Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry and short stories from the kitchen table of his ex-wife's home. His latest collection is titled, In All These Naked Pictures Of Us. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print or online in, Chiron Review; The Beatnik Cowboy; Eleventh Transmission; Crab Fat Literature; NEAT; Dead Snakes; Blink Ink; and coming soon to Poetry Pacific; Your One Phone Call; BAD ACID LABORATORIES, INC.; and the Poems-For-All project. Victor’s work has also appeared in anthologies published by Lady Chaos Press.
It Sounds Worse Than It Really Is
There are times
that I stumble
backwards from
her might, and
there are times
that I get
a real good feel
of her tits—
right palm / left nipple
left palm / right nipple,
and nothing has
changed; the
pushes still come
to shoves, but they
are never hard
enough to
completely ruin
love—just hard
enough to make
a good fuck-night
impossible when
we are sober.
The Day Before My 35th Birthday
The Red Sea inside of me is bottled in
Modesto; it rolls over each morning as the
bottoms of my feet hit the stained cut pile.
God is catching a catnap under the couch
cushions. I peel bananas for three-year-old
children and try to shake her awake.
My lips are substitutes for fingertips in all
of my dreams. The first pot of coffee is
never strong enough, the second pot of coffee
is always stronger, but I’m bored with coffee
by that point. I drink beer. There is a jewel
inside the stomach of my desire.
Wake up, God, they are gonna riot soon, but
I’m sure you already knew that, right? . . . and a
machine gun in my sister’s hands may be my
ultimate demise, but things can only get better
from here . . . I'm never certain though, just
human, and intrigued by the possibilities.
Distracted
In the pauses, I sat with
rolled tobacco, lit and
burning much quicker
than the lead was dulling
and disappearing.
A pencil in my hand.
A cock in my hand.
Possession. I dropped one,
the cock; it was mine.
I ran my wet lips softly
across the rolling hills, and then
down to the valleys that my
knuckles and the spaces between
them made; it looked just like I
was kissing myself, but I was not.
I was not that tough. I knew a
man though that was tough and
kissed himself for comfort—
kissed himself from his fingertips
all the way up into his armpits.
The women loved him for it,
and he always got the good
drinks for entertaining (from the
wives, the sister,
the cousins, the daughters).
On the nights when the women
were not around, he took a few
good fists in the back alley
(from the husbands, the brothers,
the cousins, the fathers)
for being such a strange fuck,
but the fists never broke him
like they did most other men in
the back alley.
He would just stumble back
inside, wipe the blood away with
a napkin, and then lick his lips before
kissing himself again. He never
once kissed himself with dry lips.
I took a last slow puff from the
butt and dropped it into a cup of
water. It sunk to the bottom and I
picked my cock up again,
shook it a bit more,
and then dropped it once again—
all for good measure, I suppose.
$4.99 Books from the Dollar General
One Night Stands and Lost Weekends
I finished the story
Frozen Stiff
by Lawrence Block and
started reading
Hate Goes Courting
when she asked me,
"If you could rename the seasons, would you?"
"I don't know?" I told her,
"It's possible. I might."
She sat quiet as I finished
Hate Goes Courting
and as I turned the page to begin reading
I Don't Fool Around
she looked over my shoulder.
She smelled like a city sidewalk after a
thunderstorm:
like wet dirt
and pulpy paper.
I closed the book.
"Why did you do that?" she asked and I told her,
"I think I fuck better when the roses are blooming
outside. The blood flows to my balls better."
Her cat meowed at my feet
and somewhere at that same moment in this city,
I'm sure,
someone has just finished
I Don't Fool Around
and turned the page to
Just Window Shopping.
Domestic
There was
no
more
innocence
left showing in my terror,
or in
my
touch.
My hands were stained with
no
more
innocence
left showing in my terror,
or in
my
touch.
My hands were stained with
radical
l
o
v
e
l
o
v
e
he said, and the Integrated Automated Fingerprint
Identification System
can’t trace the chance impression
on the pipe bomb kisses
which
are so
passionate that the lips swallow lips and the front teeth
crash, clank, clangor.
Christ.
Your women must be thoroughly pleased I told him
you talk
like you got goals.
Myself, I just
get pussy when
I can
get
it.
There isn’t much explosion, or intrigue,
I mean
unless you count the
occasional squish, or squash, or the one time
I had a
woman
moan
and
fart and
then
laugh, because she thought it jiggled my testicles.
I don’t mess with women anymore
he said as he sat my lunch plate on a napkin
I’m a Domestic Love Terrorist
and
there are fourteen other men
in our secret cell—
in an underground
bedroom plotting attacks on what remains of traditionalism.
Do you wanna come to the next meeting?
How do you know I’m not a fat cop, undercover and
trying to pump you for information, I asked him.
He smiled. Oh well
he said,
gay sex isn’t a crime these days, Sir.
And, he forgot to put the sour pickles
on the side of the steaming
hot plate like I had asked him to, but it was ok.
He
was
pretty
enough
that I could over-look it all.
Join the Kokomo Oralists Outsider Poetry Slam team
A Letter to the Editor
Sir,
You are full of shit. Your brain is a swollen sac; a spider’s nest. You poke that fat finger inside of your ear and wiggle it around with a squint-eyed smirk like you have just stuck your finger between the mid-morning spread-open thighs of a woman who doesn’t fear her asshole being rubbed. I don't like you much. I blame it on your infested head most days, but anyway, are you still accepting poems? If so, here are three more poems that I wrote last night after supper, before I got drunk and shaved the hair off of my balls. I shaved it in the bathtub and it only took about ten minutes. I got the idea from Michelle. I shave her legs with caution and strawberry shampoo; she trusts me with the blade, even near her cunt. We finger fuck in the shower and then soon afterwards I scramble eggs with what’s left of a hard-on before I kiss her off to work. She leaves and I take a short nap, then I clean up the pieces of fallen eggshell from the floor around eleven o’clock before pouring myself a drink and sitting down to write. I usually don’t write much in the daytime, I just waste the day watching this city snarl through the living room windows. I can see Sixth Street from here and it’s a rough strip of hardball; the punks and pussies stroll it doing stick-ups. Well, I hope you enjoy the poems that I sent and I’m sorry for not liking you much. It’s just that I don’t like many editors, but I respect them and I guess in a way that means I respect you too. We have to exist together somehow.
Hard-Boiled Eggs Again
She called one evening at dinnertime to tell me that she
was laying on a bed in a hotel room in Oklahoma. “Jesus Christ,
that is like six, or seven hours away,” I told her.
“I had some things to take care of," she told me—she was
slightly younger than I was, and had rib bones along her
stomach that I could feel with my lips.
My stomach was bloated, and she had never attempted to
kiss my sides when we had spent nights together in hotel
rooms much closer than Oklahoma.
"Are you alone?" I asked her. “Yes,” she replied. “Are
you drinking?” she asked me. (I was always drinking and
she knew this) "I wish you were here with me,” she said.
"In Oklahoma?" I asked her. "Yes, in Oklahoma,” she
laughed. "Shit. I have work tomorrow," I told her. "They
have nice showers down here,” she said. "Do they?"
"Oh yes,” she replied, “I am going to play with my pussy in
there tonight." "Sounds pleasant, two fingers?" "Oh yes,
two fingers," she laughed again.
"I cut one of my fingers on a knife today,” I told her. "Oh,
sweetie,” she stopped laughing and asked, “Did it bleed
much?” "It bled; it stained me red like I had smashed a fat
bed bug between my fingertips, but it is fine now,” I told
her. "I'm bored,” she said. "I'm hungry," I replied. "Is it
dinner time yet?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm going to eat something,” I told her, “Call me back
later." "I will call you back tomorrow,” she said, “It is
supposed to be eighty-degrees here tomorrow. I'm going to
wear a dress." "Okay,” I told her; we hung up the phones,
and I finished the beer that I was drinking when she called.
I walked over to the cooled boiling pot, reached in and
pulled out a hard-boiled egg. I peeled it and sat down at the
table with another beer. She only owned black dresses. I
opened the beer up and sat there thinking about how lucky
Oklahoma was.
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