Four Texts

JAMIE IREDELL

bunnies

jackrabbits' eyes spotlit red innards spilt on sage red as mars the planet not the god though red as red giant stars jackrabbits supernovaed by the billions billions of inhabitable planets billions of rednecks my jackrabbits my stars my desert sage my nebulous supernova aftermath burning the nose of my pistol my jackrabbit coat-grey the surface of this rock this inhabitable planet my moon

A Story that is Not an Enumeration of Things I Hate about Classic Rock

1. (Likely) anything by The Eagles.
2. The Warlocks.
3. What became the Grateful Dead.
4. Mozarella.
5. Spinning.
6. Anything by Bad Company.
7. Mystic River.
8. The artist formerly known as my insufferable ass.
9. I can't imagine no direction home.
10. I am not, nor will I ever be, blue.
11. America.
12. About Alice in Wonderland.
13. Remaining empty.
14. Not so gang-oriented.
15. Twice, my tortured georgics.
16. Georgics.
17. Not Don Henley.
18. How many times Chicago?
19. I tweezed the life out of pot.
20. Sometimes this life stifles my life.
21. I want you to tweeze my balls.
22. Goldfinger.
23. The American Original.
24. Emerson's "The Poet."
25. Jimi Hendrix's hairy penis.
26. Making out at the Slough.
27. Smoking the pot I tweezed.
28. In bars.
29. Playing pool.
30. Clapton is not the world's greatest guitarist.
31. Something about a man with no name.
32. I once discarded the idea of a stolen-from-me-
by-my-college-roommate Jimi Hendrix Live @ Winterland + 3.
33. Another unlucky one.
34. Bo Jackson.
35. If you've come this far . . .
36. I have disintegrated.
37. The scarlet sunset.
38. Those who know so little about Boston.
39. Take me for a Californian.
40. Unlucky.
41. That's James Taylor.
42. Empty, you cigarettes.

Dover

At Zmudowski State Beach the waves crested up and we paddled them in. The football shuttled from fingertips. Driving away, Ben's foot was heavy as a locomotive—which was how we steamed through the artichoke fields, weaving around corners, disregarding the softness of our flesh jiggling in the truck cab. When we launched from the burm into the green thistles, and jostled and blinked, we'd landed safely, the engine still ticking. We floored out of the crop, mud spitting out behind us. That night it rained. We guzzled Zimas at a condo in Salinas. Leaving, in the same pickup, Ben again gave it too much gas. His father actually raced at the track in Watsonville, and Ben sold auto parts at Pettigrew and Folletta after school. We 360ed, came out facing the way we'd started. We made it home. Ben had a moustache when he was fourteen. We called him "Dover" and also "Chewy," for all the hair. In his Xmas card he's smiling, bald, with his wife and four daughters, three of whom are triplets.

a story

stupid students
stupid deciduous leaves
stupid girlfriend
stupid atoms
stupid birth
stupid airfare
stupid god
stupid tectonic slippings
stupid dream
stupid south
stupid pbr
stupid childhood
stupid santa claus
stupid girlfriend
stupid american
stupid caring for atoms
stupid my heart a decaying leaf
stupid adolesence
stupid killing orbital axis
stupid girlfriend
stupid essays to grade
stupid airliner
stupid trip without acid
stupid god, give me lightning
stupid life
stupid death