opening: her body bloodied with a knife sticking out of it in the backseat being bounced between her seatback and the backs of the seatbacks in front of her— Wait, Dad asked, what the hell? I said, If he’s not careful on the next large preggers bump her corpse could tumble to the floor, falling atop the filthy mats, atop the sloppy wads of mats, to wedge between her seat and his recline.
His? Dad asked, I said, If he doesn’t slow down.
It’s night? Dad asked, I said, Yes or virtually, the sun’s gone down, moon’s gone halved, how’d you know? her body’s rolling and thumping.
What’s the night like? Dad asked, I said, It’s wet, the stoplights flash above like spotlights.
It’s green, a bright go green, the car’s being driven fast.
Slow down, Dad asked, who’s driving?
Her boyfriend.
Boyfriend?
Driving southwest, I said, away from the towns he’d grown up in, toward the towns she’d grown up in, poorer to rich, criminal to just criminally tame—quarter tank to Empty, burning last gas, he’s wasting time, he’s stalling.
Dad asked, What’s his name?
Blood’s pooling in the seams of the seats, blood’s puddling and the radio’s off but he turns it down anyway, that’s a good detail that he can’t stand all that noise, he’s turning the volume down, down, lower down, all this one paragraph he’s just lowering the volume.
Why’s he doing that? Dad asked, I said, It’s a circular motion like how you’re supposed to stab someone then diddle the wrist, tweaking the knob of the liver, the spleen.
That’s a good detail? Dad asked.
Neon sizzles past, neon sizzes, zisses? The windshield, in reflection, becomes signage. His throat burns, the boyfriend’s, “his hands are readied tense.”
It’s when I wrote that line—beginning the story from the middle, I realized—that I knew I was stalled too (my hands were readied, tense ): knew that I couldn’t say the Word, knew that I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about this Word to write a story with it in it (anyway the Word was not a word, was actually less than a word, was meaningless, had no untainted derivation, had no true legacy or beauty, it was even less than its least letter, it was nothing, it was ruination).
So I described things, I made things up and described them to my Dad: light and signs and the throats of boyfriends, frisking my face in my sleep with a thumbnail that left wounds, smoking quit cigarettes and drinking nightly a half bottle gluglug of whiskey, waking up late so getting to work late where I’d spend Midwestern quantities of time on the internet pursuing this one particular commenter I thought common to a spate of local sports blogs but under twelve different, differently gendered aliases and product recall news especially when it concerned the domestic automotive industry and searching search engines for “whats wrong with my story?” coming back from work still worrying the story and hating the story and thinking that introducing this Word into the story would be like introducing Mom who really wants grandchildren to a girlfriend who’s really a man, it’d be like inviting friends over to my apartment for dinner then serving them individual portions of my feces garnished with poems about how much I hate friends and the poetry would rhyme.
It’d be wrong to bring this Word into my story and so into my life, not interesting in the way that foreigners tend to enliven a host country with their cuisine and dress, religiosociocultural traditions and languages, but in fact evil and destructive, The boyfriend’s foreign? Dad asked, I’m trying to tell you the story by not telling you the story, I said, you should be aware that this is what writers regularly do, This is America? Dad asked—To recap, I said, he’s driving because her corpse is in the backseat and her corpse is in the backseat because he killed her.
The boyfriend might be, I said, he originally was or should’ve been, I said, heading
His? Dad asked, I said, If he doesn’t slow down.
It’s night? Dad asked, I said, Yes or virtually, the sun’s gone down, moon’s gone halved, how’d you know? her body’s rolling and thumping.
What’s the night like? Dad asked, I said, It’s wet, the stoplights flash above like spotlights.
It’s green, a bright go green, the car’s being driven fast.
Slow down, Dad asked, who’s driving?
Her boyfriend.
Boyfriend?
Driving southwest, I said, away from the towns he’d grown up in, toward the towns she’d grown up in, poorer to rich, criminal to just criminally tame—quarter tank to Empty, burning last gas, he’s wasting time, he’s stalling.
Dad asked, What’s his name?
Blood’s pooling in the seams of the seats, blood’s puddling and the radio’s off but he turns it down anyway, that’s a good detail that he can’t stand all that noise, he’s turning the volume down, down, lower down, all this one paragraph he’s just lowering the volume.
Why’s he doing that? Dad asked, I said, It’s a circular motion like how you’re supposed to stab someone then diddle the wrist, tweaking the knob of the liver, the spleen.
That’s a good detail? Dad asked.
Neon sizzles past, neon sizzes, zisses? The windshield, in reflection, becomes signage. His throat burns, the boyfriend’s, “his hands are readied tense.”
It’s when I wrote that line—beginning the story from the middle, I realized—that I knew I was stalled too (my hands were readied, tense ): knew that I couldn’t say the Word, knew that I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about this Word to write a story with it in it (anyway the Word was not a word, was actually less than a word, was meaningless, had no untainted derivation, had no true legacy or beauty, it was even less than its least letter, it was nothing, it was ruination).
So I described things, I made things up and described them to my Dad: light and signs and the throats of boyfriends, frisking my face in my sleep with a thumbnail that left wounds, smoking quit cigarettes and drinking nightly a half bottle gluglug of whiskey, waking up late so getting to work late where I’d spend Midwestern quantities of time on the internet pursuing this one particular commenter I thought common to a spate of local sports blogs but under twelve different, differently gendered aliases and product recall news especially when it concerned the domestic automotive industry and searching search engines for “whats wrong with my story?” coming back from work still worrying the story and hating the story and thinking that introducing this Word into the story would be like introducing Mom who really wants grandchildren to a girlfriend who’s really a man, it’d be like inviting friends over to my apartment for dinner then serving them individual portions of my feces garnished with poems about how much I hate friends and the poetry would rhyme.
It’d be wrong to bring this Word into my story and so into my life, not interesting in the way that foreigners tend to enliven a host country with their cuisine and dress, religiosociocultural traditions and languages, but in fact evil and destructive, The boyfriend’s foreign? Dad asked, I’m trying to tell you the story by not telling you the story, I said, you should be aware that this is what writers regularly do, This is America? Dad asked—To recap, I said, he’s driving because her corpse is in the backseat and her corpse is in the backseat because he killed her.
The boyfriend might be, I said, he originally was or should’ve been, I said, heading
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