Anis Mojgani - In the Pockets of Small Gods

In the Pockets of Small Gods Anis Mojgani Write Bloody Publishing Americas Independent Press Los Angeles, CA Copyright Write Bloody Publishing, 2018. No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews. Mojgani, Anis 1st edition. ISBN: 978-1938912-84-9 Cover Design by Anis Mojgani Interior Layout by Madison Mae Parker Proofread by Florence Davies Edited by Hanif Abdurraqib & Kaveh Akbar Author Photo by Ryan Longnecker Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com Printed in California, USA Write Bloody Publishing Los Angeles, CA Support Independent Presses writebloody.com To contact the author, send an email to writebloody@gmail.com MADE IN THE USA JMP August 22, 1977-August 22, 2006 In the Pockets of Small Gods I can see it like it was a film with the January sun of Texas smiling down on my skin and Burnet Road having just finished eating tacos alone and just six blocks from the house we had moved into together back in October three years beforethe little shitty one that was dark but where the light in the bedroom at the back would enter in so lovingly and where I had set the kitchen on fire just before Christmas , where we first brought Trudy home, and where we would take her for walks together at dawn, at dusk, and would often stroll down the street to the same taco spot I was just now leaving when, after six months of wishing I were dead, and only fifteen miles from Lake Travis where Jeff chose to drown now nine years past, from out of my dark steeping heart the language changed, instead I want to kill myself bubbled up to my damp brain for the first time, as I crossed the street and sipped through my straw cold black cherry soda and unlocked the car doorwindshield gleaming the same way Im sure the lake had when he left, with August dancing its light across the top of the water like a blade traveling slowly in the dream or a quiet ghost leaving its sheet and I lingered with the door open before the click of the closing, on my arm the winters sun so warm // I want to sleep the sleep of the apples -Frederico Garcia Lorca // When youre in your coffin, clanging down the river with all the other coffins in the water of the next world, all of them bumping and jostling against one another, the contents thrown about like riding in a small plane, youll peek your head up to see what the racket is. Youll see the other coffins.

Looking around youll see nothing but coffins and river and two banks distantly flanking the river, and the biggest tallest dark stretching above. So dark it feels like this place, big as it is, must be inside of some sort of bigger something. There are still stars though. Wherever this river is you can still see the stars. While looking around youll see that there are other heads peeking out of their coffins. You yell across the dark, asking: you know where we are? And someone will answer back: Nope, you? Nope you say back.

You ask somebody else: What about you? Nope. I wonder where this is. And someone else will say: I dont know. Its big. Yeah. Yeah. Big. Its vast. Its vast.

And depending on what part of the river youre in, someone else may say: Yeah. Vast like the backside of Sean Brown. And even though no one knows who Sean Brown is, everyone will laugh. The chuckles will subside until a quiet sets in over the laughter, a quiet like you sat in somebody elses church. Like its strange and it aint for you or you dont get it but maybe you can see that somebody does and that its for them or for some peoplepeople who like you are just trying to house some sense of the world. So you lean into that understanding with respect.

If not for the outcome at least for that desire to make a place special for finding the understanding. And thats where the quiet comes from. Someone will then ask someone else: Where you from? And they will say: Texas. What about you? Boston! Boston? Yeah, Boston. I know someone from Boston. Kate Leigh.

You know her? No. What about Stephen Ellis? Nah. Im actually in Somerville. Somerville? Yeah Somerville. And someone else will then yell out: Somerville? I know someone in Somerville! Who? Nick Kathkart! Know him? Yeah! I do actually! I do know him! Yeah? Yeah! Oh man, small world. Yeah, Nickys a great guy! He is, he is.

I hadnt seen him in five, ten years, and when I did he had a first edition of an e.e. cummings book to give to me. Great guy. And the first person wont know who e.e. cummings is but will still agree that Nicky is a great guy. And then it will get quiet again.

Until someone else asks: Where are we again? And no one will answer. A few people shrug. All of you will look into the stars that are collecting in the distance of the above. Youll try to think of someone you might know that lives in Somerville or Texas or Florida or France, just to have something to talk about with a person you never met before just right now, just to share something in the dark quiet, even though all of you are already sharing the river and the sound of the current bumping all of you into one another and youll wonder where the water is taking you and how long it will be before it brings you there and what there will be like, if itll be like here on the river with all of us sitting in our boxes trying to split the dark by sharing our voice with others, if itll be like how it was in the world before this one.

I do not remember if it was August like his coming and his going but it must have been as July was when he was found I remember spending all morning wondering if I needed to wear dress shoes or if I could wear my cream colored converse I remember I sat near the back in a pew by myself I do not remember if there was a coffin. If there was, there would have been nothing inside of it.

I remember a picture of his face in a frame sitting on top of something I remember his precious mother, never seeing her cry, how happy and grateful she was to have me there. I remember dandelions in the grass when we stood outside afterwards, when she and his father were shaking everyones hands, how beautiful the two of them looked smiling inside the sun I remember it was a beautiful day one of those perfect southern ones New Orleans can get I remember thinking I had bet on the wrong horse remember wanting to break his face open I remember all this unnamed and nameless this that was in me All this curdling blood and anger and want And if I could tell my then self something now I would tell him that the wolves in the woods sometimes make halos to better hold us and sometimes the wolf makes the halos that we might be better held I would say Anisit is very possible for a person to be loved and yet still feel so alone that they just have to leave O Jeff what rattled inside the flower your chest held so tightly that you had to go live once again back with the animals o closeness that was you You wore sandals and emerald velvet to our prom and so at the back of the church I sat with my dirty chucks on their soles fresh with the morning soil and dew I remember it was summer I think I was wearing long dark sleeves When I left the house to go I couldnt feel any of the sunlight that the day dared to try and touch me with