On the Way to the 53-B District Court of Livingston County, October 1, 1999
____________________________________

lIt begins while eating something extremely
erotic, like a cake with a picture of two
people making out on it. It begins on a Friday
night, driving to Lansing with Anne. It begins
before that, with the line, He was interested
in this turn of events. It begins with
$148.77 worth of phone calls
to Ypsilanti. It begins at the possibility
of sailing the ocean blue, with all its oceany
blueness. It begins when you never go sailing
off the coast of North Carolina,
when your father leaves a package on an empty
boat in Norfolk, Virginia. It begins
when your best friend sends you a letter
about walking to Bigfoot to buy NyQuil
for his asshole friend Nick, about
meeting a woman there who lives across
the street, a woman who wants to read Tarot
for him. It begins when she draws the death card.
Typically, you hate your name, but for some
reason, right at that moment, when he's written,
At least I'd have a funny story for Jason,
your name seems beautiful to you. It begins with
the two of you in Taco Bell on a Tuesday
night. No, it begins in a Chinese
take-out place that same night.
Or maybe it begins on the corner of Third
and Woodlawn, where you're standing alone,
a breeze blowing your hair to the right, the traffic
rushing leftward, where Richard has envisioned
his own death. It begins with a message
on someone's machine at three am,
a message saying, That's it, in the past
hour I've found myself naked in someone
else's bed and had my driver's license
confiscated. It begins when that message is lost.
It begins as you stand alone and confused
in the setting sun at a pay phone in Cougar,
Washington. It begins with a story about holidays,
a story that really isn't about holidays
but instead how it feels to want so badly
to love your family and not be able to, to want
to live a normal life but to know it's impossible.
It begins when you read this story, or really,
afterwards, as you're sitting by yourself
in Tubby's next to the Dog Wall of Fame,
watching everyone with somewhere to be go by.
It begins on a Monday night as you're waiting
for her to call. It begins when she doesn't,
or rather, the following day when you're writing
something about Tubby's and your neighbor's just
rowed out on the lake and the sky's turned
pinkish and cold and she calls, and to hear
her voice today of all days
and to talk about gymnastics which you may
or may not like and the person she's loved
ever since she left you for him,
about you having your license confiscated,
to do these things, you feel, means something-
like being handed pamphlets about Jesus.
No, no. Scratch all that. It begins
when a gray cat walks into your house and falls
asleep on a green jacket. It begins as you're falling
asleep on the coast of Maine, the lights of Portland
eight miles away in the distance. It begins
on Mount St. Helen's when Kirk pees
into the lava dome. It begins later that evening
as you're taking the red eye from Seattle to Detroit
and you're so thirsty not even all
the Pepsi in the world will keep you from drinking
the lavatory bathwater. Wait, no,
it begins the last time you're holding the woman
you love outside her door in central Mexico,
August 2, 1997. It begins
earlier than that, in a hotel room in Pátzcuaro
on the Fourth of July, in bed with her, never
wanting to fall asleep, never wanting
that moment to end. And back home
someone you don't know yet is falling
in love with his Shakespeare professor and a year
later you'll be watching your second cousins
shoot off bottle rockets in Plainfield,
Indiana, during the longest fireworks
display you'll ever see. Your grandmother's there.
And now you wonder if you'll ever see her
again. It's been since April, and you called her once,
but it's not the same as it used to be, it's not
like playing bingo in her living room,
the only game she ever had, feeling
someone's unconditional love, one
that today you fear you may never feel again.
And the rest of the time you're just trying to find that,
and knowing that it may never happen again
is unbearable. It begins with an old photo,
the colors pale, worn out. It's cold outside.
You're wearing a red and blue coat, a hat.
Somebody had to take that picture, somebody
had to. It begins with a letter from your best friend
and the death card. It begins with a woman saying
someone you have just come to know or will come
to know very well soon will be a mess
on the inside and will keep you from what
you're supposed to do. It begins with a phone call
to Anne, a long distance call to Ypsilanti.
It begins when you don't feel like you can take it
anymore, in someone's living room
where you're forced to name your favorite state
in the union, a room that seems to be lit
by candles but which isn't. It begins when
somebody cuts you in the buffet line at a local
restaurant. This tastes like homemade strawberry
pie, are you sure it isn't? It begins with someone
telling you to take care of your face, a phone
being ripped from a wall, a shotgun
fired indoors on a Thursday morning, the memory
of a Nova Scotia sunset last winter.
It begins one morning when you receive
a phone call and no one speaks on the other
end. It begins when you hang up
and glance out the window toward the lake. It begins
when you see over a dozen swans swimming
toward you, and it never ends.

 

From Standing in Line for the Beast by Jason Bredle, 2007

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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