a bar with a bartender and booze. The only lights on in the space were strands of green lights, webbed across the ceiling. Many of the tables were occupied and a poet was on the stage. I couldn’t understand what she said. I went to the bar, leaned against it and ordered a drink, scanning the room for Kristin. A number of women in skirts and with thick black hair were seated among the crowd, but I wasn’t sure if any of the women were her. I turned to the bartender to ask about her gin selection—the low light made it impossible for me to read the bottles.

The bartender didn’t reply, didn’t even move. I figured she was listening and I was loathe to interrupt but she was the bartender so I said, a little louder, “Excuse me. What gins do you have?” Again, no response. I moved down the bar a little, as close to the bartender as I could (odd, I thought, that no one else is at the bar) and that was when I realized the bartender was a mannequin.

I admit I recoiled from it, and backed clumsily away from the bar. I looked around, to see if someone was watching me, maybe laughing at me? I looked around and the stillness of everyone in the room—even the poet—became horribly apparent to me. There was no actual person in the room but me.

That there was the sound of speaking and then—it happened while I was in the room—applause—tipped the balance from interesting-weird to freaky-weird and I got downstairs right quick, worrying a little that the bouncer was not only in on the gag but that he was in on the gag and the gag wasn’t funny. Indeed, by the door, stood a man.

As I approached him, I asked dumb questions, trying to keep my cool, “Is that an installation? Where’d you get all the mannequins? Was the whole event the poem?” until I saw that, like the bartender, he was a mannequin. I cursed and brushed past. Doing so, I knocked it over, and it fell and shattered. I didn’t look for someone to apologize to, I just took off. Once I was a good distance from 1373 I texted Kristin who was like, “Where have you been?” and gave me the correct address.

I don’t remember much about the Book 12 reading.

[I should mention that John Cotter and I are reading in the Yes! Reading Series this Sunday. The reading starts at 4pm in the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue. More information about the reading can be found here.]