Jack Garrett

Kitchen

by Jack Garrett

The kitchen is alive with sounds

refrigerator humming

Steam pipes hissing, gaining in pressure and in pitch

Then, as if they were about to explode, they suddenly release their pressure in a long orgasmic sigh.

A baby rat crawls around in the stove

Another, possibly larger, I can hear near a hole in the wall that the plumber made.

Sometimes, when there's a lot of shit in the sink, there are so many roaches crawling around

on the pots, pans, and silverware, that I can actually hear them all moving around.

When my ear removes itself from its immediate space, I can hear the junkies upstairs, clomping around,

calling for their fucking cat, yelling, fighting, clomping up and down the fucking stairs

yelling "Meow, Meow."

There's definitely some kind of rodent by the refrigerator, I can hear him moving.

The refrigerator just shut off.

© Jack Garrett

7 Ways of Seeing a Scar

by Jack Garrett

Don't see the scar

Imagine the scar's edges

being smoothed by fine grade

sandpaper

Imagine the scar standing naked

without a body to imbed its root

Imagine the moment of impact

when the flesh exploded

leaving the scar like a hungry

leech tooth mark on a sinking shark

Imagine moving the scar

to another part of your body

Imagine the scar

escaping in a trail

of wounded pus

See the scar's death mask

as she screams

© Jack Garrett

Freddy on 14^th Street

by Jack Garrett

Dead feet, dangling from the gurney

Dead hand, poking out the sheet

Gotta walk by the funeral parlor

as I walk down 14^th St.

Old man Freddy, he’s sittin on the steps

80 years old and he’s cookin in the sun

I asked him why is he sittin by the parlor

Sittin on the steps on 14^th St.

He said he’s near so why not be nearer

sittin by the parlor, cookin in the sun.

The undertakers smile as I walk on by

Smilin at me & Freddy on 14^th St.

© Jack Garrett

The Crowd

by Jack Garrett

I am driving fast over a hill on an old, worn-out country road when all of a sudden, as I reach the bottom, I see a railway crossing with a large bump in front of it. The sound of a speeding locomotive is then heard coming from my right. Since I am driving so swiftly, I have no chance of stopping in front of the train safely, so I make the decision to accelerate my car’s speed even faster, and as I am doing this the car becomes airborne as it hits the large bump, which acts as a takeoff ramp, sending me flying through the air at a speed of 55 mph for a distance of 40 yds, and at an altitude of about 15 ft. The jump sends me sailing over the train’s engine, clearing it by a good 2 ft. I then light a cigarette and relax as I cruise down the old country road still in one piece.

I no sooner take the first puff when a policeman’s siren suddenly blasts from behind me, and looking into the rear view mirror, I see his lights flashing their menacing message of warning. I then panic and step on the accelerator, leaving the policeman behind me in a trail of burnt rubber and flying pebbles from the gravel-sprinkled road. I am scared into taking such resistive actions for many reasons: #1, I have just robbed a gas station; #2, I have just shot the attendant (didn’t kill him, though); #3, I don’t have a driver’s license; and #4, the car that I am driving is a freshly stolen Jaguar XKE with 12 cylinders and a top speed of 180mph. It also contains a sun roof, which at this point remains closed.

My decision to escape creates an idea in my criminal mind that I would somehow feel safer in a crowded city where I could blend into a crowd of people rather than continuously race the policeman’s car on the open country roads and probably risking the eventual outcome of being trapped by a roadblock. I decide to turn south on a super highway that leads to the city, which is only a few miles away. The policeman is still behind me, although his reflection in the rear view keeps getting smaller and smaller as I keep on going faster and faster down the semi-crowded freeway. I glance at my speedometer—180mph as its needle is pinned down to its extremity. Then out of nowhere, I see 6 or 7 police cars coming down my side of the freeway with lights and sirens flashing and screaming in hot pursuit.

The other cars on the highway begin pulling over to avoid head-on collisions with the police cars. This is my chance, for only 30 ft or so away is an exit ramp leading to the crowded city. I get off the highway well behind the police cars coming at me and well in front of the car that is still following me. I drive smoothly up the ramp, hoping I’ve made it, but again I see more police cars coming down the road, which is adjacent to the exit ramp. Instinctively, I step on the gas again, but I am now approaching a red light with a crosswalk, and on that crosswalk I see a middle-aged man reading a newspaper as he is walking across the street. He is too close for me to come to a safe stop without hitting him, so I try swerving to my right, hoping to get behind him, but he is walking too slowly to avoid the ultimate collision course that has just been created by this untimely encounter of man and machine.

The low front bumper of the XKE strikes the man solidly below his left knee, sending him flying high into the air before landing with a thud in no other place but on the roof of my car. I keep on driving—keep on driving faster—I have to. I can’t just stop now and turn myself in with a man laying on top of my roof.

The cop cars on the adjacent road are now right up next to me, for I am also on that adjacent road after turning left at the intersection. The police and I are racing at about 80 mph, while all the rest of the cars on the crowded boulevard are pulled over to the side.

The man I hit at the intersection is still on top of the roof, yelling at me to stop, so I quickly open the sunroof so he can crawl inside the car if he wants to. He doesn’t want to, and this proves to be a fatal mistake on his part because one of the police cars begins pulling up too close for comfort, and as I downshift to regain a comfortable margin, I hear him swearing as the gravity force forces his fingers free of my sunroof as he rolls rapidly off my speeding car and into the street, where I don’t know what happened to him.

I am driving much faster now but I am also looking for a place to get out of my car so that I may blend into the large crowd of people as planned. Then I see it—the perfect place to get out. On the next street in front of me there is a huge traffic jam with crowds of people walking along the sidewalks. I immediately turn right and park the car in the middle of the street, get out, and begin running through the crowd as the police are still rounding the corner.

I run through a crowd standing outside of a large department store. The streets are narrow, the buildings look old, and the people seem poor and miserable. As I get through the crowd, I come to the doorway of a very old building that is next to the department store. As I open the door, I come to a long staircase and run up the stairs with wild abandon. The building seems occupied, but no one is present. “I want to be in a crowd…” is what I am thinking as I run up this old wooden staircase that creaks like demanding crickets.

When I finally reach the top of the stairs, I come to a window that overlooks the crowded street below. Through the window I can see and hear the sights and sounds of police and people struggling to get by one another. A policeman yells out, “Clear the way, there’s a madman on the loose!” Then a pedestrian yells out, “I think I saw a madman run through this door!” Upon hearing this I run to another window that is at the opposite end of the hall and located toward the rear of the building. This window proves to be my escape route, for it provides easy access to the rooftop of a slightly lower building next door, which is only an inch or two away. I hurriedly open the window and slip outside where I dash across the rooftop. I then come to the edge of the building and notice a fire escape leading down to the alley, where there is a small crowd of people sitting around. I decide to go with the crowd as I run down the long grate iron fire escape stairs to the people in the alley below.

As I reach the bottom, I see closely what kind of people I have chosen to blend myself in with. The people are all dirty, all old, and all seem to be mumbling incoherently as they sit in the alley with their backs against the building wall. I then quietly and slowly sit down with them, hoping to blend into the crowd. As I am sitting, the one next to me says in a grizzled but threatening tone, “What the hell you doin’ here, boy?” I don’t answer him and I don’t like the tone of his voice, so I get up and move toward the other end of this small crowd of vagabonds, sitting in a row with their backs to the wall. I sit down again hoping to receive either no response from the man sitting next to me, or else maybe at least a more friendly one than before, but preferably no response at all, because that is the way things usually work out in crowded situations. I see his head turning toward me slowly. His face looks somewhat younger than the rest, but equally gritty. His eyes have a touch of vengeance while at the same time looking crafty and menacing. “Hey Boy,” he says through sparse, gritted, yellow teeth, “I’ll bet you got some money on you, heh boy?” I don’t answer him. Instead, I remain perfectly still because I am now seeing policemen running down the alley around the building, and some of them are running towards my crowd.

Four of the policemen come over to where we are sitting and ask us if we have seen anybody strange running around in the alley or down the fire escapes. I tell them that I haven’t seen anyone strange, but the man sitting next to me says that he has and that that certain somebody is sitting right here next to me. I then get up and run toward the fire escape with speed and power so extreme that one would get the impression of seeing a taut spring being released from its casing and flying into the air through the sheer force created by its former tension. I reach the fire escape, scrambling up the steps with the police only a few yards behind me. As I make the long ascent to the high rooftop, I keep thinking, “Where can I find a crowd?” I finally reach the roof and dash across to the front of the building where I look down at the crowded street below. “I’ve got to blend in with a crowd. I’ve got to, and I shall.” I then hurl myself over the building edge where I land with a splat that blends in perfectly with the crowd.

The Jokemaster

by Jack Garrett

Sidney Gillmore, a young, up-and-coming stand-up comic, stood above his Holiday Inn bathroom countertop with pen and paper in hand, desperately trying to conjure up joke data for tonight’s performance at Caesar’s Palace. Joke data, a series of randomly selected nouns, verbs, conjunctions, adjectives, and the like, is an integral part of Sidney’s stand-up comic routine. Unlike most stand-up comics, who think up their own jokes, Sidney has a small appliance that he carries from town to town in his suitcase that automatically produces jokes. The machine is called the Jokemaster, and it plugs into any ordinary AC outlet. It is usually placed upon a countertop or table and is the size of any normal kitchen appliance. One distinct trait, however, clearly distinguishes the Jokemaster’s physical appearance from any other small appliance—it bears a strange resemblance to Bob Hope. In fact, one might even think that it was Bob Hope’s head sitting there on the countertop, with a very silly grin sliding sarcastically across its face.

Sidney finally finished scratching out his joke data on the long, thin slip of paper called, appropriately, “joke tape,’ and fed it into a small slot at the top of the Jokemaster’s head—much like a hole in Bob Hope’s head. The paper was then sucked quickly into the machine, and the Jokemaster began shaking about in a frenzy of spasmatic twitches. The Jokemaster’s eyes rolled, its ears wiggled, and then after only a few minutes another slip of paper shot out from the Jokemaster’s mouth with several jokes written in computer lettering. Sidney smiled, tore off the piece of paper, and read one of the jokes: “What do you call a peanut that’s been robbed, beaten, and abused? Assaulted peanut!” Sidney chuckled to himself and thought, “Wow, that’s brilliant! What would I do without my Jokemaster?!” He then read another joke: “What’s brown and sounds like a bell? Dung.” Sidney could barely refrain from cracking up and thought to himself, “Oh boy, I’m gonna get over big tonight. These jokes are gonna kill ‘em.” Just then the Jokemaster spit out another joke. Sidney grabbed it and read: “What’s big, green, hairy, has teeth, and lives in a cave? The Los Angeles Times.” Sidney scratched his head, looked at the Jokemaster, and said, “I don’t get it.” The machine promptly spit out another piece of paper, and it read: “Neither do I—I get the New York Times.” Sidney was quivering with joy.

Sidney began getting dressed for the night’s performance. He selected an orange suit coat with green pants from his suitcase and began rehearsing his joke delivery in the mirror as he dressed. He then parted his slick black hair neatly down the middle, looked at himself in the mirror, and thought, “Here comes success!”

Sidney’s physical features were about as striking as the Jokemaster’s. He wasn’t what you’d call brutally handsome. For one, he was short; two, he was fat; and three, with that green and orange suit he looked somewhat like an overgrown, joke-telling munchkin.

Sidney arrived at Caesar’s Palace promptly at 10:00 p.m. His show started at 10:30, so Sidney stood around backstage for awhile, talking to a joke-telling French horn plater named Waldo Pierson. Waldo had just finished his act, and he told Sidney how he had gotten over really big with some new jokes he had just made up. “Let’s hear a few,” said Sidney. “OK,” said Waldo. “What do you call a peanut that’s been robbed, beaten, and—” “Wait a minute,” screamed Sidney. “That’s my joke—you stole my joke!” “Impossible,” stated Waldo plainly. “I just made it up today.” “The hell you did,” snapped Sidney. “That salesman in Buffalo told me the Jokemaster was guaranteed to produce original jokes.” “Jokemaster?” questioned Waldo. “What’s a Jokemaster?”
A look of sickness came over Sidney’s face. He had let out his secret. He had to think of something quick before Waldo Pierson questioned him futher. “Ah…Ah…Did I say Jokemaster….I meant Postmaster….You know, the mailman?” “Oh yea?” said Waldo. “Yea, the mailman told me that salted peanut joke this morning,” said Sidney. “Odd coincidence,” replied Waldo. “What about Buffalo? You said something about Buffalo, didn’t you?” asked Waldo. “Ah yea…Ah…I said I was really buffaloed by that joke.” “What about that salesman,” said Waldo. “You mentioned a salesman that guaranteed something, didn’t you?” “Ah…Ah, you must have misunderstood me,” said Sidney. “I said…ah…Oh yea, the mailman said that joke is guaranteed to really make a sale, man!” “Hmmm,” said Waldo. “You ever hear of that joke about the New York Times?” Sidney’s face suddenly matched the color of his pants. “He’s been telling all my jokes to the same audience,” he thought to himself. “It can’t be,” he thought again. “It can’t be the same joke.” “Ah yea,” said Sidney after much contemplation. “I heard it but I didn’t get it.” “Neither did I,” said Waldo. “I get the New York Times.”

“Hey, it’s 1030,” said Waldo. “You had better get out there! Knock ‘em dead, kid.”
“Wait…Wait!” said Sidney. “You’ve been telling the jokes I was going to use!” “That’s show biz, kid,” said Waldo. “I gotta run—got a train to catch, ya know?” Waldo Pierson left Sidney standing all alone with no jokes to tell. It was now 10:35, and the audience was beginning to grow restless. Just then, the house manager stormed over to where Sidney stood sweating with fear. “Get out there,” growled the manager. “It’s 10:35—you’re 5 minutes late! Get your ass out there!”

Sidney Gilmore walked peevishly out onto the stage, as the crowd lightly welcomed him. His sweat hands grasped the microphone, his legs shook nervously, he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The audience began booing Sidney. “Come on, ya bum. Tell your corny jokes. Do your stuff, kid—c’mon!” they jeered. Sidney’s mind tried everything within its limited power to produce a joke, and finally he had one—or at least he thought he did. “ What do you call a cashew that’s been beaten, robbed, and abused?” Someone in the front row then promptly yelled out, “Assaulted cashew! What a stale joke. I think I’ve heard that before! Har Har Har!” the entire audience booed, and then after a few more feeble attempts in the same vein, the curtain fell on poor Sidney. The stage manager thus fired him promptly on the spot, calling him a variety of expletive deleteds.

Sidney then rushed back to his hotel room where he rummaged through his suitcase, trying to find the manual for the Jokemaster. “There must be something wrong with this damn thing!” he thought to himself.

When he finally found the manual and was fumbling through it, he noticed a small logo on the bottom of page 12 that stated: “Jokemaster, patented 1975 by Waldo Pierson, and the joke’s on you!”