my best girlie hilarie and i used to rage together in this happy little band-

M-9

give us a visit, be friends with us, good times!



 

she sold her body
for a comfortable couch-
the one she had was good enough
for her, but not for her infant son.

she told me this.
the white chocolate martini
that she had paid for
slipped a little in my hand.

i love this woman,
she buys me bread and two-dollar earrings,
we feed each others children
and placate each others men

in times of screaming sorrow
a pair of black-eyed susans
one of which will beg for bread,
and one of which will whore.




s. barry, 2009

ha ha ha

my mother's spirit shrieked in
through the fifth floor window
of the Provenzano-Lanza Funeral Home building-
into the loft i shared with you
when you were not sharing it
with one of your others.

under the tin factory ceilings
after the spending of ourselves
after taking your watch from your wrist
and laying it down
on the bedside table

spiraling into sleep

while between the first and second floors
an elevator carried the dead
from family
to laboratory
and then back down again-

pristine.

and the sound of weeping
and the chemical wash
and the waxen lily breath

rising.

you used to time yourself
during morning meditation,
i would laugh and steal your watch
and wear it to work
and meter the hours until i could return to you
and spend myself again
and spiral down into sleep
and wait for my mother's spirit
to come shrieking through the window-

warning, warning.




s. barry, 2008

the problem with you
lies not in some
imagined abyss

but rather in the maze
of chest-high ditches
you dig for yourself

my hands are broken
from pulling you out
my legs are broken
from running behind

foxhole to foxhole
grave to grave

attending the curse
of unwanted children
crawling
towards unemptied buckets
standing
in unwatered gardens




s. barry, 2008

re: lines deleted
from my correspondence

lately they concern you

the lines i pull
at the final scanning

the lines i write
to spite myself

to feed myself

to feel my self-

this badly oiled machine
that was built
for the express purpose
of crashing




s. barry, 2008

once i caught a salamander, played with it for a while, then put it in my dancing ballerina jewelry box when my mom called me down for dinner. i forgot all about it.

i found it about a week later. it had sort of mummified; a perfect little dried salamander. it was so perfect and creepy that i kept it for years.

also, one weekend it was my turn to bring home the classroom pet mouse. he was in a fish tank with a screen across the top, and at night he would climb up on his water bottle, grab onto the screen with his claws, and walk across it hanging upside down. the noise was making me insane, so i grabbed my poncho and covered the top of the tank with it then placed the screen on top of the poncho, with a big rock holding the whole thing down. it didn't occur to me that he would have no air, and i forgot to take the poncho off in the morning. he almost died.

that's about it, unless you care to count all the narcotics and vandalism.

Nine o’ clock says it’s time
to kick the bastard back;
shows me a bloodred beachball
set on a nest
of dull warm knives,
a silvery alien fish
breathing clingfilm
in a brown glass jar.

Later on asks again
are you for or against this?

and I answer
with everything I ever held down
spilling out into the waterways-

A solid tide
to shoot the dam
and float this piece of me home.




s. barry, 2008

"Hello?"

"Hey, Dr. Jeffyl, it's S."

"I told you not to call me that."

"Sorry, man. Hello, Igor! We're out of printer paper and cooler cups. How you fixed?"

"Come and get 'em."

The elevators are always stuffed during lunch hour. It's easier to walk out the front door, around the parking circle, back in through the double doors, and down the stairs to A level.

One-quarter of the way down, I'm looking at all the people at the bottom, hustling or strolling or standing around. It's a big, open floor with high skylighted ceilings; the bright and echoey makes me put my sunglasses on.

I see him coming and take them right back off . He's wearing dirty yellow sweats that hang low at the ass. He's narrowly missing other people in all directions, and he's holding a tennis racket next to his head, string side up.

Closer now. Thin fringe of colorless hair. One blue sock, one white one, trashed sneakers. Still holding the racket in place.

At the bottom of the stairs, he jerks past me, speaking directly and urgently into the tennis racket.

"Situation normal on 15th. I repeat, situation normal."

He feels me looking and turns around, scowling. "Shhh..." He gives me the shush finger. Then he walks on, resuming his transmission in whispers.

I can't remember what I came down here for.




s. barry, 2008

i was fifteen

it was 1978

during that summer i had to stop watching television, because something strange was happening to me. everything on television began to appear two-dimensional. the light showed itself to be artificial, the shadows looked off, and i could hear the room humming. if i watched for too long, i would get faint and smell something which i could only describe as hairspray. i told my father about it and he gave me a copy of jean paul sartre's "nausea".

i spent that summer lying in the sun in the backyard, amid my dad's pot plants, smoking pin joints of connecticut homegrown and reading jean paul sartre.

my biggest worry was my sixteen year old boyfriend, jay. he wanted to get married. he lived in a shitty house down by the rotary with his crazy mom and his very cute little sister. the house smelled like dryer sheets and half their shit was still in boxes. he was sweet and good-looking and tended towards parasuicidal histrionics. i knew he'd never amount to anything.

i dumped him later that year when i spied him kissing jane, my scene study partner for "the effect of gamma rays on man in the moon marigolds". i was playing ruth. she was playing tillie.

i kicked her ass.




s. barry, 2008

yessiree folks, it's another cat oars joint!

fourteen zombie tales, ranging from the quite ridiculous to the absolutely exquisite.

z is for...

my weirdo writer friends and i just live to stock your bookshelves with tasty literature, so grab your copy today, and don't forget to snap up some extras... christmas is coming, bitches!

love ya,

hta