Orange Suitcase Read Online Free Page A

and buzzed. We were asleep when the sun came up.

“Something About Rings”
    A couple sits at a table across
    the room. I peer over my book to watch
    their quiet fight. They rest silent and
    full of hard gestures—steel hands and eyes.
    â€œYou’re a bastard,” says the tattooed arm.
    â€œFuck yourself,” say jeweled fingers, clinking teacups.
    Quiet fights are quite ordinary. Split
    a relationship to see its odd rings.
    I settle the novel and turn to watch.
    They are fine, they are in the midst of love,
    when sucking tells less than a touch,
    when indifference tells more than a fuck.

“Something About Someone Else’s Poem”
    A friend emailed me a poem out of the blue from the Caspian Sea. I read it late last night after a five-hour bus ride. L- was asleep in her clothes on top of the duvet. I took a shower and then it was 2am; she was still sleeping. I sat wide awake and naked at the kitchen counter reading my email on the laptop and read the line: I am too ashamed to be unproductive. I toweled at my face and put on my glasses. A few lines later: I am the right man for the job. I rose to hang up the towel. I peed. I flushed. I put on some underwear and covered L- with a blanket. I went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I took out a beer and sat back down to write something. I stayed sitting. I need to get something done before I sleep, I typed. Then deleted it. Then retyped, then redeleted. I pondered the meaning of that word: redeleted. I typed the word: redeleted. I deleted. I revised. I am the right man for this job.

“Something About Moby Dick”
    S omebody said this:
    Â Â Â Â Â It could have been an amazing novella if he’d cut all the whale-science shit.
    Somebody replied:
    Â Â Â Â Â You mean cetology.

“Something About Marriage, Pt 2”
    S ometimes a person might ask, “How did you two meet?” And if you answer, “We met in Bible Study ten years ago,” the asker will think certain things. And maybe those won’t necessarily be things you want the asker to think about you, but at the same time they may be true things, true parts of a past you cherish. So when I got back to New York after a trip to Seattle and a student asked me, “Who’s wedding were you at?” and I said, “A friend from high school,” I didn’t go on and tell her that I knew the groom from Bible Study and Student Leadership conferences. Instead, I repeated a story a married actor-friend told me during the reception.
    The actor and I had been sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, drinking our way through a bucket of expensive Northwest stouts and smoking thick cigars gifted by the father-of-the-bride. It was windy and the wafting cigar smoke smelled of salt. The mountains in the distance were beautiful with orange fire behind them. Puget Sound looked like a great puddle of oil. “Let me tell you something about my wife,” the actor-friend started. “Or rather let me tell you why I love my wife.” He swallowed at the correction. “Last weekend we were at the mall getting a gift and we started talking about our own wedding, how that guy had fallen in the pool with his tux on and how her sister was so drunk she jumped in to rescue him still wearing her bridesmaid dress. The sun was shining, birds were chirping…We were laughing and I was a little distracted when I went to unlock the car, but then the key wouldn’t work, and I realized I’d gone to the wrong car; there was another the same color two spots away. So I looked back at my wife, who knew I was trying to unlock the wrong car, and she starts shaking her head and says, ‘Wow, I’m married to a fucking retard.’ And then she smiles, you know, joking, but then she goes completely stoned face and says, ‘I don’t think I can stay married to a retard—our children might be retarded.’ So now we’re,