Wonderland

by Matthew Dickman

  The light told me I was king.

  The light bent down and whispered shame on you.

  The light huddled around the house.

  The light arrived and was the shape of a stamp.

  The light pours and pours.

  The light slipped around your finger like a ring.

  The light lifted up the gown.

  The light slipped into the pilot’s left pupil and sang.

  The light left.

  The light did not care who I was though it knew I was bad.

  The light was Atlantic.

  The light crawled and begged across my bedroom floor.

  The light did not shiver.

  The light pooled when the blood pooled and your fingernails.

  The lighthouse.

  The lightroom.

  The light bought drinks and loved the children in the park.

  The light came down and taught everyone a lesson.

  The light made a pillow and then went to bed and didn’t get up.

  The light you are standing in.

  The light turned against me because it’s the right thing to do.

  The light on the table and the pencil.

  The light was electric and glass and broke when I punched it.

  DIRTY ROTTEN IMBECILES

  The crows are crazy.

  It’s like they are the only things that love

  each other here,

  in the air

  moving away from each other, clouds of death-smoke-empires,

  then coming back, lighting and

  alighting and lightning. It’s good

  to return. Black lightning and soft.

  They see everything and let it

  happen. They let the men happen to the women

  and the women happen to the children,

  they let the lilac trees blossom in the rain, the maples drop

  their leaves. They let the Rottweilers sleep

  in the grassless backyards. They let the cats get run over

  and the moon rise.

  ORCHARD

  I liked the dream my brother’s high school girlfriend kept having about

  the skinned and dead horses

  hanging from willow trees, a whole, what do you call it?

  orchard of willow trees,

  you would call it that, you would call it an orchard because of the fruit

  and the flies. I liked it because she wore

  wool skirts that covered her knees and soft Easter egg-colored sweaters

  and she wore her hair,

  which was always washed in some strawberry shampoo, in a bun

  and I like the dream

  because in the winter she would wear a ski jacket to school and it dripped

  with ski-lift passes like medals,

  they were like dry-cleaning stubs dry cleaners pin to the plastic bags

  over clothes, and so many of them

  that she looked either very clean or highly decorated, a single white pearl

  in each of her white earlobes. Don’t you

  ever wonder about other people’s ears? Ears that get pierced,

  that get a tongue pushing inside them,

  ears that get pulled off, anyway it is true that people have had their ears

  pulled right off of them, and sometimes

  that’s an accident and sometimes it isn’t. The sound must be awful,

  like a crowd of ants shoving through

  the brains of some butter. The ears just falling through space like mice

  with bloody feet, really just like mice.

  I like to sit at night on the back porch and listen to the neighbors and laugh

  when they laugh and cry when they cry.

  FOR IAN SULLIVAN UPON JOINING THE EASTSIDE WHITE PRIDE

  Even now

  Even now

  Even now

  no one can say that you were never a child. What our neighborhood

  lacked in compassion it made up for in baseball (stomp)

  bats and chain-link fences. Asian mini-marts

  and your parents’ rage swelling inside your chest (stomp)

  like someone pumping up a basketball, like someone taking

  a long drag off a cigarette.

  Now when you get dressed you get dressed (stomp)

  for battle. People cross the street when they see you

  like you were black. Like you weren’t afraid of anything. Like there

  was nothing you wouldn’t do. But you are afraid (stomp)

  of everything

  of everything

  of everything.

  FOUR A.M.

  I made a way so nothing would ever work out.

  I made cereal.

  I made a crook in my arm for your face.

  I made a star out of apple seeds and two of your hairpins.

  I made a mess out of the party.

  I made four plus four and then I made you cry.

  I made my bed.

  I made a bed that would be impossible to sleep on.

  I made this thing happen.

  I made my body get bad and then I made nothing.

  I made a box with a horse on it for my mom when I was twelve.

  I made a bee die.

  I made a slug die with salt and it was forever.

  I made dinner out of all the things I’ve been embarrassed about.

  I made myself eat it.

  I made no progress with Communion or cherry blossoms.

  I made a sign of the cross and meant it.

  I made snow out of my brain.

  I made lost and found.

  I made lost.

  I made you think you were crazy and also laundry was hanging.

  I made a place where I could go forever.

  I made longing out of a toothbrush.

  I made a goodbye and so long and fuck off and what are you doing.

  BAD BRAINS

  Walnuts gather around

  the roots of the walnut tree, fall one at a time until there are many,

  a hem of them,

  a skirt of walnuts sweeping the ground.

  Falling and then lifted back up into the branches

  by crows, in the mouths of squirrels.

  Some of the walnuts are rotten but most

  of them are not.

  Most of them are not bothering anyone.

  Falling to earth,

  swept into the schoolyard.

  The walnuts wear brown snap-back

  Starter caps

  in between the blades of grass.

  Someone across the street is stomping on them in steel-toed boots.

  He’s breaking their heads

  open. All their heads.

  Open up.

  Then he’s going to stomp the broken bits, the soft parts inside.

  WONDERLAND

  He must have woken up

  in his bedroom

  with a poster of the Sex Pistols

  on one wall and Star Wars

  on the other, two parts of him, Caleb

  and the age he’s supposed to be.

  Socks and underwear all over

  the floor and no

  siblings on earth.

  Later we are skating down Woodstock

  past a yard with a small dog walking

  up and down, we stop

  and kick the fence

  and then Caleb spits on the dog

  who just barks so he spits on the dog

  again, some of the phlegm

  getting into the dog’s eyes,

  its long ears, Caleb keeps

  spitting, begins to scream

  at the dog, who is now overcome,

  slamming its head into the fence,

  and so Caleb does the same,

  gets down on his hands and knees,

  their two heads

  crashing together sound like

  a hammer coming down on a hand.

  EIGHT A.M.

  I happened to myself and
everything disappeared.

  I happened to be walking.

  I happened and you were there and scared.

  I happened to be an addict.

  I happened with the glass in the bathtub.

  I happened and there was a sound that came from heaven.

  I happened and it was quiet.

  I happened and your mouth blew open like a soda can.

  I happened in high school.

  I happened in my mother’s lap and the dead starlings.

  I happened to be standing next to you.

  I happened to the room before the room hung itself.

  I happened to be lying.

  I happened to download all the things that make you insecure.

  I happened and it began to rain.

  I happened to be an orange you were eating.

  I happened to be a body that moves like a long dash and hamburger.

  I happened to be the stove door and the pretty lady, circa 1950.

  I happened to be nothing important.

  I happened like a cake full of lightbulbs and a bat.

  I happened to be barefoot and a worm.

  I happened to be the worm.

  I happened to the scissors when they should happen to me.

  I happened to be there when the dog turned back into a boy.

  SACK OF RABBITS

  There she is

  There she is

  There she is

  my older sister, her tall body

  reaching up, reaching out, toward anything.

  That feels good.

  Walking through downtown Los Angeles with her boyfriend and the heroin

  he sold, brown packets of wasps.

  I was born. She held me,

  babysat, carried my twin brother and me through grocery aisles

  like a mom in middle school. Her boyfriend

  holding her hand, her heart like a sack of rabbits, skull-sized

  motors in the dark. They are pulling half-smoked

  cigarettes out of ashtrays. I love her for this.

  I love her for getting clean and then getting drunk and back

  and forth like

  a tennis ball

  a tennis ball

  a tennis ball.

  BAD LOVE

  The light from the porch is like a floodlight, looking for bodies, my body

  sitting next to my little sister’s body, which is shaking because she is crying

  because she

  is heart

  broken,

  I want

  my sister

  to feel

  whole again, I want her to be happy. We keep lifting beers to our mouths like

  weightlifters lifting very small weights. I want her not to suffer but also I don’t care.

  I’m like

  a mom

  that way, the way

  a mom is

  happy

  to have her

  kids back in the house, no matter what, no matter the illness or shame, no matter

  if they are back because they have failed, just happy

  to take care

  of them,

  and hold

  them, pretend

  they are little

  again, like me

  with my sister, never wanting her to leave the porch, opening beer after beer

  so she’ll stay, never wanting her to stop being here, and because I am selfish and afraid of

  death, I’m fine

  with her being

  pulled apart

  by grief, I’m fine

  with the world

  pulling her under, and I’m saying yeah I know, I’m so sorry, but really

  I’m thinking let it be like this forever, let her cry and cry,

  let her struggle

  if it means

  I get to hold

  her, if it means

  we never stop

  drinking.

  NINE A.M.

  I don’t know what happened.

  I don’t know what I look like and also this morning.

  I don’t get why with your feet and fingers.

  I don’t know where I will be buried.

  I don’t play any instrument and also October is coming.

  I don’t get the light’s somatic response system.

  I don’t do this.

  I don’t do my brain in order of the Stations of the Cross.

  I don’t do fuck you give me some more.

  I don’t know how not to.

  I don’t know why I arrive without ever being somewhere.

  I don’t vanish and white sheets with two holes for eyes.

  I don’t steal flowers anymore.

  I don’t enter the cool-forest-dark and also it’s a brain trust.

  I don’t do light everlasting.

  I don’t do a plastic bag around my head.

  I don’t campfire without you and your son and the beach grass.

  I don’t talk about the murder trial.

  I don’t not-ever-not talk about it because it’s in everything.

  I don’t hashtag my heart.

  I don’t glass breaking at night.

  I don’t gas station at night.

  I don’t elevator between the floors of my brain.

  I don’t know what to do now that I’ve done all of this to you.

  BLOOD MOON

  I will not say I remember

  because there is a death

  in remembering, a ghost

  beneath our bed, an empty

  cage at the zoo, and I will

  not say do you remember

  because there is a killing

  in that, a knife someone

  is putting inside someone else,

  a Glasbake mug of hemlock

  I made ’cause I was thirsty.

  I won’t say it because it’s not

  true. I keep walking

  around our apartment

  like a guard looking

  for your hairpins, I don’t know

  what I’m making out

  of them, they seem so

  beautiful to me and feel

  like water in my hands,

  water that never spills

  onto the ground, when you

  would cum all I wanted

  were babies, babies everywhere.

  I’m trying to manage my

  dumb-dumb time machine

  brain and be here. OK I’m here,

  I’m here thinking about babies,

  I’m standing here right now,

  I know, I can feel it, some

  gold leaf in you being licked

  up by someone that doesn’t

  make you feel like dying.

  Oh tulip, I remember

  everything, every every every

  thing, the light coming in

  through the bamboo, walking

  in the dark over the overpass

  toward your place, and the black

  silk pillow I hated, the picture

  you posted of me back before time,

  when I was still new, when I was

  something you wanted too badly.

  LOST BOYS

  I am always doing this. Walking around the old neighborhood, always

  sixteen, moody and stealing cigarettes.

  Baby, even when we’re fucking I’m back there with the dogs

  and trash cresting

  around the bus stop like a wave of what people can afford.

  In the rain I’m wearing my brother’s jeans, a book of matches in my pocket,

  afraid of the people here, each match

  tip melting into pink slime.

  Even when you’re swallowing me, honey, even when I’m standing

  in our kitchen getting dinner started, or playing with your son

  I’m there. I’m not getting beat up. I’m not high,

  not really. I’m just walking around

  looking up at a sky that looks like a closet, hating
the birds

  because it doesn’t feel like they belong, just the sky and the street belong.

  Just the rain and the boys

  on the corner, boys who were born here, death tucked away

  in their hands,

  their bomber jackets, death in their teeth and ears, wind in their

  pockets, when they smile

  it’s not like when you smile,

  their faces stretch out like a police state, their shadows

  covering the whole block.

  NOON

  I stayed inside while everyone else was with the others.

  I stayed inside your body too long.

  I stayed and I thought a country would rise from the water.

  I stayed and stayed.

  I stayed and addressed the crowd and it was no one.

  I stayed in the darkest corner of your hair.

  I stayed for the dishes and the towels.

  I stayed inside the dotted I of my brain.

  I stayed inside and waited for the Surgeon General to call my name.

  I stayed near the light in your window and the red leaves.

  I stayed long enough for your son to love me.

  I stayed inside an unknown planet.

  I stayed because I didn’t know what else to do and also knives.

  I stayed past my bedtime.

  I stayed though I am a little boy with a bedtime and a mother-mind.

  I stayed and helped clean up.

  I stayed for the love of ferns and rain and the sand in your shoes.

  I stayed and drew flowers on my arm.

  I stayed and cut the flowers out.

  I stayed because they told me there would be medicine.

  I stayed because there was none.

  I stayed for the sundial and the gas station and the Christmas lights.

  I stayed though I was asked to leave.

  I stayed because leaving is like a plane exploding inside a nursery.