Hopfensperger, Liam

Carolina Digital Repository

Liam Hopfensperger✽4✽My eyes leave ghostlike artifacts flashing faintly inthe  background;  last  night  I  didn't  sleep.  Imicrowaved  the  wrong  mug.  Even  the  handle  isburning my hand. My coffee tastes like melted plastic—I’m trying to spit out shreds that aren’t there, or thatare already liquefied.This morning, my throat scraped like dry sponges.The  stall  over,  someone  wearing  white  Nike  hightops  and  seemingly  Jordache  jeans  was  gruntingrhythmically in time with his own bowel movements.I am sitting half- catatonic and masturbating. At thishour,  it’s  more something to do than something tofeel. I'm smearing the semen like grout, leaving littleglobules on my thighs.5✽After reading Akira when I was about 15, I had a sortof  preoccupation  with  crumbling,  billboard-infestedAsian skyscrapers and their lawlessness. Toweringpomegranates,  full  of  chambers  enclosed  by  thedark.Some  are  ceiling  to  floor  with  rusting  cagespartitioned by plywood. These arils are pregnant withthe  mixing  juice  of  tenants,  cockroaches,  mice;dripping  through  the  iron  grid,  staining  thecheckerboard tiles.  Staining the coats and teapotshung from iron bars.6✽He is watching the storm roll in through the windows.The windows are bigand Scandinavian-modern.The whole strip mall is a littlehandful of painkiller-dependent suburbia. But a rather clenched handful, squeezing paint7until the crust is stuckin his palm lines. The storm looks painted. We stillgot the sale price because I looked Halloween-y.They told me hasn’t anyone toldyou you look like the rich kid who tags along to a bank robbery to see what it’s like.My parents don’t payfor shit. If he set up a heist he’d probably put out an ad:8Actors needed, 20-50 year old Hispanic male. Non-union.Last time I was hereI was with a melodramatic bleach-blonde girl with sledgehammered teethwho now lives in Colorado on an Indian reservation abusing tramadolin the mountains wherejuniper berries grow rampantly and the petrichor is mentholated.9✽I  am sitting on the floor in the bathroom on a wettowel,  light  brown with  speckles  bleached pinkish.The insides of my thighs are stagnant wet. As is theair that smells   of unrinsed conditioner. The mirror isunfogging  in  a  sort  of  jazz  album  cover  pattern.There  is  a  neon  green  police  lineup  on  thecountertop.  Propped  up  tallest  in  the  middle  andshortest  on  the  ends.  Four  ACT  bottles  and  one,Food Lion brand, all the way at the very right end;the runt of the litter, labels written in a rounded sans-serif, deadpan, hands crossed in front of his waist,please do not touch the display items, furniture storefont.10Maybe they're laughing at me. Maybe my teeth arethe  laughingstock.  Two  dentist  parents  but  badgenes. In the creek, the water runs over the micaand the feldspar.I  cannot  use that  mouthwash because bubblegumflavor  makes  me  cry.  It's  the  same  pink  as  thegrapefruit  acne wash, as my face, as the calcifiedtoilet ring. I was told we live on a large granite slab,clayey world-turtle. I  read somewhere that fish arechoking on all those plastic acne beads: that's howmy  mucus  feels;  the  runny  crying  mucus  that'soozing  out  of  my  face  like  soap  bubbles  filling  asponge.11I don’t think there’s a way to give proper justice tothe sound of blowing the nose while crying. How doyou capture the desire to get everything out. To fullyeat  a  Jello  fruit  cup  without  a  utensil  requiresharnessing its momentum. In those moments, I amaware of the limitations of what is inside my mouth;the flesh, the gelatin, originally flesh-covered bone,and the fruit, if only in name.12✽He does one thing over and over and only now realizes he is quite far from good at it. The sun visor in her car is broken, falling in frontof his line of sight. It takes an active effort for him to look into nothing. The sun has been downfor hours now and they park at their favorite spot if only out of convenience. It is a small city-ownedbubble off of a service road next to a corporate complex. Everything is there; 13the company buildings, apartment buildings, grocery stores, restaurants, swimming pool. In the grainy black it is a citronella lamp and the mosquitoes flutter in and out. Some are just out of school and don’t know better,and some are middle-aged and single, supposedly,and walking their dogs on the side of the highway,but the bubble of a parking lot is surrounded by trees and a gravel road and seems forgotten. She parks perpendicular to the parking spot, saying let me do a spider14check before you get in the back. He is taking deepbreaths. He is tired, trying not to say crass things like his father does when he’s to the point of fallingasleep mid-sentence, which is most evenings. Spiders won’t bite you if you don’t panic, he thought.They are patient and eat mosquitoes and builddreamcatchers. I have not remembered my dreamsin a while now. It seems that is a good thing.15✽Sometimes I wish I could just be locked ina car trunk forever, pitch black ridingasphalt riptides and waves. I wouldn't talkto the driver and he wouldn't to me,while I gasp goldfish through the circle gaps,aluminum panels punched polka dot.Maybe this is the most effective formof meditation, or contraception:when the tires compress rocks into their treads,rustling over leaves rusted orange,my skin itches and vibrates, contracting–molting resonant, cicadan harmonic.Every instar, insects replace a numberof neurons; I wish I could do the same.16✽It is manic cold outside and my goosebumps feel likemetal echoes. I am driving with the windows open soI don’t fall asleep but it’s not very effective. My teethare chattering in recursive drum rolls and I can’t helpbut wonder how much enamel chips off every time. Ibit into my lip. The blood tastes like mint gum withthe flavor chewed out. I look up and the trees look as if they are circling me.I know that the stars always circle me. When I closemy eyes, the stars dance like static. Pine needlesare falling into my eyes and small  branches crackunder the weight of the windshield wiper, molting. Mytears do not freeze.17✽I am trying to learn the stars, but my eyes are full ofjudgment. Fridays are supposed to be cold, and thisone is–I feel a light tinge on my  palate  reminiscentof pickled pears. The pear blossoms have not yetarrived. If they had, they would be suffocating.18✽IKEA boxes make makeshift end tables.Tiles in Carrara or Calacattaor something Italian, with a glasstub sliding door. I thought it character-building to have a leaking radiatorand silverfish wriggling phosphene.Or like my grandmother's tiles, calaminepink, that bulged an air bubble like myblistering flea bites. Nevertheless,I've always thought it cozy to sitin a locked bathroom, pitch black. Lightseeping in under the door in such minuteamounts my body drinks the oversaturatedPolaroid postprocessing, back small19on cold floor. My arching reflexis reverse cat, but my tongue flitsbetween bony finger earthworm segments,sweat residua acrid like salted fishcoming back to life. The pretend rainfallmakes my back hair stand on end. The dropletspop when they hit the porcelain, bouncing.20✽The people are dancing on the courthouse steps. Isee  their  hands  making  shadow  puppets  on  thewindows. One person is wearing red. Sky sepia fromsodium  lamps.  The  branches  are  being  weigheddown by the snow and a snowbank falls from theroof.  Hitting  the  ground,  plumes  rise,  wisping  likeswallowtails.21✽Ren Hang was surely not afraid like me. To kill simulacra–enormous ones,dancing in funhouses and behind red smoke bombs. To let tongues extend, buddinglike torch lilies. A false blue glow on the palate, belonging to that mouth,because he had an old camera thatoversaturated the light of peopleas if a pearl of a marble dragon.I’ve thought for so long that the art depends on the materials. And it does, in a way.The body is not supposed to blossom here. In public. Or so they say. I’ve seen this picture before, of the nude python lady 22under the mint leaves, yellow and green.I’m trying to remember the vibranceand the rule of thirds. And the last timeI appreciated a body for its own sake. I’m trying to think if I’ve loved; the way Ren does his motherand her rubber chicken. My parents havenever read my poetry. They asked if I could add some pictures to make iteasier. I probably could have.I'm not fond of the idea that picturescan trigger an entire memory.Ren means indefinition: he deserves exactness, somehow; at least remembranceor dedication. I'm sure he’s alreadygotten it from someone else. But he taughtme how to let the winds blow past. How23the hurricanes are only periwinkle silk and feet stretched outwards like swallowtails,all crying in harmony. He asked me whose funeral pyre surrounded meat the otherwise dark seaside at midnight.24✽25✽Devilwood grows rampantly on my mother’s land. Itsmatte  black  drupes  fall  from  waxy  branches,shriveled and dry. It  always seemed to me like anapathetic plant.In  China,  osmanthus  grows  swathes  of  reveredblossoms. I know where my ancient mothers settled,and  supposedly  the  autumns  there  are  pepperedwith humble orange petals; shattered butterfly wingsthat smell of apricot.26✽This morning I ate a banana, yellow yellow green green green. It was unripe to the pointthat the stem wouldn’t break open and I had to unzip it like Bananagrams. The starchy grainy diffusion feels like spores or radio static. Hockey skates over radio are wind 27over airplane wings. Can you call it wind if you’re making it; if you can say that fish choke. Can we capture the quiet of a coffeeshop on a cold day. There is a mousy, brown-eyebrowed blonde Burberry-pencil-pouch girl contorted into her chair. Across from her there is a guy with a fishing visor, a sweat-wrinkled fraternity shirt. The girl’s perfume smells like Japanese 28scented erasers or muscat gummies. Mixing vinaigrettely with his open Red Bull and maybeI am the one who is choking. Even watching cinema, I have to listen to music. –Imagine Ferg talking to (through?) a young Chang Chen circa A Brighter Summer Day. –Imagine young Ferg mobbing in Taiwan, soaking in the rain and pushing his bare catfish feet into and off of the mud. 29✽Water poured onto old storage boxes like the moths hatching larvae in the upstairs closet. The mauled and regurgitated innards hadn't been touchedin years. At first it sounded like rain.Cardboard mush wrung out brown water and the dust ribbons made web-likeglue. The wall is open now and a man I don’t know is touching fiberglass insulation with his bare hands, fibrous and barbed. The fumes smell like diamondburs grinding my teeth off down to the root.30✽April was once named for Nerowho has the mouth of a lion.His mother, if anything, was perseverant. Her bedroom smelled black. Black coffee, dust mites, char. The TV was left running on half-mute when she carriedthe urn of a man she knew.Alabaster the color of honey. Shimmeringin the nascent sun, smelling of fat.She had left a Boston roast in the fridge too long in the crisper drawerbecause there was no space elsewhereand the fat smelled of hollow Ogygianceleriac. That night, she made sorrel gazpacho31to rid her hands of the smell. The table was quiet. Kiwifruit for dessert. Metal sound of spoons was muffled. Soft furry rinds. The dark seeds were flossed out from between her double canine.Nero’s late father was unremarkable.Many would tell you that he was dishonestwith sagging cheeks and jowls. His widow came from a long lineof sharp, pointed faces. Latch on to a manlike a lamprey, efficiently and selectively, said her mother when she was a child.After flossing, she saw a cockroachlaying its smooth pillbox of an egg case,latching it to the countertop with its saliva. Blemished the marble. 32✽Somebody is making out with their reflectionin the glass, a little askew, and I thinkJesus Christ, my lips are chapped and bleeding. And what about those little micro-jagged edges on the glass. And once the lip skin starts peeling it unravels in little sea snakeribbons, or like how I imagine algaepeels off bleaching corals. 33And the boxfish, eating that algae throughits sphincter of a mouth, filtering the water. And, boxfish-like, we flailed our febrile limbs, sweating out toxins. Our tessellated mouths aqueduct saliva. And, last week, mucus: Green and eutrophicating our gills. But we didn’t inspire anyonewith our streamlined forms.34✽Light  is  beating  down  as  reflections  off  glasswindows.  It  gleamed  off  the  porcelain  tiles,  as  ifDelphic fumes rising from the drain grate, but whenour mannequin heads were about to speak, we hadto  wait.  Hands  between  our  thighs,  our  tearscalculated, fearful. I am fearful of the sun and of thefuture.35✽Last night, the sky shone mauve, or puce, and thetrees  were  blacker  than  normal.  The  last  time  I’dseen that was when I tried to drink bleach but gotscared of the taste, my esophagus ingoting what feltlike plastic. The mauve, or heliotrope, shone blue-grey through the window onto the tiles, where I facedthe  sun’s  reflection.  I  cried  at  the  sky  and  I  sawcrucifixes in the grout and I planned to give myselfstigmata but never did. 36✽I was steaming, but not upset. Tired steaming. Theelevator  creaked  and  smelled  as  if  I’d  licked  themetal,  and  of  incense.  It  felt  like  I  was  a  patientwaiting for the therapist’s couch, standing outside ofthe door, nauseated. I used to read The New Yorkerin my old therapist’s office. It  was lined with whitenoise carpeting and white noise paintings over ocherwall paint. My  reflection in the elevator wall looks like tinnitus.            On the way home, there was a6-point buck standing about 2 feet in front of me, atfirst  just  staring.  He  stomped  and  snorted  when  Iwalked past, but didn’t move. Moving less than if hitby a car, left to rot; snorting and flailing with 4 brokenlegs. I’m afraid of the trees swaying in the breeze,waiting to break. 37✽Magnolia tree off the patio. Already bloomed and shed its low petalswhite and children’s shampoo pink. It’s still coldFebruary, wet. Fifteen years agothere was an all-encompassing blizzard. Around here, we don’t often get blizzards but this was when the polar bears onlywere a little bit green, algal, mangy;my mother held the splintering trunk upwith ratchet straps on branches mangled greenwith bare flesh wounds. Creaking wood, metal clicksaudible from the veranda coveredin snow blemished with my young flat footprints.It took five years before its flowers stopped38blooming brown. It took ten years beforeits trunk straightened and the first grey strands grewinto my mother’s scalp. Now the petals,white and children’s shampoo pink and purple on the fringes, purple of unroastedeggplant, float on top of the bright water.Water so bright cyan it gleams painfulhaloes that came through the overcast clouds.In Biei at times, the water is mattecyan. Dammed volcanic mudflow ran off into the manmade womb of the newbornlake. Dead larch and birch trunks dot the surface.Is it impolite to let store-bought meatrot? The fridge smells rancid and stale. The windis blowing hard outside and crumplinginto the steadfast door. Magnolia39branches are burdened into bowing.I can hear the bark scraping on itself.The past-warranty fridge ice machine failsloudly. I already have a migrainefrom the wind and the clouds. I used to knowa self-made camgirl but didn’t know howshe made her pocket change. A year agowe talked on the top of a parking deckat five in the morning; it was barelydrearier than now. Barely more unstablethan now, I was convinced she was goingto murder me and leave my flesh to rotor put me in a scent-proof garbage bagin the creek. In passing, I had told her that I wanted to die and she said yesmy mother is dying her hair fell outshe is tired and I’m tired I don’t40know how I’ll ever travel anywheresee anything and I said most peopledon’t. It was cold; I'd forgotten a jacket.You couldn’t see any stars because of the streetlamps; gargoyle facefuls of windbroke it into sparse airstreams like whisperswhen a corpse hollows itself and ink-blackarmored harbinger plecos cleanse its innards. A blackthorn tree tangles around rusty square chain links that block in the sloe-eyed cows.Its white blossoms wilted in the snow. Now the leaves are rusting, marred by powderedvermilion spots spreading their spores acrossthe countryside. It will only get colderand the sleet will envelop the dyingplants and cows, skin pulling gaunt under41cheekbones.Brown grass is crumpling and pulling thineven partway up the mountain. The mountainlooms on the crumpled horizon as cloudscast down shadows dancing mad swirling greyjewels encased in a kaleidoscope.Here the mountains look like rows of shark teethblunted by wear and bleeding mud downpourslike where the Sierra Nevada enclosethe oversized neon clown in front ofCircus Circus Reno, bulbs flickeringoutgrowths as if metal was growing gall.With large troubled cartoon eyes, as if trapped,he was the brightest sign in that dusty,quiet shantytown where the dusty ranch sands stick to suburban plywood glue.When I think back on it, only the wisps42of the memories remain. Asbestoscrumbs fray off the sides of ceiling tilesthat have to be moved, sitting on my clothesand in my throat like wisps. His shirt was slimesnotgreen striped with heather grey. I exchangedit for one of mine, accidentally.It took three washes until it smelled like meand Gain instead of him. The cloying smellof detergent flowers, matte and candied,reminded me of blooming azaleasdrowning in wet chartreuse pine pollen sporesthat stained the roads and vinyl siding neon, gummy adhesive. Meant the airwas about to steam. But in the desert,through the window, everything looked orangeby dint of the sun’s omnipotent glare.The hotel room was cold; he was from Texas43so he kept it cold. It was Saturdayand he was from Texas, so football was playingon the TV louder than necessary.This was his room. When he paid, I hidbehind him, away from the tired gazeof the receptionist’s stone countertop.After it happened, I had pozole rojo in a casino restaurant with a neon sign of a cowboy hatand a margarita glass. I once readthe Aztecs made pozole with the fleshof human sacrifice as a sort ofprimeval Eucharist. I thought what bettermeal to wish the death of he who now sitsacross from me? And when I ate that porkas replacement flesh I thought of myself44as powerless as Circe against moly;I could not stop it happening again,and I could not stop him becominga schoolteacher. Only just now comes springwith its azaleas bubbling inand out of bloom, my head is transpondersmoontalking but I find solace in the stopped.At the end of the long road, there’s a lakeand a metal crash barrier gate. Treesare swaying, nondescript deciduoustrees, green and yellow. Everything is alonein its oneness except for the insectsholing into the tree flesh and the earth.45

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