Richard Weaver

A Day Like Any Other
 
except her ears slid snail-like down the sides of her nose and continued downward until they plunged into the hot tub which was anything but hot though it did have a propense of tub-like qualities and admirable tendencies. The ears floated as they would in the fierce, luke-cold jet streams, streamers of zinc oxide swirling in suggestive Rorschach patterns. The blot test blackened blues. Another day of betrayal. Body part sloughing. abandonment. The slouching of America. She knows enough not to call Dr. Ecdysis who bills episodically and doesn’t make pool calls. He claims an immune response to sun and chlorine though his skin is cracked and leathery. For a moment, perhaps half a moment, she considers fishing after her ears, paddling against the wicked current, and if successful in her efforts, dropping them in the ice with her Rye Whiskey. Isn’t it enough that they float, content not to sink. The pinnae gathering water, not sound. The lobe piercings remain open to the possibility of designer-crafted gold danglings.
 
**
 
Meaning
 
is almost never perhaps maybe seldom on occasion sometimes nearly absolute.. Or, something to consume blithely. The ways in which sounds and resulting words engage are myriad and mystifying. They may jangle or jingle or roar jungle-like. They might glow in the day and darken at night. Or slowly become invisible. Often as not, they spit in the beholder’s eye with fiendish precision. They collide. They collude. Many have been known to openly conspire, allegedly with the writer’s best interests at heart. Who is he after all to judge or carp. What matters most is pages moving forward with a curdling plot or a whirling world. There must be motion. Movement. A distancing from erasure. What passes for time progressing much the same way that whiskey fuels and accelerates the interaction of bladder and kidneys, kidneys and bladder.
 
**
 
The Sins of Angels
 
are scree at the bottom of molehills hidden under the sea. Which sea I am unable to say. What sins, you ask? Can any angel be singed? What are the criteria of angelic sins? Surely this is a matter best handled in silence. A quiet candlelit reading of Jude 6 and Peter 2.4 might best illuminate chains of darkness and actions or thoughts unclean. For now the sands of angel are untimely hourglasses. Their songs are unsung by the insane. No harmony flowers forth. Snakes rattle their sibilant pleasures. The easiest answer is blasphemous in its unreeling silence.
 
**
 
A Man Made of Clay
 
worries the Raku kiln might be too hot or not hot enough, the humidity too high or contaminated with microbes, that red clay dug specially to be his heart and lungs, his brain testicles and toes, might not be up to scratch. That there might be air bubbles beneath. The pounding had not been vigorish enough or the assistant’s hands might have sullied its pureness. A man made of clay is no micro-manager, although he has enrolled in a certificate program. Quality, he muses out loud. Control, he adds after the fact. If not I, then whom? Or what? A prejudiced unmasked? A truth further concealed? Is there ever an answer that satisfies fully? A question that isn’t its own mirror? AMMOC yields the point, and offers his remaining time back to whomsoever knows said person to be presently dying and forecasted not to last the night. 
 
**
 
Nothing Else
 
seems to be at an impasse. No go to go where went was not welcome. Where arrival was neither expected nor guaranteed. Nothing Else was always wanting somehow, despite protestations and pretense otherwise. To do or not do to. A question or a three cushion bank shot. Can anything be done towards mitigation? Nothing Else has no response of course, but does raise and lower its shoulders, if perception is the flicker of a gnat’s heartbeat. Nothing Else is drained of imagination, but considers that a plus. It make be naked, it is true, but remains undaunted if good for the nothing that never was. NE can’t be bothered with nada, jack, squat, zip, zilch, or the bottom of the net. Nor does it have a conscious, good for who is stupendously nought, but less than none. Sadly, it is both gluten and glutton free but is willing to negotiate if necessary. Or else.
 
**
 
A Shirt has Somehow Tied Itself
 
into a fixed series of granny knots with no granny present, not even a distant aunt or a cat o’ nine tails. Even the wrinkles have wrinkles. There was a severe permanency about this half-hogtying. An in your face Harry Houdini quality. A level of professionalism rarely seen outside dyslexic drycleaners at the South Pole. Not that it mattered to the shirt. It was new to the world, freshly released from a plastic bag, denuded of washing instructions, and happily rid of all plastic theft protection. There is the small issue of cascading, twisted knots stretching its pristine Sea Island cotton fibers. Alas, no beau waits to be dressed or adorned. Is this staged art for the near-deaf, those who can hear the near silent screams of fabrics in distress? Are there echoing echoes of child-labor laws falling in domino fashion during an earthquake? Can there be a happy future for this debased shirt who has committed no crime, violated no known laws, and whose coloring offends no sensibilities? Or has the world suddenly inverted, shifted heaven to hell, stiffing the waitress and bartender? Can the unworn ever become wearable? Can hope ever be freed from bondage even when wrinkles reluctantly release?
 
**
 
The Unkempt Bed Had Remade Itself 
 
military style this morning, crisp hospital corners, glass smooth sheets with quartered corners, the bedspread taut enough to bounce a quarter off. Fluffed bedspread 8” from the head where plumped pillows proudly wait for the next head aboard. And a faint scent of lavender with a hint of Italian rosemary. No motes linger on any surfaces, including the overhead fan blades. The lights are dimmed in anticipation of tonight’s tired guest whose socks are likely to explode windows, whose broken shoes might inflict wounds and ultimately scars. Who is likely to fall headfirst onto the bed and there rest until dawn jackhammers his eyes open, and the short race of man against distended bladder ends abruptly with trousers anchored to ankles, the guest’s head bobbing in the sparkling toilet.
 
**
 
Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, & New England Review (1980). He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first four years.  Recently, his 200th prose poem was accepted since 2016.