KEITH NILES

summer of devastation summer of love

i had left her house like two-ish this afternoon and
we’d had sex again, by nature a good thing, but it
was odd, full of ill portents and then we’d slept too
much, anyway i walked out with a very kind
bulging paper grocery sack full of melons and salad
and couscous and clothes and it was another
inhumanly hot day in l.a. but it started! my fuck of a
car started, so i hightailed home while i had the
chance, determined not to stop cuz i knew it
wouldn’t start the next time, but not a mile from my
home i was lured in by carne asada tacos. and
languored there with the sports page for a good 45
minutes, out of the swelter. i rose, donned my
shades, crossed sunset, opened it up, dissipated the
heat, tried it. nothing. the mercurial bitch. the
mercurial bitch wouldn’t start. for hours. flipping
the hood and tweaking shit and turning the key and
nothing ad nauseum. hours. it was just an unholy
hot fuck of a day, 96 degrees and fuck it! it was the
worst such episode in a now too-long series. since
i’d been seeing her and since suddenly we had
become inflamed again things had started falling
apart, all my devices were malfunctioning one by
one. and all i could think about were those poor
fucking melons suffering, dying inside the
tupperware in the paper bag in the back seat.
anyway fuck i finally got on the payphone and
called triple a and had to renew my shit and they
dispatched a truck and i was more embarrassed than
anything and as i crossed the street from the
payphone i was crazy about her again, but i knew
what was gonna happen, i got in my car and of
course the bitch started right up, you just knew it
would. all right, shit. back to the base with what’s
left of your soul! and as i parked and opened my
car door and grabbed the paper sack and dragged
back towards my apartment i realized that the bag
was hemorrhaging, the tupperware had come ajar
and i was trailing chunks of cantaloupe and
crenshaw into the dirt and all over the sidewalk but
fuck it i made it in i made it, it was over, and i
resealed the tupperware threw it all in the fridge
opened a beer and called triple a off and tried to
gather myself.

then i took my last dose of mushrooms and
fomented the design of my book and watched marx
bros. movies and walked all over east hollywood
and came back and drank beers and scraped up
every last dreg of weed remaining in the house and
was happy and scragged across the internet and
created a blog and painted a cover for my book and
finally set in on those melons and i’m here to tell
you i damn near polished them girls off!


keith niles lives in los angeles. his new collection,
kiss the bongwater (knownothing press), is said to
shatter the boundaries between humankind and the cat
world. ottomaton66@hotmail.com.







© 2005 Underground Voices