Secondhand Smoke
Martin Ott
The man who bought Hitler’s bed did not have nightmares as a child.
The man who bought Hitler’s bed did not have nightmares as a child.
Woke up alone today in my own bed
after a solid sleep for the first time
in over three weeks, feeling strange there,
almost rested, but not quite, how big
my bed was around me, how new
I carve horses out of watermelon. I swallow / fish eyes like gum drops. I pray under / neon chandeliers, string chrysanthemum / in my hair.
i think i was an onion in a former life / i think you chopped me / lord how high were we last night
Remember when every stray dog was a love story and the snow that night cleared the crust that had gummed my eyes shut? No, me neither, but fuck it. Let’s get lit one last time.
I wish I had that glorified high school / experience— where some boys / are chugging expired strawberry liqueur / and everyone, I mean everyone, / is sprawling on the grasscarpet
When I exhaust all other forms of exploration, / this landscape will deny me at the border; / & I will turn my gaze toward a darkening / sky filled with stars I no longer recognize.
Sometimes I say novels ruined me in the way they ruin all young bookish girls, slowly and tenderly rotting out the light and making room for the sweet dark.
Remember, there’s a light emitting from you and it's not just your cellphone. / The Internet is a scorched wasteland. / But you've walked through worse places / on your way to work.
It means nothing now but it meant enough then, enough to change a life, to alter the smooth rhythmic turning of the world.
He doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t want any.
That’s the only way Mays can pitch,
because he doesn’t play the game
of fraternity formed on summer ballfields.
Me at my most beautiful. Me locked in. Me sacrifice stance.
He could say from experience
that Babe Ruth was an asshole,
but he never said it on the field.
That was the year Dave Kingman’s pop fly never came down at the Metrodome
Nineteen players were ejected during the Padres/Braves brawl
Angel Mike Witt threw a perfect game against the
Before the nasty glances, which I sense to be for me, I shake my downcast head, grin in disappointment, and mutter “Damn.”
While waiting in my car outside your house I counted thirteen wrinkled ticket stubs I’d tucked inside the glovebox after games
to serve as some reminder of the season so far.
Baseball is, if nothing else, a reason, and so it is everything:
I’m thankful for the throwaways. Like the time the Bears lost in extra innings. Randy Bass, pre-Hanshin Tigers Randy Bass, had committed an error on a routine toss to the pitcher at first. It was
Then something funny happened / after months of imprisonment, / handled like/ animals, less than/ animals, / they started playing baseball.
Love is like a museum. You have to look around, experience things, and then leave.
Garielle's longest, most peculiar, most particularized book. A sure-to-be collector's item. Delivery 4-6 weeks!
"Is this the actual diary you wrote at the time? The diary reads a lot like a novel, with its motifs of the murderess, the acupuncturist, etc." -Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted and The Complete Gary Lutz