sat until his head grew so heavy he couldn’t hold it up.
Inside his head it was all one color. His heartbeat skittered in his throat. He did not dream.
He woke to a sour mouth some time later with someone standing over him by the bed. At first he assumed it was the child having come to smother, rub him out.
Okay, he thought. Let’s go.
As his eyes grew accustomed back to the room’s light, he saw the grim, loosed lines of his wife’s face. She looked many years older now already. She coughed up gravel on the mattress.
“Do you remember the first time you fucked me?” she said. “How sweet your kiss was? We bought a room in an old hotel. There were flowers in my hair. I’d never met a man like you. I thought you’d take me places. Light my insides. Do you remember the way you spurted? I’d only known you ten days. You called me another name. How wise your eyes were, rolled back in your head. I had my mind on television.”
She moved toward him, her body hulking. She put a leg up on the bed. He could feel the chill in her forearms, the hair there already grown out long and matted.
“Let’s make this baby,” she said, begging. “A new life. Please, my dearest. Squirt me up.”
He pushed her off. He got up and moved out of the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. He waited for her to pound or push but there was nothing. There was no tick, no garbled gobbling. The house was still.
The father opened the door and saw just a room. A room he’d lived and slept in for many years.
Through the window, instead of dirt now, the sky was pouring roach. The critters hit the earth and wriggled upright, already a foot high off the soil. Other bugs erupted from a new budding crevice—leeches, gnats, mosquitoes, wasps. He could hear the collective hum of wings and cilia vibrating in the air.
The dogs were at the front door. They smashed themselves against the frame, howling, hungry, chewing each other. They’ll be inside soon, the father thought. His stomach gurgled. His brain began to click. There were things that he might have known once. Places he had been. Days and numbers, thoughts, corruptions, wishing, exits, lists, and vows. Everything seemed to wriggle in his shoulders. He spoke a thing he knew aloud—it came out wrong.
Upstairs, he found the child again. It had swollen through the attic. Its body pressed against the roof, warping the beams. Its huge bright red pupils spun for focus. The father recognized in the child’s face, even so bloated, certain of the mother’s features, and his own. This thing they’d made together.
The father wanted to kiss the ruined child’s dappled lips. He wanted to climb inside its size and live forever.
The child was saying something. Its voice had also grown enormous, even larger than the house. The child’s tenor seemed to scratch the room, to turn the very air to liquid dust. The child’s voice echoed in the father’s head—a self inside himself incanting with each the word the son then said. At first the words seemed, to the father, nothing, nonsense, a voice thrumming through his skin to rip it, though with all of these words coming out now, the father began to feel something soft inside him glisten. His body washed, an old tide rolling.
All these words, the father felt, were words he knew he wanted—these words were written in his flesh and on his flesh and all around it, in the dirt and water, on the air.
And now the massive baby lay before him, coocooing, while outside the earth began to writhe.
And now the father opened up his numbing mouth and gave his son a name.
MANURE
I will not speak of this day.
BATH or MUD or RECLAMATION or WAY IN / WAY OUT
When the final crudded current first burst somewhere off the new coast of Oklahoma, I was seventeen and cross-eyed. The storm spread in a curtain. It came and cracked the crust that’d formed over the fields, the junk that’d moored up in our harbors. It washed away most everything not tied
Inside his head it was all one color. His heartbeat skittered in his throat. He did not dream.
He woke to a sour mouth some time later with someone standing over him by the bed. At first he assumed it was the child having come to smother, rub him out.
Okay, he thought. Let’s go.
As his eyes grew accustomed back to the room’s light, he saw the grim, loosed lines of his wife’s face. She looked many years older now already. She coughed up gravel on the mattress.
“Do you remember the first time you fucked me?” she said. “How sweet your kiss was? We bought a room in an old hotel. There were flowers in my hair. I’d never met a man like you. I thought you’d take me places. Light my insides. Do you remember the way you spurted? I’d only known you ten days. You called me another name. How wise your eyes were, rolled back in your head. I had my mind on television.”
She moved toward him, her body hulking. She put a leg up on the bed. He could feel the chill in her forearms, the hair there already grown out long and matted.
“Let’s make this baby,” she said, begging. “A new life. Please, my dearest. Squirt me up.”
He pushed her off. He got up and moved out of the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. He waited for her to pound or push but there was nothing. There was no tick, no garbled gobbling. The house was still.
The father opened the door and saw just a room. A room he’d lived and slept in for many years.
Through the window, instead of dirt now, the sky was pouring roach. The critters hit the earth and wriggled upright, already a foot high off the soil. Other bugs erupted from a new budding crevice—leeches, gnats, mosquitoes, wasps. He could hear the collective hum of wings and cilia vibrating in the air.
The dogs were at the front door. They smashed themselves against the frame, howling, hungry, chewing each other. They’ll be inside soon, the father thought. His stomach gurgled. His brain began to click. There were things that he might have known once. Places he had been. Days and numbers, thoughts, corruptions, wishing, exits, lists, and vows. Everything seemed to wriggle in his shoulders. He spoke a thing he knew aloud—it came out wrong.
Upstairs, he found the child again. It had swollen through the attic. Its body pressed against the roof, warping the beams. Its huge bright red pupils spun for focus. The father recognized in the child’s face, even so bloated, certain of the mother’s features, and his own. This thing they’d made together.
The father wanted to kiss the ruined child’s dappled lips. He wanted to climb inside its size and live forever.
The child was saying something. Its voice had also grown enormous, even larger than the house. The child’s tenor seemed to scratch the room, to turn the very air to liquid dust. The child’s voice echoed in the father’s head—a self inside himself incanting with each the word the son then said. At first the words seemed, to the father, nothing, nonsense, a voice thrumming through his skin to rip it, though with all of these words coming out now, the father began to feel something soft inside him glisten. His body washed, an old tide rolling.
All these words, the father felt, were words he knew he wanted—these words were written in his flesh and on his flesh and all around it, in the dirt and water, on the air.
And now the massive baby lay before him, coocooing, while outside the earth began to writhe.
And now the father opened up his numbing mouth and gave his son a name.
MANURE
I will not speak of this day.
BATH or MUD or RECLAMATION or WAY IN / WAY OUT
When the final crudded current first burst somewhere off the new coast of Oklahoma, I was seventeen and cross-eyed. The storm spread in a curtain. It came and cracked the crust that’d formed over the fields, the junk that’d moored up in our harbors. It washed away most everything not tied
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