there is nothing more perfect in this world than a strip of number four staples
shining and ordered, geometrical and symmetrical
hinting of infinity
the very image of the logos that in the beginning was with
and was
but staples have sharp points
are easily placed in the mouth
can be swallowed where they will lodge in the throat
and must be kept out of the reach of children
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world.”
– Dorothy Law Nolte, “Children Learn What They Live”
the rain today brought the snails out for their snail-paced play.
they left snotty trails on the concrete of the back porch.
my son squatted by the open back door,
cooing over the slow-dancing snails, telling me,
look, dad, they’ve all found their shells.
the big ones have found big shells,
and the little ones have found little shells.
they all found the shells that fit them just right.
at the edge of the porch, by the wet grass, he saw an empty shell.
he picked it up, looking around for the snail it must have belonged to.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
tücher the prince and cinderella scoot
moving boy-footed and girl-slippered to set the coffee table for tea
fat-handed children giggly to spread the white sheet with tease and toys
the sheet doing for a tablecloth for children spilling onto the floor
their laughy bodies falling falling
stopped at mid-play by cinderella’s mother calling
‘step lightly, cinderella, step away’
leaving a slim glass slipper under the ghostly-sheeted coffee table
topped by cold dregs for sipping
stale scones for supping
cinderella slipping like mist from charmful tücher the prince
now of the -pality of one
boy-footed to the doorway moving
watching cinderella run
calling to the ashen girl vanishing cinderella! making fists unmaking fists
making fists again
fat hands rolled into scepter’s ends
prince tücher squints into the brightliness of a sunnish day
watching the girl-slippered girl slip away—
knobby-handed princeling, it’s time to clear the table
there will be another ball tonight
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Fish pain is something different from our own pain. In the elaborate mirrored hall that is human consciousness, pain takes on existential dimensions. Because we know that death looms, and grieve for the loss of richly imagined futures, it’s tempting to imagine that our pain is the most profound of all suffering. But we would do well to remember that our perspective can make our pain easier to bear, if only by giving it an expiration date. When we pull a less cognitively blessed fish up from the pressured depths too quickly, and barometric trauma fills its bloodstream with tissue-burning acid, its on-deck thrashing might be a silent scream, born of the fish’s belief that it has entered a permanent state of extreme suffering.” – Ross Andersen, “What the Crow Knows”
he is a man of several habits
his virtue that of the fallen arch
his odor the smell of an evening’s must
his taste the flavor of nothing at all
his lovers ephemeral, he carefully gnaws a thumbnail or two
rubbing himself the wrong way
spitting thumbnail slivers onto the floor
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
a light
switch
clicks
a woman
gasps
a twig
snaps
like
that
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The maiden voyage of the newly recommissioned USS Pueblo in January 1968 was not a well-planned operation. The ship’s preparation was hurried, and the crew was not adequately trained to meet the emergency that confronted them. The SIGINT detachment did not know how to conduct aspects of its mission and, more importantly, did not train in emergency destruction measures. There were numerous highly classified documents aboard the ship that were outdated, some were not needed to carry out the mission, and still others were in unnecessary duplicate copies. When the destruction order finally came, the Pueblo crew was thrown into complete disorder. By at least 20 January, North Korean military authorities were aware of the Pueblo‘s presence off North Korea. Visual reconnaissance of the Pueblo began shortly thereafter. Once the Pueblo was confirmed by the North Koreans as an American vessel and as an intelligence collector, the North Korean purpose was to force the ship into submission and to seize it.” – Robert E. Newton, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations
the caterpillar crawls and eats
crawls and eats
spins itself into a chrysalis
waits changing
waits
changing
emerges with a dress made of wings
dances for a day
sips nectar, mates, and is gone
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
a little girl, maybe three or four years old,
stands behind the closed screen door
to her dilapidated house and watches
a stranger walk by. she says, daddy left.
she says, daddy. the stranger
looks at her as he passes. she says, daddy!
across the street and down two, a hatchback
has a freshly-broken window. pebbly
glass is scattered on the car and on the street.
three blocks further up, a tall and slender
blonde woman carries her bags and workpapers
to her truck. she gets in and starts it up.
her perfume leaves a portion of itself
on the still and cool pre-sunrise air.
the scent lingers. she drives away.
sunflowers stand in her lawn, facing
this way and that, waiting for the sun.
the shadow of the earth
sinks in the western sky.
sparse clouds turn pink, then gold.
the stranger passes again, heading
back the way he came. the little girl
is gone from behind the screen door.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The artist rules. Nothing else matters.” – Sissy Spacek (interview by Richard Grant in The Guardian, January 26, 2002)
black dogs charge me in the morning
while i hang a load of laundry on the line.
in sunrising light they dash across the lawn without a sound.
i see them for a moment from the corners of my eyes,
but when i turn to meet them, they are gone.
black dogs charge me in the evening
while i am drinking strong, dark coffee and sitting in my chair,
reading strong, dark words from heavy books, black dogs beside me for a moment,
never staying long enough to show me what they want.
they never bark or howl or whine.
they make no noise at all.
black dogs charge me at night while i sleep tangled in my sheets,
sweating and dreaming of empty leashes and crowded rooms,
of women wearing scarves tied across their eyes,
carrying glasses of iced tea along sidewalks teeming with black dogs, black dogs,
black dogs with mouths open, black dogs with tongues red, teeth white.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
finally the facts are faced: the child within will always without.
(i’m so hungover, my fingers keep hitting all the wrong keys.
thank (whoever) for backspace and delete.)
that child within will never be content to sit himself in the quiet corner where,
when i am feeling optimistic, i think to place him.
or maybe he will. (i should not try to write when i am hungover.
the mistakes are legion. in nineteen minutes i have to shower
and get ready for work. i will arrive at the office my customary
three-to-five minutes early, the boss will ask how i am or how my weekend was,
and i will lie. i will say fine. i will not tell him (who in a similar situation would?)
how a good friend of mine left her marijuana and her vodka (along with her cat,
her dog, and her apartment) in my care for the weekend.)
that little bastard (the child within), get him around dope and booze,
he goes for it. he pops right out of that corner where he’s been sitting
(scheming all the while), weird and devilish grin on his face, lights up,
pours out, kicks back and has a high old time. before you know it
(or i know it, or someone knows it, or who knows?), he’s eaten an entire
roast chicken and four cherry turnovers, played with himself (twice),
and stayed up all night watching short video clips and playing games.
he’s back in his corner this morning (went there on his own accord, no fussing,
sweet as the cookies he also polished off by the bagful), happy as whatever
the happiest thing is (a child, perhaps?), undoubtedly planning his next escape.
though his back is to me, i can see him smile. the little shit. he’s left me bloated,
hungover (like i said), in need of exercise and clean blood. and he knows
that although i make him spend almost all his time in that corner, his back
to my world, hearing me bitch about how much i think or believe i need to do,
and how exasperating and distracting and foolish he is, there is no one i love more.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“When Death enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as not to have to return for a long time after that.” – Guy de Maupassant, “A Humble Drama” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
this is how this works:
here’s the sky
there’s the sun
bright—don’t look at it
it’s a special star to us, the sun
but no big thing in the big scheme of things
it’s a normal star
a clerk or a waiter
a star that watches the game on sundays
its own day, it takes it off
has a hot brewski
so there’s the sun
it lives in a galaxy
it has billions of neighbors just like it
they all have families just like ours
ours has us
if you—or anyone—puts our pieces
(carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.)
around a sun just like ours
you’re going to get us
or someone very similar
here we are
there’s the sky
it’s night now, so you can see all those other suns
back behind and beyond all those suns, there are more suns
billions of them
and back behind them
there are more galaxies
billions of them
anywhere you look
everywhere you look
billions of them
they all have suns
drinking hot brewskis and watching the game with their families circling around
families just like us
looking up
looking out
looking at all those other suns
everywhere we look
any time, night or day
we look at someone out there looking back
(Copyright 2003, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
a young couple, male and female as is
often the case, sat at a table in
the back of the room, eating pizza &
staining a game’s wooden letters with their
pizza-sauced fingertips. they (the young
couple) chattered and clattered their hard-
scrabbled words. up front, arrayed at tables
along plate-glass windows, more couples
nattered in their almost-quiet rustling
way. a man stepped up to the counter to
order a drink, a fancy blended, stirred,
poured out, & sprayed with something pressurized
in a can. a reader in one corner
mumbled home-made poetry into
a broken microphone. this room was once
a martial-arts academy for
women and children. later, there was applause.
(Copyright 2003, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Oh! if you cherish life, never disturb the burial place of old letters! And if, perchance, you should, take the contents by the handful, close your eyes that you may not read a word, so that you may not recognize some forgotten handwriting which may plunge you suddenly into a sea of memories; carry these papers to the fire; and when they are in ashes, crush them to an invisible powder, or otherwise you are lost.” – Guy de Maupassant, “Suicides” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
there’s been a lot of talk lately about destroying the world
about how we’re going to destroy the world with our automobiles
or our appetites or plastics or nuclear bombs
or something dark and sinister sprung from a lab somewhere
or who knows what, but we’ll find a way
or so the story goes
as if we could destroy the world
it’s a big world, and it’s pretty heavy
we could wreck the environment
destroy our civilization
kill off a fairly large number of ourselves and other animals besides
(we’ve been working on that one for a while)
but destroy the world?
the bacteria hear our talk and laugh their quiet laughter
to them, we’re little more than food and incubators
they know we ain’t gonna be destroyin’ no world
for that, you need a fairly large asteroid or an exploding star
no overgrown monkey all full of itself is going to be destroying any worlds
whatever other damage it may do
the bacteria laugh and whisper, little monkey, get a grip
(Copyright 2003, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
the scene is the pre-drawn stole
the pre-dawn stroll (haven’t quite awakened yet)—
it’s this morning, is what—is when it is (is the coffee ready yet? soon? good).
so i’m out walking, and i realize today’s date makes today the day
before the real columbus day, and i wonder if any of that calendar stuff where
dates got changed applies to the mariner’s day (coffee’s ready!).
you know, like how it is that geo. w’ton has two birthdays
(father of our country, born twice himself),
and i decide both probably not and it doesn’t matter.
five hundred and eleven years ago tomorrow, etcetera,
and as we used to sing in our chipper schoolchildren’s voices,
in fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two,
columbus sailed the ocean blue
without a cabin boy to screw,
oh, what was a sailor-man to do?
which is all good fun to recall or to invent on a still october morning,
walking the streets of the ‘hood underneath a clear sky.
i start looking around in that sky at what is there to see:
a fullish moon heading downwards in the west,
orion and his puppy high in the southern sky,
jupiter rising in the waking east; and when i look down again
at the street in front of me, i see that i am not in danger of being run over
or of straying into a pack of feral dogs, but there is a woman walking towards me.
an unusual sight this time of the day.
she’s dressed in dark, what appear to be athletic clothes
but they could be fashionable evening wear—
probably athletic clothes as she has on her feet white athletic shoes
that practically glow, they are so white. her hair is or seems to be copper in color,
though that could be the effect of the moonlight and the streetlamps.
i say good morning! to her as we pass, don’t want to scare her.
she says nothing, no ninny she—it is still dark out,
and we are alone on the street (it is a dewy morning).
she passes and i smell her smells: perfume, cigarettes, and… cookies?
graham crackers! she smells of graham crackers,
a childhood favorite of mine, but then there is the cigarette smell again,
it’s pretty overwhelming, she just had a smoke.
probably not athletic clothes after all.
so i go, heading back to port, thinking again of the chris who crossed the ocean blue,
making possible—not coffee, that probably had something to do with the portuguese
or the arabs—but certainly he could get some credit for chocolate, slaughter,
sweet potatoes, infestation, this country i live in, and the me that lives here.
(maybe i’m wrong about the sweet potatoes,
but i want to give credit where credit is due.)
(Copyright 2003, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Good digestion is everything in life. It gives the inspiration to the artist, amorous desires to young people, clear ideas to thinkers, the joy of life to everybody, and it also allows one to eat heartily (which is one of the greatest pleasures). A sick stomach induces scepticism, unbelief, nightmares and the desire for death.” – Guy de Maupassant, “Suicides” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
i went out to feed the cat just now
and saw the most amazing thing on
the freeway exit ramp right behind
my house. stopped for the light at the bottom of
the ramp, a large white s-u-v with
four uniformed special forces guys
riding shotgun on the running boards.
i thought, jesus christ, who the fuck is
that? the s-u-v had tinted windows.
if it weren’t for the special forces
guys, i never would have noticed it.
one of the special forces guys was
wearing mirrored shades. another had
those white plastic handcuffs sticking out
of his back pocket, or maybe hooked
to his belt. all four special forces
guys were wearing flak jackets and helmets
and olive-drab. they had guns and small
radios. they were looking all around
while they waited for the light to change.
there was nothing on the news about
anyone important being in
town. the cat was waiting to be fed.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
the perfect woman now lives in our neighborhood.
she walks her dogs at dusk.
two brown dogs on two stainless leashes,
one perfect woman in tow.
she walks her dogs down the sidewalks,
crosses streets, cuts through alleyways.
who does she think she is, to bring her perfect self into this forsaken place,
this neighborhood of shotgun shacks, empty twelve-packs,
thirty-year-old cars on concrete blocks?
she is a goddess come to visit the damned.
we can scarcely stand to glance at her.
we can scarcely stand to turn our glance away.
she is as perfect as anything we have ever seen.
we will stand in our front yards, and wait for her to return.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Certain secret sorrows, certain tricks of fate which awake in us a whole world of painful thoughts, which suddenly unclose to us the mysterious door of moral suffering, complicated, incurable; all the deeper because they appear benign, all the more bitter because they are intangible, all the more tenacious because they appear almost factitious, leave in our souls a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of disenchantment, from which it takes a long time to free ourselves.” – Guy de Maupassant, “Minuet” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
she had everything but the vodka.
i had the vodka, which was very good.
i almost wrote god instead of good. good
god, that vodka was good. it was distilled
from the feathers and fat livers of gray
geese, or so the bottle’s label seemed to
indicate. we had two martinis each.
i mixed them up in her mixer, filled with
her ice, with a smattering of her
vermouth. and they were good. not god, yet. or
any longer. oh, and her olives, too.
the olives were hers, and the toothpicks. we
talked. we talked some more. she pulled out her dope,
and we smoked the better part of a bowl
(her pipe, her lighter). i have to work in
the morning, so i drove home filled with goose
bumps and olives and smoke. on the way, i
drove past a cop who was parked on the shoulder,
his hazards flashing. i was going sixty,
which is all right, it’s a sixty-five zone
even if it is an s-curve and ought
only to be a sixty, at the most,
but i wandered a little to the port
side of my lane, which troubled me. the cop
seemed troubled by something else and gave me
no trouble. i got home safely, guarded
as ever by one or more angels. my
porch light was off. i thought maybe i had
left it off or maybe i had turned it
on and it had burned out. once inside, i
reached for the switch. it was off. i turned it
on. the light blue out—i mean, blew out—in
the instantaneous flash characteristic
of catastrophic failure of the
filament. i have the new bulb here
beside me and will now go screw it
in, after screwing the old bulb out.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
in just a few minutes of morning news
my clock radio told me i would soon be shivering in my home
unable to afford the heat while meanwhile
sex offenders would be living in their cars right outside on my street
or living underground somewhere
or straying too close to schools of children
some of whom would be raped by family members
if they hadn’t been already
and would have to have their wombs scraped clean with twisted coat hangers
probably in some alley someplace
while all of us were slowly poisoned by air too dirty to breathe
all of this and i was still in bed
still in bed
slapping at the snooze button
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The rough weather continues. Fresh disasters are anticipated.” – Guy de Maupassant, “At Sea” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
there’s a paving rig on the freeway just back of my house.
the windows rattle to the dull bass note pounded out by the machine.
the driver leans out from under his bleached orange parasol,
watching his work. i watch him through the kitchen window.
his white hard-hat reflects the pummeling july sun.
i go outside and sit on an old, battered bench in the diminishing shade
cast by a cottonwood tree. the paving rig paves.
i smoke dope out of a small pipe.
hungry orange grubs eat the tree’s leaves.
the grubs are the definition of voracious.
they leave the leaves a dying latticework above a drizzle
of dark-green droppings softly falling onto my shirt,
into the hair on my head,
onto the hairs of my arms,
onto the skin of my fingers,
into the bowl of my pipe and into the cat’s water bowl by the bench,
where the droppings expand like some novelty
purchased for pennies from the back of an old comic book.
the hard-hatted driver shuts his paving rig down for lunch.
i finish smoking my bowl. the day is hot and now very quiet.
(Published in High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19); copyright 2012, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
my next-door neighbor mows his lawn early on sunday morning.
the gasoline engine of his mower is loud. he sees me,
smiles, waves and shouts a cheerful hi!
he survived the state pen, and since his release he’s been happy as a fresh-fed pup.
my next-doors on the other side scream their fucking-fuck-fuck-fucked
at every hour, night and day, day and night, all week long, month after month,
for sale sign newly-raised in the dirt of their easement.
this sunday morning, they have left off the copulation talk for the duration
of their breakfast. a pebble thrown by the mower’s blades
clangs the sign, ricochets in my direction,
skipping to rest at my feet where i wash my car by the curb.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“We entered the farmhouse. The smoky kitchen was high and spacious. The copper utensils and the crockery shone in the reflection of the hearth. A cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor of spilled stale soup, of former wash-days and of former inhabitants, the smell of animals and of human beings combined, of things and of persons, the odor of time, and of things that have passed away.” – Guy de Maupassant, “The Farmer’s Wife” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
my index finger has a mind of its own,
fingertip absently moving over my belly as i read in bed,
fingernail discovering a flaky bump of skin to scratch to an upright position,
small white scale of skin standing up from what may well prove to be
the first growth of a melanomic death. i pull it free from
off the bump on my belly, scraping it up with my fingernail,
dropping it into my mouth for recycling,
where it has neither flavor nor weight.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)