| Thunder Sandwich #17
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 dweeb by jeff filipski |
| An Oak Cliff Tale Possibly the wail of a drunken Banshee or that of a desperate man with a freshly broken heart, not sure, but it was definitely anger loud defiant anger, thunderous. Not just everyday fuck this or fuck that anger, but balls to the wall hating the lord God, vibrating tonsils, punching holes in the dark anger. And so close. Out the window on the street some plaintiff screamer cursing fate or a woman, or his own failings. These vocal bullets could have shattered the window, drawn to the lamplight striking my pregnant wife. (I fear) Or come like chaotic bricks, smashing the world falling defiant to the floor. It could have been me fourteen years ago, spitting into the sky demanding more of life, and love, little realizing that the worst was yet to come. But this voice is foreign possibly Spanish or indiscernibly intoxicated, not that of an existentialist being let down easy, possibly that of a killer, an executioner human in form only. Challenging life. While we that are aging, fragile with responsibility and very small fears, lamplight mannequins, poised reading poetry in bed, simply do not answer. There is no answer. He screams outside the window. He screams on the street corner. He screams down the block. He screams until barely audible then gone. Only one in a series of unknowable passing tragedies, late, on an Oak Cliff Monday while cats roam the streets and wives are asleep. JIMBO Jimbo, a name that conjures images of warm tobacco spit-filled soda cans and back pocket circles worn into ill-fit slide down blue jeans with, a loud slurred cursing voice, and a violent streak, as big as Texas. The last I heard he was a police officer, but in the haunted memory of youth he still invokes the image of a vicious Darwinian redneck archetype that never fades away. Although his bile saliva had graced the back of my head on more than one occasion and I had seen him beat others rather badly especially Chris Cooper, whose flat back crotch face crucifixion had seemed particularly humiliating in it's homo-erotic overtone, I had escaped his wrath. Due mostly, to an absence of both pride and reputation that allowed me the freedom to run like a frightened child (which in fact I was) seven houses down from the corner school bus drop off to the relative safety of my front door. Far from the most athletic kid on the block I could still outrun Jimbo, whose lumbering Neanderthal-ish ape like frame, put him at a disadvantage, at least in speed. Mostly, I remember the aluminum foil that he had inserted in and around the ass of his pet Dachshund, and the discomfort it caused the weenie dog, as it rolled around in the grass while Jimbo slurred a threat to beat the living shit out of any kid that dared to offer aid to HIS dog. Despite vast oceans of both time and miles that separate us now and despite myself, with all that I aspire to, I wish him only ill whenever I think back. That son of a bitch. The worst of everything |
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| ISSN: 1534-4037 |
Edited by Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny
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