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I guess what I'm realizing is that I'm bad at consistency.
Dick Fancy wanted only this, wanted a place in which to put forth effort with minimal pressure and maximal joy, and yet the pressure seemed to override the joy at some point last week, making Dick Fancy a postless blog. Dick Fancy begs you not to pass judgement quite yet regarding its consistency. It is trying. All it can do is try. It wishes you only the best though, and hopes you wish for it the same. Dick Fancy aims for the best, wishes to ride the waves of bestitude into a brighter future of work and postings and love and pleasure and contentment and friendship and good-tidings and cheer and general benevolence. But, sometimes, good people of the universe, of that crudest of words, 'the blogosphere,' we are beset by our own perceived limits. See, Dick Fancy grew tired of itself. Grew tired of the smallness of itself, and took steps backward, further into the dim light its own resistance.
Dick Fancy, continuing to speak of itself in third person, also wishes to inform you it is on some strong homeopathic cough medicine right now.
Because Dick Fancy has a cough, not because it wants to get high. Just to be clear about it.
There are just these everyday struggles that come from being human and sometimes catching cold/coughs, and so many other things. It is frustrating being laid up in bed, for the third time in a relatively short number of weeks. It is frustrating feeling creatively stagnant.
But we shall all push through. We shall continue to abide our original promise of putting forth work without necessarily worrying on its perceived 'goodness,' or 'rightness,' or inherent value. It is work for the sake of work. For making work, and for delivering it, in whatever state it may find itself, to the good people who are kind enough to look upon it.
That being said, I have for you a mostly un-edited, likely still-to-be-completed poem. I will make no apologies for it other than those implicit in what I just said. No title as of yet.

And if she offered you her body

lord would you take it, though she is not

one of your terrible sons? Though she be

bereft of forehead marking

describing all the ways

she was built to disappoint?

Though she be clear-eyed

careful, too careful

perhaps, and though old men with crushed faces

do not call out her name as they pass through

the gates where she stands, waiting to be led, waiting

for the wood box before her bed to open

of its own volition, beaming

answers through its rice-paper

scroll. How many hours has she chanted

blind to the night, ceramic string of Christmas

lights tonguing the white walls

rainbow for a thing that cannot spring

full-formed out of nothing, hands

outstretched to pull her back to herself or to the self

still learning its parts, summing them

slowly to unsolid answer. Answer

enough, at least, to blurb herself

to strangers at parties. To make them wonder

who made her, at the songs she was sung

as she fell to sleep in her father's

arms, mother, too, singing

close by, off-key.

CAT PIC CAT PIC CAT PIC

Dick Fancy re-enters your life with a short post bearing excellent news: We've received our first cat-pic, courtesy of an exemplary viewer. Below, our humble reward, the fruits of our seemingly fruitless attempts to connect the individual to the world, to make sense of the cosmic trusses pinioned to the sky above our heads, cutting up the sunlight into strange triangles. Yes. You've got it. You've made sense of that tangle of thorns, gentle reader. And now, to reap the benefits of all our hard work:

Thank you, Woody Forrest (sp?) Leslie. You have served your country, and now you may continue resting with that nice-looking cat sprawled across your torso.

The rest of you: take heed. You are still falling dangerously below your potential, far as I can tell. The universe might be finite, and then you'll run out of time, and there will have been no recorded evidence of you interacting with cats. This will be a shame, perhaps a greater shame than any of us actually have the capacity to stomach. Think about it.

Take heed your brother in rightful cat-action. Take heed.

Love,
Dick Fancy

PET-A-CAT MONDAY

That's right. Here at Dick Fancy, we're proud to sponsor PET-A-CAT MONDAY. All you have to do is get out there and make sure you pet at least one cat today. It's much harder to pet a cat than it is a dog, because dogs have parks and leashes and demand walks, whereas cats generally keep indoors unless they're feral. SO, if you don't already possess a cat in your own home, you'll have to do a little groundwork in order to find one you might pet. Don't be creepy about it. Just call up a friend who you know has a cat, and ask if you can come pet it. Or, maybe a way to be less creepy about it is to call up this same friend and not mention the cat at all. Just ask if this friend wants to hang out at their place, and then while you're there you can get in a little cat-petting. Don't make it obvious that this is the only real reason you went over there. Your friend will be offended if you do. If they already read Dick Fancy (and WHO DOESN'T?!!!), they'll probably be on to you. So, proceed with caution. But definitely make sure you pet a cat.  Oh, and if you don't have friends who own cats, you'll probably have to go to the nearest feral-cat hangout with an open can of tuna fish. (If you're in the Brooklyn area, I definitely know of an outdoor lot on Manhattan ave between Driggs and Nassau that seems to be a very hip spot for feral cats to grounge (lounge and grunge.)) Good luck. 

I'd love to see some pics of you petting a cat, so if you're out there and you've got a camera, take a shot and send it to me.

If you don't, I'll be super embarrassed. I understand this is a distinct possibility. However, I enter into this request understanding there exist some inherent risks one must be willing to take for the sake of PET-A-CAT Monday.

Included below is a small passage from a story I'm working on. I don't know yet what will become of this story. There is much to be figured out. Thanks for reading.



And onward....
From "Unpronounceable Towns:"

Sofia crawled in her dreams. She was an adult who could not stand, no matter how hard she tried. Her husband floated in a fish-tank just beyond her reach, but he was alive, and looked remarkably happy there in the water.

WHY DON'T YOU LEAP OUT AND HELP ME, she would sometimes shout to him. She wasn't sure how long it had been like this: she, sprawled and helpless, her husband floating, flippered. WHY DO YOU DO NOTHING? She saw his teeth sparkling against the small waves he made as he flipped and twisted. It was very frustrating to her, to be without full access to her height. She wondered why, wondered what had happened, why everything around her was weirdly blindingly gold-white, why there was no furniture. No one else seemed bothered by it, but, then, there was no one else. There was her husband, the fish, en-tanked. There was her body, mysterious and uncooperative.

She crawled her way to the edge of the tank. It would be too high to climb inside, but, still, she clawed at it, desperate. Her love was inside, her love. He was so, so close. And he was alive—this was the important part. He had not been alive, she'd thought, not that long ago, though time, she knew, had been somehow bent. In what direction, she couldn't say, but he was here. That was what was important, some impressive meddling the universe had taken upon itself. A hand extended through impossible circumstances to save them, to return them to each other, despite the ropes of death. So, he was a fish. So her legs were lead and dragged beneath her, useless, without explanation. This could be overcome—all of it—as long as she could see him, as long as he existed. This was what was important: existing.

He pressed his cheek against the glass, near the bottom, where their bodies could have met if not for the thickness between them. MY LOVE, she cried out. She pressed her lips to the glass, and he in kind. MY LOVE MY LOVE. Her heart was full-up; her legs melted into the whiteness beneath her. He could not speak, or she could not hear him, but his lips moved. His fish-y lips. They'd always been big, the way she preferred lips to be. Womanly lips that bloomed upon his face, announcing his handsomeness. The lips of a fancy model on the face of a fisherman.

Before he was a fish and the world was entirely white, when her legs still worked and when most things made more sense than they did now, they'd wake together, pressed to the sun, the dirt-scent, the smell of horse shit rising almost sweet through the windows and he would run his big model-fish-y lips over her arm, shoulder, the tendons in her neck. Her mother was downstairs, clomping around on the cracked tile floor, stirring things in pots. Fernando and Ignacio were still sleeping, else frantically stunning themselves awake with internet porno or, more than possible, Fernando was at the university library, which he said was properly quiet in order he might study in peace. She'd heard him muttering the name Fermina again and again for the past several months, in the passing dark, when she'd creep downstairs for water or swigs of homemade wine from cloudy glass jugs in the middle of the night. As far as she knew, he had not slept in that long. Fermina, Fermina, like some demented, feverish man upon his deathbed, barely audible, pained.

She understood this now. Her husband, the fisherman, had become what once he hunted. This almost made sense, too, if she thought about it long enough. The hunter becoming its own prey. She prayed some larger thing would not swoop down and attempt to hook him at the mouth, gut him, make him flip wild in its big death-y hands, while she watched. The world was white. What color would his blood be?

His cheek against the glass against her cheek against the glass. This was what was important. He was here. She could be happy this way. She could learn.