One Track Mind : Nikki Allen, Dib Cochrane
William Basinski - Disintegration Loops (Track 1)
As if I can hear everything I’ve ever done in my present day breathing. Or every breath ever born from these lungs can be counted, is counted, a chicken scratch tally on all the sidewalks and all the walls. It is like that.
It is seeing you for the first time.
Being on the receiving end of the statement “I love who you are” when hope seems to be the brilliant musician who died too young.
I take all the fissures in my heart and line them end to trembling end. I fill them with all the saline shed. I make a river. I sail away this way, for good. It is like that.
The evening light coming into the city bus on the ascending path out of the city. The way it turns the backs of the necks in front of me to Midas artifacts. It is impossible to tell if it is summer or winter; the light through the window does not tell temperature.
Insomniac testifies. In writing. Never sends, keeps for twelve years.
The power going out. The entire block in blackness, except for the moon, and the moon has been incredible lately. A fat shouting. There is nothing to do but stand on the porch, watch the neighbors come out cupping palms around candles.
The lack of sound objects make when dropped into the hole created by my mother’s absence. It is like that.
Kissing in a field. There is fog, there is you. There is nothing else.
The birds at four a.m., the power lines they sing from.
You and me both being asleep while our aortas carry on, two cans connected by string.
The bowed bookshelves after the books have been removed. The dust staying to outline the ghost spines; it is like that.
The funeral I do not want to attend.
Demolition of denial. A light bulb dimmed.
Bowing your head when you do not pray,. Bowing your head because there is something about suffering we cannot understand. Bowing your head out of instinct.
The desire to make sense.
The memory I never told you about. It is like that. It is dying as a write this. It is fading while tomorrow comes into focus.
Taking the long way home.
Digging in December dirt without a coat.
The end of the street you live in, one solid shot of the trees and patch of sky, houses and intersection. In all kinds of weather, on all the days that ever started, viewed in quick succession. Believed, missed.
Like that.
Like this.
Nikki Allen is a writer living in Pittsburgh. Her most recent poetry collection, quite like yes, was published earlier this year. Visit Nikki at www.honeydunce.com
Dark Side – The Shadows of Knight
Jim Sohns is one of those guys; you know the type, the sort of low-heeled hoodlum that prowls around your daughter’s high school offering all the short skirted lasses, with a wicked wink, a friendly ride. Sohns is a member of that dark and dirty pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll deities, the gods that lurk in the brackish cesspools, one hand flipping a switchblade, the other dialing a sex line. Sohns resides there, eternally hangin’ with Sky Saxon, Reg Presley, Roy Loney, and that guy from The Chocolate Watchband whose name I always forget.
Dark Side is The Shadows masterpiece. Two minutes of menace that spotlights the creep-next-door quality of Sohns’ needle-y pipes. Yeah, Jimmy-boy is broken hearted coz his lady lied to him, but you know this guy is just waiting, watching the door to her house long into the wee hours, patiently staking out the joint knowing she has to come out eventually, and when she does…well, it won’t be pretty.
And god help the poor fool she’s taken up with since dumping Jim’s drop-out ass. Jim has some other songs in the arsenal for that chump. And you know he’s just waiting to pull the kid down some dark alley and give his demons a good workout.
Dib Cochrane is a writer in Pittsburgh. He would like to apologize to that guy from The Chocolate Watchband in person coz that dude rocked mightily.