The Gothic Funk Paramanu Pentaquark Issue #6

I spent too many years with cannibal cupcakes
eating me nightly, and I asked
nothing in return. It wasn’t that I didn’t
enjoy it exactly, but it never felt right, waking up
the next morning rimmed in frosting, sugar
cruising up. When the taste soured in
my mouth and I had to end it with the carrot cake,
I was inclined to blame the carrots, but since
I entered the scene I’ve grown confident
the icing was the issue.

I have entered
an age of asparagus.
I know what it is now to come into the root cellar
and see every turnip fixate on you. I never could
have imagined how much broccoli would
excite me, that I’d get a flushed face just watching
a daikon pull her movies. I never knew how
deeply I was mustard at heart, how I craved
untethered minerals. And when spinach flutters
towards me, glorious curvy leaves like silver knives, I know
this is the ending song, that morning will find
me black and blue and green all over,
loving every minute.

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You deserve a break today.
Stars sauce a flat horizon,
and you’re lovin’ it:
the crunch, the soft white flesh within.

Stars sauce a flat horizon.
It’s easy to make your selection
—the crunch, the soft white flesh within.
It’s a good time for the great taste.

It’s easy to make your selection:
every blemish is a failure of toxins.
It’s a good time for the great taste
and she’s got it all for you.

Every blemish is a failure of toxins.
You look for the golden arches,
and she’s got it all for you.
She loves to see you smile.

You look for the golden arches
in her spuds and in her eyes.
She loves to see you smile,
gleams lean and uniform and crisp.

In her spuds and in her eyes,
the long figure of monoculture
gleams lean and uniform and crisp.
In the fading dark she shines russet,

the long figure of monoculture.
Nobody can do it like she can.
In the fading dark she shines russet,
the closest thing to home.

Nobody can do it like she can.
You taste starch and oil on your lips,
the closest thing to home.
And so you go for the goodness.

You taste starch and oil on your lips
these moments when she does it all for you,
and so you go for the goodness,
seeing her peeled and stripped and straightened.

These moments when she does it all for you
are the tastiest hours you can imagine.
Seeing her peeled and stripped and straightened,
you murmur, “Let’s eat out.”

Are the tastiest hours you can imagine
the meals that dominate your menu?
You murmur, “Let’s eat out”;
she sure is good to have around.

The meals that dominate your menu
leave salt in your mouth and your throat.
She sure is good to have around,
makes you believe in magic.

Leave salt in your mouth and your throat.
The depth of your satisfaction
makes you believe in magic.
What you want is what you get:

the depth of your satisfaction.
You deserve a break today.
What you want is what you get,
and you’re lovin’ it.

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We are on our last teeters-
you and I holding together
to our youth or what we thought
when we were young.
The rocking began so slowly
as rocking always does-
first at the breast.
The slide once a noun
becomes a verb
pulling us until we can no longer see
ourselves in the mirror.
But for now we still have a teeter
together.
We will not look
when the teeter becomes the fall.

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I am called at last into Winnipeg’s office. I am awed by the quantity of wood paneling, stained an oxblood color that hints at the butchery of the saw. The rest of the office feels like a shoddy set which stagehands will disassemble as I cross the threshold.

Winnipeg’s suit is immaculate. I have countered with my tightest pants.

Shut the door, says Winnipeg. I make sure to meet Winnipeg’s eye while I shut it.

You, says Winnipeg, are a disgrace to this firm. You’re late every day, you’re insubordinate, and your attire is, for want of a better word, looks down, looks up, provocative…

I give Winnipeg an insolent but melting look.

Winnipeg enters through my window. There is a cherry tree and a downpipe, but I’ve left the details to Winnipeg’s agility. What makes agility so sexy? Fucking doesn’t require that much agility.

Although it’s not like fucking requires musicality either, and Winnipeg strumming the guitar, hair closing around his eyes…

I pretend to be asleep because I’m certain Winnipeg likes it that way.

I’m careful to stir at the first touch. Squirm in bed and look up with worshipful saucer eyes.

Big reach, big stretch, big…

I say fake-sleepily, oh, Winnipeg…

Winnipeg walks into a bar. Is there meant to be an end to this story?

If so, I’m it.

To those of you here to judge: could I have your gracious permission to take a shower after a long run? May I please scrub the sweat off my glowing, tanned body with thickly lathered bodywash? Would you mind if I sensuously enjoyed the warm spray with my eyes closed, carelessly leaving the door half-open, or are you cynically going to make this about our current houseguest, Winnipeg?

And yes, I have met Winnipeg’s kids. Gorgeous little miniatures of him—even his genes are strong—they sleep so sweetly, while in the next room…

Let’s pause for a moment to discuss what I want and what I don’t. I don’t want lockets. I don’t want my initials carved in a tree. I want a bottle of cognac, once, for no reason, with no note, the knowledge of what has happened at certain innocuous places, a fading soreness.

I’m empowered. I positively radiate empowerment. The muscles bulge and the straps hold.

Although: picture Winnipeg cursed with some obscure medical condition in which if he doesn’t fuck, he’ll die, bundling him pale and shivering into a cab where the driver asks if we don’t want to go to a hospital, fiercely telling him Of course not while running my fingers through Winnipeg’s abundant hair and murmuring for him to hold on, hold on.

And of course I want to feel a little discarded after the crushing finale, when he gets up, entirely his old self, and strides around the room putting on his watch.

After all, used is just another way of saying useful. And useful is just another way of saying sometimes necessary.

I’m here for Winnipeg’s autograph, every item of wardrobe chosen to skirt the edge of availability, and at my big clean guileless smile he opens his jaws and swallows me whole.

(That ragged carpet, his black boots gleaming under the trestle table with the wonky leg. The violent vertical strokes of his autograph as his pen jolts the table, his blank eyes.)

Winnipeg watches porn. A cold connoisseur, dismissive even as it gets him off. As if the climactic scene was performing a service, doing what other scenes weren’t willing to degrade themselves to do. When I beg him to let me watch with him, it feels like the actors on screen watch us from beyond the camera’s event horizon, their fucking a tired excuse for the indecent homage they pay to him. I’ll look for the exact thing that gets him off, the little vulnerable point where the armor hinges and the truth spurts out, but he won’t tell me and I won’t be able to guess.

Winnipeg would never use the word with me—never—but it’s like one of those psych experiments where they use every word but that word, and all the test subjects are sure someone said it, even though it was never uttered, wasn’t on any of the flashcards…

I seem to have become a person who fantasizes about Winnipeg.

I assure you I’m living a normal life very normally and competently.

When suddenly—

Let me lay it out. No picnics. No sunsets. No kindness. No gifts of clothes you would never wear. No comfortable nocturnal farts. No bumping into each other in the hallway, no encounters too quick to rearrange the mask of love. No slack faces of sleep. No remorse. No tomorrow. No trace when I pass offstage.

This is not all I want. But it is what I want.

I can’t really picture Winnipeg’s face when it’s not in front of me. But when it goes in, let me tell you, it’s the size of a fucking municipality.

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