Nick Francis Potter: HERBERT 2B MAKES A MESS OF THE LOCALS

I’ll make it important for you to think about that Herbert’s in a marriage. 1. It’s pretty large. You understand what I mean. And it’s right to be thinking about equipments when you think about Herbert. About how farming has equipments and kitchens have equipments, because girls now, they’re marrying tractors and plows and they’re marrying refrigerators—they’re marrying microwaves—and things that are Herberts as well are getting married to girls. All the time. If you want specifics I’m saying Herbert 2b specifically about marriage with a girl getting married to equipments. My wife. $13,000. Or think about it this way: Herbert 2b is helpmeat, is what she put strung up between us in the marriage so that I might be who I have always have had in me all the time forever what I want to be, but she was a lot of work and marriage is a lot of work and I guess that’s why. She’s put a full hand of divorces against me already, so we’re as much divorced as married now. I suppose this is where Herbert finds his way into marriage with my wife and me. Maybe this helps: Three’s not too large a number I don’t think. And equipments, if we think of things in terms of equipments, equipments might do that number down below three and in-between two and three. I have a small factory all the time in my head. It’s what I’m after, it’s what I was saying about how I’ve always wanted to be. A business owner. Two and three-quarters and the marriage is operating all the way fine. Or it was until what Herbert, and let me tell you about Herbert: Herbert is a kind of a moose-like equipment the way it gets through a doorframe, and what Herbert did was make it that we are all out of doorframes—who knew my wife’s liked the whole set of doorframes so much?—and we can’t get upstairs anymore and we’re out of the house for groceries and Herbert still is in there and when he put his head down onto the walls it opened things up, the way you could get to any room all at once because every room was the floor now inside of there. Do you want to know about my wife? I’ll tell you in a little bit about my wife who is also now Herbert 2b’s wife. The house then is a station of rubble and all that’s left is Herbert mowing down at the sticks and beams and everything with his head (equipment) so now my wife, she has me in a hotel and she is in her own hotel not in my hotel and we just left Herbert 2b in the remains of the house. See what I mean? Her: “This isn’t the type of thing that is ever working, I’ll cut you down straight. Follow?” Me: “Right.” Her: “I’ll get your throat out of your neck. Follow?” Me: “Right.” Her: “Make me think twice I will always do it.” Me: “Right.” She makes a silly thing at me sometimes and I just have to make it laugh off, but I’ve been hearing worry about Herbert 2b, I really have. Everyone says so. This will make a spot in your mind: Herbert 2b, inside of Herbert 2b: all birds. Have you been inside a store all birds are everywhere in cages? How it sounds when you are around where Herbert 2b is. What they say in my ears is Herbert 2b has hard feelings is what I meant. No heart. What they say is Herbert 2b has a trumpet for purring out sad purring, he’s already within bird-range, and that Herbert 2b’s caterwauling that side of town down the drain like a sad sorry Herbert worsting everything that has ears. This, look at this map—I make this—they’re saying that Herbert 2b, since we left him, he knocked down this building as well: My wife is a wife that will be her own wife, she says this to me, is that maybe she is asexuality. I have a dictionary. She has cosmetic surgery for her bones that they call her clavicle bones when I’m at the hotel there and I assume Herbert 2b is looking for her and I know where she is, approximately, so I would be looking for her too, if I went out. I could make a business out of clavicle bones. I could make all kinds of businesses. And my wife can use a telephone through imagination, says she might want to cut marriage from her arms and legs and what’s still hanging from her back: a marital cape, of sorts, and I think about that. Wait for her: is she going to call? At one point, what they say—did I tell you about the television?—is Herbert 2b is marching down hellward, digging a moat in circles around and around the old house, still has his trumpet, and is finding all the dead animals that have ever have been dead around the house and making ideas for my wife. But an equipment, whether you want to know about it or not, is not what I’m always going to be when I make a business. Not Herbert. You understand what I mean. I have a hard time inside of a hotel but my wife visits me after she has surgery with my money. My money makes new bones for what they call clavicle bones for what my wife has in top of her chest just below her neck what she says is surgical cosmetics. Follow? She’ll tell me about what they are and why they flutter why they jack her up why she’s always carrying and spilling her tea why her place where she used to have what is called clavicle bones runs sounding like two small engines things like hummingbirds is what she has audacity to say straight at my mouth is what she’s done with my money. I think it’s true. I found it like this: Different things: I’m right up close to the sun now, for starters. In the hotel again. People are telling me that Herbert 2b is looking around for us. I don’t want Herbert 2b to look for me but I want to find my wife since she’s always alone from me lately. It’s also hard because I’m a future business so I feel terrible that people are calling Herbert 2b bad business and I have him in-between some of my wife and me. They’re on the television and they keep telling me that Herbert 2b is all the way in the middle of the city with a bag of dead birds which bag is ripped in the bag and leaking dead birds and filthy animals, not only birds, the insides of birds because of it dragging birds and calling out for the name of my wife and my name, and other animals falling out too: rabbit, mice, possums, tiny hawks, rabbit. It’s so much that I pull the covers up over my back and have the pillows on top of my head and ears until the commercial is what is on the television. A deer’s head. I think where is my wife and Herbert 2b’s? Have you seen a cat? I saw this cat for my business and want to know what you think about it for a business and if you think my wife will love me then: It’s the TV: some downtown artist loves Herbert 2b all the time and kisses his cheeks all the time for art and this is always what I’ve always wanted to have happen with my cheeks from some rich business magazine and he’s not my husband. It’s the TV: is enough to tell me that Herbert 2b is big famous and this new artist loves him when Herbert 2b puts his head into how there’s a bird picture for the gallery for publicity I’m upset to kill someone like Herbert because he is so sad for my wife for art. My wife makes my telephone tell me ringing: “There it is did you see on TV?” Me: “Uh huh.” Her: “He’s married to me.” Me: “Uh huh.” Her: “He’s married to you.” Me: “Mmmm.” Her: “I’ve got to be off. You understand, don’t you?” It’s a good idea to take something with wheels as big as I have for equipments spilling wings and what remains out of a bag—I’ve done done a decision like this five times before, but this time, come decision-time, I’m gonna have all the gasoline I need to get there—to reduce it—you can hear a store all birds with the door open anywhere—only two minutes before I arrive and I have an automatic car running hard kissing him, 45 MPH, right into a building and make a wreck of it, all metal everywhere, bricks, and some blood bits from my lip, but mostly shrapnel Herbert 2b, buzzard viscera and a burst of feathers like exploding a down pillow, wiry plumes of what my carfront now is a tin flower. You understand. After Herbert 2b seems not to be bird-powered I can get out of the car, carsmoke, and shake people’s hands who are looking at us / me, I’m an artist now, a future business, then when I can shake anyone’s hand I want I see my wife in the big huddle of lots of lots of people and I get romantic to her through the bodies—I’ve seen every movie—and give her a little kiss on her hand and hold her hand so that she can’t escape, she doesn’t seem to, and get one onto her cheek. I’m so much a husband I go select a dry feather to put in her hair and make a position to look eye to eye for the cameras. Business. Marriage.

Nick Francis Potter is a multimedia artist and writer from Salt Lake City, Utah. His writing has appeared in Caketrain, >kill author, HTML Giant and Untoward Magazine. He is currently pursuing an MFA from the Literary Arts program at Brown University.

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