Dan Abandons Dina For Greener Pastures

It is nighttime then it is daytime and then its nighttime again and we are under the big orange tree balancing ourselves against each other and it is light enough for the street light to not come on but dark enough that when I look down I cannot see the distance of ourselves between each other under this large orange tree that should have dropped leaves so long ago. We are in these hills together, you and I, and we are in these hills because, you and I, must say goodbye, even though what does this even mean, we see in movies and TV, it's not goodbye but so long, see you later, see you soon. You send me a text that says my love I love! but it is not this orange tree that dies eventually, or these hills that will pass, too, no. These hills will be here forever, I say to you without prompting, the first thing I say. When we take trips we look up the mountainside to see lumps of houses that skew our view, most cities have skyline orders, you tell me, these ugly houses cannot break this mountain skyline so that when you look up for a view you don't just see money in the form of walls, rooms. My love I love! not this light and dark moment on Conlon Street, where everything is a photograph, half-developed.

It is daytime and then it is nighttime, and then it is daytime again. I am reenacting a dance move in front of the mirror, my body awkwardly working this way and that, my body awkwardly moving.
Remember when we danced in my living room, your head nodding back and forth to an awkward rhythm from a stereo I left behind when I left that summer. As of today, at that time that year, we only had a few more weeks left, and you were in love with another, so soon so soon. When the tables turn. Who do we call to fix the loose screw, the loose nail.

My love, I love!  but not me, as we are distance in the form of the blackest hole, this vortex of suck, in and out and in and out. If we could pry open my ribcage, among the others, is a heart the shape of a baby's two fists shoved deep in their mouth, up and over the dimples of knuckles, as if fisting itself, fisting itself. If we could pry open my ribcage, an organ the shape of a state in America, a city just as big, these rolling mountains of scraggle, this unending doom of West. If we could pry open my ribcage, you could see the promise of gold if you just dig, the arrangement of settlers that if you till the land and make something fruitful, you can keep the land. But it's not so easy when the conditions are sour. It's not so easy, this dream, this dream.

What if I gave up completely? It is daytime and nighttime, so much a blur already.

Dina and Dan Ride Public Transportation

When I get on the bus, there are eight women and children and I cannot help but feel as if this is the Titanic and we're all going to go down, deep into the dark concrete, deep down underneath the soil towards the center fire core, where we would say we were going to dig to China, Australia, like the heart, down deeper below where we thought it would be, we are going to dig and keep digging into the sternum, into the pockets of yellow fat like you saw in the frog that you cut up in science class, you didn't refuse, you relished in it, in fact, asked if you could have the frog tongue to keep in your pocket with you the rest of the day, your teacher of course said yes because he was a creep, too. Later, before this particular bus ride, you will remember being a year out of his class and going to his class and saying to him "you loved having me in class, I rocked your world" and he blushed but did not say that it was inappropriate. I told him you were a lesbian, seen at the football game holding hands with another woman, seen holding hands, "so what?" was the teacher's response, who cares, no one cares if she's a lesbian "ew, it's gross" I said, but what I really meant was, "I want another woman, too."

There are eight women and children on the bus and we are stopping at every stop, every single stop is requested but no one gets off and no one gets on. Still. We jerk past the stops the way your arms tingle before a heart attack. I thought I was having a heart attack once, I threw up on myself in my car on the way to the hospital. Turns out it was just gas. Still. What more to a heart attack than the body eating itself and stopping oxygen, the torture and beauty of it all. The heart says, enough. The heart says, enough. You should have stopped a long time ago. You cannot simply snort heroin and stop all of a sudden, you puke on yourself on the way to the hospital, that is what you do. You feel like you are having a heart attack, the biggest anxiety attack you've ever had.

The last stop a man gets on and it changes the dynamic of the bus ride. All of a sudden, all the women are flocking, they are asking him questions, the children are vying for his attention as if he is the leader of this pack, as if he is Daddy to every child, Husband to every woman. I am on the bus and we are going down, the strongest ship to ever sail the sea, we are all going to die. The man is tipping his fitted ball cap towards me, saying hello, hello, with his yellow stained teeth. Eight women and children riding around waiting for Daddy, waiting for hubby.

Dina and Dan say Happy New Year in July

Across the fence, there would be different strokes of ringing for the need, the want, the necessity. Across the fence, there would be a different bell and long song, a different singing, a warranted eventual warning sign, across the fence, different strokes of ringing for need. Ring Ring, we would hear and we would come running, we would come running, or maybe not running, underneath the bell here we are, here we are. Across the fence and into the basement, God Bless America, it is July and the bells are even further south, the King of the Forest is no longer the King, de-crowned on this day of independence and freedom. Across the fence, the bell rings and we respond, we look towards the sound together, we look towards the sound. Here is the time that we can remember our feelings, we can remember the ways in which we are who we are. Today across the fence, the ring and and the silence, I cannot remember anything but the silence. We are in France, in Paris, and we are celebrating the 4th of July which no one cares about there, no one cares. We light sparklers that a police officer puts, out says "Pardon" in French says "you cannot do that here" in English and we put them out like cigarettes, the burn the soft folds of our hands. Across the fence, there would be different bell strokes, two rings for this, five rings for that, like a really bad morse code across a sea through different lines, across the fence there is need and want, we are all de-crowned, sitting in our own sweat, waiting. Here we are, bells and bells. We are in the basement with the fireworks with the fireworks that pop too close to my eardrum, I am deaf in the right ear. I cannot see out of the left eye. In this city in the west, there are no fireworks this year, every surface area of land from here to the state border is on fire. Out west, so much fire. Out west, so much fire. I cannot see out of the left eye, cannot hear out of my right ear. In the city in the west, deaf, deaf.

Dina and Dan with Moths

The little girl watches the other little girls tongue kiss and she wonders what other little girls taste like, do they taste like her, like the way mothballs smells, what does that mean that she tastes that way. When she gets older other little girls will wonder why she smells that way, too, as if her outside skin smells the way moths' inside skin smells like, all dust and garbage.

The little girl wonders what this means to smell of dust and garbage, how this means that the ocean is filled with moth corpses when they went swimming, the saw so many insect corpses that they could not swim anymore, she was afraid of the insect corpses in her bathing suit laying eggs in her brand new pubic hair that she shaved when it first came in because it made her uncomfortable and she shaved with a dry razor and it hurt so bad she had to wear a maxi pad all week when she didn't even really know what a maxi pad did for anyone.

Dina and Dan: I Dont Care Mom and Dad Rock N Roll Makes Me Feel Like I Am Always About To Cry

Then in the tiniest passes

It’s first behind the sky, in the wind

Because that’s the plan they came up with

It’s the weather they have

And I moved along the roof

The air smelled like evening

Maybe a feeling like that

Imposing itself, my time overseas

Dripping through boughs

Long ago setting out,

Only to come by desire

The considerable façades of friends and evenings

Without knowing for what

But still elbowing for a spot to talk

And look, the hemline of Jillian’s shirt

Saddened the way you looked so desperately

At the young kids standing around

Wearing clothes

You no longer fit into, the same

Breasts on Sunday morning,

And in the vapid haze of middle age

The little sky hung watery

Shot through with steeples

I used to write poetry about moonlight

I braced myself but that was all I could do

Before I lost my balance, I went out

Headfirst, or sideways, the sound

Fell away as I fell and the sky flashed

In abstraction, I saw things

It’s always these and feeling so

I let go, I mean I really laid myself

Out, but did not mean to

Though I had long desired  

Its elegance, tumbled over the drain

Pipe into bushes along the garage.

You came running out, yelling, you fell

I told you, you were going to fall 

Dina and Dan, Yr Parents Totes Dont Luv U & U Will Be Alone 4EVR

Dream of evening

then the bubbling mess

at my arriving on time in fits of spit up and drool that identify me as a speaker of language variously establishing itself.

The globe and map were drawn of artists, for the sake of new thinking, and we were supposed to believe them, growing beautiful in constantly discarded minutes, as they collided with new lands, horizons of their own fashioning.

. The extremes are actually rather broad swaths. The middle line is but a hair, says Emerson.

I imagine I go outside. There is

nothing.

The marvelous thing is that even if he says it's painless it actually really hurts and it smells worse 

Dina and Dan Lose a Baby

There is a bedroom preserved in time in a museum of the little girl, her things are all arranged, everything that was donated from her parents, the little girl's room is set up as if in a time capsule, this is what her room would look like had she lived, she was a messy little girl.

There is a river down the hill where a body was a found, a body is found every summer washed up from the ocean. Once in the news a pregnant lady was found, her baby still intact inside of her but her head and arms and legs where eaten by sharks. All that washed up was the torso and the baby and the bulging breasts still kept inside a maternity tank top.

There is a river down the hill from the museum where you can look out of the replica of the little girl's bedroom and see the river where the bodies are found in July, always July. The river is a mausoleum, a final resting place, the river is a mausoleum, if only for a little while.

There is a bedroom preserved in time in a museum of the little girl, her things are all arranged, everything that was donated from her parents was not actually hers. They had gone to a thrift store and bought things to bring. They could not bare to give anything of hers away, and besides, they did not want anyone to know that she was a tomboy. She did not have any frilly, girly things in her bedroom and now that she had washed up on the shore, they were embarrassed. Before she had disappeared, they were not embarrassed, but now they are, they should have bought her more pink and more dolls. Maybe then she would not have left her home before school that day. Maybe she would have locked the doors and called her parents. When the museum asked for some of her things to help educate others, they could not give away her basketballs or her playing cards. They gave dolls she never owned.

There is a river down the hill where bodies are found in the middle of the summer, you can look out of the window of the replica of the little girl's bedroom and see where she washed up on shore, her arms and legs and head still intact, her torso fine but bloated with heat and salt water.