The Marijuana Chronicles (14 page)

She seemed surprised at my generosity.

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“What are you talking about? I’m always nice to you. I’m giving you shelter, food, clothes, and pot. What else do you want, a fucking kidney?”

“Kidney?”
Birdie tilted her head.

Sophia and Annabelle made their way into the kitchen and started hovering. I waited till they’d gotten some coffee down then told them about Doon’s plans for them.

“Pennsylvania?” Annabelle said, wrinkling her nose. “I was born there. I have no wish to return. Not even ninety-five years later.”

“Does he think we’re like Frankenstein or something? How horrible of him,” Birdie said.

“Would we make money?” Sophia asked.

“It’s possible.”

“Would we go on TV?” Sophia pointed at the television set.

“Maybe,” I shrugged.

“Really?” Sophia’s eyes widened.

“Sophia, we do not wish to be put on display like zoo animals,” Birdie said.

“We don’t?” Sophia squinted.

“We don’t,” Annabelle said.

“Where can we go?” Birdie asked.

“Go?” I said.

“I don’t want to be experimented on. If we stay here, they will come for us.”

Birdie was right. But where could they go? They’d only been living in the twenty-first century for forty-eight hours. I couldn’t very well send them to, say, Maine, or New Jersey, and expect them to blend in, never mind survive.

“What do you know about Wyoming?” I asked.

“Like your wallet?” Sophia pointed at my weed-stash wallet open on the coffee table.

“Like the state out west,” I said.

“Cowboys?” Annabelle asked.

“Sort of,” I said. “I think nowadays the cowboys drive pickup trucks and wear helmets. The West isn’t that wild anymore, but nothing really is.”

All three looked at me blankly.

“Well?” I said.

“What would we do when we got there? We have no money, no nothing,” said Birdie.

“I’d get some odd jobs like I have here. And you would too.”

They looked at one another. Then they looked at me again.

“Okay,” Sophia shrugged. “I guess. But if it’s horrible, then I want to go be a zoo animal and be on TV.”

“How do we get there?” Annabelle asked, glancing all around, like maybe the twenty-first century had teleporting devices that she hadn’t noticed yet.

“We’ll drive,” I said. “My car fits four. And a dog.”

“When do we leave?” Annabelle asked.

“As soon as we pack up a few things,” I said.

I had nothing I valued in the apartment. As for my jobs, the developmentally disabled adults wouldn’t remember me for very long, and though I would miss seeing Henry, the big mastiff at the shelter, finally find a permanent home, it was about the only thing I’d regret.

What’s more, I’d have company.

I’d always figured I’d eventually rescue more pit bulls or try living with a man for more than three weeks. Now, instead, I had zombies.

At least they had normal-sized heads.

B
OB
H
OLMAN
is a poet, professor, and proprietor of Bowery Poetry Club. His new book, his sixteenth (if you count CDs and videos, which he does),
Sing This One Back to Me
, is from Coffee House Press. His series on poetry and endangered languages,
On the Road
, is shown on LinkTV. org, and his new special,
Language Matters
, will premiere on PBS. He is also working on a multimedia performance called
The Trip
. Holman lives on the Bowery in New York City.

pasta mon

by bob holman

Pasta Mon cookin in a limousine

Windows rolled up—poem written in the steam

Poem starts to change—to a recipe?

I’m cookin up a story! You still hungry?

Deep in the blue sea deep in the memory

Connected, perfected—totally poetry

Yuppie got a puppy & the baby got a Pamper

Doin the 500 in a Winnebago camper

Why?

Why?

Why Pasta Mon cry?

Back in the history I shot the deputy

For not makin sauce sufficiently garlicky

Everyone entangled in a single ecstasy

A single strand of Pasta Mon’s linguini

This is the wild life! Carbohydrates? Out of sight!

“Pasta Mon Fashions” give eyesight insight

See the world through spaghetti headlights

Ravioli figleaf? Pasta Paradise!

Why?

Why?

Fresh onions is why

So much pasta Mon cannot give it away

What’s the matter with a platter of pasta pâté?

Keep the homefries burnin—a sorbet gourmet

You too can have your own authentic Pasta Mon beret

Pasta Mon starrin on his own tv show

Yesterday’s menu’s already obsolete-o

Today, I’ll show you how to roll a pasta-filled burrito!

W/ no
habichuela
on the tuxedo

It might boil over—the pot is bubblin

It might boil over your mind that’s troublin

It might boil over—dynamite!

Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?

It happened to me while readin
Weekly Reader

The future was comin—it would be beater

Beater. Deffer. Bigger forever.

Sun on the horizon—it was always risin

The Future is here—the Past is a goner

All stuffed in a pasta shell of once upon a

Time when the rhyme would be flora and fauna

A cheese syntheses: Utopian lasagna

A nickel for a can & a nickel for a bottle

A trickle-down sound from the nickel that bought you

America the Beautiful in quarantine

A cardboard mattress and a cardboard dream

Barbecue trash cans linin the Hudson

Dogs are howlin as you throw the spuds on

Pasta Mon’s recipes gettin kinda smelly

Rat ratatouille & vermin vermicelli

It might boil over the pot is bubblin

It might boil over it’s your mind that’s troublin

It might boil over—dynamite!

Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?

On the good ship
Pasta Mon

Where the last macaroni is stuck to the pan

& the ship is sinkin

& the food is stinkin

& you just keep drinkin

O, oaweoh …

And remember!

“Bud” spelled backward,

… is “Dub”!

PaRT III

ReCReaTIOn & eDuCATIOn

C
HERYL
L
U
-L
IEN
T
AN
is the New York–based author of
A Tiger in the Kitchen
. She was a staff writer at the
Wall Street Journal, InStyle
, and the
Baltimore Sun;
her work has also appeared in the
New York Times
, among other publications. The Singapore native has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is working on her second book, a novel, and is the editor of
Singapore Noir
, a fiction anthology that Akashic Books will publish in 2014.

ganja ghosts

by cheryl lu-lien tan

T
he lousy bugger was taking so long to get ready that Jackson’s balls really started to itch.

The tropical heat was so stifling, the scratchy polyester covering of the settee was so painfully glued to the bottom of his sweaty thighs, that Jackson wondered why he had bothered to come back to Singapore during the summer. He desperately wanted to scratch himself but he could hear Seng’s mother shuffling about somewhere nearby. In the industrial-strength fluorescent light of Auntie’s small living room, there was no hiding anything. After years of not seeing Seng or his mum—better to behave tonight.

“Aiyoh
, my god …” Jackson mumbled, glancing at Richard, who was next to him on the sofa, tapping away on his phone, looking as fresh and talcum-powdered as he had an hour ago when they arrived at Seng’s. Fucking irritating, Jackson thought. After just a few years away in the States, his body had forgotten how sweltering Singapore was when it wasn’t monsoon season.

“Eh,” Jackson said to Richard, who nodded, not taking his eyes off his phone, “what are we doing tonight?”

“Fucker,” Richard responded, looking up and poking his third finger in Jackson’s direction. “You don’t remember, ah? Singapore, Wednesday night—nothing to do,
lah!
”

Seng’s door opened suddenly, sending a blast of ice-cold air into the living room.
Bugger couldn’t even share his bloody air-con
, Jackson thought. Seng, oblivious as usual, slowly made his way around the room, picking up his platinum TAG Heuer from the dining table and slipping it on his wrist, taking his keys off the hook next to the altar, then stopping to light a joss stick, bowing three times to his dad’s grim face in a framed black-and-white photo before jabbing the incense in an ash-brimmed rice bowl.

“Eh—girls, stop complaining. Tonight is different,
lah
,” Seng said to his friends, tapping his hand on his chest pocket, stopping when his fingers found the shape of his lighter. “Ma,” he shouted toward the kitchen as he reached into his back pocket for his Marlboro Menthol Lights, “we’re making a move!” Sliding a cigarette between his lips so he could fire up the moment they left, he raised two fingers, gestured toward the narrow, chipped door, and started walking.

After all these years, the bugger still had the same
kwai lan
air he had even when he was fifteen. Whenever they walked into any room, whether it was a lecture hall or the front VIP section at Pump Room, Seng always swaggered ahead of the two of them, chest puffed out, chin slightly up, as he surveyed the place, watching people as they watched him, wondering who the fuck he was. Not that the three of them were a gang—but with Seng looking so
kwai lan
, Jackson was always on guard. If other guys thought they were some sort of gang or just trying to be fuckers, who knows where a staring contest could lead even in the most
stylo
of clubs.