the fabulist
by Joshua Kleinberg


The only thing I know for certain
is that if you watch a person silently
eat a whole meal, you will fall
in love with that person.

Andy Warhol + Burger King.
Google that shit,
but it's a girl I'm talking about
in a hip new grilled cheese joint
in Columbus, Ohio.
Where my friend takes me
and screams over Akon
about the New Criticism.

Google Warhol though
and his burger,
and find someone new
to have ruined everything.

As babies, our bones,
like self-knowing tendrils
slide into each other and fuse.
Or is it the other way?
Is it fewer or more?
How many bones
do you think you have now?

Mandi says spheres circle spheres,
and the earth is one,
and atoms are some,
and I didn't quite follow,
but somehow this means
that God is a drunk and we
are his liver.

I have drunk from cupped hands
at the river of sweat.
It was me Hashem marked
with the splotch of the lazed.
I have slobbed
on the unhusked knob of The Truth.
And lied.
And told everyone
of polishing off the black last of its bloom,
how sorrowfully
I pancaked my sorrowful face in its oil,
that Truth chained me and heated my feet.
That I was made to call it Mammy.

What I mean is have you seen my frog?
Has anybody seen my gal?
Heaven is probably a place
where you just do the shit
you were doing in Florida
when you were six, and your mother
said, "if you're bored then you're dumb,"
and your stepdad was trying,
but he really didn't have a clue,
and he made you kneel on rice as a punishment
because he was second-gen Cuban
and discipline was a big thing for him,
though you could always tell
that he struggled with it personally
(he once asked you for help
deleting porn from his history
before your mother got home;
he insisted it must've been a virus).
And you're not sure that you've known
anyone dumber, and she doesn't
let him see the daughter he made
and you think your mom's okay,
and you can't imagine dude crying,
but you think his eyes are probably
pretty distant a lot.

Your brother hates him for hitting,
but it didn't really bother you,
you played football, and had learned
from the coach's tee-shirts
that pain was just weakness
leaving the body.

He once tickled you so hard, for so long
in the bed with your mom
(when she was still, I don't know,
auditioning him?)
and it felt like a fun thing,
a nice family thing,
and then you sharted.
I don't know, you were seven?

And you wrote in your diary
that you hated him,
and loved that girl from Lost in Space
and Men in Black was your favorite movie,
and The WB was the best TV channel.

The one thing I made out
when Truth opened her books
is that she's a she, and she never finishes,
and her daughter tells you in confidence,
"I wish she'd just let me add him on Facebook."

Truth, if you're there,
this song is for you.
I have sutured a coronet
into my hands, in case
we are ever alone.

I will bring you a case
of the good stuff tonight
if you'll text me and say
that you need me.
I'm only open to sick shit
if you'll really let me win you.

I like to make small bets with myself
about whether I'm blacked out or not.
I hope that tonight I am not,
or I guess I just wrote this whole poem.

Maybe it covers the things that I'll need.