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BlazeVOX [books]
presents
Cleaning the Mirror
by Joel Chace
Chace
(BlazeVOX , 2008)

 


A goofy tallish man once hurrying a pot of boiling corn overhead for the sink, dashing it with a burst of tap water and through the steam taking your miniature utensils out to our small candled table where on the wall I shadow monstrously. Return to find you seated on the floor against the low cupboards, corn cob in one hand, holding with your other hand your lavender eye pillow like a blindfold while we eat, both of us – why the hell not – legs splayed out across the linoleum, stick of butter in paper between us.

Your eyes still sleeping?

You readjust the pillow to cover your face.

This is how you'll know me, on visitations, living among a constellation of the town's apartments, barefoot, dishtowel slung over my shoulder, cooking at an efficiency under a bare kitchen bulb. I am not a violent man – your hand and giant cob scoot the papered butter towards me.

You know, I say, all the stars are having kids too.

You can't see me.

Oh? You in the other room?

And you tilt your head back to see from under your pillow, down past your feet to the doorway where the legs of a chair are eyelevel in the jittering light.

Am I?

 

 

 

Monstrous

 

chaz reetz-laiolo