Cameron Vital, the protagonist of the novel Soft Orbit
He badly wants to be the protagonist of the graphic novel Soft Orbit
Joe Worthen's art blog
Twin Prime
Palmetto State, a chapbook I just finished for my bookbuilding class. It mostly a purge of old SC stories. Most are really short, varied POV with dreamlike elements. The following story “White Wine” starts the show.
cover photo by Luis Hernandez via flickr creative commons
White Wine
White Wine
Joe Worthen
He’ll sell it to me underage, when I come in late, when I’m out that way down Poinsett. I stand over the gum and erection pills and lighters and he turns down the radio and comes out from behind the lottery tickets. I don’t lead him on, I make it clear what I want and I leave it up to him to provide. I get white wine in a carton and a pack of filters. I say: “Goodbye Martin, goodbye.” I drink it behind Winn Dixie, on the concrete loading dock. There’s a field out there, between the Winn Dixie and the high school. It used to be woods but they got the idea that they’d clear those and build something in there. So they cleared em out, down to dirt, but they must have got distracted by something because they never built shit. And now there’s tall weeds and skinny trees coming back, spider webs and moss, crickets and cicadas. So I think I might go walk through it, out to the high school and see what that’s like at night with wine in my stomach. I walk through the brush, the pokeweed and the foxtail, trailing cigarette vapor. Burs scrape my legs and my flip-flops get slick with dew. When I make it to the school, I sit against a brick wall and look across the field at the Winn Dixie. I flip a tick off my calf, he hadn’t got a chance to bite onto me yet; he was still looking for a good spot. I take the last warm sip from the carton and swish that tart wine between my teeth and around my tongue. I kick off my flip flops and slide my slimy heels against the cement. I unbutton my shorts and rub myself with two fingers. I come once after ten minutes, only after I close my eyes and really try. Then I start getting the feeling that I need to hide something so I put my last six dollars in the empty Marlboro pack and bury it at the edge of the field in soft soil like a daffodil bulb, like something that grows.
I’m working on a new novel about a group of artists, programmers and drug addicts who live and work in this house. The working title is Mezacht, which is the name of their text based online game (their only profitable product) and their development company.
Poem 7/8/2011
happened real fast
built on stilts over virgin inlets, tribes of wrappers, packages, cut boxes broken down into flat planes over warm human asphalt
Spent it on rides, stayed up late, came eight times total to your crude vibrations, rigged my own touch to the fabrics in your palate, loose and calm like deflated clouds of cigarette smoke
We hid it behind explanations, coarse like the clay court waltz of our drifting caste (who learned the bird calls, who hung out on the lazy river with the cell out). And I snapped her bra like a tragic hero might, over artichoke dip and the crunching hallelujahs of praise and worship karaoke
Introduced it like a PM option, whatever bruised you like an apple, Vatican gold turned brown, ill and conscious of tomorrow’s promises
We played it close. We disguised our arguments as limited edition fast food toys and collected them, wound them up and watched them shake and fret and scream at the end of a short meal
Came to terms with 99%, pursued an ambitious high before my 9 o clock shift. Tried to cut a shade of love into the way I ignored your calls and I felt the same warmth from your own dial tones, and when they came, from your clean words, as varied and beautiful as the days of summer
David White and myself are in the long and painful process of publishing a short series of 5 children’s books about a little boy and his Magic Bathtub. These are the covers for the first two (artwork: Joe, layout: David)
In the Camps of Vargus album artwork done by Kate Worthen (drawing/coloring) and myself (layout). The first track is below.
