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In the Cabin up on Stilts (In Black Clock)

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In the Cabin up on Stilts (In Black Clock) WINTER - SPRING 2013 NO. 16 CALARTS NO.16 WINTER / SPRING 2013 NO.16 JASON KNIGHT 1 Black Clock © 2013 California Institute of the Arts Black Clock / ISBN: 978-0-9836625-4-9 Black Clock is published semi-annually under cover of night by the MFA Writing Program at the California Institute of the Arts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia CA 91355 One-year subscriptions (two issues) can be purchased at blackclock.org/subscribe Editorial email: [email protected] BLACK CLOCK NO. 16 Distributed through Ingram, Ingram International, Bertrams, Gardners and Trust Media. WINTER / SPRING 2013 Printed by Lightning Source. EDITOR Steve Erickson SENIOR EDITOR Bruce Bauman Thank you to the Rosenthal Family Foundation MANAGING EDITOR Orli Low for its generous support ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Joe Milazzo PRODUCTION EDITOR Anne-Marie Kinney POETRY EDITOR Arielle Greenberg ASSOCIATE EDITORS Patrick Benjamin • Christopher Black Eleni Demetriou • Jessica Felleman • Sam Freilich • Bel Poblador EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Maggie Mull • Riley Raubacher Sara ‘Vesta’ Seltzer • Adriana Widdoes EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Seth Blake • Bryon Alexander Campbell COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR Chrysanthe Tan ROVING GENIUSES AND EDITORS-AT-LARGE Anthony Miller • Dwayne Moser • David L. Ulin ART DIRECTOR Ophelia Chong COVER IMAGE Jason Knight AD DIRECTOR Sara Gerot GUIDING LIGHT AND VISIONARY Gail Swanlund JASON KNIGHT FOUNDING FATHER Jon Wagner 2 3 JASON KNIGHT 4 THE INCLUDED Danielle Pafunda TUBULAR Claire Phillips A HOLE IN THE SKY Henry Bean WHITE VAN FEAR Vyshali Manivannan CASKETEER Larissa Szporluk RINI’S CHILD Carola Dibbell CHICKEN WIRE Craig Clevenger POST- Laura Sims DECOHERENCE Stephen O’Connor GAMES AND STUNTS Albert Mobilio EVER YOURS Danielle Pafunda NOWHERE, NO PLACE, LIKE HOME Karrie Higgins ELECTION DIARY 2012 Rick Moody IN THE CABIN UP ON STILTS David Rice AQUAMARINE Marisa Crawford 5 6 JASON KNIGHT 7 DANIELLE PAFUNDA THE INCLUDED 8 DANIELLE PAFUNDA THE INCLUDED This is ground zero for those with unusual enfacement. This is their tent city in which I’m sometimes welcome. A lending library features everything, which includes the television’s anthemic bleating, the sadcore harp, Why are you smirking up your face making obnoxious facial scenes?, touchscreens, micro-ground coffee, antiqued rose- colored garments and a biographical history of the color pink, Sally Hemings, a spaceship, portable defibrillators, cat memes, nail polish that hardens to a ceramic finish, a repurposed ashtray from a railcar, inside-out pocket watches, strips of plastic with fine grit overlay meant to prevent slippage, a diving suit, the chain latch for a front door, size 7.5 bamboo knitting needles, a power strip, a dripping paper sack, avian themed silver pins, a polar bear’s ear that appears much larger out of context of the bear than one would expect, a lock of hair from a seven-year-old white female, the braid of a ten-year-old Korean female, one strand from a Keralan intersexed, fifteen-year-old black male— fingernail clippings, someone’s mother, turmeric, EDWARD CUSHENBERRY 9 fraying polyester dragon pattern brocade-backed photo album export, metal-setting amp, dried four leaf clover, dust, young adult historical novel about a pirate and a merchant’s daughter, two Day of the Dead skeletons pushing an infant skeleton in a walnut shell pram, a #10 envelope with plastic address window, water-stained curtains, abalone, a faux brass fire poker, Erlenmeyer flask with crusted rim, diapers, sebum, orange plastic rabbit-shaped egg mold, lengths of black gray and ivory tulle, a phenylephrine HCL tablet, Liam Neeson, hog bristle, nervous habit, Castile soap, book binder’s tape, staple gun, BPA coated receipts, crumbling wings of dead Miller moths, barback’s towel soaked in fumaric acid, index pages from American Psycho, spice jar filled with soil from the volcano Hekla, linen notecards, underwire contour padded bra 36B in nude, a marrow spoon, irony, brake pads, 1/8 inch plastic pegs in pink blue red and white, an oak pew, thirty-pound bag of small-stone white and light gray gravel, cold hands, striated throat, warbler feather, glass jar— 10 EDWARD CUSHENBERRY 11 CLAIRE PHILLIPS TUBULAR JOSHUA SCHAEDEL 12 CLAIRE PHILLIPS TUBULAR On the corner of Pasadena Avenue and Figueroa, the comings and goings of those appointed by five people stood in line in the hot sun, waiting to the court to community service, few appreciated be next to inhale the Egg and see the Saint. It was philosophical discussion. In his need for the not long before the truck ran out of Egg and a fight universal he felt alone. Not even his wife Angela broke out. liked talking about the future. It wasn’t that she “I told you there was no point in standing was stupid or small-minded. She just didn’t want in line,” Ben told his wife. “Nothing ever works to despair. out. We shouldn’t have come.” “Come back next Saturday,” an emaciated Angela wasn’t surprised things hadn’t worker called out from the banged up catering worked out the way Ben wanted. She was busy with truck. “A new batch is being hatched as we speak.” her baby and secretly hoped they would be able to Ben turned bitterly behind him to the go home without adding Saints and psychobabble cracked sidewalk where a silver-haired amputee to an already long list of complaints. suited up in a gray duct tape bag cinched at the Ben worked for Caltrans in Malibu and waist sucked down the last delicacies of the Spittle soon, it was rumored, he’d be losing his job. and Pittled Eggs of New York catering truck. “Lucky The State parks had all about closed and now, dog,” Ben spit on the dry cracked ground. “Time spectacularly, there was talk of closing Zuma to hightail it outta here.” Ben tossed a flubby arm Beach in the winter. This Saturday Ben had hoped about his wife and baby as a crush of embittered for a vision or a sign to help him make the next patrons moved forward for the truck. right move. It was nearly impossible to talk to his “I’ve been waiting here for over an hour,” a co-workers about how he was seeing things. By buxom broad shouted up to the Ouroboros worker. attending protests down at City Hall, the union “I’m not leaving till I see a Saint.” The Ouroboros workers felt they were taking control. What they worker banged closed the catering truck’s window failed to miss were the signs everywhere of a and started up its engine. “Where you goin’, fool?” mass societal collapse. E. coli. Terrorism. Extreme An Armenian homie tossed an empty weather. Land-faring mutant worms. Once the beer bottle toward the truck and it shattered transportation system fell apart due to high oil loudly against the side as the swaying truck pulled prices and the trucks were no longer able to deliver out into Lincoln Heights traffic. “Go back to their goods to the cities, a return to hunting and church!” the driver sniped back. gathering was inevitable, leaving only the practiced “I don’t want Jesus, I wanna bona fide gun owner to survive. Tubular Saint,” the buxom woman hollered. “I In his chosen field of work, scrubbing public wanna see Bear, like my sister.” toilets and grooming county shrubbery, overseeing “C’mon,” Ben maneuvered Angela and six- 13 month-old baby Hilda toward the car, past the day’s wheel. “Imagine if I’d seen a Saint and we won the winners sprawled out in the dirt under a broken lottery like that lady in Carson with stage three frondless palm, stoned and inhaling the dregs of the liver cancer. It’s too damn bad. The lottery’s up to notoriously potent Spittle and Pittled Eggs. four hundred mil this week.” The family boarded the four-wheel “Nobody can prove Saints are real,” Angela drive Ford Hybrid SUV purchased before the countered, jutting her lower lip. End Times had announced themselves via the “So?” Ben sniped. “That’s the way it’s tubularfamily.com sighting of the black-hatted always been. Spiritual things aren’t provable, that’s New Jesus drifting up and down the 5 freeway. In why they’re spiritual. Besides they’ve proven the a bombed-out yellow Toyota Tercel, the Manco existence of giant tube worms. They’ll prove the Incan hailed passersby with endless stigmata blood Saints next and the Tubular people. You’ll see.” works—turned out Jesus was an illegal immigrant. “I don’t believe in the Tubular. That’s a Too ironic for words. myth,” Angela pouted. She didn’t like all this talk “This freakin’ sucks,” Ben lamented, of interspecies breeding and the breakdown of stabbing the steering wheel with a meaty elbow. culture. Of the unfamiliar. She wanted everything “Now what am I gonna do?” to remain the same. To remain the way it was “You’re so pessimistic,” Angela sighed, when she was in school, when her hair was long, carefully buckling Hilda into her seat. “You’re down to her waist, and she was good at passing always taking the gloomy view.” Scantron tests. “I can’t go back to being a nurse aid. All “If I were Tubular, I wouldn’t need a job,” that freakin’ illness and misery—I’m not cleaning Ben said, tailgating the white 1998 Acura up another bedpan, Angie. Maybe I’ll start cooking ahead. “I’d just eat plastic bags out of the garbage meth like that teacher with cancer on TV.” and get high on Egg,” he guffawed. “Dammit,” he Angela shot him a look of annoyance. yelled, eying the consumption stats of his vehicle, “You’re way too lazy to deal.
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