3 TEXTS
Jason Bredle
THE SEX PARTY
I'm at a party and a fight breaks out
between the Sharks and the Jets. What to do!
I grab the first item of defense I can find: a bouquet of roses.
Freak, and tonight I was to propose marriage to my girlfriend!
A Shark disembowels a Jet
a mere four feet away from the shrimp cocktail
which is a mere two feet away from me!
Should I jump out the window?
I really don't want to be disemboweled like Jeremy.
Boy, is this ever one of those times I wish I’d been friends
with that guy in high school
who had a chainsaw head
because he could really get me out of this jam!
But he died, falling asleep
on the couch while eating Rice Krispies,
accidentally disemboweling himself.
Oh man, it's Sunday, and not only am I witnessing
this truly exceptional knife fight
between two rival gangs
but I also forgot to call my dad
and he's still mad about how I ignored his demonstration
of the neat seat because I thought I looked like Rafael Nadal.
O, the tornado of this life,
the fighting, the bleeding, the love, the hate,
the disemboweling. I like trampolines
but I don't like tramps or lines or the letter o.
The Sharks and the Jets are cats and I'm painfully allergic.
No one warned me of cats at this party,
particularly cats in gangs
who are disemboweling Jeremy and now Christine!
Should I subscribe to Tricycle Magazine?
Rivers Cuomo is in the new issue,
but I don't know if I can handle any more subscriptions.
They pile up endlessly by the door, by the blender,
by the toilet, by the radiator, by the little table where we keep
all the menus,
and every night when I park my car
I imagine someone will emerge from the shadows to quietly
slit my throat.
ELEGY FOR ARCHITECTURE
I was headed home after a day of really good sunbathing, and,
I don’t know, it was weird, because I took an alternate route,
to break out of my cocoon or whatever,
and I ended up on the outskirts of town,
like, near the river,
down by that haunted mansion,
and I don’t know what came over me, but I was just like,
screw it, I’m going into that haunted mansion,
and you know what?,
I bet I end up finding a real nice old lady in there
with a lot of cats who just happens to be misunderstood
but who bakes extraordinary chocolate pies,
and in fact the old haunted mansion isn’t haunted at all,
and I was thinking about this while peeking though the windows
to see if anybody was in there,
and I didn’t see anybody,
and it turned out the back door was unlocked,
so I went in, and it was weird in there,
but then it got really weird
because I made my way upstairs
and I heard the back door slam shut, so I was like, holy fuck,
and then every time I took a step
in any direction the floor was just creaking like crazy,
so I stood still for a while, and I didn’t hear anything,
but then I was afraid the sun would set
and I’d be alone in the dark in there,
which I didn’t want, and I was thinking
man, where’s this real nice old lady
with the awesome pies right now? I’d really like to see her,
but she didn’t ever show up,
and I decided that rather than continue exploring the upstairs
I’d just get the freak out of there
because I started thinking,
what if there’s a corpse on some antique canopy bed
in one of these bedrooms and I walk in and the corpse just sits up,
and it’s like the corpse of the real nice pie lady?,
because I just don’t think I’m emotionally strong enough
to handle that kind of scare,
so I turned around and just freaking sprinted out of that house
like you wouldn’t believe
and sprinted all the way home,
and Raul was there, at home, and I was like
well, I thought there might be a nice lady with cats and pies
in the haunted mansion, so I just went in there,
but there wasn’t a lady like that in there,
and I got scared and the sun was setting, so I took off,
and then I wanted to stay fit, so I just ran all the way home,
and he said that one time Brian went in there
and fell through a trap door,
which is crazy, but even crazier is that apparently that house
used to be part of the underground railroad
and he actually fell into a secret room and saw the ghost
of a black man.
KITCHEN STADIUM AT TWILIGHT
Man, that dude looks exactly like Scott. I mean,
freakishly tall, yet also short with crazy non-crazy hair
falling all over his shoulders which aren’t shoulders
but instead butterflies.
It turns out the three of us—
me, Scott, the guy who looks like Scott
who’s also named Scott
which is just kind of a bizarre coincidence—
all attended the same college
and were all in the Squirrel and Chipmunk Watching Club
together although none of us remembers the other
and at the time Scott and Scott’s resemblance to one another
was, essentially, non-existent, and I most resembled
a chipmunk named Raul.
He was so persnickety, that chipmunk,
but I loved him all the same.
He munched me a tremendous model
of old New Amsterdam one Christmas
for which I’ll be forever grateful.
You should have seen the detail! It was Oscar season
and he was all pumped up
for Gangs of New York. God do I miss Raul.
I remember one night when I was upset about my life,
my failures and so forth,
he called me and told me how special I was
without even knowing.
He just did things like that. It was summer
and I couldn’t find a job and was painfully alone,
which meant I spent a lot of time in the kitchen
remembering the kitchens of everyone I’d ever loved.
I was subletting Genevieve’s apartment, who was so nice
and had a hook hand.
Why would I tell you such things?
When I was really upset, I’d crawl inside the refrigerator and cry.
How I wanted to leave this world, to become a waffle iron,
to give a sleepy hungry person the love
to begin each day unlike me.
oddily constructed. It had a family in it.
Jason Bredle BIO.