Wednesday, May 27, 2009

CHARLIE PARKER



In the novel, each chapter begins with a section taken from one of the many writings tucked inside the trunk that doubles as Kerry’s coffee table.  The passage below is one of the last stories entered into Kerry’s black notebook.


It was Tuesday night and I was home alone.  It was too cold outside and too warm inside.  Charlie Parker was playing the saxophone and I was playing with the various forms of hair I could find on my body. 

I had dreadlocked the hair on my toes, a few patches on my legs, and my big pubic mop, and had begun focusing on my nipple hairs.  They stood coiled black, and obscenely proud, strewn across the death pale backdrop of my Irish potato skin.  It was an embarrassing scene.  I felt like reaching for a shirt though nobody was inside my apartment, and I thought about my days of cigarettes, and watching clocks, and T.V., and masturbating to early morning workout shows, and how I ever even managed to hold conversations with people, and how sad it all really was.  

And then I lit my nipple hair on fire.  I started on the right side lighting individually at the ends, watching them flam and fizzle out in an orderly fashion.  I was brushing the ash into my belly button, and everything was going fine until about midway through the left nipple when one hair got rebellious and decided to spread across the remaining forest.  That mother-fucker took a good chunk of my nipple (long pause) which made me fall backwards, hitting my head on the table behind me, which knocked me out and caused a loud sound which made my landlady call the police, who called the paramedics who, upon finding me on the floor, brought me here to this hospital, with doctors and nurses that proceeded to laugh uncontrollably, while calling every psychiatrist in the city down to see me.      

  By, Kerry Ryan Magann





self portrait by Kerry Ryan Magann

2 comments:

  1. You can only stay forever young... It's Christmas. And I'm sitting here or should I say laying here in the stolfis home. It's Christmas and we are supposed to be with our families. And of course the stolfis are a part of my family. But the family I need most is my brother Kerry, but he killed himself. I. Can understand why and I also can't. He is my only one hero and I can't even tell you why, my heart tells me he was wise and loving.... I know he loved me...I think about him everyday and only wish he could be here to help me through my tough times ,but he's not I have me myself and I that's it. I probally drank 6 glasses of wine tonight to forget the pain I have. But allll it's brought me is to lookingat something to do with my brother Kerry, I need him more than anyone and ever. No one will ever be able to understand that. No one will ever know what it's like robe me....but it is life and shit happens for a reason. But why the fuck did my only brother (my only man who I looked up to) have To be taken away from me? There's obviously an answer I've yet to know what that answer is. But why do all these other families get to spend their holiday time with the one that they love when I'm sitting here alone wanting to be with the one person I can never have...itzx not fair..but it's for a reason. And this Christmas I just want to know what the fuck it is. My brother is the one person that can save me.....and he's not here doesn't even know who I am all he knows is a young girl but I've grown upq and I've learned I need him to help me more than ever right now... No ornr will ever understand how I feel but I'm not even asking them to.

    My brother was the shit and I cry every night because I never ever got to know him for who he was... I just hear these stories .... But not stories of my own.


    I hope my brother is always smiling and out of his pain. But my only wish for Christmas this year is to be smiling with him...

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  2. I need you here with me.... we all need you. I love it when you smile but I also love you when you are sad. I am here for you. I will not leave you. I am listening...

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Thank You For Encouraging My Joy of Writing
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Shannon E. Kennedy

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Photo by Joan Harrison