Wait for it
a goose in a suit and tie asked me to describe my writing goals and I thought, seriously, what does that even mean? Does it mean being published, recognized, praised, praised again, hallelujah, fame and fortune, love, love all you need is love
I kinda doubt it was about submission guidelines, stuffy queries, agents and editors you don’t know from Eve, a handful of defunct publications on your resume, the sparse list of rejections not because you’re so wonderful but because you can’t be bothered to submit. Once in a blue moon you might drag a canary out of the cage, pour a slippery goldfish out of its glass bowl, open the door to a giant gorilla stranded in the zoo, a few flickering flames against the black hole of extinction, heap new words on the old, your digital stats showing a handful of views, out of which only two pairs of eyes appear to have stayed on the page long enough to read your despair, one got busy texting and forgot to click off, the other skimmed and promptly forgot
the jibber-jabber of words blanketing time in spurts and starts until they hit a brick wall and start pissing every which way like a mad person with an assault rifle or a submachine gun, or whatever the term for an automatic or semi-automatic thingy that just keeps spraying from the hip of some feverish guy in unwashed ill-fitting clothes, whose finger is stuck to the trigger, a wild-eyed guy with flailing hair who can’t stop stumbling in and out of the crowd, watching in wonder everybody flying out the door or the arena or city square hoping the bullets ain’t chasing them
or sticks and stones, your bones, the bones I love, the feel of your naked shoulders on the pads of my fingers, where are your shoulders now? I remember their golden outline against the white pillows, words can never hurt you anymore, but they’re killing me
I stand alone on the killing fields, I look around, you look around, we look around, casting our gaze upon stunned walls and concrete and blacktop ricocheting the bullets, the words, your dreams, the life left behind, the fucking waste of it all. Easy now, here’s a waste basket, go ahead, toss out any rounds left in that rusty chamber, your writing goals, dog shit on your shoes, could be deer droppings, possibly bear scat, a big brown bear rifling through your garbage, sniffing the cleaned off bones of pond-raised salmon, not the river, not your assault rifle, you’re just a girl. Now go get a shiny new machine gun, it’s just words, mean no harm, sticks and stones, you summon them and they appear, no need to go to the store, order online, wait for the delivery truck
summon and forget, summon the salmon that can’t climb up the concrete dam, like slippery words hitting a brick wall and dropping down, summon and wait for it, wait for it my love, love, all you need is to put the shiny thing on the tripod, use an old-fashion remote release, the kind people used for group pictures before wireless started hissing in the boiling air above the viper pit of wires tangled in your hair, medusa reborn into an acid ocean, there’s a three second delay on the trigger, enough time for you to run around, stand in front of the muzzle, say cheese, wait for it
