Gentle Reminder

a prose poem from Travis Alexander

Travis Alexander wore a Jawbreaker sweatshirt to the Morning, Fuckers reading last month in Kansas City, so of course we are now very close friends. Hat tip to Bud Smith for the e-intro in advance of AWP. I tried to get Travis to call this piece fiction rather than poetry, positing that more people would read it, but he doesn’t give a shit about these sorts of things. A prose poem it is. -AV

Little Engines is free in print and here on the ‘stack, but a paid subscription helps me keep going and puts money in the hands of writers & artists 🖤

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My kid, hysterical in the throes of a tantrum over toys or TV or god-knows-what, just punched me in the face, square in the nose, and now this chipped piece of bone that's been loose and floating freely about my cartilage for years, detached and drifting ever since the night I fell face-first into a cordon of granite rocks encircling a firepit, shifted, its movement sharp, nauseating, reminding me that I'm not entirely put together.

He punched me, and my sinuses, my poor sinuses, having in the past been ravaged by jagged chunks of crystallized baking soda and dog dewormer, having been rotted out and eroded from all those good times, having been beaten down by a barrage of blows, my sinuses, once juggernauts of the after-party but now pedestrian, weak, and victim to chronic infection, swelled up like black balloons behind my eyes.

And my eyes, my tired eyes, all bloodshot and puffy because my kid doesn't sleep well and so neither do I, welled up like overrun levees, watering my cheeks like destitute gardens incapable of growing anything but crow’s feet, sending the bags under my eyes packing, heading for higher ground, and I want to follow them.

He punched me, and I’m seeing stars, the sun, God, the son. I taste metal, cheap wine, the blood of Christ, for his sake and mine, forever and ever, amen, forgive me, father, for I have sipped, it's been three years since my last refreshment, but now I want to drink. I'm only two glasses away from feeling okay, so I better drink three just to be safe.

I need every last drop left in Jersey City. All of it. Anything. Give me your wine, your Coors, your huddled glasses, half-empty and abandoned at last call, the wretched refuse of your medicine cabinet, the dusty bottles of golden Listerine under your bathroom sink, please, just a fix, anything goes, because my house, this home, is dry as bleached bones.

And so I run, out the front door, down the stairs, around the corner, into my car, up 78 to 9A to 15 to 91 to 84 to 90 to 2007, to Allston, to the front porch of my first apartment where I sit and listen to Yeah Yeah Yeahs and watch the amphetamine sky fade from the color of twenties to the color of tens, until the loser birds start talking shit, until the college kids come stumbling home and shoo me away, and then I head out again.

Back to my car, down 90 to 84 to 91 to 15 to 9A, into the Holland Tunnel, to my block, up the stairs, and through the front door, where my kid, my incendiary kid with all his fire and fury, all that pent up energy which must somewhere be displaced, my kid, my sun, my stars, my reason for breathing, for leaving the good times behind, is standing there in the hallway, barely awake and rubbing the sleepy seeds from his eyes, my eyes but younger, electric, and beaming brightly with gratitude I cannot fathom, smiling and overjoyed that I came home.

I pick him up, we hug, and he kisses me on the nose.

Travis Alexander is a writer and musician from New England. SIRENS, his scifi/horror novel, is rolling out as a serialized podcast.

Website: boaisy.com
Instagram: travisalexander
X: travisalxndr

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💰 Travis runs a design / branding company called BOAISY. He makes hats and sweatshirts embroidered with the enigmatic phrase “Congrats for becoming rich” which is one way to translate the Lunar New Year saying 恭喜发财. Order one for a friend at boaisy.com, where you can find the rest of Travis’s work (and maybe commission him to design your next book cover).