The Porch Boy's Party

The Monkey Robot will touch the inside of your wrist while standing in your mother's kitchen.

The Monkey Robot will touch the inside of your wrist while listening to the six shout and laugh in your parent's living room. The six sit, not in pairs, but grouped loose, as the unabridged Oxford dictionary waits on the lectern. The tome is open to pernicious, perry and personify.

There are six in your parent's living room, and one waiting on the porch.

The Porch Boy is sullen, and he is shaded at the ankles by box wood.

The Monkey Robot says, There are plans. There are plans that will spin around you.

As the sun sets an amber light to your back, and you say the word: Maybe.

There are six, plus one on the porch who has grown sullen. The Porch Boy studies the corners of the only house on the street that has be touched by a lightning strike. The Porch Boy with fingers to his lips, thinks of the phrase printed in the newspaper 'the was a fire in the walls', and then he comes back inside.

In your mother's kitchen, The Monkey Robot touches you on the neck, as the six plus one, break the lock on your parents liquor cabinet, choosing only the cheap gin.

In your parent's house, The Monkey Robot touches your cheek and one of the six spins a Sinatra album. Frankie begins to croon Blue Skies, and this prompts the two of the six who are eager to dance. Like spring snakes the pair wrap themselves together. The porch boy becomes embarrassed, and turns his attention to the lectern.

The Monkey Robot touches your mouth with a Monkey Robot right hand, and you turn your head to say the word: no. Only to turn back and push your face against the Monkey Robot right hand. You show The Monkey Robot the slow fall of you eyes, when one of the six barks two words as the record ends. Only five laugh.

The one who has come in from the porch moves the dictionary to the word red.

The Monkey Robot say, "Show me where your sister hid her books."

The Monkey Robot can see that you are too old to wear braids.

The Monkey Robot sees the way you drink whiskey and knows you are too old to be wearing braids.

The Monkey Robot touches the space between you shirt and skin, and lingers.

As the sullen The Porch Boy waits for you, in your braids,

with whiskey on your breath

and the dictionary presents the words red and redden and then reddish

as the six laugh,

And The Monkey Robot waits for the next record to turn.

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Disclaimer

I never could finish the MRL story. I didn't want to write about The Man from Senegal. I did want to write that he goes home to have dinner and chokes on a chicken bone. A bone that had been attached to a thigh that was seasoned just right with white pepper and lemon grass. I wanted to write about the directions that his legs jerked in and how that long tall body careened as he lurched out the doorway of his house. I so desired to find the correct words to describe the blue of suffocation that would bloom under his dark skin. I wanted to write about the people who pass him by, as he plucks with such long fingers at the the bone caught in his throat. How they are my own personal heros, looking away to check the time or what it was lodged under their fingernails, as he tumbled to the ground. I wanted to write about the dust that clings to the front and backside of that beautiful shirt of his, as he turns over in the street.

In the end I was not that person and that was not how the story ended.

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