Sunday nights, I host Radio Dystopia, a radio show on KBGA, the local college station, in which I feature only legally downloaded music, the idea being that I expose folks to stuff they would not otherwise normally hear, they like it, they go check out the website, then, hopefully buy music from that band or artist.Once I’ve downloaded the week’s music, I throw it into iTunes, organize it (sometimes), and show up at the studio, patch my laptop into the board, and relax.

Admittedly, some weeks, I get lazy, or busy, and have no time to download individual music tracks. Weeks like those, I abandon the format and play requests only, or whatever I’ve had in heavy rotation in my own head for the week*.

/Marc

This week’s top 10 heavy rotation

1. Hold Your Head up High and Blow Your Brains Out. The Bloodhound Gang
2. Ain’t it the Truth. The Gossip
3. Leap of Faith. Bruce Springsteen
4. World Party. The Waterboys
5. I Can See Clearly Now (the Rain is Gone) . Jimmy Cliff
6. Invitation. Richard Buckner
7. Haw. 16 HP
8. Backslider. Toadies
9. Dreamland’s Burning (Fnga Mix). Dead Hollywood Stars
10. You’re One. Imperial Teen

She walked up the back dock unexpectedly, and she was beautiful. I hadn’t seen her since she moved from Chicago and I took a job at the Trib. When she left, she told me she wanted me to come along, but I had stayed behind, preferring the company of the boys at Chelsea’s and the girls who would go home with me when the lights came on there.

I hadn’t heard from her. And I didn’t know she was back in town. The beer at Chelseas’s had grown stale and the girls stopped coming home with me. Now, it’s eleven a.m. and I’m sitting on the back dock, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the shade, dreading the heat of the office and the clatter of the typewriter keys.

And here she is.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said.

She stood there, more beautiful than I remember, waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t, she shifted the camera she was holding to her right hand. She dropped her keys into her jacket pocket. She left her sunglasses on.

“Can you please tell me where I can find Jessop?” she asked.

I stumbled, and flicked my cigarette. I stepped towards her. She did not back away, but did not approach me. I steadied myself against the wall. I took the flask from my boot. Took a healthy pull.

Peggy stepped into the shade. Still, she did not remove her sunglasses. I wanted to see her big-as-the-Wyoming-sky blue eyes, and remembered how cloudy they would get when she was angry.

“Where’s Jessop?” she asked again.

“Peggy, you’re beautiful.”

“I suppose I’ll find him,” she said.

Every hair was in place. She looked…well, that dame was something.

My throat closed up. I couldn’t talk. I lit another cigarette.

Wordlessly, Peggy Marie walked past me and pushed through the heavy steel doors. She had no dust on her new leather shoes. Her slacks were freshly pressed. And she smelled of lavender.

I never did find out where she was living, nor how she came to be in Chicago again. Jessop rarely spoke to me, and I was too new a hand to approach him about it. I did see her photographs of the car show in Detroit that next week, and they had her name below them.

Peggy in Detroit, at least right now. That explained the fancy Ford she had stepped out of that Saturday afternoon as I watched her in the parking lot. Her calf had flashed briefly in the sunlight as she got out of the car, and I didn’t know, then, that it was Peggy Marie. The old familiar lust returned, and when she was close enough for me to see her, for me to know that it was her, the wind was knocked out of me. Like I was seeing her for the first time again. And I knew I was wrong to have stayed in Chicago.

———-

The back of the original photo has the following written with a blue fountain pen in a woman’s hand, “Taken by Johnny that Saturday afternoon. 4 - 28 - 45″

I found him down at the riverbank. Larry had disappeared on Thursday. No one had heard from him for three days. Found him down there shivering in the early October morning frost. Laying under a rotting log.

We stopped as we walked up the driveway, and Malcolm had come bounding out the front door. She checked herself at the top of the steps when she saw us, put her hands up to her mouth so that the dishtowel she was holding looked like some crazy vomit caught in suspended animation, flapping there in the wind.

Larry’s glasses were broken and lying in the mud when I found him. Now they hung off his face a little, dangerously close to falling to the driveway where his eyes were transfixed.

He hadn’t said much on the way home and I was afraid for him when he had to talk to Malcolm. He had told me about Amy, and I knew that it was bad.

We had walked home reluctantly, I’m not sure why I was so scared. My left hand was unburdened with gold. But his was heavy with it and Malcolm’s hand had a similar band.

I wanted to trounce him, but knew enough to keep it to myself. He was my brother and I was thankful, mostly, that he was alive.

Amy saw me at the jukebox on Thursday and had run out of the bar into the darkness. When I got to her house, Larry’s truck was parked in the yard. I went inside to find her, alone, crying by the fireplace. I had turned on my heel to go look for him, and walked the dirty streets of the North side until daybreak.

I slept briefly that day and set out again. Wasn’t ‘till this morning that I finally found him, shivering, and I had slept little and restlessly for three days.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he had said.

“I know,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

And now he stood in the driveway with his terrible secret about to spill out, like a deer gutted in the snow. I wanted to say something, anything. To him. To Malcolm. But I stood still, clasping my hands behind my back, and waited for one of them to speak.

Deconstructed poetry from an inactive blog. Inspired by Jessica Simkovic, written by Marc.

Billy seemed bigger than he usually seemed. But I never stood this close to Billy before. I ain’t never stood this close to no one who ain’ my kin.

Billy done gone an’ took my book, the one with my special thoughts in it, an’ he read about how I knew ‘bout him an’ Tammy an’ he mad. Real mad. So mad he said he gon’ stomp me. Stomp me good.

So I’s skeert. An I’m thinkin’ maybe Billy don’ run so good on account uh he so fat. But Maw said “don’t say ‘fat’”. But Billy. He fat. An he gone stomp me today. I don’ think I kin run pas’ him he so mad. But ifiin I kin git pas’ the brick wall I know he’ll trip on the tracks an I kin run to the trains. The whistles be blowin soon an’ I kin smell the bread baking from the Bakery.

Billy stood in fron’ of the Bakery an’ said he gone stomp me. An’ I kep lookin’ at his shadow, so tiny behin’ him. And I thinks to mysef, I thinks, Billy ain’t so mean. He shadow is smaller’an him. And his shadow pretty big an all but it maybe only as big as me.

I wish maybe his shadow make him stop. Jus’ pull away from th’ sidewalk an tell him this jus’ silly. Billy, this jus silly. Or maybe the mens come walkin’ out o’ the fact’ry. See Billy gone stomp me an’ stomp Billy ‘stead. Stomp him good. I’m a good boy, I don’ mean no harm.

But Billy mad. He real mad. An I knows it – he gone stomp me an’ get blood on his daddy’s tie. Billy gone stomp me smaller than his shadow.

test run of the audio blog functionality. All other audio posts will be original works or explanations.

I was in New Hope, PA back in 2000, and I stumbled upon a box of old photographs at a sidewalk sale. I bought them, and paid more than I wanted to for them. It was worth it, though. Many of them are incredible. Some of them have shown up in collages that I have done or ‘zines on which I have collaborated.

This week, I drank Kettlehouse growlers with Rachel, and as we sat looking though the photographs, we experimented with using them as jumping-off points for writing. We agreed to choose one photograph individually, and then we would both write for ten minutes (it became twenty) using the chosen photograph as inspiration.

She chose the photograph featured in today’s post. I will include only what I have written, as she took hers with her when she left. In the coming days and weeks, I will post results from the same excercise here. By necessity, the writing takes place longhand, however, I have done no editing in putting it here before you. Comments/criticism/complaints etc are welcome.

Shaney Takes a Photograph

I could feel his hands on me. Shaney was laughing with her camera and her floppy hat and I felt his hands touching me. He was holding me. Tight. The sun was bright. It should have been a perfect day in Spring.

“Okay, now, smile!” Shaney said.

I wish she could see me. Take her camera away and see him and the way he was touching me. I didn’t want Shaney to take our picture. Not because I’m not pretty. I am. He always tells me I am. But I knew when she took the picture he would take me back up the hill to the house.

I was glad my back was to the house.

That way I could run if I wanted to. But pretty girls don’t run away, do they? That’s what he told me. Up at the house. When he would touch my hair.

I knew he liked to touch my hair. And his other hand always touched his belt buckle underneath his newly pressed suit jacket. His hand on his belt buckle. He wanted to touch my hair.

So Shaney took our picture. And the sun was bright. And when I cried they said it was because of the sun. The sun in my eyes. But I liked the sun.

There is no sun in the house.

In the house there is no sun and I can’t see his face and he pretends not to see my tears when he touches my knees. When he holds my dress.

And Shaney took the picture and he pulled me to him and he whispered in my ear and his breath was too hot on my neck.