Angry Self Trilogy

Steve Price
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Babysitting Angry Self

Six dollars an hour plus all the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos I can eat.

I’m gluing the furniture back together when the telephone rings. I stand, and land on my face. Angry Self has tied my shoelaces together. My tongue and I flop on the floor detached from one another. Angry Self must scrub his teeth and go to bed. Too bad if The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich isn’t over.

I lift the receiver and rest it next to the hatchets. Your voice is as banana pudding as ever, even through wires and plastic and the awkwardness caused by my infantile dependence on you.

Angry Self Gives God the Finger on Earth Day

The celebration is on Sunday. I set out on Saturday afternoon. The park is five miles away.

The freeway is backed up. The planet stops revolving, becomes a photo- graph. My fingers are part of the steering wheel. Sixteen hours later, Angry Self unpries one of them, pulling it upward. It quivers, the only thing in the world that has motion.

There’s a second photograph, which fails to exist. It’s of you and me stand- ing on the earth and hugging.

Open Casket for Angry Self

They’ve done a nice job with his mouth foam. As I bend for a closer look, a tear falls upward and splashes me in the eye. I reach for your sun-warmed hand, grab air.

Where are you? I bought extra satin and made you pajamas. Please don’t say it’s too late.

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Steve Price’s work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. He writes and teaches yoga in Phoenix, AZ.