Pee On Water
By Rachel B. Glaser

Though alien to the world’s ancient past, young blood runs similar circles.  All those bones are born from four grandparents.  Baby teeth and baby teeth all down the line.  Jackets didn’t used to zip up.  There wasn’t a single door.  The ground sits around us dumb and keeping secrets. 
 
Earth is round and open, whole and beating in its early years.  Middle of the night, the stars in a bright smear against the blackboard.  Sit in the centuries-long lull.  A breath pulled so gradual the breath forgets.  Clouds idly shift their shapes.  Winds run back and forth.  Our planet in the slowest pink floyd intro.  Stubborn ice blocks will not be niced down by the fat sun.  Melted tears run, then freeze.  Tiny cells slide into tiny cells.  The wind learns to whistle. The sun starts setting in a colorful display.  Ice melts into oceans, lakes and ponds.  Plants have their first batch of leaves.  Guppies shiver in the lake.  Shiver, have babies, babies shiver.  Crawlers.  Diggers.  Stingers.  The plants get bit and chewed.  Leaves grow more intricate.  Beings start dragging with them, little lives.  Moments where they crawl on sand.  Moments where they look behind them.  They eat plants.  They eat stomachs.  Lick bones.  They pee on grass.  Pee on dirt.  Pee on snow.  Their skin is cut by teeth, by claws.  Water fills their lungs.  Blood falls out of place; cries itself in a blind pool.  Blood dries on leaves.  Blood browns on fur.  Creatures big as mountains stomp on top of mountains.  Then new ones.  New ones.  Feathers, spikes, hooves.  Clouds crawl smugly.  The air smells cool.  Atoms bump and lump without letters and numbers.  Monkeys play with sticks.  Monkeys eat ants.  Birds have sex.  Bears have sex.  The sun gets better at setting.  The monkeys walk upright, slouched, lips pursed, smiling, not smiling.  They get sexy about each other’s butts.  The monkeys fuck from behind.  They sleep in leaves, in mud, in trees.  They protect their babies and teach them.  The sun glares in their eyes, making spots.  Ants amble on, self-consciously changing direction.  Monkeys pee on leaves, on dirt.  Rain makes them flinch, makes them happy.  The monkeys make faces.  The monkeys get smart.  Two monkeys look at each other with knowing eyes.  The trees sway.  The birds chat.  The knowing eyes are locked in a gaze.  They look away.  They look back.  They have sophisticated children.  The monkeys grow and learn, get mad, throw stones.  New monkeys make faces and new sounds.  They need less and less protective hair.  They have babies.  Those new monkeys have babies.  They fight, throw punches, show teeth and bite.  The new monkeys think each other are sexy.  Raise their babies away from other monkeys.  New knowing eyes.  Laughing, teasing.  The new monkeys have vaginas more between their legs, less easy to snag on branches.  Males try sex with females from the front.  Boobs get bigger to remind males what butts felt like. 

This is the nice time of early men and monkeys, before cigarette butts cozied fat into the grass.  No plastics, no prayers.  Wood isn’t sliced into slats, it’s still living it up in trees.  The rain is surprising, usual.  Men and monkeys leave their lives with their bodies.  Early men paint, cry, stare into fire meditatively.  Pee on grass.  Pee on dirt.  Wear furs, have babies, catch dogs.  Fall in love with dogs.  Pause at oceans and their rambling edges.  Sticks complicate grass.  Grass complicates sand.  The ground and every thousand thing on top it.  Curves and lumps.  Uneven clouds.  But click the clock radio through am to pm, spin the equal sphere like a sonic hedgehog; the leaves live the leaves fall, the leaves live the leaves die.  
 
Men ride horses, roam plains, live in trees, in caves, wipe the sleep out of their eyes. They dance to a beat, carve wood into arrows, get jealous, get sick, get made fun of.  Pleasure and fun plus boredom and loss.  The fun of hands gliding on top water.  Of mud oozing between toes.  Knotted hair is pulled back.  Dirt gets comfortable on skin.

A band crouches in the bushes.  Horses down, blood on ground.  Blood on grass.  Blood on brains.  Legs are separated from bodies.  Trees stand still, sway, stand still.  The first restaurant opens.  Families look alike.  Caught dogs love man back.  The middle of the night waits for people to run bravely through it.  A toothbrush with bristles is invented.  Dandelions lose petals, grow big fluffy heads. 

Days of work.  Hands on rakes.  Hands on shovels.  Hands on rocks.  Hands in clay. Hands in water.  Aches in bones, aches in muscles, aches in head.  Night chases day.  Seasons switch slow.  People pee in bushes, in open trenches.  There are jobs, schools, songs.  There are Moms and Dads.  Young and carrying their children haphazard down the street.  Older and with their hands in dough.  Moms cut hair short, feel free.  Moms leave hair long, feel free.  Men feel cool riding horses.  Arrows are pulled on tight bows, yanked back near ears, released in wild flight.  Blood dries in sand.  Blood dries in hair.  

The sun casts pyramid shadows on packed sand.  The sixteen-year-old girl awakens to be seventeen.  The heat is hot on the street.  Sand in teeth.  "Sister!" her boyfriend says.  He gives her love poems written with the picture language.  They are about bathing together in the river, touching and holding red fish.  The seventeen-year-old girl laughs, "Brother, what fish?"

"The ones that feel right in hands."  He nudges her.  He hunts honey all day.  He and others sacrifice an animal.  Remove its lower entrails and fill the body with loaves and honey and spices.  They offer it to a god.  The boyfriend sneaks out to meet the seventeen-year-old girl.  They get drunk, tongue on tongue, tongue on lips, tongue on cheeks.  The seventeen-year-old girl puts honey and crocodile dung in her vagina to block out sperm.  They sniff water lilies, get high, fall clumsy asleep. 
     
Chairs are rare.  They sit patiently in rooms.  Mutton fat is boiled to make soap.  Rocks are fired out of bamboo poles.  Yolks juggled between eggshells.  Condoms made from fish and animal intestines.  Men feel cool playing the lute.  They pee in chamber pots.  Pee in private.  Fish are caught with hooks.  Held in rigid hands.  Unhooked hastily with fish eyes wide and watching.  Flopping around wishing for water, wishing for water.  Diseases wriggle, latch onto cells, to genes, to skin.  A bishop writes The School of Infancy, a book that recommends letting children have a childhood.  He says babies should have their spirits stirred "by kisses and embraces," that "children should learn to play."  Children say their jokes a few more times aloud.  They balance their spoons on their noses.  They lie in the flower field and hum.  

A lake sits still and wet, creating dynamic calm.  Girls no longer swim lakes. "Fish bite our thi-ighs!"  A collective whine.  The ducks don't give a fuck.  "More for us."  The ducks stick their face in their feathers.  "You've chay-yanged!"  They eye the girls, "You used to wear your hair in knots."

"Don't remind us."  The girls watch the lake with the others, for the dynamic calm.
 
A rebellious inventor is sick of shit on street.  Of shit in bushes, of pee in puddles.  He takes his evenings by himself, working hard on a “necessary” for his godmother, The Queen.  His wife laughs.  His friends laugh.  He tinkers with pipes.  Meanwhile, he shits in the outhouse.  He smells pee on the sidewalk.  He wants to sit on a pretty machine that will whirl the pee and shit invisible.  He succeeds in making a flush toilet.  A plumbing wonder! He tries it out.  Pees into the toilet, onto water.  A quick little waterfall, each drop twinks.  A pull of the flush and the toilet answers, a hush swirling it all away.  A magic wave!  The sewage system is not advanced enough to handle the water disposal.  A smell creeps out the pipes.  The inventor’s friends laugh.  He never builds another one, though he and The Queen both use theirs.

The first chocolate factory.  First personal ad.  Swimming feels like flying with thicker wind.  Friends add onto long running jokes.  Young Beethoven goes deaf from his father beating the shit out of him.  Dogs get annoyed at having ears inspected.  Deadly yellow fever epidemics kill thousands.  A band of adventurers plot to overtake something.  The year without summer.  June snow comes down in sheets.  The seventeen-year-old girl gets arrested for wearing pants.  First safety pin.  First saxophone.  Potato chips.  A pencil with an eraser attached.  Two people say same thing at same time and laugh.  Diamonds are discovered in Africa.  Diaries, discovered in underwear drawers.  First White House Easter egg roll.  First train robbery.  "Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest.”  Boxers start wearing gloves.  Flush toilets work with new sewage systems.  Everyone begins to pee on water.

At the World's Fair, someone rolls a waffle and scoops ice cream in it.  Plastic is invented.  Neon lights.  127 kisses in a single movie.  Fire department horses retire.  Men feel cool riding cars.  Chuck Berry fucks time into place, pulls it into beats and it hangs.  It plays.  Women use Lysol disinfectant in their vaginas to prevent pregnancy.  Crowds of bodies are buried in the ground.  Bombs are made with chemicals about to freak out.  The seventeen-year-old girl looks into the toilet at the shape of shit that sits there, complete as one thing, a size similar to her boyfriend’s penis.  Not right, but close maybe, and she puts her hand above the water, widening her fingers to remember the length.

Smoke blows out car pipes.  Cars come close to smashing.  Flags paraded around,  and stuck on the moon.  A little sister orders her baseball collection by cuteness.  Wild animals have no more room.  Land gets so full of buildings, when town girls and city boys escape into the open, ‘God’ is waiting in the fields.  Cars smash, glass in a crowd of shards.  Sirens cry and excite the streets.  Huge ambivalent teen models lounge across highway billboards.  Knifes are waved wildly about.  Dust gathers between VCR remote buttons.   

A bunch of 5th grade girls hang out with 5th grade boys and the boys start looking through the video tapes for something to show the girls, and the girls don’t know what but they giggle and try to sit up so their stomachs don't bunch but they bunch anyway.  A boy sticks in the video and it's of a man raping a woman against a pinball machine.  The 5th graders stare, leaving the potato chips alone in the bowl.  A boy laughs.  A girl tries it out, laughs a little too. 

Dog walkers pick up after their dogs.  Shit in plastic.  Shit in trash.  Shit on grass.  Pee on grass.  Pee on pavement.  Pee on pee.  Cars come close to smashing.  Ketchup proudly won’t leave bottle.  Underwear inches up in butts.  Bullets find their snug way into bodies.  Moms and Dads talk in whispers while children pretend to sleep in backseat.  Snow falls all night, everyone wakes to good moods.  Guitars bought optimistically, lean grandly forgotten against bedroom walls.  Raindrops race on car windows.  Children strain to listen as parents talk quietly in the front seat.

Harper dribbles the ball down the court, guarded by Ward, head fakes right, passes left to Pippen.  Pippen up against Oakley, looks to see if Longley has posted, but Longley hasn't posted, Longley is tangled with Ewing.  Longley’s arms curl around Ewing's arms while Longley's little eyes look to lock with Steve Jaffe's eyes, but Steve Jaffe's eyes follow the ball.  Pippen drives by Oakley, then kicks out a pass to Kerr who quick bounces it to Jordan.  Jordan holds the ball, Jordan's eyes twinkle.  Jordan passes it back to Kerr who is alone behind the three-point line.  Kerr takes a breath, grimaces, jumps the ball into a spiraling three-point attempt, which hits the rim and sails out of bounds.  The spectators react and react again.

Someone is killed wearing a mickey mouse shirt.  Blood out head.  Blood on mouse.  Blood on pavement.  Eye missing from its place.  The mouse still smiles.  Pee mixes with water.  Pee soaks in dirt.  Worms wiggle around embarrassed.  The sun is in a rhythm no one can stop.  The sky stays put.  Babies grow into sturdier shapes.  The rocks stay.  The paintings stay.  The best people leave.  Blood slows and then sits.  Everyone's tongue gets hot and hurt in their own mouth.  The sitcoms play on.  Newly dead bodies get put in wood.  Spacemen invade space.  Dog-catchers catch dogs.  Then the worst sound, dirt on wood.  

Girls sit outside a mall in the cold.  One girl is sure life stops at dirt on wood.  Black like outer space.  Another claims you return again as your great-great-granddaughter, still in family tracks.  But the seventeen-year-old girl says firmly, “When you die, you watch movie remakes of your life.”  The girls smile, but the cold tells them it is dirt on wood.  A boy rides loops in the parking lot, his butt high off his bike seat.  Sperm bite eggs.  Wet new eyes.  Same classics, same cliffs notes.  Cows in sandwiches.  Tongues on tongues, dirt on wood. 
 
Cell phones are used as weak flashlights.  City teenagers discover grass, have sex in bright sun.  Flies swarm around.  Semen sits at the bottom of the condom, the sperm trying, dying. People strap bombs under their outfits and enter buildings.  Religions are dragged through time.  A pet dog catches a rabbit, hears his name called, turns around, loses rabbit.

The buildings get straighter, sturdier, simpler, shinier.  On New Year’s everyone looks funny in their 2020 glasses, 2050 glasses, 2086 glasses.  Every famous person born finds the time to die.  The newspaper isn’t on paper anymore.  Scientists are still trying to make pain less painful.  

Wake to half thoughts and a dirty mouth.  Remember your first name and last.  Toothpaste on the toothbrush.  The day cut into hours.  Stream your pee onto water.  Remember the fields of trees, the wayward grass?  We couldn't help crowd everything with squares.  Dictionaries, mattresses, apartment complexes.  All buildings with flat faces, with rows and rows of square eyes.  Pages, screens, tiles.  The curves got covered with lines.  The birds have sex.  The bears eat trash.  Life still runs enough years.  Plenty more than before.  Fur ruffles in the wind.  Candles coy and shy their hot face.  Many parts are still the same.  The day is light and easy to see in.  A soap bar slims down to a sliver. 


*This story previously appeared in The New York Tyrant, Vol. II No. I


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