Kip Manley's Blog, page 11

Beauty (Closing)

Awake, she sits upright blankets falling into her lap. One hand to her breast one to her belly, tangled black hair slipping over one shoulder in a matted clump as she holds herself. Something scrapes. Something’s sizzling. Her mouth opens around a word. She tries again: “Jo?” she says.

Jo pops around the corner from the little hallway kitchen, spatula in her hand. “You’re awake,” she says. “Did I wake you? How you doing?” She’s wearing boxers and a loose black tank top.

“Thirsty,” says Ysabel, her voice rough and weak. Jo busies herself in the kitchen with cabinets and the refrigerator as Ysabel leans back closes her eyes pulls the blankets to her chin.

“We only had the two eggs left,” says Jo. Ysabel opens her eyes and takes the glass of water. “I cut ’em with the can of cream of mushroom. Campbelled eggs, which I used to have when I was a kid.” She’s setting plates on the blankets by Ysabel, greyish yellow glops of egg, black-cornered toast. “Only I think the ratio of egg-to-soup needs to be higher. But you can soak the toast in it, which is good because the bread’s pretty stale.” Ysabel’s handing back the glass, empty, tugging the blankets back up to her chin. “You want a shirt?” says Jo.

Ysabel shakes her head. “These are new,” she says. The top blanket’s a woolly plaid in black and red and orange-browns over a maroon thermal blanket.

“They replaced the futon, too,” says Jo, forking up some runny egg. “With a mattress, but whatever. No idea how they did it while we were sleeping on it.”

Beauty (Act IV)

Laughing she opens the door to the apartment. “Ysabel?” she calls, standing there in the little hallway kitchen. Out in the main room three candles still burn on the glass-topped café table. Before them a small glass jar, uncapped, empty, sides filmed with milky residue. “You wanted a little atmosphere?” Jo flicks the light switch. The shoulders of her jacket and her short brown hair are dark with rain. Her face screws up. “Jesus, the smell,” she says. On the carpet bare feet bare legs stretching along around the corner Jo’s suddenly darting forward to see Ysabel naked on the floor by the futon head to one side eyes open mouth slack black curls smeared and wet. Jo hands over her mouth eyes wide. “Ysabel?” Her voice gone quiet, and then, coming back, “Oh fuck oh fuck. Ysabel. What have you done? What,” kneeling by Ysabel’s side hand over Ysabel’s throat under her matted plastered hair, “did you take,” reaching instead for her wrist, the arm flung to one side over the futon, stopping short and coming up to her own face, reaching down again to peel the hair from Ysabel’s throat and breast, her thumb then fingers feeling for a pulse just below the corner of Ysabel’s jaw when Ysabel’s mouth sucks down a thinly ragged breath. Jo shrieks her hand jerking back up in the air. That breath escapes in a gentle sigh and is followed by another, deeper, bubbling in the pit of it. “Fuck,” Jo’s saying, “Jesus fuck,” almost a sob, “what did you do what did you do.” Reaching for Ysabel’s flung-aside arm, pulling it close, looking to the crooks of her elbows. “What did you do.” Jo stands, looking about the room. By the candles on the table the jar still filmed with a milky residue.

She snatches it up and holds it to the light, brings it to her nose for a sniff. A slime of vomit clings to her hand, and she sniffs that, her face screwing up again. “The fuck is this stuff? What did you do?”

Things to keep in mind (The secret of motion)

Since I believe there is a most intimate relationship between the quality of a person's life, its abundance or sterility, his integrity, and the quality of his poetry, it is not irrelevant to say that, judging by some—not a few—I have met on my travels, the people who write banal poetry and, to almost the same extent, those who in desperation make up a fake surrealism, usually seem to be the same academics who talk a liberal line concerning education and politics (and often, as teachers, are genial and popular) but who, when it comes to some crucial issue, such as a student protest, will not commit themselves far enough to endanger their own security. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is their poetry banal because their lives are banal, or vice versa? I think it works both ways. If these people committed themselves, took risks, and did not let themselves be dominated by the pursuit of "security," their daily lives would be so changed, so infused with new experiences and with the new energy that often comes with them, that inevitably their poetry would change too (though obviously this would not ensure better poems unless they were gifted in the first place).

Beauty (Act III)

The refrigerator light as he opens the door shines dimly on her there in the saggy blue chair in the corner, curled up in a long pink T-shirt, her book in one hand, a finger keeping her place, the flimsy balloon of a wineglass in the other. “Hart and hive, girl,” he growls. “You spooked me.”

“Agravante woke me,” says Marfisa. “I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Sleep can’t stand me,” he says, closing the refrigerator. He’s leaning most of his weight on a black-handled blue metal four-legged cane. “Been at each other’s throat for years.” He shuffle-clomps over to the counter, reaching for a light switch. Halogen spots under the upper cabinets flash to life. “Can’t remember who started it. But a lovely girl like you? How could sleep resist your charms?” His dressing gown’s a deep rich blue, unbelted over pale blue and pink checked pyjamas.

“There’s plenty enough who can,” she says, lifting the wineglass as if to sip from it, but turning instead to set it on the narrow kitchen desk. “Why should sleep be any different?”

“Troubles of the loins, is it?”

“Of the heart, Grandfather. Please.”

“Ah. Love.” He snorts. “Something we didn’t have in our day. Never saw the use of it. Now beauty? Oh!” Both hands on his cane he tips his head back wizened face lit up by a beatific smile, ivory hair a wild crown. “Why once I razed the towers of Heigh Pareval and salted the foundations of her walls because her Queen thought to keep her three most beautiful boys from the eyes of the world.” His shaggy brows come together and his smile droops, his eyes look away as his bobbing head begins to shake from side to side. “Or was that your grandmother, rest her teeth? I get confused.”

Beauty (Act II)

On her back on the bed in the dark her pale hair still in its thick rope of a ponytail draped over one shoulder soaks up what little light it can. Her knees drawn up together tipped over to one side, her little black dress rucked up about her hips, her feet bare. Her eyes closed. It’s a round room with casement windows all around cranked open to the sound of rain. Cardboard boxes full of clothes stacked here and there, and more clothing strewn about the bare wood floor. The table by the bedside’s a scrolled marble top balanced on a single fluted pedestal leg. A little blue glass reading lamp, dark, an alarm clock, a flimsy balloon of a wineglass with a small dark puddle at its bottom. A paperback book turned over, splayed open, says The Wounded Sky on its spine. She opens her eyes.

He’s standing in the doorway, the only flat wall in the room, silhouetted by the dim light in the stairwell. His head a great dark mass, his hair in dreadlocks that hang down past his shoulders. “You’re in a mood,” he says.

“Go away,” she says, closing her eyes again.

“Tell me,” he says, “this isn’t what it looks like.”

After a moment she reaches for the switch on the cord of the blue glass lamp and flicks it on. “What does it look like?” she says, sitting up a little, picking up the wineglass.

“Like you’ve suffered some apocalypse of the heart, sister dear.” His eyes are bright, his smile is gentle. “Like you’ve lost your one true love, who’s never to return.”

Beauty (Act I)

His eyes pop open madly jerking about. He’s stretched out on the narrow back seat his black suit coat draped over him like a blanket, squirming under it, huffing, fighting to free his arms. Up in the front seat Mr. Keightlinger leans one arm along the back of it offering a huge plastic cup filled with bright blue slushie. Mr. Charlock grabs it and greedily sucks it down with long cheek-hollowing pulls at the straw until the cup gurgles. He wedges the cup between his knees and delicately presses his fingertips to his temples, trying a number of grips, index and ring, ring and pinkie, thumbs and middle, thumbs alone, until he shivers and doubles over in a coughing fit, hacking something blue and sticky into a handkerchief. “Fuck me,” he says. “It was easier when I couldn’t get in.” He sniffs, pokes the straw around the cup, slurps at what’s left. “Que hora?”

“Noon’s half gone,” says Mr. Keightlinger.

“Shit.”

“You needed the sleep. Relax. They’re coming back from Erne’s.”

“What I need,” says Mr. Charlock, “is a long hot shower. Gets warm like it’s supposed to today? You do not want to smell what I got going on. And the crick in my neck.”

“Was it worthwhile?”

“Last night?” Mr. Charlock shrugs. “Whatever they had’s still gone. The Chariot or whoever can mope about whichever damn door he wants and as long as I’m bounded in a nutshell done up by a joiner squirrel and drawn by a team of redundant little atomies, I can get in there whichever night you please. Just, please. Make it a night she’s had it good and long and hard first, okay? My ribs feel like they was kicked in by red shoes.”

Things to keep in mind (The secret of patience)

When I watch Desert Hearts now, I think of a few people. I think of the (older) baby queer I matched with on Tinder who disappeared and who I followed up with a month later anyway. I think about how, because of that follow-up, we spent a night together where, following her lead, we stopped at making out with clothes on. I think about how that person is now so much more settled in their queerness—with their sexuality and their gender.

Beauty (Opening)

“Let’s do it in one,” says the red-headed man, and Marfisa shrugs. He flips up the tails of his long green coat and perches on a round stool before a keyboard balanced on a couple of sawhorses. She turns to face the soft black bulb of the microphone in a spidery clamp up about her head, a circle of fine black mesh held before it on a twisty plastic arm. “Just like we said,” he says, and crooks his back fingers wiggling over keys a moment before falling. Simple chords march out one by one to lay down the bones of a melody, and when they double back a little more certain she takes a breath and then another and begins to sing.

“You want us to call you what?” says the woman with the short dark hair, curled up in a corner of the couch along the back wall of the dim studio booth.

“The. Blue. Streak.” The kid snaps off each word in its own little bubble of speech. He’s wrapped around a big-bellied acoustic guitar at the other end of the couch.

“I mean for short. Do we call you, I don’t know, ‘The’?”

“Blue’s fine,” says the kid.

“She means it’s stupid,” says the bald man sitting on a stool before the control board. “You want to shut up a minute?” Through the thick glass wall Marfisa’s holding her hands up around either side of her microphone as if to keep a candle from blowing out.

Gin-soaked (Closing)

Dirty laundry piled on the futon, pillows tumbled to the floor. The doors to the bulky blond wood armoire stand ajar, more clothing piled on the floor there, leaking from drawers. On the glass-topped café table a straight green glass vase full of wilting spider mums has been pushed to one side to make room for an open pizza box empty except for a couple of nibbled crusts and a litter of petals. The sink in the little hallway kitchen is lost under a pile of dirty plates, glasses, bowls, a saucepan. A key rattles in the lock. Jo limps in shrugging a shoulder out of her jacket, flicking on the light in the little hallway kitchen. She shimmies her other arm free and lets the jacket drop to the floor. Heads across the main room stumbling over the black spear-haft stretching away under the table, kicking pillows out of the way to stand by the futon, her left hand gingerly opening and closing.

Ysabel’s in the little hallway kitchen looking down at Jo’s army-surplus jacket on the floor by the overflowing garbage can. She starts to say, “Could you at least,” but Jo snaps “Not now, okay? Not fucking now.” She’s unbuckling her belt. “And I don’t want to hear how it wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t opened my eyes when I shouldn’t have.” She kicks enough clothing away to free a space on the futon by the wall.

“It was more your big mouth,” says Ysabel. Jo’s yanking off her jeans, wincing, shaking out her left hand. “I told you it would sting a bit,” says Ysabel.

“Whatever,” says Jo, squirming under the blankets. Ysabel sits in one of the spindly wrought-iron chairs by the glass-topped table. “We’re going to see whatsisname, Erne, tomorrow,” says Jo.

“All right,” says Ysabel. “Does that mean you’re going to start carrying the sword?”

Gin-soaked (Act IV)

Jo kicks open the doors and runs through them onto the porch down the stairs Ray after her. Becker catches the door, watches through it as they run down the street between the boles of the great concrete pillars holding the onramps above them.

From away behind the church another crash of metal. “Back door,” says Becker, and he lets the front door close.

In the basement they’re mostly sitting again. Open Mike’s pacing by the piano. Ysabel’s turned sideways in her chair, her blackened eye faced away off toward the rack piled high with folding chairs. Beside her the Soames her shoulders to Ysabel’s back, her spectacles in one hand, squeezes the bridge of her nose. “I should be out there!” cries Open Mike, pounding the quilted piano with a balled-up fist.

Twice Thomas stands and walks across the ragged arc of chairs and men and women, his cap on his head, hands cupped carefully before him. He drops heavily to one knee before Ysabel. “Lady,” he says. “I would never spurn so rich a gift, but I must do something to–”

“It’s spoiled,” she snaps. “Gone dead. Wrung out. No better than the lint in your pocket, rabbit.”

He stands then, turns, and walks away, clapping the dust from his hands.

“He was wrong,” says the woman in the confetti-colored cap. She’s squatting on a chair back by the coffee urn, legs folded under her orange skirt, nibbling on a donut.

“Who was what now?” says Guthrie, worrying at a thumbnail with his teeth.

“When he said there were four. There’s only three from the track.”