the stranger

The stranger
By Katie Oscar


One tiny figure slips out
From a wet grey side street
On that side of the city.

The stranger stands for a moment on the empty avenue
Under a dark streetlamp.
All the lamps on that side are dark.

It’s nearly six-o-clock
In a month where the light goes grey at three
And dark at five.

The brown-silver fog
That shrouds the city almost completely
From outside eyes,
Swirls idly but insistently
Through the streets

As though blown by a wind
That only gas is sensitive to
And flesh and hard matter can’t appreciate.

In West Bridge Students feel disoriented
And a sensation close to seasickness
As they watch the gas blow by them
On the avenues.

But the stranger under the dark lamp
Isn’t bothered by it at all,
Only the slightest shake of his head,
As he stares back toward East Bridge
Through the haze,
Gives away that he can see the stuff at all.

No one comes here at night.

Those few students who don’t retreat
Behind their drawn curtains
And locked doors by six o’clock
Keep to East Bridge and its river side restaurants and pubs,

There’s more light and less mist there;
Really there’s just more light and
The mist, like the moon,
Turns invisible in the light.

Bridge avenue is never busy,
It’s no man’s land,
Cutting a slice
Between east and west
Here and there.

No one lingers long, they slip past,
Between places,
Eyes quick and ready
Hoping no one from where they are headed
Sees them come
And no one from where they are leaving
Watches them go.

The coarse sound of glass
Breaking and grinding
Under the strangers small feet
Echoes down the wide silent avenue

The stranger takes no notice
But continues to look towards East Bridge
With the kind of weary nervousness
Usually reserved for those standing on this side
And looking toward that one.

The broken glass comes from the broken lights,
It covers the empty sidewalk
For at least three blocks
On that side of the avenue
Until it stops where the lights are still burning.
No one comes here at night.

That side’s lack of light
Makes the line between there to here
Quite obvious tonight,
In the grey rain the street reflects the lights
From the windows on this side.

The lights reach out,
Towards the shadows
Stopping almost exactly
At the feet of the traveler
Who steps into them,
Finally deciding to cross.

He moves slowly
Watching the light around his feet,
Acknowledging its welcome
Until he stops in one black spot
Where something is obstructing
The light from one window.

Its one black smudge
In a sea of twinkling reflection.
He looks down at the shadow
And then up at the window.

I look back
And then slip away from the sill,
Leaving the stranger
Standing in his pool of light
Looking up.

Death and stories

I swallowed the story that she told me and once inside my body, circulating through my blood stream, it started to search for a way out.
Little bruises appeared on my legs, then over the weeks, as the story neared the surface of my skin, the bruises turned to blisters, blood blisters.
When you stick a tack into a blister, you release the blood. Is a bruise just the same, I wondered, would it only require a longer tack?
The story she told was about you. She said you were dying. She said there was not the slightest hope that you would ever leave your bed.
I watched you breath, I watched the green lids of your closed eyes.
I thought about your dancing, and the way you never stopped. You never slowed for anything, you were always moving forward.
At night I lay awake, propped up against two pillows in the empty bed beside yours.
I watched you lying there and stuck my bruised knees with short pins.
I unbuttoned my shirt and, as the hours wore on, watched the bruises appearing along my ribs,
Soon a blister formed on the left, above my heart.
I stuck it with my pin and watched it bleed and felt the pulse beneath it, feeding it. And then starvation.
The tiny wound gasped and opened wide, tensed and then failed.
I closed my eyes,
That’s the end.
The lie she had fed me had escaped, now you will live.

God and Pitted Fruit

I decide to amuse my apathetic self with frozen cherries, their juice is dramatic, like licking blood off your fingers- purple, red, cold.
“Vampires die when they drink dead blood, cold blood,” I remember.
Fresh, Frozen, Grade A, No Sugar Added, Dark, Sweet cherries, Pitted.
“Pitted” I think, “heartless, dead, they thaw and ripen in your mouth. Sweet cold cherries, pitted.”
How do they get the pits out?
I look for puncture wounds.
Unblemished.
How do they get the pits out? Have they bred the hearts out?I bite, then crack! I bite a heart.
I smile, thank you, I say to someone.
I understand. I created a metaphor and so
you adressed me from within it.
Heartless! Bred to live without hearts!
All cherry, all fruit and sweet without heart!“Nice metaphor,” you said, “and on that note- here- you, you have, be, find, by chance, by luck, by destiny, the one cherry with a heart, one, out of thousands.
“Here, for you.”

Thoughts on the Trailer for the Film “Revolutionary Road”

"I want to feel things- really feel them. How’s that for an ambition?"
Why is this so complicated? It seems so simple, really, really straightforward; I Don’t care who I am, where I am or who I'm with, I just want to feel things.
The movie that this quote belongs to is about how this simple desire causes a horror.
The trailer follows the format for a horror movie; the music, timing, thrusts of base into your guy as reviews fade in and out over black between visuals. Why are we so spooked by the drama, the challenge the pain, and the anguish of this dream failing before our eyes?
No one goes to the mall is too crowded. No one likes the normal situation- “the same ridiculous delusion.”
The dream failing before us is not his dream, it’s the dream of an entire culture we are all here, at the mall which is why we don’t want to be here- its too crowded.

The horror movie marketing of this movie makes perfect sense.
BOOM, base in your gut- You are no one.
BOOM BOOM, base in your gut, goose bumps on your arms- All you wanted was to feel things.
BOOM you feel the skin of your stomach, your chest and your back against the fabric of your shirt.
“We’re gonna be okay.”
You let out your breath.
“I hope so” She says, “I really hopes so.”
“I hope so” you think.
Maybe this film will show you how.
But, because you have the smallest bit of civilian insight into filmmaking, you assume it will all end badly.