Li'l Bastard. David McGimpsey

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СКАЧАТЬ Person Round the Panty.’

      I’m saying I like the idea of sitting down

      without really needing to get up again.

      I’m saying I had no idea what flirt.com was —

      Nina, I was in my professor clothes!

      My grey sweater and blue shirt combo

      will soon be featured in the slick pages

      of Grey Sweater and Blue Shirt Combo

      Magazine. Name, as always, misspelled.

      5. Speaking of stealing cars and running them off into the quarry to collect the insurance money, I ran into your father. Your real father.

      It’s so embarrassing, the cutesy pet names

      adult lovers adopt. I called her ‘pookie’ and ‘snook’

      and she called me ‘horseface’ and ‘the human wallet.’

      Oh, snook, we bought so much lawn furniture!

      Then, making my plans to move down south,

      I stopped stooping from the weight of that shame.

      I sold my hockey cards. Even Bobby Orr.

      I sold my woodcarvings. Even Bobby Orr.

      Yes, money poured in like gravy at the wrap

      party for The Biggest Loser. I thought

      a red truck and a beagle named Steve

      were all any sensible Texan would need.

      I asked her, ‘Am I being vain or stupid?’

      ‘Sweetie, it’s like when you asked if I found you

      ugly on the outside or on the inside —

      it really isn’t an either/or situation.’

      6. My Canadian Novel.

      The Newfoundland orphange playground.

      Then asleep in the stiff nunnery’s bed.

      The train was stalled at Portage and Main.

      ‘Just around then my marriage fell apart.’

      The pea garden was not just her hobby,

      but a metaphor for memory and loss:

      when the river ice breaks up in April,

      I discover my father kept a mistress.

      A journal the other woman’s daughter found

      in a cedar chest full of baby clothes

      was the story of a woman’s courage

      and how a war wound kept a man alive.

      In the Stamford, Ontario, archives,

      a historical oddity is unearthed

      and chased into Mediterranean hills —

      where they’ve never endured a real winter.

      7. Bury me beneath the willow but throw out my DVD collection — it’s useless.

      I tell my students Gertrude Stein did not

      just wake up knowing how to punch a zebra.

      You have to be dedicated to the craft.

      First, you have to know how to punch a horse.

      Likewise, I wanted to move to Texas,

      and installing a ranch-dressing pump

      in my kitchen was my inauspicious start.

      Another shift of classes and I’m gone.

      When I announced my intention to leave,

      my friends very caringly inquired into

      how to go about applying for my job.

      I just said, ‘You should ask Jason.’

      ‘Jason from the English Department?’

      ‘No, Jason Seaver, the dad from Growing Pains —

      he’s actually a real person, you know.

      He’s advising me to be a better friend to Boner … ’

      8. Even with the kleptomania, I was the perfect boyfriend.

      When I put on my silk suit and pince-nez,

      I hap to think upon the treading verse

      of McCawmber Hextall. ‘Hush, pale stone,

      there’ll be no more magnets for you!’

      Oh, I enjoyed the poster stand in Sears,

      so much so I spent a Christmas Eve

      in the juvie docket the same day I smacked

      Manny Destrine just for being Manny.

      I would have stolen a bedroom poster

      of Carolyn Forché if I’d seen the jacket

      photo from The Country Between Us —

      I settled for Kathy Ireland all the same.

      In the can, I wrote my very worst poem.

      The poem went, ‘I know where you live, pig,’

      and basically just repeated that line.

      Hush, pale stone, I live in the hip Plateau.

      9. Orville Redenbacher’s mistress rejects the label ‘porn star.’

      ‘Who’re you calling a literary hipster?’

      he huffed, putting down his pint of Steam Whistle.

      I apologized, of course, and promised

      to read his second book, Suck It, Dick Cheney.

      The next day I was back at the office.

      The whole floor had been freshly painted —

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