He’d done as he was told. Did what he promised. It didn’t take long to adjust. After a week of training, Wayne started the overnight sorting shift at the garbage facility just off downtown. He found if he spiked his rum with Alka-Seltzer, he could make it through the entire night without his back cramping up, and if he chewed gum, he never stank of booze— just tropical fruit mixed with burned coffee from the never-ending pot in the lobby of his new home, the LAX Holiday Inn. Working …
I lost count of the bubbles today. I don’t have a clear concept of how long that long time has been–only that at this place, where the words “Welcome to Seafood Hut” drop limply from the cook’s lips when the door chimes and a customer enters, there is no other meaningful way to measure the passage of time. Sometimes, the cook’s greeting is timed simultaneously with the lazy gush of the filter, and the smaller bubbles throw themselves against my shell’s edges and cut themselves into seafoam. …
Unable to sleep (unfinished work, lab reports) (don’t ask, don’t ask), but tomorrow’s pickup day, so I make myself get out of bed to take out the trash. As I’m walking to the gate, I see myself, back from taking out the trash. He’s carrying a scale under his arm. I’m not (yet). I want to ignore him; I hope he’s going to ignore me. At least the moon is up; the moon is fat and yellow and full. If there are now two of me all over again, there aren’t two of those (yet (checking) ok). The air …
My community is bolts and washers. Alloyed metal is the fusion of two, just like me, but I’m alone in this aisle. Plumbing is what we don’t want to see; we put it behind cupboards or in the ground, but the heart is dependent on pathways and valves. I could stay here for hours if only the men in those orange aprons would leave me alone. Love is geometry, yes, but I’m overwhelmed by the possibility of so many angles. Well, not overwhelmed— I see the extrapolations, lines and their intersections, …
On the first Sunday of October in 1988, Mr. and Mrs. Suzuki drove my suitcases to the next homestay family, the Yashiros; I followed behind on my 50cc Honda Tact. Mr. Yashiro— a busier carpenter than Mr. Suzuki, judging by his absence— had built a home for his family with amenities like climate control in every room. In the front hall bathroom, he had also installed a washlet: an evolved toilet that directed a jet of cleansing water in the direction of my butt at the tap of a remote control. The …
After my mother dreamt that the cow she was eating was her own mother, bovine eyes terrified and crying, we went vegetarian. Tofu, tempeh, and seitan had yet to catch on in Atlanta, so she replaced our 8-ounce reusable container for bulk grind-your-own crunchy peanut butter with a 16-ounce jar. Creamy peanut butter epitomized the normal life I just knew was better. Jif’s predictably standard smell represented clothes bought from the Gap, not stitched together interior design scraps my …