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"A REAL LIFE ASTRONAUT"

by *spandrel

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1.
An outing with Kenny free of the NBC. Somebody let him watch a Van Wilder DVD, and now he's ataxic. Kenny wasn't even 15, but with freckles wilder than the blood in his eyes, he climbed over from the passenger seat and put it in her. And she let him too.
2.
Botch 02:39
On Superbowl Sunday my friend’s little brother Botch came over and smashed all our Hot Wheels. He opened the carrying case like a treasure chest; he whipped them at the cinderblock walls in the basement and then chopped at the wreckage with my dad’s hammers. I wanted to put his wrist in the vise and leave it there, but he looked like a capybara and had ADHD so I joined him. We went outside and he told me that his dad was a terrorist who blew up construction sites. Botch shoved a stick of incense into a reed and lit the thing. He said, “Watch, it’s a hand grenade.” (All these dirt shoulders of disappearing grade, the deadly lines of pipe, the abandoned construction equipment...) Botch wanted to blow up our driveway but he hadn’t the right explosives. Instead he threw golf balls at the house. He smashed both windows in my room, and he smashed the window panes I had made into paintings and left propped against my bed. The pieces sprayed on my sea-foam carpet, I put my hands into them. I took masking tape and tried to put together a puzzle missing at least half its pieces.
3.
MAD HOUSE 03:41
Corey came back from the ranch. Toes gangrenous. Dark eyes. Dark eyes that never fluttered. His prom-date ASHLEY, an NT peer, had gone to college orange and came back oranger. He moved in with me and Uncle C. and the rest. Loose sheets on the furniture, sheets over the bodies. Uncle C. was useless these days, pensionless. All the fat women who told him what to do, all the fat women… sheets over the bodies. When he was a kid he played with pistons. He carried a switch-blade and made the clack-clack, turned his faces to the side and fanned a finger until it turned to wax. We strode the carpeted ramp down to the cafe, my fingers hooked into Corey's gait-belt, pulling him back as he chopped with high knees. Heaping shredded cheese from the salad bar onto a personal pizza, heaping ranch salad dressing onto that pizza. He ate it all with his fingers before we even sat down. We looked for a table and classic high school - even Scrotemanski had better things to do.
4.
Miata 02:45
dandy-walker, dead-in-the-water work in the ceiling outside of mother first-born-baby-boy not breathing retarded daughter, we named her Miata wearing sweatpants, standing askance her sexuality will be repulsive we gave up on our daughter Miata she lives in the Peace Center now
5.
I was ready to rub out my eyes. The cafeteria was a buzz of shoves getting in my face. James told them I used drugs, that I was a cheat, on the wrong side of no good. Jason was looking for me, ready to rebreak my jaw in about five extra places. The faces in front of me switching out like a slide carousel jerking. The winter light pushing bubbles into the window glass like glossy cataracts. I ducked around the pillars with peers pulling out pocket knives and ran upstairs. Into the wide ribcage of the old house, I went searching for skeletons in the myriad bedrooms. I thought about getting into one of the beds, stiff and desiccated, my body just another medical specimen, but kept pushing upward into attics of attics, searching for the top. But slanted roof yielded slanted roof, and the old cleric hooked me under the arm and spun me around. Ratcheting his body down, he exhaled with weight and misted saliva: "Have a blessed day and may your children sleepwalk forever in their brand new Ryan homes."
6.
T.V.I 04:38
“Hey there old lech, hey old lech. Hey!” He shuffles past the kids - they must be freshmen in high school. His face is greasy, he’s had hair above his lip since he was in second grade. One of the kids flicks a rubber band at him. It scissors through the air, sparking static constellations as it makes friction between molecules; it zaps his earlobe. Pretending not to feel the sting, he continues walking and brings his fingers up to his face, swishing them and watching the play of light across the wrinkled surface. First a parallelogram skims across the side of his knuckle, falls into a deep furrow, and comes back out a trapezoid. There is also a tremor. His fingers smell sharp of fecal matter and chives. Most of his cuticles have been removed, now jagged caves, the skin soggy and white. He’s an Eagle Scout, but if you came to his front door bleeding from the nose, he would surely turn you away. He’s concerned about the carpet – but not the vomit in the toilet, it looks like a birthday cake turned upside down.
7.
i could die in this war and it would be blank

credits

released December 31, 2018

all tracks by *spandrel.

Thank you JCD!

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*spandrel Columbus, Ohio

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