TRICK BOX

Trick Box

Back when we were pure and ate

Cheerios instead of Fruit Loops

and had grubby faces and wore hand-me-downs

except on School Picture Day

and lived in brown apartment buildings

next to culverts and made slingshots

out of boys underwear and talked about

Yellow Rivers, you know, the book by I.P. Freeley

and skateboarded around stolen yellow cones

and the neighbors complained

and the teachers said we were gifted…

back then, we both knew and didn’t know, saw

and didn’t see our lives unfolding around us

like a trick box.

Out There

I know that if I go out there,

the winter sun will hit my brain and burn through

the soggy human detritus that threatens

every day to wreck my birth-joy.

Work and words, debt and duties I never knew I’d have.

Decisions. Pride. Regret.

If I go out there

and I’m very still, the trees

will talk to me (as they always do) and smells will invade

and dissolve that grey matter pudding, fuel for the

insanity machine that keeps us alive. Unliving but alive.

But… if I go out there, will I have the edge to survive

this bloated human universe?

I turn the knob.

Day is a Stranger

Round little face, long slender hand on the 12, short fat one on the 6. Woke up early because I don’t trust the alarm clock. Had those boxy kind of dreams again. In the final one, I was lost in a foreign city, a blurry-faced person helping me get to another part of town. But of course, not getting there because in dreams the goal is never achieved.

**

6:05. Crusty eyes. Smoke? Chemtrails? They’ve been spraying a lot lately. Ah there’s a clunkety-clunk. Little squirt is up, or maybe the cat. Now clicking noises, yep, he’s up, playing with Legos. When he was six, he used to play the little keyboard – lovely, atmospheric music. That time’s over. Now it's click click.

**

To the right, a lumpy shape—my mate— ensconced in a state of decadent unconsciousness, perhaps the result of last night's “medicine.” The Green is everywhere now, people giving it away or trading it like cowry shells. In some cultures it’s called “giving up.”

**

6:20 already. God. Coffee. Lunches. The sense of dread that washes over at this time. Things got better when I agreed to make the lunches. Spreading mayonnaise helped the relationship. Gotta try to stay married.

**

6:30 and I turn my head to view the assault: achingly bright sky poking its nose above the curtain. A seemingly benign stranger trying to noodle in on my affairs.

**

6:35 and still no alarm. Why can’t someone make a reliable alarm clock? Better turn it off now just in case. It could go off while I’m in the bathroom. Should try to be thoughtful.

**

More light filters in, making additional sleep unfeasible even if the job didn’t exist. The Job. Coffee. Lunches. Another clunking sound, this one on the stairs. He’ll be down there now, under the blanket on the couch playing Blob. When I was a kid we played it on shag carpeting. Now it’s a couch game.

**

6:45 and my feet touch the floor, submitting. The shaggy-haired little man acts like a teenager, reading comic books and listening to heavy metal. But still a boy. A child navigating the squishy network of life and its repercussions. Soon I’ll be on the couch, playing Blob. Then Coffee, Lunches, the Job, the Day.

Maya Sutherland: I live in Eugene, Oregon, where I work as a writer and part-time “moss scraper.” My background also includes stints as a graphic designer, printer, journalist, and writing instructor. My poems and short fiction have appeared in a few journals and "zines," including Edgz, Poetry Motel, Wallpaper, Pudding Magazine, and Graffiti.