I
bears fuck you up and i don’t mean their claws and teeth and your forgetful bacon grease by the campsite; sure, there are stories of the mauled beyond repair, the cylopsed survivors but my care is your move out to the edge to that house with the stained porch encroaching on the forest and the first bear you see walking through those trees, just the slight sight cracking your bones and a line of your marrow is licked clean by a big wet primordial tongue and a bit of your inner-ear is gobbled like a mulberry and you are now cursed an ache and a dizzy spell upon the hint of her kind even when they become like your neighbors: everywhere, juxtaposed to the vinyl fence or the wicker patio furniture or the nerf football on the cutgrass and you are left hollowboned and knockdown dizzy asking: how the fuck?
II
you push him into it anyway, saying it’s of the beer and the omnigray midwest winter and he cracks peanuts, brushing shells to the sawdust while placing you back in that other bar in cuyahoga falls or was it chagrin falls? or was it akron proper? or maybe way out in fucking youngstown where he was drinking other pitchers of beer with another generation of buddies there for the karaoke, his “juke box hero” taking over the rust belt one bar at a time, and here he belts over the shittalk of other drinkers standing in the rain and not breaking stride goes right into the story of rosie the muzzled bear with the oven mitts on the dog leash held by the silly fuck in the john deere hat and how rosie was the karaoke machine that night and how for fifteen bucks you could wrestle her and a pin would win free drinks for the bar and how your buddy had been a high school wrestler or a football player or just big as fuck and that made his buddies that night pay fifteen bucks and buy your buddy his own pitcher of bud light that he chugged before turning his buckeyes hat around and squaring up on that bitch, and here is why you always push him into that story: the spot you stop listening and wander back to a firewarmed bar on a colder night and his whispered first telling, more of a confessional really, of that tale to the marathon drunks left hanging on the tap and how that first time he said he turned with water in his eyes from chugging the beer to face rosie and through his tears saw the saddest little bear and hearing this cracked something in you which still leaks out in dreams of muzzled nights wearing oven mitts and being held on a dog leash by a silly fuck, hugged by besotted former wrestlers in bars all over the omnigray midwest, dryhumped by lostboys of the rust belt, and always you wake hollowboned and knockdown dizzy, wondering what might be Bear for: how the fuck?
III
your first thought seeing the bear rumbling towards your porch’s ripped screen is the mother in your neighbor’s doorbell cam video meticulously popping picket after picket of his ten-thousand-dollar fence to straighten the path for her three cubs back down through the reeds to the slickstoned creek and on to their beary home, but when his nose goes to the mulch beneath your porch, you remember the lady with the laugh at the starbucks when you first moved out to the forest who told you of when she first moved out to the forest and that morning, rushing out to her car already late for work and noticing the vinyl panel under the side corner of her sunroom flapping and getting out of her car in a trance and walking around the side of her house, running her fingers along the bark of the dutch maple like her lover’s belly, and feeling in your belly a movement upon hearing her intimacy, and how she bent down, and here you imagine the sniffing bear cracking and lifting the vinyl panel under your porch with his paw like she did with her trembling hand and finding his Ancient asleep under your very feet, under you: hollowboned and knockdown dizzy knowing he has always been there and it is you that has just arrived or cared to notice or cared to ask: how the fuck?
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daniel joseph was raised on the Rooster River, educated by the Kokosing, carefree along the Potomac and now writes and live with his family tucked into a fertile river valley. His most recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle; Terrain; Hobart; MoonPark Review; The Baltimore Review; Flash Boulevard and Quarterly West.
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image: George Rozanski – on the lookout for park rangers in bear suits since 1985
Rejection Letters 