Gina

by Jesse Millner

Abandon normal instruments. Brian Eno

Abandon normal instruments, abandon mortal intuitions about how to live and love here on the edge of the blooming catastrophe. Abandon all appliances, including hair dryers, toasters, and egg timers, abandon your Cadillac Seville, your reusable shopping bags, your favorite coffee mug, the fucking blender you make your kale and strawberry smoothies with—abandon all that normal shit, walk out on Main Street naked, wave your arms at passing cars, feel the cold air numbing your skin, because of course, it’s January in your city of blasting furnaces that send grey smoke into the sky until the sky itself is dimmed, and the whole world is smothered in a blanket that is not soft and blue like the one your grandma gave you when were a baby, before the normal instruments were thrust upon you—spoons, forks, stuffed animals, the toy pickup with rubber wheels that you liked so much. As you grew older you became even more normal, loving recess and hating math, loving the wild freedom of kickball and hating the moment your teacher rang the bell, when you had to return to the hard seat where someone had carved Gina into the blemished pine. You wondered who Gina was? Did she carve her own name with a pocketknife she’d smuggled into school, or was it some admirer with sweaty palms who snuck glances at her when the teacher had turned her back to write Montezuma on the blackboard? Now you’re thinking about the Aztecs, the eagle they worshipped, the dead rattlesnake hanging from its talons, how their normal instruments were obsidian knives they used to carve into the chests of drugged captives before flinging the bloody hearts down the stone stairs. Now you want your own knife to carve out a little quiet place for yourself from the heart of this noisy world, this stupid world of smoke and mirrors and strip malls and gated communities and fast-food restaurants and car dealerships and donut shops and grocery stores and vape shops and CBD shops, and banks, and streets that stretch off into every direction of the compass, east, west, north, south, and every angle in between, all those places where the sickness of those who have not abandoned normal instruments has reduced the world to a shining catastrophe, so beautiful sometimes as it burns. Whatever happened to Gina, you wonder, she of the carved letters that once pointed towards a life? Did she escape the normal instruments to find love and happiness? You want that for her, sweet Gina, angel of the classroom where boredom bloomed like weeds on the side of a highway snaking through a valley in West Virginia, where outside small towns there are pastures and over the years farmers have abandoned refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, even old Fort pickups, to the industry of rust. Yes, a graveyard of normal instruments where on quiet nights you might hear ghosts of appliances whisper as they wander toward the little river that meanders through some nearby woods and the apparitions gather on the muddy banks to admire the sheen and sparkle of moonlight on the water, which has never been normal, has always been an instrument of erosion, of geologic change, and the music it makes is the hymn of the true God born from fire billions of years ago. Gina is there, part of the unending story that will beat the normal instruments into ploughshares, help the lamb lie down with the lion, raise the dead, and at last bring peace to the world. Yes, Gina is there, sweet siren of 4th grade, Gina of braces and ponytails, Gina, queen of recess, Gina of flesh and blood now resurrected by memory, Gina of love, Gina of light, Gina of wonder, Gina of Grace.

Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared most recently in Past Ten Magazine, Apple in the Dark, and Anti-Heroin Chic. His work was included in The Best American Poetry 2013 and Best Small Fictions 2020. Contrary to internet rumors, he was not raised by the Asmat in New Guinea, nor was he raised by wolves in SW France, nor has he ever worked as a rodeo clown near Cody, Wyoming. He can’t surf, rock climb, eat the hottest Thai peppers, salsa dance, read minds, levitate, or no matter how hard he tries, speak in a language his dog might understand.