Eric Morris
Everything You Have to Look Forward to Already Happened
The future is careening at you like a Winnebago
with cut brake lines. The driver died in his sleep.
The passengers, however, hoped for a better ending,
one with less parboiled panic and weather delays.
Through this and the comets leaving irreparable
divots in your yard, you fear becoming the man
your father never was. The future is bound
to creep up on you like an ex-lover who you told,
It’s not you, it’s you, and all the distant planets
conspiring against us. In so many tomorrows
crowded like faceless patrons on the train platform,
you wanted to sweep every woman you met off
her medications and walk into some great lake
until your heads were underwater and the rest
would be dredged ashore. Once in a casino,
you saw the future being sweet-talked into
free drinks and a little necking, but that’s not your
future. As a child, you dreamed a future that even
your mother deemed impossible. Many futures
have ransacked those around you. There’s those
that end abrupt, like the sweetheart who didn’t
call you sweetheart and was later killed stuffing
marshmallows into her mouth and repeating:
Chubby Bunny. Some are pre-packaged with
an expiration date of yesterday, like the bologna
that gave you the dry heaves. Watching the plants
wilt on the sill, makes you want to call and forgive
the people you wronged for their overreactions;
who threatens another’s life over a stolen identity―
it wasn’t even that interesting anyway. If you could put
the next decade in a box, you would with a subpoena,
a flooded basement, and apocalypse predictions
to recreate its original habitat. The box would no doubt
be dropped or shaken too hard and then what?
Every pedestrian would shake a fist at you and say,
I’ll remember your face. Your future is a liquor store
robbery, a knife to the throat, those purplish clouds that
emanate a storm that will flood the basement and all
the people living in the basement. You’ve seen a man
swallow his own fist, a woman with gills, and had
a panhandler give you a few bucks and some coffee.
In the summers with heat waves coming off an open grill,
you wanted to deny the future even if the grill marks were
perfect and the ice cream refused to melt. But the future
is the used-car of your inescapable days. There’s the Cadillac
of futures, and there’s you walking with your thumb in the air
down a road that goes from pavement to gravel to dirt.
Everything that happened before was Free to Good Home.
All and Everything from Your Childhood is a Great Burden to You
In the hollows of your imperfect body,
you feel like a rain dance has been enacted
and you regret the existence of God.
You take great pains to deny this―
deny it like a swollen lip―for which
you feel an even greater guilt.
You make phone calls to your mother
to confirm the existence of God
and ask for recipes that will remind
you of your first funeral: a neighbor lady
who paid you to pick the floating bugs
out of her pool. You agreed to this
because of the drowning element
and you liked to hold your head under
water until your brain felt like a well-shook
can of soda. You feel a retrospective
guilt for the bugs, the lady who died
unexpectedly at home. You have so much
guilt that it feels like a glacier is moving
over you and through you. You once left
a bike in the rain and thought it dissolved,
but really it was stolen. Everyday still
feels like metal rusting and being washed
away. You feel the guilt of the earth
reclaiming what it could and you know,
heavy with guilt, that it would reclaim
you if given the chance. On quick inventory,
you feel you’ve been depleted like a beach,
came out damp from the wash, and were squeezed
too often like unripe fruit; but the bruises
are charming and oddly warm to the touch.
That Awkward Moment
when you were luggage-less in the Atlanta airport
and you asked that lady when her due date was
and he said any time after the first of January.
The look on your face was, some say, homicidal,
but on the inside your animal spirit was poached
and turned into a pantsuit for active senior citizens.
At night you have dreams about naked people doing
the Macarena and everyone wants to shake your hand.
Other peoples’ nudity pains you. In a gently-used
sauna on the western front while you were reading
The Communist Manifesto, a man in his mid-fifties
pissed on the coals. In itself, not too awkward,
but he did it while talking about The Cosby Show
and how he, as a child, set moths on fire. Some days
feel like you’re stuck in a terrarium and the glass
is fogged up and you can only draw crude stick people
to express your feelings. Let’s not forget the night
you meant to lose your inhibitions and dance like
a deer on a frozen lake, but you, instead, lost
bladder control and woke up in a wet bathtub.
You shamed the family the Halloween you went
as your favorite baseball player who died tragically
in a paddle boat accident three weeks prior. Maybe you
did overdo it with the blood? Maybe you did overdo
it with the unplugged ventilator? Maybe you’ve lost
something on your fastball and that explains all
the whispering. You feel shame and you want to rub
your nose in it. The next summer, everyone called you
Nancy and not because of your mediocre looks.
That was the last summer, you determined, you’d
relive in your head like erotic fantasies. Not as bad,
though, as watching Baywatch with your grandfather,
who calls breasts ‘hooters’ and then whistles too long.
Every day feels like dragging your heartbroken body
from the school bus having to ask your mom what
words like tits, jerk-off, and libido mean, because
your friends use them and laugh and you laugh but
don’t know why and suddenly the world seems so much
like the last place you ever want to be, like Dallas maybe.
In life, some hours pass like an ill-timed erection and everyone
is watching in Hollywood slo-mo. Any movement would
be incriminating. Then there’s the bad touch and the half-hug-
half-handshake that leaves much to be desired. You can
apologize profusely, but the truth is that, at that moment,
you’ve ruined everybody’s life. It’s like thinking you’re
vacationing in Aspen only to realize you’re actually in
East Baltimore. Still you say to family and close friends,
“Welcome to Aspen!” In your shroud of loneliness,
you’ve never forgiven yourself for ruining Christmas
and you’ve never forgiven the world for standing too close―
well within your personal bubble―and talking too loud about
its vigorous sex life and all the places beautiful people go.
Eric Morris teaches creative writing at Cleveland State University and serves as a poetry editor for Barn Owl Review. His work has appeared
or is forthcoming in The South Dakota Review, Puerto del Sol, The Laurel Review, Pank, Post Road, The Jet Fuel Review, The Collagist, Anti,
Devil's Lake, Redactions, and others. He lives and writes in Akron, OH where he searches (mostly in vain) for a way to lift the curse of Cleveland sports.
Return to March 2013 Edition
The future is careening at you like a Winnebago
with cut brake lines. The driver died in his sleep.
The passengers, however, hoped for a better ending,
one with less parboiled panic and weather delays.
Through this and the comets leaving irreparable
divots in your yard, you fear becoming the man
your father never was. The future is bound
to creep up on you like an ex-lover who you told,
It’s not you, it’s you, and all the distant planets
conspiring against us. In so many tomorrows
crowded like faceless patrons on the train platform,
you wanted to sweep every woman you met off
her medications and walk into some great lake
until your heads were underwater and the rest
would be dredged ashore. Once in a casino,
you saw the future being sweet-talked into
free drinks and a little necking, but that’s not your
future. As a child, you dreamed a future that even
your mother deemed impossible. Many futures
have ransacked those around you. There’s those
that end abrupt, like the sweetheart who didn’t
call you sweetheart and was later killed stuffing
marshmallows into her mouth and repeating:
Chubby Bunny. Some are pre-packaged with
an expiration date of yesterday, like the bologna
that gave you the dry heaves. Watching the plants
wilt on the sill, makes you want to call and forgive
the people you wronged for their overreactions;
who threatens another’s life over a stolen identity―
it wasn’t even that interesting anyway. If you could put
the next decade in a box, you would with a subpoena,
a flooded basement, and apocalypse predictions
to recreate its original habitat. The box would no doubt
be dropped or shaken too hard and then what?
Every pedestrian would shake a fist at you and say,
I’ll remember your face. Your future is a liquor store
robbery, a knife to the throat, those purplish clouds that
emanate a storm that will flood the basement and all
the people living in the basement. You’ve seen a man
swallow his own fist, a woman with gills, and had
a panhandler give you a few bucks and some coffee.
In the summers with heat waves coming off an open grill,
you wanted to deny the future even if the grill marks were
perfect and the ice cream refused to melt. But the future
is the used-car of your inescapable days. There’s the Cadillac
of futures, and there’s you walking with your thumb in the air
down a road that goes from pavement to gravel to dirt.
Everything that happened before was Free to Good Home.
All and Everything from Your Childhood is a Great Burden to You
In the hollows of your imperfect body,
you feel like a rain dance has been enacted
and you regret the existence of God.
You take great pains to deny this―
deny it like a swollen lip―for which
you feel an even greater guilt.
You make phone calls to your mother
to confirm the existence of God
and ask for recipes that will remind
you of your first funeral: a neighbor lady
who paid you to pick the floating bugs
out of her pool. You agreed to this
because of the drowning element
and you liked to hold your head under
water until your brain felt like a well-shook
can of soda. You feel a retrospective
guilt for the bugs, the lady who died
unexpectedly at home. You have so much
guilt that it feels like a glacier is moving
over you and through you. You once left
a bike in the rain and thought it dissolved,
but really it was stolen. Everyday still
feels like metal rusting and being washed
away. You feel the guilt of the earth
reclaiming what it could and you know,
heavy with guilt, that it would reclaim
you if given the chance. On quick inventory,
you feel you’ve been depleted like a beach,
came out damp from the wash, and were squeezed
too often like unripe fruit; but the bruises
are charming and oddly warm to the touch.
That Awkward Moment
when you were luggage-less in the Atlanta airport
and you asked that lady when her due date was
and he said any time after the first of January.
The look on your face was, some say, homicidal,
but on the inside your animal spirit was poached
and turned into a pantsuit for active senior citizens.
At night you have dreams about naked people doing
the Macarena and everyone wants to shake your hand.
Other peoples’ nudity pains you. In a gently-used
sauna on the western front while you were reading
The Communist Manifesto, a man in his mid-fifties
pissed on the coals. In itself, not too awkward,
but he did it while talking about The Cosby Show
and how he, as a child, set moths on fire. Some days
feel like you’re stuck in a terrarium and the glass
is fogged up and you can only draw crude stick people
to express your feelings. Let’s not forget the night
you meant to lose your inhibitions and dance like
a deer on a frozen lake, but you, instead, lost
bladder control and woke up in a wet bathtub.
You shamed the family the Halloween you went
as your favorite baseball player who died tragically
in a paddle boat accident three weeks prior. Maybe you
did overdo it with the blood? Maybe you did overdo
it with the unplugged ventilator? Maybe you’ve lost
something on your fastball and that explains all
the whispering. You feel shame and you want to rub
your nose in it. The next summer, everyone called you
Nancy and not because of your mediocre looks.
That was the last summer, you determined, you’d
relive in your head like erotic fantasies. Not as bad,
though, as watching Baywatch with your grandfather,
who calls breasts ‘hooters’ and then whistles too long.
Every day feels like dragging your heartbroken body
from the school bus having to ask your mom what
words like tits, jerk-off, and libido mean, because
your friends use them and laugh and you laugh but
don’t know why and suddenly the world seems so much
like the last place you ever want to be, like Dallas maybe.
In life, some hours pass like an ill-timed erection and everyone
is watching in Hollywood slo-mo. Any movement would
be incriminating. Then there’s the bad touch and the half-hug-
half-handshake that leaves much to be desired. You can
apologize profusely, but the truth is that, at that moment,
you’ve ruined everybody’s life. It’s like thinking you’re
vacationing in Aspen only to realize you’re actually in
East Baltimore. Still you say to family and close friends,
“Welcome to Aspen!” In your shroud of loneliness,
you’ve never forgiven yourself for ruining Christmas
and you’ve never forgiven the world for standing too close―
well within your personal bubble―and talking too loud about
its vigorous sex life and all the places beautiful people go.
Eric Morris teaches creative writing at Cleveland State University and serves as a poetry editor for Barn Owl Review. His work has appeared
or is forthcoming in The South Dakota Review, Puerto del Sol, The Laurel Review, Pank, Post Road, The Jet Fuel Review, The Collagist, Anti,
Devil's Lake, Redactions, and others. He lives and writes in Akron, OH where he searches (mostly in vain) for a way to lift the curse of Cleveland sports.
Return to March 2013 Edition