Author: a-spider-on-state-street

How have online sales been going?

Too busy. I have had absolutely no time to do anything besides this and deal with the construction people…I still have unanswered contact emails from two weeks ago!

Scrap Creative Reuse, 1:30PM, 11/4/2024

december is the culmination of a series of unfortunate events, one month crashing into another, a pileup on a highway slick with ice. the snow masks your face, reflects the sun into my eyes. you believe punishment precedes trial, as did i, once upon a time. that time is no longer upon us–its passage should not be mistaken for an apology. i look into the bottom of my cup, at the tea leaves and the tarot cards, as if the swirling dredges could pull a lifeless body from the shore.

I got the job back, and I’ve been in meetings all day, all the guys at the house are really nice. So yeah, I’ve been sober for about five weeks now—yeah, thank you!

AADL Downtown, 4:30PM, 10/29/2024

it’s interesting that most of our limits are self-enforced, biological or not. in a society composed of chance, where do we draw the line? you and i do not hold the same significance. you see a miracle when you look out the window and i see a miracle when i look at you. both are true, in a sense. Darwish would profess an act of love, Marías a curiosity (“the window of a lover is more interesting than our own will ever be”). the window is a physical limitation, the infatuation a mental one. history always repeats itself; man must do as man did once.

You can each pick out one ornament for the tree. See they have Barbie, Minnie and Mickie, all the princesses… Grinch, Hocus Pocus, Harry Potter…

Walmart, 11:30AM, 11/30/2024

salem, 1690.

a body surfaces, frozen eyes and blueberry lips. a prayer, coughed up from the lungs. she’s alive! a miracle! the women weep and grow restless: they know what is coming. the preacher accuses, first with his eyes, then with his fist. a promise, jerked upright, throat wringed like a wet dishcloth. the floor opens and swallows the body. who’s next? the yew adds another ornament to its branches. inside the house, a silence borne from fear. not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

I wish that would help… like, abracadabra! That’s how you do the [-] problem! Gee, thanks.

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00AM, 10/18/2024

i am seven and the dust bunnies morph into a creature under the mattress, tickling my ankles and stealing my socks. i am fifteen and i learn the taste of love from from a dog abandoned on the roadside. i am thirty and you speak to me in whispers, your voice like tendrils, bending cartilage, bypassing cochlea. i am sixty and the conscience is subdued, the voice tragic. the magic, left to rot with the monster under the bed.

I’m sick of looking at screens! I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing all day… my eyes feel like I just wanna take them out, wash them in the sink, and push them back in.

Chem Building, 4:30PM, 11/14/2024

at some point the force of habit kicks in and your mind checks out. this is the death of a life, this drudgery. routine makes the mind numb, the soul weak. a counterclaim against optimism: if the rest of the journey is forgotten, you have converted your adventure into a chore. one foot in front of the other, nothing more than a machine. my fingers beg for rest, one letter scribed, one letter typed. this hope hovers above all of us, a claw half-grasped, holding us in place. step out of bounds, slip up, and you will be crushed–the claw does not care, it suffers from the force of habit as well…

They’re in the nice heat of their car, we’re in the cold. They can wait!

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00PM, 11/14/2024

a beam of sunlight washes down the flank of the mountain, a bear in hibernation. some days the snow recedes and exposes the conspiracy of survival: the weeds that bloom false flowers, the dandelions that slither between sidewalk slabs. concrete yields to tree roots, roads forked like lightning and runways cracked like eggshells. an apocalypse, a tragedy, a return of equilibrium. the gardens have long degraded, but the soil is still slick with sorrow: a name mother nature remembers, but a face she forgets.

He didn’t go to jail, they put him in a cage. Solitary confinement, for two years!

Mujo Café Duderstadt, 10:00AM, 11/20/2024

you come out a shell, you understand that? i didn’t believe it, i grew up alone and confident, but it was a confidence bred to impress others. you spend your whole life stealing from the spotlight, taking attention by force, and it gets you in trouble, you know… you’re running from the law, from the past, and you’re running from yourself–that’s the worst part. they don’t care about your body, they care about your mind. the most important weapon. they take it, and they turn it on itself. a captain that sinks with the ship, a noble death at your hands. and you only have yourself to blame.

That’s one of my theories, that King Tut’s tomb was an elaborate theory. Cuz it makes perfect sense! It was discovered in the age of circuses and freak shows and fake artifacts—oh, this is the one perfectly preserved tomb?

Digger’s, 3:30PM, 11/29/2024

but curiosity got the better of you, didn’t it? you bring it up quickly, too casually, in a way that implies you’ve been thinking about it all day. it’s never left your mind, i know it and you know i know it. why dance around the campfire after it has burned to ash? a stutter-step, a dewdrop on a leaf, a bomb disguised as a blessing. my tongue hovers on the edge of detonation–so this is how rooftops become tombstones–as the granite slides open. the hieroglyphs twitch, awakened from slumber.

It’s my lucky Hot Wheels car, see… I can fidget, play with the wheels when I get stressed.

Angell Hall, 6:00PM, 12/3/2024

ready. where there are no riddles i am met with rhymes: a fifty-meter sprint, a poetic dash, an impossible distance to cross. set. the eye of the needle shimmers: a twinkle, a rumor, a tumor lying in wait. what’s the magic word? the engine squeals and the rubber drags its nails across the asphalt and the wall becomes ceiling. is it true that people don’t remember words, they remember feelings? a face, a mouth, a scream, the word go. a single moment crystallized, heat-shocked and left to rot. a neural pathway, brittle and dehydrated, ready to snap at the thought of you.

We should just become English and get double-decker buses.

Pierpont Commons, 11:30AM, 11/8/2024

there is a screech of sweaty palm on stainless steel. the paint is stripped away in degrees, each sheet plastered to a different person. to think that we grabbed the same railing, turned the same key, held our own hands in the absence of the other’s. i was young and i did not realize you were young too. the paint, strong and dazzling, untouched. the pain, flaring, like a static discharge through the heart. the same hands, once cupped and overflowing, are now scrabbling at the coffin–but from which side? bury me alive, if it means you will never see me dead.

This is a really weird Sunday. I feel like everybody who was already gonna be somewhere has already left.

Trader Joe’s, 12:30PM, 11/24/2024

you are stuck somewhere in a space without dimension, a page without definition. your hair trembles. if i blink, you wave, your wrist flapping back and forth, your smile stretched between ears. an apparition, childish at heart, perhaps the worst way to suffer eternity. scream! please scream! the soul never matures; it knows the mortality of the body cannot compensate for the factors of luck, the four-sixteen-sixtyfour-leaf clover tattooed on your back. you are stuck somewhere, going but not gone, and i am stuck with you, suffering in silence, praising the deity that granted passage.

the devil’s dichotomy: an underworld, or a world without you.

Thanksgiving! It’s about the food and the family. I’ve told you, it’s like Christmas without the capitalism!

Glen/Catherine Inbound, 9:30PM, 10/8/2024

it is hard to write fiction and recognize the elements of truth that are sewn into the words, baked into the structure, digested in conscience and spit out as thought. of course i am thankful, but to speak it aloud would shatter the reality, a stake driven into the timeline. the only way to speak is to write, to draw parallels, to squint at the stars and see a bear. we are a kaleidoscope of butterflies, each of our successes driven by the updraft of our companion’s wings. i thank the earth for spinning so that i may see the sun split the horizon every day. i thank the moon for shining so that i may read and cry and dream without judgement.

i thank you, dear reader, for listening so that i may share a slice of this fruitful life with those who enjoy it.

I don’t think any TV sold within the past six years has had any sort of DVD player in it…

Traverwood Library, 6:30PM, 9/11/2024

[an excerpt, or a cry for help]

there is small comfort in the whole truth, but there is no comfort in a half-truth, because your honesty is shielded by your shame. just because you can tell a story doesn’t mean it deserves to be heard. are you not shameful? we are growing old, novelty ripped out and replaced by convenience. perhaps i will write today, because there is also a small comfort in a whole lie, a brazenness mistaken for bravery. an undiagnosed feeling squirms in my stomach. it takes a lot of half-truths, a summation of sins and sorrows, to approach the mirror, speak the words–

You can drive for two or three days in Texas and not leave the state.

Yeah, it’s one of the biggest states.

Alaska is even bigger… look at that. Too big.

Pierpont Commons, 2:00PM, 10/31/2024

—it’s nothing, really, and it’s true, because nothingness–emptiness–inflames the mind and plagues the soul. i lick the envelope; it is empty for now, though it will carry the weight of a novel in its folds. i think of emily dickinson and susan gilbert, tongue and glue, attraction misattributed like an incorrect citation. the quote wasn’t theirs, did you know? it was written by carolyn forché. you are beaming. of course i knew, but i tell you otherwise because this is your moment, your gold nugget that you sifted from the crevices of memory. how would forché put it? tenderness is in the hands? that means–

But that’s just the way that I have to communicate with some of my relatives, just to let them know that hey, I’m still here!

Ann Arbor Thrift Shop, 1:00PM, 11/18/2024

–the heart is the toughest part of the body, though not for good reason. graphite needles puncture skin, drawing blood from vein to inkwell. you’re stationary–letters leaking, fingers bleeding, arms wound like a clock: forever crooked, never on time. the wire, peaked with clothespins, is slack and sagging. to allow for miracles, you say, even though you don’t believe in them. i believe in you, though. what does that make me?

to the right, the maxilla quivers. to the left, the mandible spins, closing the gap. hot breath, pulsing gums, the proof of life staring at you–do we make our own miracles?–as you stare back at the scythe, at the split decision–

midnight strikes. the gator’s mouth snaps shut. the clothesline pulls taut and the pins are falling, falling, gone.

[pointing to a bag of psychedelics] You laugh at me but you support it. Look what happens when you support it!

UniQue T-Shirts, 1:30PM, 10/16/2024

your face turns, a sunflower in september. a starburst of seven streams, blending together, repelling, intertwining. you grab my hand but i am already gone, a trip distilled into its core emotions. a fairytale nightmare, a frontal lobe stunned, or stunted, only time will tell. an infection, a parasite, a host and a contestant–the grand prize a great flood, for better or for worse? the earth swirls and sloshes. mud becomes bronze becomes clay becomes tar. i am trapped, anchored to a moment, watching the world spin forward without me, the present freezing into the past. i watch the drops of sanity peel from my skin, feel the beads of blood coalesce beneath my tongue–a ribbon, a pulse, a dream.

Like, I get it! Harassing me is only gonna make me want to vote less, you know…

East Quad, 6:30PM, 11/5/2024

we are always running to a graveyard or an office or a sunset that we will never reach. why would you take a golden ticket for granted? keep duties away from indifference. your voice, silenced, cut like a stem, put on display–oral histories drying up in your parched throat–and for that i mourn your loss, your vowels sharp as the glass that imprisons it, the enamel behind your teeth ground away like whetstone. this is your fault, your victimhood, your desire. we have split the atom and put it back together, you and i. it hurts to breathe, but we breathe anyway.

I need to lock in but the minute I get home… the minute I see my bed…

Chem Building, 9:00AM, 11/6/2024

wake up, you’re going to be late. now is your chance to tell your story. see the camera? smile and wave. your achievements are not interchangeable; your memories are not replaceable. you’re scared? i don’t care. everything that can go wrong might go wrong. life is full of might-go-wrongs, it’s how we built the pyramids, planned the skyscrapers, chipped rock from the moon. might is a powerful word, it indicates strength, it predicates possibility–trust me, there’s nothing stronger than a word that tumbles around your head. internalize your worth and wear it like an accessory. scratch that itch, spit it out, shed your skin and leave no trace behind.

wake up, you’re going to be late.