The door swung wide: twin beds, twin lamps, twin plastic cups
wrapped up in cellophane
and he says No Henry, let's not do this.
Can you see the plot like dotted lines across the room?
Here is the sink to wash away the blood,
here's the whiskey, the ripped-up shirt, the tile of the bathroom floor,
the disk of the drain
punched through with holes.
Here's the boy like a sack of meat, here are the engines, the little room
that is not a room,
the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread,
hovering over the hollow boy passed out
on the universal bedspread.
Here he is again, being sewn up.
So now we have come to a great battlefield, the warmth of the fire,
the fire still burning,
the heat escaping like a broken promise.
This is the part where you wake up in your clothes again,
this is the part where you're trying to stay inside the building.
Stay in the room for now, he says. Stay in the room
for now.
This is the place, you say to yourself, this is the place where everything
starts to begin,
the wounds reveal a thicker skin and suddenly there is no floor.
Meanwhile,
there is something underneath the building that is trying very hard
to get your attention---
a man with almond eyes and a zipper that runs the length
of his spine.
You can see the shadow that the man is throwing across
the linoleum,
how it resembles a boat, how it crosses the tiles just so,
the masts of his arms rasping against the windows.
He's pointing at you with a glass of milk
as if he's trying to tell you that there is
some sort of shining star now buried deep inside you and he has to
dig it out with a knife.
The bell rings, the dog growls,
and then the wind picking up, and the light falling, and his mouth
flickering, and the dog
howling, and the window closing tight against the dirty rain.
Here is the hallway and here are the doors and here is the fear of the
other thing, the relentless
thing, your body drowning in gravity.
This is the in-between, the waiting that happens in the
space between
one note and the next, the place where you confuse
his hands with the room, the dog
with the man, the blood
with the ripped-up sky.
He puts his hands all over you to keep you in the room.
It's night. It's noon. He's driving. It's happening
all over again.
It's love or it isn't. It isn't over.
You're in a car. You're in the weeds again. You're on a bumpy road
and there are criminals everywhere,
longing for danger.
Henry, he's saying. Who is it that's talking?
I thought I heard the clink
of ice to teeth. I thought I heard the clink of teeth to glass.
Open the door and the light falls in. Open your mouth and it falls
right out again.
He's on top of you. He's next to you, right next to you in fact.
He has the softest skin wrapped entirely around him.
It isn't him.
It isn't you. You're falling now. You're swimming. This is not
harmless. You are not
breathing. You're climbing out of the chlorinated pool again.
We have not been given all the words necessary.
We have not been given anything at all.
We've been driving all night.
We've been driving a long time.
We want to stop. We can't.
Is there an acceptable result? Do we mean something when we talk?
Is it enough that we are shuddering
from the sound?
Left hand raising the fork to the mouth, feeling the meat slide down
your throat, thinking
My throat. Mine. Everything in this cone of light is mine.
The ashtray and the broken lamp, the filthy orange curtains and his
ruined shirt.
I've been in your body, baby, and it was paradise.
I've been in your body and it was a carnival ride.
They want to stop but they can't stop. They don't know what
they're doing.
This is not harmless, the how to touch it, we do not want the screen
completely
lifted from our eyes, just lifted long enough to see the holes.
Tired and sore and rubbed the wrong way,
rubbed raw and throbbing in the light.
They want to stop but they don't stop. They cannot get the bullet out.
Cut me open and the light streams out.
Stitch me up and the light keeps streaming out between
the stitches.
He cannot get the bullet out, he thinks, he can't, and then he does.
A little piece of grit to build a pearl around.
Midnight June. Midnight July. They've been going at it for days now.
Getting the bullet out.
Digging out the bullet and holding it up to the light, the light.
Digging out the bullet and holding it up to the light.
You Are Jeff
1
There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road, beyond
the hairpin turn, or just before it, depending on which twin you are in
love with at the time. Do not choose sides yet. It is still to your advan-
tage to remain impartial. Both motorbikes are shiny red and both boys
have perfect teeth, dark hair, soft hands. The one in front will want to
take you apart, and slowly. His deft and stubby fingers searching every
shank and lock for weaknesses. You could love this boy with all your
heart. The other brother only wants to stitch you back together. The
sun shines down. It's a beautiful day. Consider the hairpin turn. Do not
choose sides yet.
2
There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road. Let's
call them Jeff. And because the first Jeff is in front we'll consider him
the older, and therefore responsible for lending money and the occa-
sional punch in the shoulder. World-wise, world-weary, and not his
mother's favorite, this Jeff will always win when it all comes down to
fisticuffs. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't always all come down to
fisticuffs. Jeff is thinking about his brother down the winding road be-
hind him. He is thinking that if only he could cut him open and peel him
back and crawl inside this second skin, then he could relive that last mile
again: reborn, wild-eyed, free.
3
There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road, beyond
the hairpin turn, or just before it, depending on which Jeff you are. It
could have been so beautiful—you scout out the road ahead and I will
watch your back, how it was and how it will be, memory and fantasy—
but each Jeff wants to be the other one. My name is Jeff and I'm tired
of looking at the back of your head. My name is Jeff and I'm tired of
seeing my hand me down clothes. Look, Jeff, I'm telling you, for the
last time, I mean it, etcetera. They are the same and they are not the
same. They are the same and they hate each other for it.
4
Your name is Jeff and somewhere up ahead of you your brother has
; pulled to the side of the road and he is waiting for you with a lug wrench
clutched in his greasy fist. 0 how he loves you, darling boy. 0 how, like
always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep
next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around
you in an act of faith against the night. When he throws the wrench into
the air it will catch the light as it spins toward you. Look—it looks like
a star. You had expected something else, anything else, but the wrench
never reaches you. It hangs in the air like that, spinning in the air like
that. It's beautiful.
5
Let's say God in his High Heaven is hungry and has decided to make
himself some tuna fish sandwiches. He's already finished making two
of them, on sourdough, before he realizes that the fish is bad. What is
he going to do with these sandwiches? They're already made, but he
doesn't want to eat them.
Let's say the Devil is played by two men. We'll call them Jeff. Dark
hair, green eyes, white teeth, pink tongues—they're twins. The one on
the left has gone bad in the middle, and the other one on the left is about
to. As they wrestle, you can tell that they have forgotten about God, and
they are very hungry.
6
You are playing cards with three men named Jeff. Two of the Jeffs seem
somewhat familiar, but the Jeff across from you keeps staring at your
hands, your mouth, and you're certain that you've never seen this Jeff
before. But he's on your team, and you're ahead, you're winning big,
and yet the other Jeffs keep smiling at you like there's no tomorrow.
They all have perfect teeth: white, square, clean, even. And, for some
reason, the lighting in the room makes their teeth seem closer than they
should be, as if each mouth was a place, a living room with pink carpet
and the window's open. Come back from the window, Jefferson. Take off
those wet clothes and come over here, by the fire.
7
You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your
brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen
you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets
up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.
Phone's for you, Jeff says. Hey! It's Uncle Jeff, who isn't really your
uncle, but you can't talk right now, one of the Jeffs has put his tongue
in your mouth. Please let it be the right one.
8
Two brothers are fighting by the side of the road. Two motorbikes have
fallen over on the shoulder, leaking oil into the dirt, while the interlocking
brothers grapple and swing. You see them through the backseat
window as you and your parents drive past. You are twelve years old.
You do not have a brother. You have never experienced anything this
ferocious or intentional with another person. Your mother is pretending
that she hasn't seen anything. Your father is fiddling with the knobs
of the radio. There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the
station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say
hello.
9
You are in an ordinary suburban bedroom with bunk beds, a bookshelf,
two wooden desks and chairs. You are lying on your back, on the top
bunk, very close to the textured ceiling, staring straight at it in fact, and
the room is still dark except for a wedge of powdery light that spills in
from the adjoining bathroom. The bathroom is covered in mint green
tile and someone is in there, singing very softly. Is he singing to you?
For you? Black cherries in chocolate, the ring around the moon, a bee-
tle underneath a glass—you cannot make out all the words, but you're
sure he knows you're in there, and he's singing to you, even though you
don't know who he is.
10
You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You're in the hallway
again, and you open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it, but
maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren't ready,
and then you don't remember where you've been, and you find yourself
down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right
hand back to sleep. It's a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you
put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the
wound that whispers.
You're in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song.
You're in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door.
11
Suppose for a moment that the heart has two heads, that the heart has
been chained and dunked in a glass booth filled with river water. The
heart is monologing about hesitation and fulfillment while behind the
red brocade the heart is drowning. Can the heart escape? Does love
even care? Snow falls as we dump the booth in the bay.
Suppose for a moment we are crowded around a pier, waiting for something
to ripple the water. We believe in you. There is no danger. It is not
getting dark, we want to say.
12
Consider the hairpin turn. It is waiting for you like a red door or the
broken leg of a dog. The sun is shining, O how the sun shines down!
Your speedometer and your handgrips and the feel of the road below
you, how it knows you, the black ribbon spread out on the greens be-
tween these lines that suddenly don't reach to the horizon. It is waiting,
like a broken door, like the red dog that chases its tail and eats your rose-
bushes and then must be forgiven. Who do you love, Jeff? Who do you
love? You were driving toward something and then, well, then you
found yourself driving the other way. The dog is asleep. The road is be-
hind you. O how the sun shines down.
13
This time everyone has the best intentions. You have cancer. Let's say
you have cancer. Let's say you've swallowed a bad thing and now it's
got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. You see
what I mean but you're happy anyway, and that's okay, it's a love story
after all, a lasting love, a wonderful adventure with lots of action,
where the mirror says mirror and the hand says hand and the front
door never says Sorry Charlie. So the doctor says you need more
stitches and the bruise cream isn't working. So much for the facts. Let's
say you're still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. We
love you. We really do.
14
After work you go to the grocery store to get some milk and a carton of
cigarettes. Where did you get those bruises? You don't remember.
Work was boring. You find a jar of bruise cream and a can of stewed
tomatoes. Maybe a salad? Spinach, walnuts, blue cheese, apples, and
you can't decide between the Extra Large or Jumbo black olives. Which
is bigger anyway? Extra Large has a blue label, Jumbo has a purple
label. Both cans cost $1.29. While you're deciding, the afternoon light
is streaming through the windows behind the bank of checkout coun-
ters. Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest,
holding onto it and not letting it g
o. Now let it go.
15
Like sandpaper, the light, or a blessing, or a bruise. Blood everywhere,
he said, the red light hemorrhaging from everywhere at once. The train
station blue, your lips blue, hands cold and the blue wind. Or a horse,
your favorite horse now raised up again out of the mud and galloping
galloping always toward you. In your ruined shirt, on the last day, while
the bruise won't heal, and the stain stays put, the red light streaming in
from everywhere at once. Your broken ribs, the back of your head, your
hand to mouth or hand to now, right now, like you mean it, like it's split-
ting you in two. Now look at the lights, the lights.
16
You and your lover are making out in the corner booth of a seedy bar.
The booths are plush and the drinks are cheap and in this dim and
smoky light you can barely tell whose hands are whose. Someone raises
their glass for a toast. Is that the Hand of Judgment or the Hand of
Mercy? The bartender smiles, running a rag across the burnished wood
of the bar. The drink in front of you has already been paid for. Drink it,
the bartender says. It's yours, you deserve it. It's already been paid for.
Somebody's paid for it already. There's no mistake, he says. It's your drink,
the one you asked for, just the way you like it. How can you refuse Hands
of fire, hands of air, hands of water, hands of dirt. Someone's doing all
the talking but no one's lips move. Consider the hairpin turn.
17
The motorbikes are neck and neck but where's the checkered flag we
all expected, waving in the distance, telling you you're home again,
home? He's next to you, right next to you in fact, so close, or. . . he isn't.
Imagine a room. Yes, imagine a room: two chairs facing the window but
nobody moves. Don't move. Keep staring straight into my eyes. It feels
like you're not moving, the way when, dancing, the room will suddenly
fall away. You're dancing: you're neck and neck or cheek to cheek, he's
there or he isn't, the open road. Imagine a room. Imagine you're danc-
ing. Imagine the room now falling away. Don't move.
18
Two brothers: one of them wants to take you apart. Two brothers: one