September 3, 2021 - Rosa Maks’ “Slow Bye” (Chapter 2)
Now Chapter Two, titled “Outdoors,”
To walk with you and your big white dogs shitting by the curb was to walk like important
royalty.
Before the taxidermist sent you his eyeballs, your oldest white dog bled from the paws
that dragged on the sidewalk. He bled on the sidewalk across from the sewage
treatment plant. On that walk, you would pick him up every time the rear of him failed
and bent underneath him, picking up puppet parts.
There is a mural on the side of your house.
When we went to the true outside together, we went like thrice or something
Yeah that’s it
And look at this legend made of it by a giant baby
maybe you are right to say I wasn’t used to such kindness, such pure male kindness
Maybe it wasn’t so condescending of you to say at all!
We went to look at a thing you made hanging in a convention center
It was so small hanging there surrounded by eighty million huge paintings
Not long ago you said it embarrassed you
How our yellow cab ride was so quiet after
I split!
You said to accompany you to this event
In a rented dress
Rented shoes
Then you said you were sick then you mentioned another
and another
and another for three years so many events to go to, none went to yet i am not event
material, too soggy and too wispyhaired to concoct any sort of updo
We went to drive your car and we decided it must not like me
Never has a machine said that stuff to me
Like your car did
Shag carpet in the back and parts unscrewing themselves as i drove it down the main
block of our neighborhood
The feather hanging in the windshield will be in the center between my two loopy eyes
until the end of my story
As symbol of old bad glory
Excitement to make the black vehicle move even one clunky time
We met in your black coat to go to the fireplace restaurant bar in the cold weather which
turned out to be closed until the afternoon forcing us into a different, less promising
place.
And perch on the edge of a piece of wood that was a table.
Play chess together and you did not understand much.
I play chess with my dad every week so I’m used to those hands making bad moves in
hopes of ancient sage genius revelation
comin’ out
poor man
I win and we walk back
later you said you knew what they were thinking there to see us together like that
What were you spinning and what for
Went to a show that paired video with instrumentals
To, for some reason, commemorate the Apollo moon mission in twenty nineteen,
and your rich friend was dressed in white playing something electric- it was okay. Folding
chairs and a beer. Then i rode my bike home I don’t know what it means to keep
company I counted all these times on one hand. We don’t do great outside like first
teenagers first time
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Rosa Maks was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is also a printmaker and is currently trying her hand at a degree in print in Tucson, Arizona. She's also a poet, freelance writer and aspiring banjo player; passions include music, creative writing and long distance bike touring. She has worked as a chess teacher, a bike frame sander, a candle maker and gallery assistant, among others. Too mercurial for her own good, she hopes her non-fiction creative writing and true-story poems speak in her place. You might find her at Rockaway Beach in Queens, dragging her bike through a dune or somewhere far from home, picturing that very image with longing.
