John Repp

Green Bottle

My wife offers me a green bottle half full of carbonated water, crumbs of last night’s crackling corn bread floating on top. “Here, drink this,” she says. “It’s really salty.” I glug it down, tasting anchovies, the olive-jammed flat bread from the Haymarket Deli, the cod we always order at the Portuguese restaurant.

I’m as hydrated as I’m likely to get, so I lift my bike off the rack in the dark bedroom, hustle past my slippered beauty in the breakfast nook, and trundle out the back door. When your car rusts out, it’s good to have a bike as back-up.

Out in the alley, I lower the bike off my shoulder, and it doesn’t bounce, doesn’t click, doesn’t shift back and forth on its space-age wheels because is has no wheels, no seat, no sprockets or brake shoes. I’ve set a bike frame down on the gravel, a frame foursquare enough to stand there like a decapitated dog.

In my irresponsible days, I’d have called in sick and made a batch of waffles. No more. The walk to the bus stop will do a world of good.

Head Study

My apprenticeship has ripened enough I’m ready for head studies. The studio is mine for as long as necessary. The models sit with their backs against the far wall.

I walk over, wipe wet palms on my lucky smock, and lift the first head from the neck into which it nestles, then set it back into place, having confirmed my first intuition: an old woman blasted to meat by a long-ago bomb.

I offer bread. No lower jaw, no eyes, a tangle of white hair, she unfurls her swollen tongue, draws the food in, mashes it against her teeth, and drops a gossamer mass on the floor.

I glance down the row of models: twelve patient creatures. All right. This demands hyper-realist representation, barbed wire, foam rubber, and clay as media. As the Master says: art is one thing, then the next.

Burrows

Sideways snow, cold so ferocious it’s grown teeth, the shambling dog squealing at the neighbors’ back door, I’m seized by an ancient need that yields a taste of tin when met, so, of course, I yield.

The acquaintance seated next to me on the blue bench I use as a sofa withdraws a derringer, tosses a can of sardines as high as the crown molding, and peels back the top with one silver bullet. Shoot some beans and we’d have lunch!

Despite the hard freeze and the aforementioned distractions, the woodchucks digging burrows next to the foundation must be stopped. No matter the dream that insisted I’d dug the holes and forgotten, something must be done to rid the place of vermin, and I’m the man for the job. I’ve read books, articles, and fund-raising letters concerning kind methods, but what if the creatures pigeon-toe their way to the home of another honest burgher? No. Kindness is darker than we think. I need traps. Poison. A good gun.