These Words! These Words!

My short story “Brick and Glass” is going to be published in a lit journal. The drought is temporarily over.

Hey All,

I’m off to China for a month and if you didn’t know, Tumblr is blocked completely everywhere but Hong Kong, so while I won’t be posting while I’m there, I will be journaling the whole time and will have some fun stuff for when I get back! I love all of you for supporting me and showing an interest in my writing and I can’t wait to get back!

Junk

Scattered.

Junk, inundated with it,
everywhere, every surface
forgotten under piles
of books, crumpled
receipts and wrappers,
bottles of water half empty,
newspapers with help
wanted ads circled in
thick black marker,
drained dry bottles
of beer, and even
memories.

My life cluttered most
when it was emptiest,
when junk replaced
thoughts, feelings,
and truth.

Time to get out
from under
the junk. 

Out from under. 

The Sweetness of Going

I thought of the road underfoot,
the way the small stones gave way
and led me farther along the path,
the way the branches of nearby trees
beckoned me on yet, away more,
the river that would accept me if only
I would take a deep breath,
lie on my back, and trust
that I would get where I would go.
We really all get where we’re going,
but hardly where we want. 

Escape

Heading for a disaster of the soul,
          crossing pavements and foreign sands
          with a head full of bad rememberings.
The traffic groans insistently at my window sill,
          as I toss and turn in the balmy
          end of land nights.
I have no taste for the endless intertwinings
          and complications of life,
          so I just want to go. 

“Brick and Glass” by Jordan Kit

          Me and Terry were thick as thieves since the day we met. He lived four houses down in a calm, tight knit New England neighborhood. The only fights we ever had were innocent boyhood huffs that meant sour afternoons but never meant anything really. This was a different matter altogether.
          When Terry called me, crying, he explained that someone had thrown a brick through the windshield of the white subcompact he had bought the previous summer with his own money. The word “fag” was emblazoned in defiant red spray paint across the hood. I asked if he knew who might be responsible. He didn’t know. I was madder than hell. I could see his face so clearly in my mind, tears streaming down puffy eyes, as he shouted, “I’m ruined, now everyone knows.”
          I’d known Terry all my life practically, so he might as well have told me the time of day when he came out to me. I wasn’t shocked, offended, or any of that. I was proud of him, but I’ve never been very good with big emotional moments, so I just said, “Hey man, you know that’s cool with me.”
          As we entered high school, we remained great friends, but fell into different sets. I took to sports and he took to the arts. Despite conflicting obligations and appointments, we still spent a lot of time together. He hung around my house and helped me with homework. He was a great writer, and edited probably every essay I ever wrote through junior year. I looked out for him at school, tried to keep him connected with goings ons, that sort of thing. We had this tacit brotherly relationship, and tried to offer each other what we could.
          The next day, there were police cars parked in both his drive way and in the road in front of his house. When they left, I went to see what the fuss was about. Terry was locked in his room. He wouldn’t even open the door for me. His pops led me to the den to talk.
          “Listen son, I know you’ve known Terry, and you know about him. We’ve known for a while, and it’s always sat fine with us.”
          “Yeah, I mean—”
          “Let me finish, kid. I need you to help us with this. The cops just told us that they had talked to some folks down the road that had heard the glass breaking and when they got to their window, a big orange truck was ripping on down the road.”
          My stomach dropped to my shoes.
          “Now, I think I seen this kid around town, and the cops said they can’t really do nothing since they can’t prove it really, and the school said they won’t look into it since it was off school grounds.”
          It was Evan.
          “Now, I think best I know, it’s this Hillridge boy, Evan Hillridge. His ma and pa live a few minutes down the way and I know he plays ball with you, so I need you to talk to him about it. See if you can get any info out of this kid. See if you can sneak it out of him.”
          It could have been anyone in the world, but it had to be Evan Hillridge, I thought to myself as Terry’s pops said goodbye and I walked back home. Evan Hillridge and I went back to little league days, Pop Warner football, tee ball, and all that. I’ve never been on a team that didn’t feature star athlete Evan Hillridge. He could run a mile faster than some folks could bike one, he could make half-court baskets with one arm if he really lined it up, and he could throw a baseball almost 75 miles per hour. I wondered if he hit 75 miles per hour with the brick.
          I was shocked when Terry’s pops said it was probably Evan, but I wasn’t surprised. He was just bad blood. I’m sure straight down the line he had supremacists and bigots of all kinds straight back to the cradle of civilization. Now, he had turned his discerning appetite on tormenting Terry.
          I felt uncomfortable with the whole mess. I didn’t want to talk to Evan. I’d have a million and one opportunities with him in most of my classes and with practice right after school. But I knew how he’d react. I knew because I’d heard how he felt about these kinds of things. About Terry specifically.
          It wasn’t even a week ago that in the locker room, he put chewing tobacco in his lip and spit into a water bottle explaining his position. “Now, listen you hear—it’s not me that’s got the problem with nobody, but God’s good word what says I have to be a certain way ‘round certain folks because they living sinner-like. Now, that fairy neighbor of yours is the worst of ‘em.”
          “Aw, come on man, come off it.”
          “Now them’s the words of a faggot, or at least a faggot sympathizer. He turned you yet?”
          I was embarrassed, and I just walked away. I didn’t want to be dragged through the dirt and shamed by this outspoken hillbilly of a kid. He was loud and never stopped talking. You can’t stop folks like that, they’ll always stick you with the last word, and it always hurts.
          I languished over the whole thing and I wasn’t even the one with a busted windshield. Terry came by to drop off a paper he had looked over for me a few days later and asked if I had confronted Evan. “My dad told me what he asked you to do. Did you find anything out?”
          “Ah, heck man, I haven’t talked to him yet. It’s hard to bring up.”
          “Hard? Try being outed to the whole fucking school. That’s hard. You just have to see if he’s weird about it, try to dig and see if we can prove it was him.”
          “I’ll think of something but I’ve got to be careful, we go way back.”
          “And we don’t? That’s just great. That’s where I stand I guess.”
          He started to tear up and walked toward the front door in a harumph. I called for him to hold on for a second, and he opened the door, said,”Why don’t you fucking grow a pair?” and slammed the door. I went to my room and laid in bed and sat in my shame for a long time before falling asleep. I felt lowdown and crooked.
           The next morning I awoke to the sound of sirens. Lights flashed against my window shade. Reds, blues, and whites danced forebodingly. For a moment I didn’t understand anything—who I was, where I was, I was blank. I snapped out of it and grabbed a sweatshirt which I put on as I descended the stairs two at a time and burst out the front door. An ambulance was pulling away, rounding the corner onto the main road as I emerged into the crisp morning air. I had a sick epiphany. I turned to the house and knocked at the door. No answer. I let myself in. “Hello? Hello?” Nobody home. I ran up the stairs and down the long hallway till it dead ended at Terry’s room. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it and let it swing open, waiting with fear of what might be. There were papers everywhere. There were books ripped down their spines, pages torn and tossed all over the bed and floor. The shelves that striped the walls were pulled from brackets and strewn about, drawers pulled and emptied from desk and dresser, and the paintings gave color and warmth to his room were now shredded canvas and broken frames.
          I backed away from the room, turned, and left the house. I got the keys to my pops’ Chevy and drove to First Mercy Hospital with clouded eyes, rolling through stop signs and taking curves and cornering turns at 60 miles per hour. I sped into the lot and ditched my car in the first space I found. In hysterics, I tried desperately to get the secretary to help me find Terry’s room. She couldn’t hardly understand me. I said it as slowly as I could, “Terry, he just came in, where is he?” He was on the second floor and she wrote down the room number for me because I said I was his brother.
          I ran up the stairs and then darted around folks in the busy hall way to find him. I came to the room, “203”, and crept in. As soon as Terry’s folks had turned to see me, his pops had already thrown his whole body into a real Texas bred right hook that caught me square on the jaw before I even processed what was happening. I heard a sick crack and crumpled to the ground. Orderlies piled in and tried to pull him away, as he had fallen on me with a flurry of shots to ribs, gut, anything revealed.
          “If he doesn’t make it I’ll fix you and that friend of yours, I’ll kill you both with my bare hands fer what you done!” I tasted blood and felt my consciousness slipping away from me—it had all happened so fast, so lightning fast that I hadn’t had a chance to even think about defending myself.
          I came to a while later in a hospital bed. Terry’s ma was there. When I was awake I was confused, and panicked by my bandages. My jaw was sure messed up, and I could feel how swollen it was. I still tasted blood in my mouth. She looked at me with troubled, ragged eyes, with the countenance of someone trying to keep it together in the face of events beyond anyone’s ken. After a while she started to talk to me.
          “Now, your jaw’s busted, son so don’t try to say anything. Your folks are on their way. Terry’s going to be okay, but from what I gather things ain’t square with you two. He done swallowed a lot of pills and different kinds too, so the reaction was complicated but he’s stable. He swallowed them pills and smashed up his room and came wailing into my room and told me what he done. He said he didn’t have nothing left, that everyone left him. I think given Red’s reaction earlier you know right well where you stand in all this. I just wanted you to know Terry’s okay and that when all of this is settled, we’re moving away. We don’t think you should try to keep contact with him because it flat nearly killed him for whatever you done.”
          She reached for her purse beside her seat, stood up, and began to walk out of the room. “You think long and hard.” She left and I never saw her again. Everything settled out of court, so I never saw Terry’s pops again. Worst of all, I was too much of a coward, like I’ve always been, to apologize to Terry, so I never saw him again either. I was just a yellow shame of a man and didn’t ever deserve a friend like Terry, and I thought about what I stood for as I lay there broken in that bed I done set for my own self.

Dedicated to Cam.

Smoking by the Sea

She held a cigarette between long
slender fingers and looked longingly out to sea.
She crossed her legs as she sat and flicked
the cigarette with forefinger, shedding ash and renewing the cherry tip.
Time passed slowly by the sea, and she might never know
it passed at all if it weren’t for the setting of the sun.
The natural and unmistakable purity of
the vast openness of the soft orange sky over sea
felt like God to her. 

Should Have Known Better

“Should Have Known Better”
a short fiction in under 250 words
by Jordan Kit

          Gerard tapped his thumbs against the counter in time with the beat as he waited for the bartender bring his beer. The band playing in the far corner was a three piece jazz outfit. The band played smooth, slow standards. Smoke hung in a low haze as it trailed from countless cigarettes in hipster’s hands. The whole scene was going to the beat with a rhythmic resolve, and Gerard grinned when the jolly gray bartender slid him a pint. It felt like a dream in the cool, forgotten 86^th Street jazz joint.
          A sweet, dark skinned brunette in a cocktail dress woke Gerard from his reverie and asked if the stool next to him was taken. “Go right ahead,” he said.
          “Buy a girl a drink?” she said.
          “Well now. Right to the point, huh? How do you know I’m not married, or gay even?”
          “Are you?”
          Gerard chuckled at her forwardness. He took a quick sip of his beer, and said, “Okay fine, but what’s your name even? I don’t even know your name.”
          “Annie, and I’m drinking gin and tonic.”
          Gerard hailed the barkeep who filled her order and slid the glass to her. She took a slow sensuous slip, and looked up at Gerard over the rim of the glass. She finished her drink, smiled, and set the glass on the bar, departing.
          Gerard laughed at his naivety. He swilled his beer, wondering about the trickster in the cocktail dress.