Happy New Year: Tiny Blues & A Short Short by William Sanders

On behalf of everyone at The Poor House, we'd like to wish you a Happy New Year. We hope that you are all enjoying yourself, and well.

In light of the new year, we're sharing with you two pieces here. One is by our head bastard, Benjamin Font; the other is by an unknown degenerate who did not feel like coming up with a title--and we were too lazy to give him one.


Tiny Blues
by Benjamin Font

It came upon me like everything does--by accident, fate, divine intervention, no reason at all. Absurd and strong, vague, in the middle of the night--the real middle...themiddleofthebrain...a dark spot in the center not at all like black ink leaking from a tiny source across the surface of a white page--but some would want to put it that way, wrongly, just because; or maybe blue, like the color of vein-through-skin: of the body next to mine, asleep; of the body in mine, awake.
A space heater provides warmth to exaclty four square feet of space--the rest is freezing. And a voice, in the middle of the night, from outside the brain going in: "You fucking bastard." Then singing: "Where are you now, my little darling? If only I could see you next Tuesday, in the light...."
A loud, hoarse sound in the night, those blues. I look out the window though I should be asleep, and it is coming from nowhere, hovering in the cold air--coming from a man so small he cannot be seen. Again: "You fucking bastard."
Those are his tiny blue. And he is right: I am a fucking bastard. I'm not drunk, but maybe I should be, I'd like to be. The body next to mine, still asleep--good. I am no one to you right now, so small you cannot see me. Easier to leave. I am gone...everything's disgusting...the grind...the goddamn This...and That--
The rejection from earlier: "Transparent, straightforward."
What that girl said on the train: "Smash it like a boken wine bottle and get out."
Get out of everything and away from everyone--including yourself, like how read the tape on the sidewalk: "The ego is a slippery slope." An idiotic gesture, two bum kids kneeling down on the sidewalk to write that, then kneeling down on the sidewalk and expecting alms, my cigarettes, my two dollars, my anything.
The rejection, further: "Too coherent."
Even in a fever that has crept up on me from nowhere, from Spain, old, through the air--beginning then in the lungs, then the bloodstream, then the brain. Soul-fever: a sickness of the kind that everyone gets when they remember that they are no one. And the are is still holding those imaginary snowjewels, those words like those that come from the mouths of pretty but neglected wives across America and beyond: "You fucking bastard. Just hanging there in the frozen pipes--something or nothing, which is it....
A block of ice that'll that; a yellow snow sculpture. A nondescript. An abomination.
I spoke with a Nihilist at a cocktail party. I remember thinking that the whiskey-sidecars were sweet, and that the food was good; that I should've worn a tie; that my brother had told me he contemplated the possibility of Singer being a womanizer, of sorts--a quiet, reserved one if there was such a thing. Someone who appreciated the beauty of women, but did not wish to exploit it. My brother is a good man. Singer was a good man, and still is; his stories are good. And I am either nothing or a fucking bastard--that's all there is to it.

&

Untitled
by William Sanders


After twelve years living on the street, slowly softening his brain and straining his vocal chords, a local non-profit organization finally assisted Lee "Cowboy" Saunders in obtain a small apartment for himself.
On Cowboy's first night in his warm apartment, he lay down on the bed--his first real bed in twelve years--shocked, disoriented, and attempted to come to terms with his new arrangements. His cell phone was plugged into the wall. He looked at it and its digital clock read 2.15am, give or take. He thought the bed was too soft. The room was too warm, and dry.
At 2.30am, or so read the cell phone-clock, Cowboy rose from his bed, went downstairs, and walked out into the street. It was raining. Cowboy stood there on the sidewalk, in the rain. He was crying. He was thinking, "What's wrong with my brain that I can't just be comfortable in that nice little apartment they set me up with--what's wrong with me that I'd rather stand out here in the rain?"
The following morning, recounting this story with a hoarse voice to anyone that would listen, Cowboy cried again. Several times he repeated the story, asking what was wrong with him, and he cried.



Happy New Year, again. And be safe.
With love,
The Poor House