Mather Schneider
Jenson’s Bottoms
School let out for the summer. Aaron and I still had to wait until we turned 16 to get our official driver’s licenses and until then we were only supposed to operate a motor vehicle when accompanied by an adult. We were still stuck on our bicycles. We went a little farther each day, killing time, staying away from home.
We were riding on the gravel road through Jenson’s Bottoms and we came to an old broken-down wooden house surrounded by junk.
Arivaca
She lives at 389 W. Rillito Drive and is seven feet tall. She doubles over to get in my cab, her face a sad skull with cracked hide stretched over it, bony hands like giant spiders, knees that knock the dash, a smile like an unknown species.
I begin the drive to Arivaca, a tiny town two hours south, way out in the desert, where UFOs are seen each night, where time seems to stop, where there are javelinas as big as cows with tusks like saber-tooth tigers. On the drive she tells me she camped out in the hills of Arivaca for 12 years in a tent, sequestered in that quiet, peyote desert, and it was the most wonderful time of her life. It was much better than her childhood, much better than any of the years since then. There was nobody around to judge her or laugh at her, the way she looked, just the sweet deer and rabbits, the netherworld sunsets, the fruits of nature, a hidden spring where she got her water which she boiled to drink.
Two Poems
LIGHT
Fluorescent light despot of classrooms and hospitals greenish penciler of eyebags and inner hells. Blacklight conjurer of scorpions in midnight woodpiles voyeur of semen and old blood on motel sheets. Sunlight at dawn like a fox with ice on its muzzle at noon when shadows disappear and evening shoulders a moth-eaten shawl. Strobe light a teenager’s dope dream amateur filmmaker’s best friend an epileptic fit in a strip club. Camp fire light like first love or last hope plum in the cheeks the popping of the bones of an old ballerina her loins still hot. Half light which has no meaning or half a meaning. Car headlights somnambulant opossum and a middle-aged man stiffening for collision. Police lights catching up to you like a venereal disease. Phosphorescent light off the bay of adolescence everyone asleep except the crabs in the wire traps gnawing raw chicken legs. Candle light by which the ancients wrote their halting masterpieces knowing they had but little time. Cellphone light wife awake in bed husband snoring dreaming of a nameless girl. Floodlight nowhere to run you shouldn’t have come here.
PUPPY SHIT
The only thing that keeps Suegra from going completely nuts is her grandson Pedrito. Pedrito is her rock. He’s the only reason she has for living. Pedrito turned eight last month. He said to Suegra, I can’t have a birthday party this year can I, Nana? It’s ok. Isabella brought a puppy over to the house as the only birthday gift for Pedrito. She left the puppy with a bag of food just as Pedrito’s mother had left him with Suegra when he was three but the food soon was eaten up and the puppy shit on the floor and Pedrito didn’t seem too interested. He only wants to play video games. They didn’t even name it. Suegra gave the puppy to a stranger who stopped to tie his shoe in front of the house. The stranger took the puppy thinking it was his lucky day. Now there’s one less mouth to feed for Suegra and the floor’s a little cleaner. Do not give somebody an animal as a gift unless it’s an animal you can eat and already properly butchered, I don’t care if you think your heart is in the right place.