Ken Cormier is a teacher, performance poet, independent radio producer, and musician. He is the author of two collections of stories and poems: Balance Act (Insomniac Press 2000) and The Tragedy in My Neighborhood (Dead Academics Press 2010). He has released three CDs of original music: God Damn Doghouse (2000) and Radio-Bueno (2002) with Elis Eil Records, and Nowhere Is Nowhere (2009) with Cosmodemonic Telegraph Records. Ken’s live performances have been described as “a William Burroughs exorcism through a Karaoke machine.” Ken co-founded and edited The Lumberyard, a radio magazine of poetry, prose and music, which aired weekly on WHUS in Connecticut from 2005-2008. Ken is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Quinnipiac University.
“Strangers” is the first of six short-shorts from Ken Cormier that will run every other Friday for 12 weeks.
My girlfriend is wagging her head around. The room is dark, and a Brian Eno record is on. We are in the process of breaking up, but we can’t stop smiling. My jeans are ripped. I tell her about the way I romanticize empty parking lots in the morning sun. I wake up early to click my boots over the sandpaper blacktop, I say. She butts her head into my shoulder and laughs and cries. I laugh and cry. For a moment the ceiling disappears, and we look up into the cold night sky. We talk about that time in New York. Everything feels like a dead end now, we say. My eyes feel red and tired. When I blink, the lids stick together. My teeth clench and press around the edge of my tongue. I squeeze my girlfriend’s knees and we kiss twice quickly. Later, in the stairwell, we talk for an hour and a half about how everything will be better when we are old, when we are strangers. Then we get into her car and smoke cigarettes while the engine idles. We both know we’re letting go of something that neither of us has ever really held, but we want to make the letting go last. She turns on the radio, and every song is about us. She says she’s going to miss the way I correct her grammar. I tell her I’m not going to be able to make it in the real world. She drives me across town to my parents’ house, and the streetlamps along the way look glittery and slick. I admire the way she shifts gears and handles the car. I think, this is the thing that I want most—the thing I can’t have. When she drops me off and drives away, it’s like she was never there.
