Dan Hoy lives in Brooklyn and is co-editor
of
SOFT TARGETS. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in jubilat,
Octopus, H_ngm_n, Effing Magazine, the tiny, CUE: A Journal of Prose
Poetry and elsewhere. His videos and movie criticism are available
on his website.
FORMER DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
I built my first
golem when I was five. When I was seventeen I learned about the
ethics of bringing a being into this world. These weren't
accompanied by deep moral concerns until I was thirty-one, and
pregnant, and diagnosed with ALS. By that time my golem had
become the poster child for the WTO. That he couldn't talk and
had no facial features (and was the color of clay) made him the
perfect choice. Last time I saw him he was standing behind the
president at the G7 summit in Boca Raton. It was too much. I
cried out, "George, I'm pregnant!" and he looked at me with that
non-face of his and waved. Then security tackled me to the
ground and I heard my collar bone shatter, followed by an
amplified authoritative voice: "Why hurt stem cells when we can
make a man out of dust, which has no feelings?"
THE BUFFALO
After the latest vocational disaster I sent out word
that I was interested in whoring myself out.
I sat back and waited for the word to return
like a dove into a suitable living. In the meantime
what I needed was a good distraction.
The outdoor partition I was in looked promising
but closer inspection of the pattern of fake grass
ruined it. The green was tricky. The fence
was just depressing. I looked up
through the fake-looking clouds at the giant arm
that contained me. The arm that contained it had told me
to distract the arm it contained as best I could.
But I was distracted by the arm within my arm
and the arm within it, wrestling. I couldn't remember
when the arm that contained the arm that contained me
and I had had that conversation, but I knew
I referred to it ever after as the Largest Arm.
The clouds looked fake but were real, unlike
the grass. I was really poor. I was genuinely interested
in whoring myself out, but the word I'd sent
wasn't manifesting into something real. Like say
a John with a hard-on. The city was full of unreal things
pretending to be real, like the Long Arm of the Law.
Even the arm within the arm within mine laughed
heartily at that one. "Law," it said, "Arm."
That this comment led to my latest vocational disaster
and subsequent residence among a partition of fake grass
beneath the real but fake-looking clouds
was not unexpected. Fake things don't take kindly
to being told of their own reality. Not that I thought
the truth would dry clean my one good suit,
but it was time to put all that behind me
and do what I could for the Largest Arm.
The arm that contained me had to be distracted.
Like the buffalo no part of me would go to waste.
DON'T FORGET THE COCAINE
I would not be alive today
were it not for the narcotics and the bodily trauma.
But mostly nights in which outbursts like allergies and laughter
remember all that took place in artificial sleep.
So the story of my life is gray matter
perforated by increasingly uncouth perversions.
Right now I get off on subepidermal staples,
internal bleeding, collapsed veins, and reconstructed intestinal sacs.
Lift up your shirt and show me the promise of more to come.
Tell me again how thirsty we are
and what it is you want me to do about it.