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poetry inchoate desires odd jobs |
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My Afterglow by Matt Fagan author info Leaning coyly against the rail of the elevated train platform, I gaze into the middle distance. The wind plays with my hair and I am terrifically picturesque. You knit your brow and wonder what I am looking for. The bank’s digital clock? My own distant apartment? I am not looking for anything. Rather, I am reveling in the sensation deep in my middle, as if organs long in disarray have finally been jostled into order. I feel like I am experiencing a delirious sneeze that goes on and on. I will board the train in a haze, and in the warmth of the car my cheeks will remain pink. When I reach the coffee shop, the cashier avoids my eyes. None of you can look me in the eyes, because you know they hold a delicious secret. You want so badly to know, but you can’t bear to ponder. Is it a mistress, a fetish, the love that dare not speak its name? I am a puzzle. My fulfillment is so fierce that it reaches out, drawing your gaze my way. But like God, I cannot be looked upon directly. The walls of my cubicle cannot contain my pleasure. Day after day, I arrive in a state of perfect satiation, beaming, leaving in my wake a crowd of lives made more mundane by their comparison to my own. I achieve sexual climax with such frequency that the periods of afterglow run together and cannot be distinguished one from the other. When I approach the water cooler you shrink away, and your hands flutter uncertainly around your groins as if they bring you shame. My partner surprises me at the office, as always, for a mid-afternoon rendezvous. Creatively speaking, my lover is the Thomas Edison of sexual intercourse. Bursting like a jack-in-the-box out of bathroom stalls or empty supply cabinets, inventing scenario after scenario and never the same one twice. On the train at night I am still conspicuous, my entire body pert, engorged. My lunchtime quickie crackles and hums all the way home, and some of you get off at my stop just to follow me for a few blocks, to bask in me from afar.
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Matt Fagan is a writer who has been living in Chicago since 1998. He's been published in McSweeney's and can be read at McSweeney's online. Upcoming stories will be in the journal Little Engines #2, BREAKFAST zine and a comic anthology by Billy Tran Dale. He's been publishing the zine MENISCUS for three and a half years; current issues are available at Quimby's and Earwax Cafe. For orders outside Chicago, contact Matt directly. Matt has a website at geocities.com/depotdevoid/meniscus/meniscus..
All material copyright the authors, printed with permission. |