The Art of Tetman Callis

some things just stick in the mind: dates, faces, names and places; colors of eyes and sounds of voices. twenty-eight years ago tonight, my girlfriend told me she thought she was pregnant. we were parked on a dark homeless street on the fringe of someone else’s brand-new neighborhood. we were there for making out (my […]

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here’s an age-old question: who among us can imagine our parents in passion entwined?right! so, we must all be gods! eternal, deathless, our origins lost in the mists of time preceding time. certainly, we are none of us sprung from the clumsy thrustings of those wrinkling, aging, inept and flatulent poseurs who insist we are […]

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“If skies remain clear, the air warm, and pollen and nectar abound in the flowers, the workers, through a kind of forgetful indulgence, or over-scrupulous prudence perhaps, will for a short time longer endure the importunate, disastrous presence of the males. These comport themselves in the hive as did Penelope’s suitors in the house of […]

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we babies of the boom, now middle-aged, overweight, out of what were once our so-alluring shapes, now with spouses gone we wrinkle and sag. we sometimes flock together in the evenings, laughing over dinner and dry red wine. once we would have paired and been naked by midnight—three a.m. at the latest—now we take our […]

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what was once done with so littlethought given other than to the doing of it now done (whenever possible)fraught with consideration with a strong desire to hold down by the wrists to bite and to stabto scream in rage against death (Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

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“It is a vast achievement, the surest ideal, perhaps, to render the condition of men a little less servile, a little less painful; but let the mind detach itself for an instant from material results, and the difference between the man who marches in the van of progress and the other who is blindly dragged […]

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i’m given to understand freud saidwe are all of us imprisoned by our dreams.but i’m shut right now in a small room with no windows(artificial light, overhead and flickering)and have no way to verify whatever freud mayor may not have said, regarding dreams and prisons. last night i was imprisoned with cream cheese cupcakes.i’d never […]

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my son has a sister who is not hismother’s daughter and another who isnot his father’s little girl. the first ofthese two half-sisters has herself two half-siblings in virginia, while the secondis closely related to severalpersons in hawaii. we progenitors(several inter-breeding mothers andfathers) are, or may be, closely relatedto people in coloradotexasohiotennesseescotlandfrancegermanythe netherlandsand possibly viet […]

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“I have studied these people for many years. We are in Normandy; the soil is rich and easily tilled. Around this stack of corn there is rather more comfort than one would usually associate with a scene of this kind. The result is that most of the men, and many of the women, are alcoholic. […]

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she drove up this evening, before sunset,in her silver volkswagen beetle, one of the new kind.it made a loud rackety clacking noise, as thoughit really were powered by hamsters on a wheel.many hamsters, on a large wheel. i watched from the kitchen window. our son, hers and mine,had gone out to meet her. the two […]

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home for the christmas holidays,i snuck to the garage of my parents’ house to get high.everyone else was in the house on the other side of the door that ledfrom dad’s green garage to mom’s red kitchen. i laid my works out on dad’s workbench,my papers and baggie on a magazine’s glossy cover photo,some comely […]

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“Nature is always magnificent when dealing with the privileges and prerogatives of love. She becomes miserly only when doling out the organs and instruments of labour. She is especially severe on what men have termed virtue, whereas she strews the path of the most uninteresting lovers with innumerable jewels and favours. ‘Unite and multiply; there […]

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i turned on the radio and folded my freshly-washed underwearwhile watching out the window at schoolgirls walking by the tingling and the pressure from my old workplace injury is always with mei moved with careclouds had been building up all afternoon the schoolgirls walked down the street to the next blocki stacked my underwear neatlythe […]

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my father storms into the house when he gets home from workbitching about obese paralegalsred-light runnerslarge cars badly parkedi’m watching television when he comes ini try to avoid getting in front of his anger after he takes off his tiemakes a martini and sitshe’s usually better he sipshe sayswhy does my girlfriend keep calling me […]

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“According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General [pre-2005], 19 percent of the general population of the United States has a diagnosable mental illness, 6 percent have an addictive disorder, and 3 percent have both a mental illness and an addictive disorder. Most of the sufferers continue to function more-or-less well outwardly, despite […]

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you are still herea root grown tight around a stonea persistent dream of dark-eyed women you are still herein this chair you used to sitin this plush and tattered chair where years after you were gonei found a long strand of what could only have been your hair i did not keep ityou are right […]

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writing by starlightsloppilyhas this page already been used? orion and his dog overheadsatellites and red-eye liners passing seven sisterschased as ever by the bull this morning he has saturn on one horn dawn breeze coming nowvenus and a thin crescent rising my girlfriend sleeps in our tentlast night we made love during a thunderstormrain pelted […]

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“The personnel security system appeared to be a solid, workable solution to the need to keep classified information out of untrustworthy hands. However, on closer inspection, the system was far less comprehensive than it seemed. The process for investigating personnel for Secret-level clearances was extremely cursory—it was incapable of uncovering the great majority of criminal […]

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she lives in the kitchen paints her facewith paste she scrapes from cans sleeps on the floor in front of her stove wakes up hungry stuffs her lovers into sausage skinsfries them up for breakfast they sizzle in her cast-iron pan she turns up the heat her lovers pop and spatter spots on the wallsspots […]

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please don’t stand so close to me, bossnot only are you attractive in your own rightyou remind me rather much of someone with whom i was onceand not sufficiently long enough agoa little too much involved with for comforteither mine or hersor for that matter either of our spousesand i see by your listing in […]

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“I have a uniquely German capacity to vacillate between sentimentality and coldness.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants

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hold me while i sleep and i shall knowthat you are holding me as in mydreams i see your face while you aredreaming me i hear your sweet voice singingme to sleep as i am holding you asclose to me as dreamers ever dreamto be as close as shadows close as wallsclose as solitude will […]

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two pot pies were baking in the oven on a cookie sheet to catchtheir bubbling over. i told my wife, the pots pies are almost done.i took a hot pad in my hand and opened the oven door. see? i turned around,my wife behind me in the kitchen. i’m not having pots pies tonight, she […]

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“Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “2.0121”, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (emphasis in original)

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it’s when i have you impaled beneath meyour eyes the colors of the oceanopen and looking into mineand i am in youi know only what is importantand am freed from all the rest (Published in Lyrotica, 2011; copyright 2011, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

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it was the middle of the day and the sunlight was bright. the house and the apple orchardstood at the base of a ridge dotted with scrub oaks and pines. my wife and son and iworked in the orchard. a jenny followed by a foal wended down the ridge. a drift of swine, sharp-tusked, followed […]

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“The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “1.12”, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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fetal lymphocytes can persist in the mother’s blood for twenty-seven yearsor so i’ve been toldso part of me was still inside my motherpumping through her heartflowing through her fingertipswhen my father taught me to ride a bike across a green field my seventh summer still inside my mother when the freckled older boyimpressed upon me […]

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my life blew up in my facei never heard a soundthere was a flash and still i can’t seemy eyes are burnedburning shards that had been my life blew offi grabbed at them buzzing by my head trying to catch an explosioneyes on firewhite blinded me reachingreaping the airthe fragments i catch are hotjagged molten […]

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“‘Defective’ was a big word in our house. Many things were labeled ‘defective’ only to miraculously turn functional once the directions had been read more thoroughly.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants

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