J Clark Hubbard

Connie Clarko Finds Dark Humor at Latin Camp

My sister looks like Maggie Gylenhaal, ironic as I’ve felt like the third Gylenhaal—Presbyterian,

doughy, born in Middlesex VA, & lacking the fuckable bone structure—since the second grade.

Lately, I’ve been sleepwalking onto golf courses, sleepvandalising the school’s water main w/ an axe,

& sleepjerkingoff in front of my hypnotherapist. The principal blames Graham Greene & atheism

but I think it’s because I’ve been seeing tubes of fluid light & six-foot-tall men in rabbit costumes

which could probably be explained by the fact that I stopped taking my meds a couple weeks back.

The best part of Latin-in-a-week was eating w/ our backs against a tree in the school’s playground, coiled concussion-causing rocking horses wheezing in the slight breeze                I don’t remember

the punchline or even the setup—I’ve been a freshman twice since that summer of high school—just June heat at high noon, & friends laughing till they cried. Alright, friend. I had other friends. I mean,

I would get them very shortly. & we’d stay friends forever,  or at least until the breakup college freshman year. For now, Jon & I  are friends & he laughs & I hold a glow between my spine & gut that feels like

what I imagine to be the afterglow     of an orgasm                  The joke was dark, something like: That Patrick-Swayze-lookin-self-help-guru sure looks like he fucks kids                  wouldn’t it be funny

if I burned his house to the ground? or Wouldn’t it be ironic if my girlfriend who transferred to escape

her stepdad’s violence was decimated in a freak car accident after a halloween costume party? Or

I wanna fuck my older sister but she didn’t even invite me to her halloween costume party. Ha, joke.

Whatever the punchline was, I found myself during lunch break at Latin-in-a-Week. Frank says

that those of us who have lost something (e.g. a left eye) find ways to compensate or die. Frank says

we crave the darkness—car accidents after halloween costume parties, blowing bottles apart w/ a gun

I found in dad’s closet, killing friends w/ the same gun after a halloween costume party. Is Frank

a daylight hallucination brought on by unmedicated paranoid schizophrenia or am I a time traveler

w/ a newfound sense of humor, waiting for a jet engine to fall through my ceiling? I spent 28 days,

6 hours, 42 minutes, & 12 seconds writing this poem. When my prof asks what it means, I’ll laugh

& say—Every Living Creature on this Earth Dies Alone. I am laughing alone

in my bedroom & asking myself—why am I wearing this stupid man-suit?

Mother! Grows a Mouth

after Aronofsky

Mother! backed into a corner by just-weaned babies, justifying her own murder—as I revolve so they must revolt. She waited for one, any of the many revolutions to bring equilibrium. The shadow image of Ali dodging Dokes, inhaling body blows, coughing up strange bloods & unknown biles. The babies tore Mother from pole to pole, left her down for the count as those w/ cocket ships penised away from the poor towards new worlds to fuck over & up before fucking off—rinse, repeat.

Mother’s second wind arrived the spring after Cleveland w/ the Dentification of the Fungi. Death caps secreting enamel, mycelia clustering into porous pincers anchoring new incisors deep in southern mud, pulsing earthen gums shrieking on contact w/ foreign contaminants— wannabe colonizers.

On Fox Mulder’s birthday, Mother reminded the babies that they knew almost nothing of the great waters as she obliterated nation-states & nautical resorts, eclipsed the Western hemisphere w/ a godtongue made of swarming mud—tasting the sky for the first time since mollusks first saw.