JOSH BARBER

SPRING CLEANING THE SHOWER CURTAIN

Boric acid and vinegar in the washer and it just gets bigger and bigger, first it’s slowly frothing and I’m thinking I’m in trouble then it’s really overflowing out the opening, a small puddle you might sop up with a towel except that it’s got thirty minutes more of churning I guess I could

unplug the washer but then when it’s plugged back in it’d get back to frothing and churning and what a thing to have to devote your time to, addressing a washer partly filled with all the water (the wash cycle just started) and now it’s slowly creeping on the tile, over the reflection of the lights and onward to the elevator, bubbles filling the basement and through the mezzanine, flooding the dumpster, still doing water damage and I’m thinking at this point I wish I unplugged the washer, either way I’d be covered in water but I guess there’d be less damage, just embarrassment really and by now I’m the most notorious neighbor in the building to such a point that the water’s pouring out with all the chemical reaction bubbles from my apartment, as if it came from there first, as if the basement ringed around up there before the other floors and I guess it did, having had the idea there to add vinegar to boric acid, just trying to do some spring cleaning ahead of time.

SMOKING BUBBLES

Rainy in Cleveland, smoking ghosts from the bubble wand, searching for my brain floating with balloons in the phone’s low-def scraggly picture as of fishing boats in the bayou or any small smoked out city before the modern, snowing lead, Toledo of that time, St. Louis or Toronto, lumpen stuff, not so much deformity, not valorization of scraggly picture on low-def phone screen but actual clarity as much as possible given things’ ability to dream, to give off life all their own.

I guess it’s that there’s no trees in Toledo, that Saturday afternoons I cast ghosts through my bubble wand morosely, clean flesh face, TV on in the living room, decor of that time, liquor, bacon, out walking, Saturday, just blowing ghosts from my bubble wand in a leaden sky,

weeping, my brain floating with the balloons floating with the leaden snow sky of Toledo of that time, TV on in the living room, decor of that time, step out walking, now it’s not Toledo but somewhere else where the factory sits by the river and dreams the dream of balloons and brains and me smoking as I dream it, and smoke and grease pours out of the S+S char pit and the hot dog buns drown in it roving past the K-mart now and now it really can’t be Toledo of that time, the TV on in the living room and liquor in the kitchen and someone sitting at a card table in the kitchen there writing something, squiggling, a phone call come in from St. Louis while I just sat there blowing ghost after ghost from my bubble wand, feeling morose, busses going in and out of the bus port of the dreaming city of that time, around the bridge past the endless park but I don’t go to parks yet, just parking lots to shovel grease every other time than when I’m blowing ghosts from my bubble wand, spewing lumpen stuff not so much deformity and before understanding disability but

isn’t it so much better, isn’t there at least a place for grease and bubble wands, dreaming factories, Saturdays in more of like a Toledo of that time and TV on and liquor, isn’t that also the Cosmos dreaming itself, nothing never not there but the trees look so real to me in the leaden snowflakes, the balloons and the brains, the dreaming things dreaming the same dream in a time before the modern and I would just read, just read, and think of how the snow sings like the ghosts from my bubble wand sings every moment I’m not soaking my brainless head in spiedie grease on Saturdays, walking past the bus station and the bubble refill store and the movies, early TV version on amidst the decor of that time in Toledo of that time, that time you at least need a piece of any time you’re in,

to the convention center and linoleum and dingy lights and downtown streets where no one lives and no one seems to dream of movies to make or see just drowns in grease on Saturdays around the TV until it’s time to drink Genessee or some other thing steeped in piss and factory runoff water, the water that evaporates into the clouds that form the leaden sleet that powers factories’ dreams, circling and circling on Saturday, blowing bubbles from my bubble wand morosely, clean cheeks, dreaming of what this would be like as a movie, dreaming of how to make this equivalent as a movie, dreaming of how to bring this into the dream of a movie like the dream that things dream, the things of this world soaked with grease and oozing ghosts I breathe and blow back out through my bubble wand.

I DON’T KNOW WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS, BUT...

Out one morning with the dog and baby, a man walked out his door. He wore glasses and a beanie hat, stepped off the edge of his metal ramp and squinted, on his way to the store. We took a second to feel each other out, snow and sun and space to walk around getting worked out and then he told me with a toothy grin the rest is extra, waking up is the blessing. He told me with the teeth that he had left after having just slept that that he was awake was blessed the rest was just extra. Yeah, he told me with the teeth he had that for being awake you should be glad that all the rest was just that: extra. So the next time you’re walking down the street, don’t rush past who you meet, pummeling forward towards extra, extra.

JOSH BARBER lives with his family in Philadelphia and writes the poetry review A New Measure.