Wess Mongo Jolley  

Manhattan’s Arms
(in three parts)

I: FERAL

He decided to keep the horns that broke through his forehead one muddy spring morning. No sense, he thought, in being appalled at those things that sprout unexpectedly from our flesh. Yet he was, at first, and would touch them with trepidation behind locked doors. The farm girl on the hill suggested a doctor she knew, the one that fixed her toenail thing. His foreman left a baseball cap with a wide front bill surreptitiously on his passenger seat. And his mother revived his childhood refrain, “whatever makes you happy dear.”

For it was truth unspoken, even to his own heart, that the horns did indeed bring him joy. Even the sting and the pain and the blood when the dry skin first split was exquisite. And soon those two stout blossoms of bone felt the stir of every breath of wind. In sleepless hours he would trace their contours with trembling caresses. And in the morning he’d delight at the torn pillowcases and lightly drifting down on his lips.

With time the stares became fewer although they never went away completely. Friends eventually looked him in the eye again and not in the horns. He wore the baseball cap out of habit, and eventually he learned to sleep on his back. The horns stopped growing at a modest two inches, and the summer boiled the blood in his veins. For although to all the world it seemed he was content, inside he began to tire of sunshine. The smooth foreheads of the farmers made his shoulders tremble. The weight of his baseball cap became unbearable, an ache that only concrete and glass could assuage.  

So April found him on a bus to Manhattan, neon glinting off creamy bone through smoky glass. On the city streets he hardly merited a second glance from the hurried crowds. In a world of women with tattooed faces and old men with pierced nostrils, he blended in. And he found joy in being a freak of no particular note.  

II. CITY OF THE DEAD

They heard that he took a train to Manhattan. They heard that he stepped blinking into a crowd at Penn Station, where he promptly mingled and was lost. They say that he hasn’t been seen since, and that dust is settling on his books. His friends seemed concerned, but only at first. Concern quickly turned to gossip, and gossip to catty remarks, until even those faded away.  

The seasons washed the earth clean of his memory. For a few years there were false sightings. A visitor to the city thought they saw him from a passing bus window or across a busy city street. And for a time they looked and squinted and tried to see. But soon, they would forget.

In the City of the Dead, they say, you must wait until the last person on earth forgets your name. And every year in Manhattan those with horns, and tails, and fins, step from buses or emerge blinking from taxicabs. The city opens its arms and they fade into the cavernous streets. In Manhattan, you can wander forever and never tread the same street twice. There is always piano music drifting through an open window. And laughter, always laughter. In the City of the Dead they are always smiling. Waiting for the last person they knew to forget their names. Listening in coffee shops for their new names to be spoken.

III.  HOMECOMING

The day came when, for 24 hours, no one stared at his horns. No one looked, and no one looked away. The day came when he forgot who he was, and longed again for the world to find him appalling.  

So he found a bench in Union Square where he could sleep, unnoticed. He closed his eyes and opened his thighs to God. When he awoke, autumn had chilled the air. Dried leaves weighed heavily upon his chest, and someone had stolen his hat. His forehead, unbroken and healed, caused him to weep.  

He cried until sunset, invisible now to the crowds. He cried until his name was gone. He cried until he forgot his home. He cried until his tears washed the last of the old words away.  

He cried until midnight. He cried until the skyscrapers whispered in his ears.  

He cried until there were wings.  

He cried until his shadow flickered across the moon.

Wess Mongo Jolley is a Canadian novelist, editor, podcaster, poet and poetry promoter. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Performance Poetry Preservation Project, and is most well-known for hosting the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel podcast for more than ten years.

His work has appeared in journals such as Off the Coast, Apparition Literary Magazine, PANK, The New Verse News, Danse Macabre, The Chamber Magazine, The Legendary, decomP, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, RFD, TreeHouse Arts, and in collections such as the Write Bloody Press book The Good Things About America.

For the past six years, Mongo has been hard at work on his sprawling supernatural horror trilogy, The Last Handful of Clover. He describes the work as “an epic meditation on aging, loss, and regret.” The novel is currently being released serially on Patreon, Wattpad, QSaltLake, and as an audiobook podcast.

Mongo writes and freelance edits full time from his home in Montreal, Quebec. Find him at http://wessmongojolley.com.