Four

by Tom Piccirilli 

The Toll of Your Personal Evil Troll

Maybe it was true what they taught us back then
about the sandbars of sins, the snapping forest traps
of potential failure and fear—perhaps they were
in our backyards all along, like the legends laid out
against the cool stone and brick, the nearby scent
of fresh-cut grass swaying us from the shadows
of apple trees, with
our scabbed knees and swollen hearts.
That was the trick.
The sunlight boiled and poured over our tanned backs—
maybe it was true we were destined to stock our lives
one against the other, comparing trunk space
and our children’s faces, tax shelters and plumbers’ bills,
the size of our porch swings and car dings
and manly things. I was once a bridge troll who sat in hairy wait
for the marketplace sellers and farmers and troubadours,
all shouldering their pushcarts,
and the drunken city guard who danced with their daggers.
I bore your burden. I demanded my price and I was paid,
or my claws would catch their scornful sneers
and I’d take their ears.
I kept their contempt in a vase, and their overbearing eyes
and sweetie-pie gazes in a wine barrel. And when
they brandished their golden chests and teeth,
I plucked each upon each within
their easy reach, and although I was the ugliest,
I was the best, and I never needed rest.
Show me the photos of your babies once more, delight
in your tiled kitchen, the in-ground heated pool, expound
upon the quiet of the filter, the thrill of the hot tub—glance
sidelong, with pity, at me one last time. My price
has increased. Bring me your carefree chatter and looks
of derision, tell me of each and every precious vaunted
well-planned decision, the power of your flesh,
the grandeur of your credit report,
the precision of your manicurist, each light of your life.
For they’ve built a bridge beneath every mall, on every corner,
on the way home from every school,
right beside your bed and next to your sleeping head
and I’m waiting beneath them all.

Debt

You don’t know how deep it is until they storm the front door
with their pink notes and certified letters, asking for what
you can give and then asking for more, coming at you once
and then twice, at seven a.m., on Sundays, as evening falls
and they wait crouched with bloated grins, near your shins,
next to the couch, with their summonses and pretenses.
Guy acts like he’s an old friend, puts his hand out
to shake. I reach forward and he slaps me with a notice.
What this time, a restraining order, a subpoena,
a warm-hearted call to court,
a few bad raps, a couple of bad days in a row.
What is owed can never be paid—not you to me
or me to you, not in one lifetime or two or ten,
it can never be fully laid to rest. My great-grandfather’s bills
still fill the mailbox, his arrears pile past my waist, my ears,
and have for years. You keep your balance and I’ll try to keep
mine. Nine grand in credit cards, that just shows I play hard,
I play so I can keep my teeth from becoming splinters, my
knuckles from turning to shards.
I play so I can make it through the day. So I make it through
the entire night
without walking the streets, the back roads leading up
to the fenced homes, while I snarl standing in your yards
and dream myself into your boats and cars and beds. My spine
is jealous stone, my skull magnesium desire,
chest nothing more than razor-stuffed straw and missed chances
and bone. I can clear our accounts in one night,
in the hours between midnight and dawn, as you snore inside
of four feet of mattress, the door to the walk-in closet
drifting open, revealing eight hundred dresses. The cats
are asleep. The children are asleep. The hounds are asleep, but
the heart is awake. I’m a shadow backlit with moon, I fall
across your thighs, your neck—there is molten silver in my throat,
steel in my eye, steel in my hand, it’s just a peck,
and you give and give and give and give until it hurts
and I’ve had all that I can take.

Choke and Throttle

We are the whispering forces set loose in hometown dark,
of closing clubs, the last-call bars, side by side
down the narrow musk-laden halls
leading out to rain-soaked parking lot hells,
where they, like us, pause behind their steering wheels
staring out at Route 231, listening to church bell peals,
cops doing a slow ride-by, easing past like oil. We will wait,
we’ll hold court and services and our seances here
while the engine thrums. The fan of the heater hums
and the radio is stuffed with static and call-in love shows—
there are voices you recognize, shades wave from
the other side of the final highway, and they know
where the substance of reverie goes.
You’re not that far off from your first love,
you’ve never moved on and she’s gone and come around
again, and again, and more. You tasted your first bitter beer
off her lips.
There was a time when this was no greater than you could dream,
when the world was no larger than a tank of gas—
she ushered you in through the back door, tippie-toes, silent,
just for a moment, the heat of her cheek in autumn,
the smell of soap on her hands. That was almost enough
for you, once. Dead leaves and dead men drift
along the curbs, stuck in sewer grates, the ice-cream trucks
speed by neck-in-neck with ambulances—there is dying,
and then there’s merely waiting the wait.
The glove box contains your 4am life: a foam can holder,
pack of condoms, lint-covered mints, nickel bag,
poorly folded maps of poorly folded places, you recognize
every street sign, every nest, all the car bodies up on blocks,
and the rest, the suburban loss of charm like an amputated
thumb or leg or arm—we have circled
and circled and run screaming
in circles, there’s no need to look in the mirror—we all have
the same face. We were all lined up together on fire,
shoulder to shoulder, bright eyes even brighter,
burning, phosphorous, at the beginning of the race
before the many wrecks.
The parking lot is slowly emptying, everyone’s
finally leaving this place, and soon it’ll be your turn to go.
We take turns, you know, passing around the luck.
There are things unsaid that will never be said, until we lose
ourselves and live (you thought I’d say "until we are dead").
The gears have slipped, our tongues have slipped—it happens
like that when we’re caught in the grip of October cruelty,
and your choke is let out, the throttling won’t take long
with such a thin neck.
In this dark what matters most
are these staggering concerns
of the heart, but we cannot get ourselves out of park,
and the car won’t start.

Jones Beach, Thirty Years After the Last Sand Castle

The laughter is hysteria-laced but human, long gone
yet still echoing, sweeping up the beach alongside
the tide, thick with sunlight and seagulls, orange sherbet
in wafer cones, comic books—my father brought me here
before he died and afterwards. We’ve visited together
many times since—he was gone by the year
I was seven, but he came back at ten,
often in winter when it was too cold to swim
and he’d bring his summer grin and lead me in
where the dunes rose, near the goldfish ponds where
the old men dozed, the showers which swept sand and salt
swirling into the drains of lost time. My brother once buried me,
my mother buried my father,
my brother and I buried our mother—somehow, I’m told, this
is the way of surf and storms, the way of worms,
natural, acceptable, eventually affirmed. The others
grow gray, I’ve gotten some gray, and we wait for the day
to stalk back to the beach when we shall remember
who we are, and why we’re here, and how, and when
but I’ve never forgotten,
and for that I can only blame
my blood and my pen.
The shells are dust,
the kitten bones in the back yard
are earth again, my father’s tombstone now bears
my mother’s name as well. You never stop learning
about yourself—for example: At the funeral
four months ago, the priest with his distinguished voice
questioned us at length, my brother
taking the cue in his new black shoes, answered—
see, I couldn’t talk yet, I had nothing to say—
and he said our father, with his black features
and Mediterranean blood pressure, his weakness
for cancer, was from Sicily and not Naples,
which is what I’d always believed
and now understood to be untrue—
I didn’t know my father and did not know myself—
there are realizations still being made every day,
each night,
and some will redefine or confine
or undermine.
My outline changes with different angles
and lighting,
but my shadow remains mine.

Tom Piccirilli's short fiction has appeared in everything from small press magazines to major anthologies to chapbook collections. His novels, including Dark Father, Shards, The Dead Past, Sorrow's Crown, and the gripping occult groundwork Hexes, have been critically well-received and have garnered him an ever-widening fan base.