Pillow Question
19 messages

From: Fred Sasaki <fredsasaki@gmail.com>
To: orders@mypillow.com
Date: Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:15 AM
Subject: Pillow Question

Dear My Pillow,

I have a pillow question about ordering. Can you help me?

Thank you,

Fred Sasaki

*

From: MyPillow Orders <orders@mypillow.com>
To: Fred Sasaki <fredsasaki@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 11:42 AM
Subject: Call Customer Service

Fred,
Any of our agents can help you with any questions.
Sincerely,
Sue W.
MyPillow, Inc.
Customer Service
952-442-4199/ 800-308-1299

… 

Arcadia

Bodies close, backs in the dirt, safe
behind our zippered door.
I grip your wrist & stare where
the tent beams meet.
We hear the trees cry.

Then we are rustled awake –
my god, you say, someone’s out there.
But I know better, & imagine

a deer, nervous snout buried
in our half-eaten grilled squash.
I know I should step outside, but
cannot. I never want to leave
this tent, I whisper,

so we cower: one question
mark cradling another. We drift
to sleep. Lights race
on the canvas ceiling, comets

in a private sky. I will whisper
my songs in your ear,

tend you like a flock, nervous
on the edge of a grassy cliff. An arm’s length
from what’s beyond, if only

for a night.

… 

If you are going to be at AWP, come check out Ashley Farmer, Casey Hannan, Dylan Nice, and Adam Novy read us a bunch of awesome stuff. 

We will be at LUCIDLounge in Seattle at 8 PM!

Biography Of Teenagers 

We’ll write our biography when we’re teenagers
and before we grow into our teeth. Before we meet
people who will laugh at us for reasons we’ll talk about
when we’re older and you’re divorced and I’m divorced too.
And we’ll both still know our exes because we have to
and not because we want to. We’ll write our biography
before we kiss in the tunnel to the log chute ride,
our log smacking against the rail, and we pretended
for that part of the ride we were old and blind.
We’ll write that I squirmed next to you when you said
there were snakes and that they’d launch themselves
like canned confetti into that log that wasn’t a real log
of course, that the kids somewhere behind us said
the water smelled like piss. We’ll tell everyone
in our biography that then our teeth glowed in that dark
light when we laughed, before what happens to us.

You can’t just forgive yourself for the horrible things you do to yourself and the things you do that harm other people, though you might want to, though you wish you could.

I vandalized the parking lot in high school. It was fall, and I scattered dead leaves all over the place. I had several garbage bags full of them, released them out into the parking lot, letting time and nature do the rest of the work for me. Soon leaves were everywhere. Soon it was a parking lot covered in oranges, browns and reds. Then it started to rain, and the rain made the leaves squish under foot. What I had done was unspeakably terrible. I was treated as a pariah, kept apart from my peers, who’d never really been friendly all that much.

And then there was the tragedy at Benghazi, which I had no role in whatsoever but, as an American, as one of many Americans (and I felt I had not been one of many Americans enough when the tragedy befell us) and news of it broke, and we as Americans needed to come together, and as one of many Americans I refused. I could sense people not being ok with my decision to refuse to come together as one of many Americans.

Worst of all was the time I left that sheet on the line in my backyard. I didn’t let it go free into the wind’s clutches myself, personally taking it from its pins and sending it off. But I did nothing as the wind pummeled it, the elements rained down upon it. And eventually the sheet cascaded from the line, away.

Lake Country

My father married
a native. She looks
like clay. Like the land.
She looks
like a history he loves.

*****

You’ve walked well ahead of me on the trail
that ends at the highway, past the inlet
flooded with spring. Next to the creek nailed
to a beech tree is an inscription I always catch
you reading: There is no music like
a little river’s. You don’t know or care
who said this first, but you stare at the lake
like it is the beginning of something.

*****

A fever broke out in late June
after the storm left our yard
treeless. Do you remember?

Our mother still can’t look
at the upturned roots of the elm
tree. She thought its twisted limbs

were magic and something was blown
out of her the night it fell. She looks
like something limp made tight,

a hammock strung among our bodies.

*****

…

A 1-year, 2-issue subscription to the print edition of PANK Magazine begins with the current issue at the time of ordering.

Subscriptions to PANK make pretty great gifts. Order one for the lit lover in your life. 

J32 J32 J32 J32
That’s where you’ll find us on the AWP 2014 floor plan this year in Seattle. The conference may be a few weeks away, but that’s not stopping us from packing our bags now. It’s cold in Houghton, we’re ready to get out of the snow for a few days.

We want to give all our friends and lit. lovers a head’s up for our pacific northwest Invasion during AWP. You don’t want to miss this evening of readings and conviviality, so you should probably click the link above and read about where and when it is, and then create yourself a note or make a reminder on your phone.

Seriously, don’t forget this.

Gay Boys And The Bridges Who Love Them [II].

saw it with my own headlamp.
lit halogen filament, breaking

between a thirteen year old’s haunted
hands, costumed in our realest ghosts.

we went door to door. unwrapping
hard candy and hard boiled eggs.

mouths of spray cans melted around pins
so the shaving cream flew in thin

white beams of light. toilet paper streaming
from three hundred year old trees.

you leaned into my shoulder as the cop
car passed like a black horse drawn

carriage, mouth ghosted my neck,
that first clean cigarette pulled

from the pack. we rubied in the blue
light. after the cavalry passed,

you turned to me. your face, a dark mask
hanging on the museum wall.

you leaned in.
you warm apparition.

when you pulled back
a thin bridge of spit.