The Pinch
I said out loud for the first time ever, I want to deface a car. I
wanted other things too, as it happened — the things I wanted were
so specific.
You see I was looking at the bodies all day. The unrolling skins of
the politicians. Due to recent developments I could see every pore,
and a moistness at the corner of the eyes.
I thought I would like to make that moistness.
The speaker of the house came on, I thought I want to forcibly
remove every piece of beard from your body.
The counselor to the president came on, I thought I am going to
unbend you like a Barbie knee, until you make that creak.
These were new thoughts. Before, it had always been myself that I
imagined: slashed to ribbons, pressed to the griddle, spinning on
the tip of a sword. Peeled like a grape for a haunted house.
But now the feeling had been let out. A pure pinch between two
fingers, and shocking how soft it was.
A brazen desire to deflate the turtle, to surprise him to the point of
squealing, to pop the lenses out so he couldn’t find his way to
school.
To rip the suit off stitch by stitch and burn it in one of those cans
that homeless people and gang members are always warming their
hands over. In the movies.
Where do you buy baseball bats, I asked.
Is there a store that sells only the red spray paint.
The secretary of education came on, I saw her clinging to an
oversized novelty pencil as she went over Niagara Falls. I had
somehow engineered this, through my cleverness.
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