Jen Hirt, "Girlfriend"
Carrie McGath, "Murder Girl"
Matt Zambito, "Uh, New Jersey?"
visits Halloween hair trip trip trippy hair, spike kink of purple green blond and
you’d never guess she’s Midwest Brunette – oh notice style the Hello Kitty
dress cherry dahlia over royal gold leggings little San Fran punker of some sort
she knows the story of Sid and Nancy inside out has her own theories but prefers
Blondie Fuzzbox Boy George reads Bitch--quotes songs with the reverence
of Psalms.
Would like me to know “I wasn’t in this town five fucking minutes before a frat
boy told me to get the fuck back to the circus.”
I am tranced by her trip trip trippy tresses--I’m a virgin in the whorehouse of hair
and she is the madam--me at her feet as she knits a yellow sun shawl smokes
American Spirits sips vodka juice n ice between spoonfuls of cereal--I ask her
how did you get your hair like that? Her spiky pigtails are the cosmos inside out,
soul of mutant daffodils, simple kaleidoscope, swirling water wake of the Ark and
the huff of the unicorn refusing Noah to frolic in the flood – her style is the but-
terfly who can swim the twitch of fish the first light a pine needle knows.
I am not kidding.
She tells me how first bleach (three packets) stripped color completely but it was
too much--she chuckles turns sad admits to scabs on her scalp--burned really
fucking bad--her friend helped with the million tiny braids twisted around rubber
bands which she emphasizes hurt like a motherfucker--she spews fuck like milk,
what vast reserves for new uses doled out on par with breathing--and dye painted
on in trio purple green blond like Easter crayon comics, like fifth place sixth place
seventh place smile.
She is a contest I can never win.
Part of the game she says is that when you do this huge clumps of your hair will
fall out but see (she says) see it was like tie-dying my hair--sure the scabs turned
purple but pick them off--and now she justifies (still knitting, clicks long sleek
needles) it’s alright because I wanted to look like a star in a raucous japanimation
porno you know, those hot big-eyed chicks with messy pigtails who just got laid.
Pauses knitting and says--did I tell you I only cut my hair with--and from her
Hello Kitty dress pocket she pulls a baggie of--razors yeah straight razors the
thin metal for the better cut. Grins and jingles them to carpet dirty old carpet
where they glint lodestone glints edges unguarded aimed to many norths one of
which is this
aurora borealis girl a pretty sun.
In the first moments pregnant with the shock
of something gone so wrong in the manicured,
pedicured street of a Midwestern suburb,
we were all focused on this girl, maybe 17,
lying on the pavement, mutilated,
likely raped, her hot pink panties just
above her knees, her white miniskirt rolled up,
but not enough to reveal this horrific vision as a girl.
We would need to rely on other things to determine gender:
small breasts surrounded by a torn black lace bra
-- underwire for lift and confidence.
All of this blossomed girlhood exposed
beneath a ripped white t-shirt.
Here is a tattoo near her navel,
a postal stand with a calla lily inked into its center.
I can imagine her bitching about the pain
of the needle to her closest girlfriend.
I can imagine her hiding it from her mother.
Her body looks more and more like a mangled sheet
beneath a painter’s feet, red specks everywhere,
some darker than others. Blood type. DNA.
A lot of blood, but not the volume of blood
her mangled body would seem to have lost.
There must have been more.
Perhaps some has evaporated into the pores of memory,
the memories we never want to possess ourselves,
the memories that compel us to be what we really are not.
We form a circle around her
as the air around us feels like rain approaching.
Our bodies in working order above her do not help.
She lies there as our darkest dream.
Her legs from the knees down shoved inside the street sewer,
left to hang there, the sewer rats likely nibbling
on what I suspect to be hot pink polished toenails.
Her clogs, discarded near each of her ears,
her fishnet stockings ripped and left at her waist,
pieces here and there about her thighs and knees.
Has anyone called the police? asks a voice.
Yes, answers a woman decked-out in Adidas
as she rolls her baby’s stroller back and forth
to stop the cooing that seems both right and inappropriate.
Two men approach and add themselves to the circle,
both in black suits with red neckties.
They cross their hearts lazily with gold-ringed fingers: Holy moly.
Another man comes down from his telephone pole.
Do you think she was a hooker?
All of us want to touch her,
it would be a frightening closeness,
a closeness to something that has to be held at a distance.
Our reason catches our hands reaching out for her,
our reason tells us: Never touch a crime scene.
One of the “holy moly” men lights a cigarette, the mother in Adidas pleading:
Hey, can I have one of those?
We are standing over this murdered girl, two now smoking,
this girl, looking more and more like a fashion shoot
I saw in Soma magazine,
a magazine I bought under a sign: Women’s Interest.
A layout, “Murder Girl Fashion.”
The police come, the detectives, and our bodies disperse.
I turn and walk away as soon as her unnibbled red toenails
are revealed to us and to the storm’s coming air that never stops
surrounding us.
Matt Zambito
“Uh, New Jersey?”
—actress Tori Spelling after being asked,
“What’s the capital of New York?”
Albany, I’ll bet you’re still reeling a bit.
Even America’s upper-crust morons (a third
of whom happen to know someone named
“Tori”) should know who you are and are not,
and Jersey’s just eight million people wishing they lived
in New York City. Albany, you look like you
could use some cheap therapy. Go down
to the Red Room on your own South Ebb Street,
pull up a stool, order a bottle of Genesee Cream Ale
for a dollar. Start some small talk with the bartender, Mark.
Lay down the two buck tip of your problem, and he’ll pick it up
because he’s nearly as proud of living in you
as he is of his kids making a SUNY dean’s list.
Without being told, he’ll change the tube from 90210
reruns to NYPD Blue, and if asked, he’ll tell anyone
your name holds the King and Queen cities to the world,
and jays renovating nests in the Adirondacks. To him,
you represent that hand of water made out of
phalanges shaped like lakes, and Niagara,
which washes out the ring around the blue collar
of the state. Your name means cabbage farmers stinking up
entire towns in the name of sauerkraut, and mothers-
to-be who know, for their kids’ sakes, to stay
in your state during their ninth month of pregnancy.
He knows Empire problems, surrounded by all that,
will surrender like bank robbers. If you drink too much
and throw up in the john, he’ll clean up after you,
he’ll lift you to your feet. So ask him about you and sober up
in the rain of his brainstorm. I’ll bet my New York plates
everything he says will mean Excelsior.