Joseph Paul Alvarado
The Tenderness
Fuck Friends
This is the last time we see each other. My house is empty after the only stormy week of the year. How are you feeling? I did nothing I never planned on seeing you to be honest but it was so much fun. That which is really so cute and fun. Shall we away? Are you joking? Remember when you said come here what did you mean exactly? I missed you. Did you miss me too? Of course or at least I think. Well thanks really you please just you can you know always come back. I really actually might. It’s only been just a few days. Thank you. I love that too. I’m ready to think back on you fondly. Wait, listen. Did you feel me just then? I did. Saved my life once and then the rest was like a dream. I woke and turned to you and whispered good morning beautiful. If you have to lose in order to win, then we’re ready.
Claudia recalled the ruby throat of a hummingbird from some summer. Watching her, Benedict feels old, slanting his curved spine both uncomfortable and natural. She thinks with smug pity then smiles whenever she sees him like this. Dappled sun backlight then the noticing of dirt-greased hair actually look- ing nice (as it sometimes can). She thinks about the flood, about her father and about the men that made her. She waits. Behind them a shoe plus mattress that has already been on the street for several weeks now. After the flood. More bugs now. She feels sick. He will forget to remember the less beautiful music. Things appear and then slowly disappear. Shallow graves in the backyard. The forest floats by with dark trees. Nothing to do. Laughter and memory then comfortable sitting togetherness inside of a moment that nevertheless connects them quietly forever.
Boring Goals
Still raining. We walk and talk over pavement dirt and trees offering scant coverage. Annoyingly later she whimpers from the pain. Neon dripping sore. The sun languishing behind us pierces a section of nebulous cloud proceedings. Look who’s coming to dinner. What you ate tasted like pure butter. How do you think that makes me feel? Why did you eat so much? What the fuck are you on about? Sarcasm stops working. Maybe you made me sick, maybe I’m in love with this tender fucking feeling. Running around without you and your short yellow hair and little white belly. I don’t like being native and I don’t like what I become. Call it what you want, totally normal heterosexual behavior. One day a real torrent is gonna come.
Inside the still-emptying house we are happiest. She shows me all of her little pills and things. My head is the pressure point. Bleeding out the inside world we make together. Did you even hear what I said? It’s like a musical female moaning. If you are a reflection of me then I am a reflection of you. To be is consciously aware but from inside a scary place. The type of person who gets dressed in the dark. She’s the one that has to look at me all the time. I bet you that’s why nobody sticks with you long term. Everything happened differently to me back then, when we didn’t know the thing that defines us is the biggest problem we have with each other. I can’t love you but I can fuck you. That’s it, bite me. You made my life worth living so please don’t break my heart. She is kidding he’s not racist anymore I’m sorry she says. Also I’m very tired and don’t feel normal right now. Honest boy fuck awesome who cares I’ll be your daddy. I don’t need a daddy but you can be my dog. So we sink both shackled bumfuck facing the pillow hurts so much my head scraping wound uppermost lip tipping over pleasantly teeming a drippy mess sucker unlike most I still think she’s better. Some other things that might happen if you die poor. Dropping slowly spinning unnecessary pictures of places.
Please turn out the lights so that I can hear you better. Then I had the most incredible dream. My mother was there and we were in some kind of strange house, not our own, or maybe not the very same housing we had growing up but somehow different. Must have been El Niño. The rain didn’t stop and the roof was leaky, green water flowing down in various silent transparent sheets. There was a lot of inherent emotional stress just by the slowly accumulating pools of undulated water. Then a different land altogether. Modern day. But particularly in a summer hot place dirty dry land sweeping over me a crevasse, dead river. Inside some version of a craftsman bungalow. I was sleeping in the dream inside a dwelling but perhaps knowing somebody was coming home and I shouldn’t be there, even though it was my place (working on this entitlement). But my immediate family was around, they weren’t trespassing the same way I was. So it was about planning an event with them knowing that I was the pariah, always defiant, so exposing a deep flaw within the structure of those closest to you. I knew I had only a few minutes to sneak out or go away in stressful slow motion dragging and spilling. The figure appeared silently as the mountain man, though now we were in the desert. He was lightheartedly driving around in a nice new expensive Jeep with a weird pistol just taking pop shots at some neighbor about one kilometer away, he passed me a German rifle and I began gazing through the scope and firing at my neighbor woman slowly walking toward us, about half a kilometer now. My oldest sister was here and she stood next to me during the shooting. She is struck by lightning from the barrel of gunfire, she screams and little red birds flutter silently from her gaping mouth. I told the man I wasn’t scared, he didn’t care, it seemed like a normal occurrence in these parts. We fol- lowed the mountain man for a little bit as police pulled him over, searched the back of his vehicle and found nothing—they obviously had a history with him and he knew them too. Did I mention the man wears the Jeremiah Johnson hat? The vehicle pulls close, I remember a puddle. He says “Oh god damn shit what in the fuck” car door falls off and he stumbles out garishly. “What the fuck is going on here?”. Mountain man stumbles away leaving the crumpled car door in the puddle and adjusting his headdress awkwardly walking away, not noticing two bystanders. Now I am sobbing like a six-week-old: “No you didn’t you literally lived like six minutes away (from me) but you never se– even came to visit me so you don’t even care about me.” Then everything goes dark. There is a special kind of lucid-easy clarity to the act of recollecting after a deep underwater sleep. Whatever there is there is a roundness to this feeling.
Something happens inside of a glowing sphere: she does not want to be here. This is not normal. Her dog is still lost. The house is still black. I guess life was difficult back then, she quietly thinks. Nothing ugly nor inhuman is beyond man or man’s ability. Baby please shoot me first because I don’t know when to pull the trigger. To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. Claudia looks at a wall and says, “I’ve traveled lazily a couple of times only to learn the way of the world is to bloom and flower and die.”
Suffering Contest
Once when we were speaking again I ask her to pray for me but also please pray for the suffering of the stars, planets, and things. She mouths a pious word-shape. Benedictine glory and all that heaven can allow inside opulent silence. I said I like your accent, a tortured bitchy Annie orphan-sounding bravada. I cough with more frequency now. She isn’t talking to me more at me like harmonizing, O God I love you. The house helps me think. A boring lay down with an interest- ing friend. They love to come or at least come by. Stopping by whenever it feels right and we don’t stop ‘em like we used to. Run tie leave lay scream scream feet want feel sleep. We weep together. Me? I forget if we fucked or not. He would just run I swear. But I saw you looking across the room at me with your beady eyes and your curved furry little cat’s mouth. Well then I wanna eat you. Did you hear that? Man it’s just a fucking thing. I remember the serpent screed shed thyself lest thee disappear. Then oral. You should fuck them all she says. I’ll start with you then. Sometimes you’re just sad for so long you gotta wait until sadness becomes your friend, generating an altogether new sound or melody. Is there a word that describes the feeling of listening to the most beautiful thing for the very first time? Feel alive in this moment, it’s less of a moment and more of a connection, the connection to a continuum outside of myself and yet a complete part of nowness and everything. Getting smaller and smaller. Just so you know I always knew that you loved me.
Rhythm is blind like a machine forever below silence n’ time that so gently burns. This is one thing that moves in perfect accelerating circles with zero center and then from there there is no end. Guilt for Benedict feels meaningless but you can’t take it away, try as he does he goes to that distant shore. Baby breaks his heart. Still he is glad in his remembering. He can breathe like the Indians. Stars like patterns of human failure found. He doesn’t know why she is unhappy jealousy night and day you torture me O creeping guilt.
Make Me Scream
Just talking to her makes me feel better. Let it go. It takes a bit of getting used to this thing of ours. Sometimes we hold hands. I’d love to see through your stormy white eyes. She says can draw with her eyes closed if you know what I mean. I saw her do it like that. Can I see you again? Inside only remains the idea of her. Make me scream. She comes again. Several passing lines light my way. Baby beseech thee. A telephone voice of her: did you meet Laurel? Did Odette stop by? Yeah I did whatever and whomsoever the fuck Odette may be. There are no names, only memory. If you try to provoke you aren’t asking the right questions. If you feel sorry for yourself nobody needs to feel sorry for you, it’s a project of curiosity. Like the turtle I can hear the forest grow.
Claudia hates the rain. Her dog ran away and he didn’t begrudge her. Things like this way we go. He will beg her to stay. Benedict would have said something already but he loves himself too much. She keeps it closer each time and feels different. Dirty children speak poorly like little cement sculptures with rendered bodies in high relief. So these two disappear into the firmament, they feel it is so special and so true. That which binds us all, honest and to the core. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t made the right decisions as long as we remember and learn and then teach in turn.
Opposite Day
~ in which Claudia searches for her lost dog and finds only a stranger ~
Dripping water travels through a window as his headache dematerializes inside an empty house. People are gone. Her voice bellows from somewhere else outside in gentle confusion.
“Fuck. hello? Can you come over here and help me please?”
“Why you staring for? You waiting for me?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah lemme know what you’re thinking you’ll need help with. One second. Hold this please.”
“Are you moving in?”
“Naw, leaving, been here too long.”
“I actually never noticed anyone living here.” “Is that your dog?”
“Missing yes. And who are you?”
“Just some slob, woke up late, burnt that midnight oil last night.”
“My name is Claudia. What else do you do?”
“Nothing really. ”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Across the rainy street a Filipino church congregation bellows a loud celebration song.
“Must be Sunday again. You should ask my indigenous ancestors for a clue.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It ain’t slavin’ days no more. Also jail lowkey looks kinda fun.”
“Stupid.”
“I actually hate that shit.” Silence. “You know sometimes you gotta lie a little to get to the truth.”
“I understand.” Silence. “What else are you doing?” “Just killin”
“Killing?”
“Yeah killin’. We kill everything here. A lotta killing. Killing the cats, killing the children, feeding the children to the dog—you know—killing the dog. All my friends are gone but that’s okay, ghetto life.”
“Oh God.” Laughter.
“Listen I’m sorry, and was just kidding. My name’s Benedict.” She giggles “That’s like an old man name.”
“Can I give you a hug?” “Are you serious?”
“Okay like yeah stay still and like hold on. I am what I do and I wanna change you. Now I don’t want you to go away, it’s wet outside. Let’s be friends.”