if the gift shop had been open I would’ve bought a postcard
postcards and birdcalls are the only things I ever buy in
gift shops
IX.
thirteen years later I’m still trying
to figure out the things Rorschach notices
we pass a car dealership and she looks back
at a long string of balloons
You want balloons, I’ll buy you balloons, I want to say
I follow out the window the things Rorschach’s watching
until I’ve almost driven off the road
the sound of my tires crossing the ridged shoulder
startles me and I swerve back on the highway
Rorschach’s weak back legs can’t hold her up
and she slams into the windshield
I’m so sorry, I say
which is quickly becoming our mantra for the trip
X.
the car dealerships and fast-food joints disappear
deeper into the red desert
everything’s red and white for miles
I drive next to a red-and-white rickety school bus
filled with farm laborers
a bright-white water cooler tied to its bumper
the bus tows two outhouses that bounce up and down
kicking up cyclones of red dust
Rorschach’s head follows the spinning dust like a
dipping bird
XI.
I’ve been loading an imaginary gun
in my head for hundreds of miles
I’m pushing a bullet into the chamber
that same action repeats itself in my brain
as often as every thirty seconds, I started timing it to see
why does my brain keep doing that?
I was just petting Rorschach’s ears or lighting a cigarette
the image pops up like the terror of forgetting an
appointment
sometimes I’m wiping my pants
and the way my thumb moves to get the chocolate off
is the same pressure I imagine I’d use to push a bullet into
the chamber
it’s a black revolver, the bullets are gold
I’ve loaded many guns but never a revolver
mostly I’ve loaded double-barrel shotguns
you slide two bright-red plastic shells into the barrel
the red plastic looks like the torsos of toy men
my father used to sit in the garage with thousands of
empty shells
he had a machine that held gunpowder and buckshot
when he pulled the handle, the torsos folded up neatly
on top
like tiny origami envelopes
there should be a trophy for people who still show up
for work
even though the whole day they’re competing with images
of their own enormous hand, sliding gold bullets into
a revolver
XII.
I never understood people who said the desert was beautiful
but now I see they’re right
when the sun is going down
and all the cactuses stand tall and independent
I purposely didn’t use the word cacti
the fact that cactuses isn’t a word
is definitely an indication of what’s wrong with this world
XIII.
it’s late when I try and pinpoint
when we began our drift from one another
remember when we drove across the desert
at night with no air-conditioning?
the only station that came in was wing-nut talk radio
water had just been found on Mars
and all the kooks were calling in
Call in, you said, call in
miraculously I got put on the air
the best question I could come up with was
Were there ducks paddling around that water on Mars?
the wing nut talked excitedly in circles never answering
my question
but we laughed so hard, a late-night exhaustion cackle
that lasted long enough to get us home
XIV.
I want the emotions of coloring books
each feeling to remain perfectly contained
inside its own thick black line
grief, utterly grief
joy never seeping into anger
here I am, not forgetting you at all
like a dog I drag our corpse from room to room
in the bedroom where your mother died
a tiny bit of Fresno light always seemed
to sneak through a fold of curtain
how does a person dislodge the scenes
that burn inside them like arsoned cars?
XV.
I’ve never seen cremains but I’ve been told sometimes
finger-sized bone lies among the ash
it’s these pieces that upset families
who want to sprinkle their loved ones like fairy dust
not have them plunk, heavy, like nickels into the sea
the cremains of our marriage shift grotesquely inside me
good and bad memories mixed in different-sized pieces
sometimes when I can’t sleep I think
irrationally, with my whole body
You’re almost forty now, you can’t be smoking
even if I’ve smoked myself that day
in my absence, I still want to protect you
XVI.
the best thing about the desert is there’s almost always a train
going by
shipping freight cars stacked like colored blocks to the base
of the sky
I wish the gap between those boxcars was my birthplace
I understand the risk of losing legs to hop a train
and that horn, who doesn’t want to fuck to that sad shit?
I drove for a long time beside a boxcar with doors open
on both sides
a moving window
I stared through the window to the rest of the far-off desert
I wanted to stick my enormous hand through that gap
and touch the other side
to throw the revolver through, then the fistful of bullets
the gold bullets would scatter like sparks
like the beauty of driving behind a tow truck at night
dragging nothing
the chain hanging off the bumper, all those sparks
flying up
I could hide my most treasured things on the other side of
that moving window
my most treasured things aren’t mine yet
Rorschach’s taxidermied ears, neatly wrapped in paper
XVII.
despite my failed knee surgery
it’s when I’m falling asleep that I feel you gone completely
like someone’s removed a bone from my leg
and the flesh has collapsed around its absence
XIII.
a few days after we broke up, I went to an old friend’s house
the only thing I could do was weed her tomato garden
I pulled and pulled until the back of my neck was
bright red
she lived near a train track
the horn kept wrapping itself around the bay
after we were done she put the sprinkler on
and went inside to cook dinner
I stayed outside
a hummingbird came and sat on the wire tomato cage
at first it flew over to the water hovering in the air
dipping its long beak into the stream, then coming
back out
XIX.
Become nothing,
my friend says every time I start to cry
I don’t understand
Don’t become the thing that tries
to overthrow the grief
she draws me a map to the suspension bridge
a few-mile walk to the scenic view
the whole time I walk, I try to become nothing
the wind pushes hard into my face as I cross the bridge
boats with boarded-up windows fill the bay
a new pier is built next to the old one
a broken boardwalk bows gracefully into the sea
the planks lead right into the bottom of the water
XX.
towns can get abandoned just like children
the town built next to the prison shut down
now there’s no one left to buy a hamburger
everything is exhausted
the cactuses and the closed-up gas station
hover in the dark in their deception
weeds grow at the feet of the gas pumps
trash bags caught in cactus patches and barbed wire
what goes up must come down
down with the prison that took all the money to build
push the lever, let it fall
XXI.
in our beginning, we were writers from San Francisco
driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains
lost and speeding, late to our show in a rickety van
still, we pulled off the road to roll down a hill into a meadow
all twelve of us lying at the bottom giddy and dizzy
you came toward me out of the laughter
one hand behind your back holding a bunch of wild flowers
I’d seen you pick them and more than anything
hoped they were for me
XXII.
I hate that everything dies, marriages and dogs and mothers
each death its own snapshot, sweaty in my hand
it’s astonishing how long the body can remember grief
I turn over in the night and there it is
pushing hard against my rib cage like a doorframe
stretching its agitated shoulders
a galaxy of grief swirls inside me
I’ve become the cavern I want to visit
each loss begins as a single drop of water
struggling to roll off the ivory edge of a rib
until it begins to harden
XXIII.
on a dirt road that runs beside the paved one
an ambulance winds through the mountain to
the power plant
no services forty miles
a Border Patrol truck hidden behind a bend
waiting in case someone manages to survive
crawling through the desert in hundred-degree heat
in Texas every mile I pass a sign that says drive friendly
an important reminder in a state that allows drivers
to carry firearms and open containers of alcohol
for twenty miles I get stuck behind a truck trailing
a prefab home
I stare at the back door of the house imagining sullen
teenagers smoking on the steps
the problem with burying things is
even if it takes millions of years
the buried thing always finds a way to emerge
XXIV.
what if I don’t even know the beginnings of forgiveness
it’s elusive like a word on a billboard in a foreign country
the same word next to a picture of a flat tire,
a gear, or two crudely painted ovens
I guess at repair
I could repair a tire or an oven or a gear
right now, the only words I understand are
the dust, the barrel of nothing
XXV.
it’s Rorschach’s birthday
we wear birthday hats and I sing to her
in the motel room we eat pizza and watch TV
someone told me Dalmatians are the only dogs that smile
Rorschach was born with a jet-black patch over her eye
as she got older the white hairs slowly overtook the patch
now the patch is almost white
the tide line moving farther up the shore
tomorrow we’ll start our journey home
wherever home is now
Rorschach walks in a few small circles on the bed
then finally settles down, her body alongside me
I close my eyes and concentrate on her head resting on my leg
I want to remember the exact weight of it
Acknowledgments
I’ve been blessed with an exceptional, loving writing community my entire career. Many friendships and fellow writers have sustained me during the writing of this book. Thank you to all of them. In addition, thank you to the San Francisco Foundation and the RADAR Lab for supporting early drafts of this manuscript.
Thanks to the following people who directly helped me during this book’s many incarnations: Justin Chin, CAConrad, Marie Howe, Kevin Killian, Robin Coste Lewis, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Ariana Reines, sam sax, Michelle Tea, Karolina Waclawiak, and Matthew Zapruder.
Justin Chin, rest in peace. You are so missed.
Deep thanks to my agent, Kristyn Keene at ICM.
Thank you, Lauren Rosemary Hook, and everyone at the Feminist Press for your thoughtful support and hard work on this manuscript.
A second thanks to Michelle Tea, for championing all my books into print. I am forever indebted to you for over twenty-five years of literary friendship.
Lastly, to my better half, Beth Pickens, I love you so much. I’m sorry you have to live with an insane writer. Thank you for supporting ALL my artistic endeavors.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Credit: © JEN ROSENSTEIN
ALI LIEBEGOTT is a poet, writer, and artist who has published three previous books: The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, and Cha-Ching! She is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards and a Ferro-Grumley Award. She has written for the Emmy Award–winning TV show Transparent, and currently lives in Los Angeles.
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS
BLACK WAVE
Michelle Tea
It’s 1999—and Michelle’s world is ending.
Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it’s officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird.
While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she’ll have to compromise her artistic process if she’s going to properly ride out doomsday.
MICHELLE TEA is the author of numerous books, including Rent Girl, Valencia, and How to Grow Up. She is the creator of the Sister Spit all-girl open mic and 1997-1999 national tour. In 2003, Michelle founded RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees queer-centric projects.
WE WERE WITCHES
Ariel Gore
Cashing into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, the phallocratic story of “overcoming” permeates every subject. Creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag’s pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker.
Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother. She’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming odd women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles t
o graduate—often the triumphant climax of a dramatic narrative—the question lingers uncomfortably. If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt: What is the true narrative shape of your experience?