PINPRICK
Mother works the garden through a glass of tepid water—
rose with a drop of blood. A distant transistor radio
whispers rare music. Stop biting your lip, sweetie pie. This
is not a matter of the wounded heart. The sloppy fake
fainting and kvetching convinces no one of nothing no
matter what you’ve been led to believe. Let’s face it: the
apple of your mind has a wormhole in it. Toss up the
plastic dice and call out a number: your only chance to
win this heat. Only the psychologist will sneer at you, and
he is a Satanist. Your silks emit sighs and soughs. When
Mother looks up again and again but says nothing, loosen
your sleeves and show her the scars whitening your wrists.
WASAGA NIGHT
Such stars. Many no longer exist, at least in some sense—
but these massive distances and magnitudes of time give
me migraines. Perhaps my mind is simply too small to
comprehend them, but can I even imagine a bigger mind?
Yet whatever my puzzlement and deficiencies, my fate is
that of my star for I am not alien to it; I am its child
though it voided me and continues to confound me. How
do I make it make sense? I don’t bother. I play the tiny ant
of myself, hurrying and scurrying about with little or no
understanding of the bigger picture. They say the universe
is expanding: no steady state system. How strange that it
exists at all and stranger still that I exist, reflecting it,
reflecting upon it, reflecting upon whatever the hell this is.
BUMS WITH GOOD HAIR
Institutions shuttered. Everyone has the God-given right to
fuck up. Hereon, the street will suffice for religious and
civic services. Relax, man. We’re just kidding, passing
time. Throw the old pugilist a loon, he with the leatherette
eye-patch, cardboard-housed by the fresh-painted yellow
hydrant. The boxed Cyclops dreams of silk and cymbals:
as in olden days. Surprise. He has an inner life. “Stop
hitting me, stop fucking hitting me...” And he always had
an inner life. Life is an open hand slap, man, and if the jaw
is of glass: heaving gutturals, rants. Life will break you,
then, if you stop bobbing and weaving for even a second.
Sal Difalco is a Toronto-based writer. Recent appearances in Cafe Irreal and Gone Lawn.
