I gave myself a writing exercise today.

Joanie Loon sits bug-eyed and yellow under a greasy blanket of hair in front of a laptop in the bedroom of her new downtown apartment, its wallpaper curling at the corners and floral in the ghastly sort of way, reminiscent of what she imagines the 1960's to have looked like. Her nails are chipped black and chewed up, fingers clicking on the mouse fast as a heartbeat as she groans through the pictures of herself on Facebook. Now that she's graduated college she has to find the most appropriate picture for her default. That's what employers do nowadays, the old people blabbed on and on about it. They Google the shit out of young applicants in search of bong rips, nip slips, and other evidence of drunken debauchery and general tomfooleries.

What does the Internet think of Joanie? Who exactly is she on the Internet? What do people think? How do they see her?

What Google shows is her Facebook, naturally, then her old Myspace, some vague webpage featuring a list of undergraduate scholarships, and--to her horror--her ONLINE DIARY, its description under the header reading: IF ONE MORE PERSON LOOKS AT ME I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD I'M GOING TO KILL MYSE--(cached).

She thinks about deleting it as dozens of blog posts flood the screen. This journal's years and years old, there's gotta be over a hundred entries. She'd have to delete the whole thing or make each entry private.

Is it worth it?

She blinks.

This time would be better spent working on a cover letter. This time would be better spent exercising.

This time would be better spent cleaning her room.

She picks up a notepad from the desk and pops the cap off a Sharpie.

"Things I Should Do Right Now"

by Joanie Loon

1. Apply to jobs

2. Attract a mate

3. Call a parent

4. Go poop

5. Drink some water

6. Take a shower

7. Make a new friend

8. Volunteer

She scratches that one out.

8. Give a bum a cigarette.

She scratches that out, too.

8. Join a Facebook group about Darfur (etc)

9. Learn to play guitar

She decides these are all terrible.

10. Dance like no one's watching

11. Let the good times roll

12. Don't worry, be happy.

13. Commit suicide.

The box of warm beer in the kitchen is calling. She retreats and cracks one open, tries to gulp down as much as possible. When she can't stomach it anymore, she puts the can down and burps at her reflection in the mirror, her lips flapping like Homer Simpson.

"Heyyyy," she says to herself. Almost half the beer's gone. If she can do this twelve more times she'll be drunk in like what, ten minutes.

She sits back at the computer, looks at the can and thinks.

Too much work. Too gross.

Back to the screen.

Why are all the jobs on Craigslist scams?

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT POSITION ENTRY LEVEL 14.00 AN HOUR EMAIL RESUME $$$$$.

EGG DONORS NEEDED 12,000 DOLLARS NO PHONE CALLS.

Yeah, okay, she'll get right on that.

She clicks on her Gmail tab. One unread message from her OKCupid account.

"Ooh la la..."

According to this email, she's just been virtually winked at by a user who calls himself "Stackhouse." She clicks on his icon and his photo jumps up at her on the screen like an angry boner. He's wearing a baseball cap and facial hair that reminds her of something from a Rorschach test. Her eyes narrow, assessing. What a shit-show. He's got a tribal tattoo on his forearm and he was too stupid to turn the flash off in front of the mirror. Stackhouse. He's gotta be like thirty-something because he doesn't know shit about the Internet. Everyone's a stereotype with a pulse.

She starts typing a message for him: "Tits or get the fuck out."

Deleted. Whatever. He won't get it anyway.

Joanie sighs into her chair and looks at the clock. Seven-thirty. Is that too early to start drinking seriously? The question depresses her. Back to Facebook.

Would Joanie hire Joanie? Probably not.

This is insufferable. Now that she’s graduated she’s not allowed to drink beer or be silly in pictures? Or wear black nail polish or skirts higher than the knee or reference The Smiths in Sharpie on her purses or say Fuck or Shit or Cocksucker or sit on the sidewalk or roll her eyes or gauge her ears or smoke cigarettes or spit in public even if she’s got a really big loogie filling her mouth? How the fuck can anyone breathe around here?

The oppression grips her bladder.

In the bathroom she pees while staring at her toenails, which have seen better days. In the magazine rack is her unfinished novel. She’s been editing it every time she takes a shit. Lately she’s been all sorts of wound up. How do people with jobs live? Does everyone make some unspoken commitment to squaredom once they hit the workforce?

The Ambien Brain

 This is something I wrote while on Ambien a couple weeks ago. I thought it was hilarious so now it's here.

 *

look:

I'M STAYING AWAKE FOR THE DOUBLE FEATURE!

observe: hindered ability to perceive location. i actually thought i was at 110 s quarry for a moment.

Shapes do not assume their general movements when moved. These fuckers are unpredictable and must not be trusted at face value.


Interruption by the old woman faces in the towels. They don't even bother speaking. Hags.

Dust flies menacingly, without destination.

weird shit's happening on the couch. First, I'm here. Second, there seems to be an array of multicolored dust particles masquerading as insects moving about to and fro on the screen of the monitor. This is madness. At least the silly neon aesthetic shit show happening right now renders it threatless.

So tired. Must sleep, right? Must close eyes.
MOMENT: I feel as if I'm moving in a car. I can see the outside of the wheel before anyone else can. Praire land and rolling hills beyond; this is what I imagine a long drive through Kansas to look like. Of all places, why would Ambien send me to Kansas? I want my money back.


I'm on the couch, not in my room, I can't just lay here passed out and making devillish noises at six in the morning. Come on Internet, hit be with your best shot.

Why am I not in bed? Christopherrrrr.

This is just silly now. I suspect I might have to go outside for a cigarette but god knows all the horrors which lie beyond the knowing caresses of this leather couch. Some air might do me nicely, though. Maybe just for five? I'll check facebook and try not to wig out if my profile picture is the repo man doing doughnuts in my car while giving me a menacing thumbs-up under the boom of some mixtape my mother made me.

Wait!


Best idea. Wish I could fucking remember two seconds later. Whatever.

Yo I love dat gentle crisp wind at the end of August. I feel immediately less terrible once treating myself to some fresh Commons air. I have cankers on my tounge and it hurts so good to smoke cigarettes again.


Who or what is alive at 6am on a Wednesday morning? Citizens, from what crevices do you crawl?

Does coffee exist at this time?

Ooh, I hear the dull groan of the TCat. I look north at the wheezing blue bus, dragon-like, passing the library and consider whether Gimme might be open. Probably not, the pansies.


Did Matt Broadhead actually talk to me through my open window on the fire escape or did I hallucinate that? What did we talk about? Probably how shitty Lewiston is. When in doubt, always talk about Lewiston, a city so festering in bitter nostalgia that its downtown Jenga-like stacks of faded bricks, broken windows, and barbed wire is held up by leaning hipsters or No Trespassing signs covered in graffiti.

My baby, Lewiston.

Won't someone put us out of our misery? What did we do to deserve this city? Sure, we spilled poison into our beloved Androscoggin, sat back in our lawn chairs while local government axed our unions, and pushed our children into crowded daycares to be raised by people more frazzled and disillusioned than ourselves.
But think about it: before the industry, we had nothing.


Aqua-blue dots in the corner of my eye. Why aqua? How tacky.


Ugh, Starbucks or Gimmie? Is that the same as deciding between Democrat and Republican? I think I'm still technically registered as a Green Party member. What was I thinking?

the hours (unfinished)

At 9pm,

at last, the snow stopped falling,

all the lights in the house

are as yellow as the sun.

Upstairs in the attic bedroom,

a towel dresses the crack

of the door, so I can sit, smoking

another cigarette invisibly.

At 10pm,

I think of showering and imagine

myself naked and saggy behind a glass,

under the storm of a sodium sulfate spigot.

Instead, I check my Facebook and smile

at endless photographs of cats.

At 11pm,

silence sneaks into each room

of my house. Doors close softly

and the yellow lights fade. I am

all that's left. The calendar falls

onto the hardwood; I daydream

about finding another tack.

 At 12am,

the house on southern Quarry

sounds like a single mouse

scrolling through interviews

of Charlie Sheen. Ashamed,

I sneak into a cigarette and try

escaping; I intend to write a story

about a woman who sleeps forever.

At 1am,

my inbox has three new messages. For

a brief moment, there is joy. Two

are from companies, insisting they help

fix the size of my waist, and the other

from my future rich-prince husband

longing for me in his Nigerian palace.

The candles burn out. I fantasize.

At 2am,

night time cough syrup teases me

on the desk, beside a capless soda

from the bowels of the fridge, where

my groceries go to die, unloved

because they demand the energy

it takes to prepare them. I slice

crescent fingernails into the trash.

At 3am,

tv shows are funnier,  actors less

amateur, the sound of canned cheer

after the joke is less commanding.

A cookie drowns in a milk glass

while I watch Richard Simmons

dance away his heavy past.

At 4am,

the bed is still made. From the yellow eye

of my house, I watch men feed a truck

with my empty packs of cigarettes, tissues

in crusted wads from bad days, the empty

bottle of Cymbalta, whose label hides

its refill, and ashes from the empty bowl.

At 5am,

world news slaps my doormat. On

my bed, the pillows lay spooning

like lovers; I long for their empty

invitation. I squish another cigarette

into a mass grave of each smoky hour.

Refreshing pages for anything new

dulls the agony of having to think.

The Hipster Summer

Every night tastes like piss

in a forty ounce bottle, smells

like sweat and the staleness of our cluttered,

knick-knacky bedrooms, closing us

in with their picture-book

walls, sounds outside like hello's and good

bye's and high-fives, inside

jokes, heavy breathing and little moans, sights

like dim lights, the watery wandering

of his eyes, headlights and lighters, the wide

grins of friends and the pretty red

buds at the ends of our American Spirits.

Every night's air is thick

with smoke and laughter. Often we feel

like we could evaporate, disappear

in the thin folds of a moment, be tucked

away in arms soft and salty in the sweat

we bleed, blink and exist only in the past.

The hipster hates the hip and loves

only that which has been discarded,

the naïve, forgotten remnants of our mothers' decades

which seem somehow more genuine, and this

is the inevitable conundrum, the wounded hole

in the heart of the hipster: the authenticity parade

is inherently inauthentic.

And so we dance away the disillusionment,

melt into each costumed other, our identities lost

in the crush of a pill or the bottom of a PBR, knowing

sadly that the tortured artist ceases to be

the moment we stand next to another.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

Mustache & Gums: A Love Story

Susan was afraid that she had become one of those pathetic, saggy-boobed, sweat pants-wearing, white bread bologna sandwich in a plastic baggy-munching, bird-watching, tacky, boring women whose asses drooped down off rolly chairs behind cubicles plastered with knick-knacky things, like calendars with pictures of kittens in costumes or mugs that say Merry Christmas. Those women who type ads in Craigslist or Singles.com with one glossy-nailed finger, too old to type without looking and too young to meet men at diners, or the library. Susan, not one for epiphanies or self-realizations, felt all of a sudden uneasy and self-conscious as she sat alone at the corner table inside of an Olive Garden, waiting for her blind date. 

 

Roger, according to his online profile page, was an Aquarian telemarketer who sold “all-natural, all organic” products and his hobbies included long walks, hiking, dancing, and deep thought. Susan was delighted. Though she hated dancing, had never actually hiked, and was often exhausted from long walks, Roger seemed like the type of person that Susan aspired to be, and so she contacted him with a picture of her from five years ago, when probing her scalp for grey hairs for fifteen minutes wasn’t a part of her morning routine. But she still looked the same. Mostly. What Susan liked most about Roger was that he had a thick yet humble mustache that implied fiscal responsibility, the desire to have children, and middle-class values. Their short email correspondence appeared to support these assumptions; he used proper grammar and punctuation, did not use silly modern acronyms, and had a pre-made online signature with his contact information at the bottom. 

 

Roger was five minutes late and Susan was crinkling a piece of her napkin into a ball, wondering if she should leave. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe Roger had changed his mind. She thought about her own online profile page, wondering if he had considered her a catch.

Susan Deschaine, 39 (but actually 45).

An executive assistant who enjoys swimming (she didn’t), nature walks (she hadn’t technically been in the woods in over fifteen years, but she thought if she had the opportunity that she would absolutely enjoy them), and music (mostly talk-radio in the mornings). Looking for a man who wants commitment (no cheating with the slut next-door neighbor after five years), and who is passionate (but not kinky), and loving.

Surely Roger fit the description, and she didn’t peg him for a man who would back out, particularly because she fancied herself slightly more attractive, especially in the picture she gave him, which featured her more slender but still-not-particularly-slender body leaning against the fence outside of her father’s farm with a big-gummed smile under her favorite shade of red lipstick and her brown curls blowing in the wind. Yes. She was more attractive than Roger. 

 

This conclusion was immediately confirmed as she watched Roger walk towards her table. He was wearing a large pair of glasses that had not made an appearance in his photograph and dress pants that were slightly too short for his long legs.

His thick mustache smiled at her and her big gums smiled back.

“Susan?” he said, with a friendly point to her face.

“Yes, Roger?”

“I certainly am!” he exclaimed with a sort of whistle, sitting down across from Susan.

The waiter, who had refilled Susan’s water glass several times out of pity, approached the table upon seeing Roger sit down, and asked them if they’d like any wine. 

 

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Susan began, trying to blush and seem bashful.

But Susan had indeed done this before. In fact, for the past three years Susan had been perusing dating sites online and had gone on eleven blind dates. 

 

“I haven’t either, but I looked at your picture, and read your profile, and something told me that I could trust you,” Roger said with a hairy smile.

Susan felt confident that Roger approved of her and so they indulged in small-talk. Susan ordered a soup and salad (though she really desired the garlic haddock or the white sauce ziti but could not risk the possibility of bad breath from the fish or gas from the alfredo). Roger ordered chicken parmesan and when their food arrived, Susan wished she had not been so reserved with her ordering, and looked lovingly at his plate. 

 

In between bites and chews and slurps, they talked about their lives. He rode a bike to work, he said, not because he couldn’t afford a car, but rather because he cared deeply for the environment. Susan liked this. She envisioned the future: they would share a two-seated bike, ride along a rocky trail in the mornings after granola and lovemaking in his Lincoln-Log cabin, within the bowels of some far-away dream-forest, where there were no insects and they’d often have picnics under trees with pretty singing birds in them. As Roger talked about the realm of telemarketing, Susan listened only to the sound of his voice, while daydreaming about cuddling on the couch with him and his mustache, watching Lifetime dramas for middle-aged women, and sipping coffees and teas with more sugar than necessary. She imagined him not only tolerating this, but enjoying it as much as she, and when she would wear her baggy, pink-bowed pajamas, he would not find them distasteful but rather he would get entirely turned on by the honesty in them. 

 

So when their dinner was clearly over, the table with empty plates and wine glasses, Susan boldly asked Roger if he would be interested in having coffee and perhaps watching a television show at her apartment. Roger’s mustache smiled wide.

_ _ _ _

Susan had every intention of sleeping with Roger. She hadn’t been with a man in months and had forgotten that she should have shaved her legs and armpits before the date and given herself a thorough washing in the shower. She’d showered the night before and was afraid that he would feel the prickling stubbly hairs on her legs and lose his erection or worse, find her pathetic. She had left Roger on the couch with the coffee and the television program to stand in front of her bathroom mirror, frowning at the thin black hair growing out of a small mole on her face. She plucked it. 

 

She then hurried to prepare for lovemaking, afraid that if she took too long, Roger may suspect that she had reacted poorly to the food at dinner and was embarrassingly confined to the toilet. This idea crippled Susan with fear, and she rushed to lather soap on her legs and run a cheap razor down them, and do the same with her armpits. She splashed water on them and reapplied deodorant. She then took her pants off and frowned. She wondered if Roger would approve of her unruly pubic hair. She did not have time to trim it, so she merely gave herself a sink-washcloth mini-bath and quickly lubricated her skin with a thin layer of lotion she bought at a Bath N’ Body in the mall on a Friday shopping trip with her mother.

Did she smell like a woman? 

 

Susan felt that she had to compensate for her slightly aged and sagging body, so she sprayed a strong perfume on her neck and then that was that. She opened the door slowly and Roger was laughing loudly at a sitcom. She cleared her throat and he turned around. He gave her the up-and-down with his grain-colored eyes and winked.

_ _ _ _

They made love modestly in Susan’s bed. Roger slowly moving up, down, up, down—a type of mechanical movement, without any sort of natural rhythm guided by pleasure. Susan was not bold enough to move with him, though occasionally she did release a small, contrived moan for the bliss she imagined she was supposed to be having during sex. Roger had not been very good at foreplay, so when he was busy kissing her neck, she sneaked a small spit on her fingers and applied an artificial wetness onto herself, hoping that in discovering that Susan was moist for him, Roger would become inspired to make love more passionately.

And though this didn’t happen, Susan felt content nevertheless because after Roger was spent, he did not curl away from her like some of the others had, but rather wrapped his arms around her, held her drooping stomach, and for once, Susan thought that her expectations matched very nicely with Roger’s, and she felt as though this was the man she had been looking for and had now found. He began snoring loudly in her ear, a tiny breeze of parmesan-breath on her cheek. Susan smiled and fell asleep as comfortably as she would if she were alone. 

 

She was happy.



COPYRIGHT 2009 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

The Centipede

I sat smoking a cigarette as a centipede

crawled towards me,

its little legs speeding onward with a lively passion

that startled me

so I jumped up and from a distance watched, sickly curious,

my stomach soured by the threat of its closeness, how it seemed

that it might crawl onto me, for a moment

become a part of me.

I could have killed it, ground my heel into its ugly writhing body

but instead I stood over it like a God, smoking and wondering

how something so small and insignificant could race toward death

with such arrogance.

Does it know? I asked myself. Does it know that I'm here?

That my eyes follow its every pathetic creep and crawl?

How the life moving its legs toward me could in a moment be taken

by a single movement from my own mighty legs?

I imagined myself in its millions of little eyes,

Death herself, in billowing clouds of a ghostly smoke.

The centipede could see nothing else.

As I squished the fire out of my cigarette,

I thought perhaps I knew then how God might feel

as she watches the human centipedes creep and crawl

over the world she thought she made:

terror.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

X

Two fat chemtrails make an X
(marks the spot) in the pink and yellow sky
over 185 Pine, its third-floor browning window
glasses frame two disapproving eyes.
Those are mine.

Look here, on the stoop, a gypsy in the smoke—
waving in those greying tendrils, all the secrets
your uncle Sam wouldn’t want you to know.
I see you, flocks of Sheeple, tapping the insides of your arms,
your quadruple-seated strollers dragging you along
a street whose corners you never dreamed of knowing
so intimately.

Off to the bodegas for powdered meals,
back Home to fluorinated baby’s milk
or the empty taps we named our breasts.
Have you seen me, children?

cutting in line for society’s stamps,
eyeballing your mothers and their boy-friends
who know not the truth, so don’t blame them too long
for your future in the service sector,
the twenty years you’ll spend in queue,
vegetables spray-painted red and green in your baskets.

Please, little sisters, do not let your eggs be poisoned—
not by Big Brother’s angry prick,
or the Weatherman, who works nights obscuring the stars
with a cancerous fog.
Eyes to the sky!—this is what a quiet death looks like.
The King of the Sheeple orders in whispers, I tell you;
he’s kissed the palms of that malevolent ghost,
who made us weep that one September.

I wait for that first day in 2012, a beautiful chaos.
A chorus of underfed mouths, screaming
that they wish they’d listened to me.
I’ve heard the lies, known the truth, seen the future.
Come here, look into these crystal balls,
two blue heavens, two blue hells.
See the X’s in the gypsy’s eyes.


COPYRIGHT 2010 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

Morpheus & Me

For Danica

My lover's name is Morpheus, see us riding on the train--

see me starry-eyed, see him in my lap singing me to sleep.

See him kiss my hands, and my wrists, and my breasts,

wherever the blue lines run

'cause that's how we fuck, and how he makes me dream

of those times when my eyes weren't black cakes crusted shut,

of gap-toothed smiles and dark curly hair

And hopes and prophecies,

and rope swinging into the stars reflected off the water.

There is always the future.

My lover's name is Morpheus, see my worries melt on a spoon,

see me nodding on the couch, and see me never leave again,

see me happy, ever-smiling.

There is no other place than now, where I am.

There is no other thing I must do.

There is no other lover, there is no one else,

there is Morpheus and me.

My lover's name is Morpheus, see him blanket me at night

See him scare away the monsters

And all my friends that loved me.

See him roll my eyes inside,

so that I can love him,

so that I can always love him

and no one else again. 

COPYRIGHT 2008 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

The Resting Brain

Marijuana is seeping through the doorway,

Am I high now?

Or too awake?

Either way, I’ve been delirious for a very long time,

Watching the holes in the wall of my home

And wondering if they are the homes of anyone else,

But me.

My television's upside down,

Singing a song about jealousy and I thought,

“I’m jealous.”

I think,

Everyone is laughing and I am not.

I’m lying to drag queens,

Just to give 'em a slap in the face,

For being so in love with themselves;

Caked in superficial colors,

Like pink and blue.

I hate them.

COPYRIGHT 2006 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS

Thanksgiving

That last supper

only Jesus was excused—

How unfortunate

that the smell

was mixed

with pizza on my right

and turkey on my left

(Vegetarian sinners)

Jesus would have walked out

and he did, in a way

How disappointing

that he didn’t wait

for this apocalypse

What a shame

that my last days are

the antithesis of

these movies I’m watching

on the family channels

It’s funny how

the phone cried

right in the middle of dinner

And I blinked once, for no

And she blinked twice, for

Fuck you.

I could laugh about

how communication

is taking away

all the communication

that we have left.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS