portion of the artwork for Parker Tettleton's fiction

Fifteen Micros
Parker Tettleton

We’re Still in Tennessee
We come back, it’s not my birthday. We’re not virgins or in as much love. The arcade’s still here, the river rocks are as sharp & as cold as I remember. Maybe I shouldn’t drink beer on the deck I helped your father paint. We were single, unsexed then. I left Christmas a day early to be with you.


Broad Shoulders
Whatever I say I mean You are my pernicious lullaby. My love has a hitchhiker’s thumb. My favorite singer is a black Camaro with the same first name as Elvis’s wife. My favorite song doesn’t mention speeding tickets. Every time I remember You don’t know just how much I miss you.


I’m Not Working Out
Or in bed with my version of a girl that goes by my mother’s middle name. Everything after is the price of the price of. I’d lick your neck & learn a new language. You’re so honest neither of us knows what it means. I circle How much of me won’t you forget?


Or Anyone Else Thinks (It Is)
I eat something of yours & promise It wasn’t sexual. I’m more omnivore recently & not sure this shirt is the color you think it is. A pop in the microwave is never good unless you’re remembering childhood or simply there. I want to grocery shop, have two hundred dollars that aren’t mine, don’t steal (usually), & smell like I’ve made friends with the glass behind a camel.


Periodical
Let’s be honest about touching each other: it never works. We make sandwiches out of newspaper. You’ve been where you’re going without me. It means I oven. Whole grain doesn’t burn like a bitch.


Runner
I’m going to drink out of a cup & a can, try not to touch my nose. Touch my nose. I’ve been What about you? Don’t answer if you’re not sharing a leg. I’m not awful I’m honest. There’s a way to get Here like Before is an ant you didn’t quite finish with your shoe.


The Perils of : Lunch
I want the sandwich you make when neither of us are having sex. I’m always never. Please invent a meaning & email to ghostoflectricity@yahoo.com. I’m this because I’m still drunk, not hung over, & I really want a fucking. Sandwich, too.


Part
I need a Ruth because I’m less. It’s May & the last five: I was arrested, nothing I remember, in a relationship, arrested, out of a relationship. The theme is I’ve been here. It’s honest the first time you step onto a stage.


Study
I’m too honest to say what I think, my liver’s curling, just opened a vent. Anything with periods should be true. Honest in if not outside. If every something was one long sentence what would get left out? I didn’t wait for You to answer when you were here! Back to back to.


Tonight
I have a hard-on for the ghosts of ugly women. At least I think so when I pretend they’re with me in the bathroom on the toilet sucking & sitting, eyes rolled back. I’ve written a story called Classic. It wasn’t my first. You aren’t either, but you are tonight.


Peanut Butter
I only partially know where you are, even less about before. When someone asks I type Y E S. That might be just for today but it’s as true as I can reach. Listening is the always poem. I end quicker than I begin.


I’m Doing What You Are
Only some things mean I will never speak to you again. I’m less concerned about the speaking & more about the seeing. Maybe I think of me but Who Cares? There is no sentence fairy. I’m not in bed, working out, or eating. You’re guessing like there’s anything else.


Sir Curl
I don’t love small talk but I’ll knock on your door. I’m full of this thing called—. My left lower cheek is warming rubbers. I bet you know how to end where you are.


Mean Always
Touching my hair doesn’t guarantee a foldout. I’m true as maybe. Where did you buy what you do? I don’t click my greens, answer news in the bathroom.


Sheets
We could’ve had beers but never made it past the opposite mouth. Knowing the difference might’ve been a part, or all, or nothing. I want you I say years, mirrors later, at myself. We hear when we’re asleep.




Parker Tettleton’s Comments

I’ve been working on pieces like these for almost two years now. I was initially (& continue to be) inspired by the work of Charles Simic & Kim Chinquee. These pieces were composed in the spontaneous, frenetic fashion that glues together the manuscript to which they belong.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 33 | Summer 2011