{"id":24059,"date":"2026-04-24T06:06:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T10:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=24059"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T10:06:45","slug":"edgar-allan-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/edgar-allan-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Edgar Allan Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wife, she writes children\u2019s books. They\u2019re educational and give the kids practical advice. Her bestseller is Pete The Pedophile<\/em>, which teaches children to stay away from grown men who wish to have sex with them. In another, she encourages the use of the words \u201cpenis\u201d and \u201cvagina\u201d in lieu of silly nonsense words like \u201cwee-wee,\u201d \u201ccoochie,\u201d \u201cgoogly goo,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

She is absolutely perfect and her books make us enough for me to stay at home and try to make a living from my carvings. I use knives. I use wood. I have a whole set of oddly-shaped knives for shaping the teak, oak, pine, walnut, cherry, or mahogany I\u2019m using that day. The knives stay sharp because I always take care of what\u2019s mine.<\/p>\n

After we got married, we had a lot of sex. Since we were married and she didn\u2019t mind, I would always blast off inside her, thinking nothing of it. Well, you know the rest. Eventually her little belly started to grow and she stopped having periods. There was a bun in the oven, the doctors verified. The bad part is: we hated kids\u2014not hated like a Nazi hates pastels, but were uninterested in them. We had both been like that even at a young age. We were both precocious children and read James Fenimore Cooper when our peers were reading Dr. Seuss. We were a match made in heaven, except we didn\u2019t believe in God. We didn\u2019t like sports, we didn\u2019t like opera, we didn\u2019t care much for TV, except as background noise for couch-based coitus.<\/p>\n

That was when we had neighbors to consider. Now, we have a nice house paid for by Christopher Tries Crack<\/em> and Barbie Has Herpes<\/em>. Indeed, in certain situations, we might woggle our fingers at cute babies or hold one at family gatherings, but those brief interactions were enough for us.<\/p>\n

There is a basement in the house where the washer and dryer live and my wife is too scared to venture. In other words, I do all the laundry. It\u2019s fine by me: we keep separate hampers, easy to sort. I throw all mine in at once, any colors or fabric, and wash away. Hers, I separate into delicates, lights, darks, and dry-clean only. I always thought dry-cleaning was a scam.<\/p>\n

My wife is working on Why Mommy Needs Alone Time<\/em> so I go out to my shed on the sloping hill of our backyard near Charlotte. I unstrap my case of knives, bringing out my oils, resins, epoxies, and glues. I have an orderly work station with all the tools in their place. I never really know where I\u2019ll go with a piece until I take away the first cut. Usually, once I cut even a minute flake off a block I can see it becoming a miniature canoe, a feather, a leaping tiger, or a Buddha. This is how I do my craft. I don\u2019t take commissions anymore because I feel like I can\u2019t live up to my own standards since the piece won\u2019t be made with precision like the others.<\/p>\n

Instead, I fill up bins of carefully wrapped carvings and when they\u2019re all full, I reserve booths at fairs, craft shows, and flea market festivals. For what I sell them for versus how long it takes to make them, it\u2019s not a lucrative endeavor. Plus I have to pay to rent the booth. Still, it gets me out of the house and the wife is always saying I need to get out more and that I don\u2019t have any friends. I daren\u2019t point out that she doesn\u2019t have friends either.<\/p>\n

She does talk to one woman on the phone daily, sometimes for an hour. It\u2019s her literary agent: THEY WANT TO PUBLISH HER IN ARABIC. Have to scratch the book about Mohammed. Translation means foreign rights which means money which means I can keep on carving as long as I do the dishes and the laundry and the yard work and cook and grocery shop and pee sitting down. It\u2019s a fair compromise. I never was cut out for work. Not real work, I mean, like swinging a hammer. I\u2019m more of a library clerk or church maintenance kind of guy. You\u2019d be amazed how much gum there is on the bottoms of church pews.<\/p>\n

After what seems like a while working on what has become an elephant, my wife calls for me. My cell sits there like a brick. She calls for me. She needs me. I carefully set down my sixty-five dollar knife and jog up the hill. \u201cWhat\u2019s the dealio, Emilio?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake me to the hospital, now.\u201d I see she has blood on her hands so I rush to open the door of the SUV and help her in, then run inside to get a towel. \u201cPut pressure on the wound,\u201d I say. She says: \u201cIt\u2019s coming from my vagina.\u201d<\/p>\n

I drive about 215 miles per hour and we\u2019re at the hospital lickety-split, blocking the ambulance entry. Simply because you\u2019re rich enough to afford an ambulance doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t have to wait your turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife is dying!\u201d I scream. Clearly I don\u2019t do well in these situations. \u201cShe\u2019s pregnant.\u201d They wheel her in fast and pull me from the room which takes some effort because I\u2019m considerably bigger than most nurses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSir,\u201d a nurse says, putting pressure on my arm. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to help her. Let us help her, okay? Go get some coffee. We\u2019ll get you when she\u2019s stable.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wait in a musty waiting room and everyone waiting to see their dying loved ones look like they\u2019re dying themselves. Ever since I\u2019d tried to off myself and got put into a psychiatric hospital for a couple-dozen days, I have a fear of hospitals. Don\u2019t say anything crazy and you\u2019ll be fine, I think. Finally the doctor comes out still wearing his skull cap. Yes, I\u2019m the husband. There is only one in the world and I am him. All the others are impostors. Don\u2019t say that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour wife is stable and she\u2019s healthy,\u201d the doctor says, \u201cbut we lost the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSurely,\u201d I say, feeling redness build at my throat, \u201cyou have some kind of RFID bracelet and we can find her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, sir,\u201d he pauses, \u201cshe passed. She wasn\u2019t old enough to be viable. You can see your wife now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I follow him, eyes welling up, feeling so terrible that I hated kids and now one was dead and it wasn\u2019t some random one. It was my one. It was dead. Propped up on the bed, my wife watches Jeopardy<\/em>, not acknowledging me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is Minsk?\u201d she says. I hold her limp hand and ask how she feels.<\/p>\n

She answers, \u201cWho is Taft?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe doctors say you\u2019re going to be fine,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

She answers, \u201cWhat is taffeta?\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse comes in with a little pink plastic tub and asks if we want to see the baby before it\u2019s taken to the funeral home, which I expect is a polite way of saying the furnace. My wife says okay and they hand her a white towel which my wife cups in her palms.<\/p>\n

Lying in the middle of the towel is an alien-looking, big-headed proto-human. I touch its little head and think it looks like a Swedish fish. My wife hands her back and the doctors say she can go. At home, she sits in the study working on Taxation is Theft<\/em> as I peek in thinking of offering her French toast.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t say anything and stops writing until I leave. I think she blames me for the baby. How adamant I\u2019ve always been about hating kids all the while dumping my seed into her willy-nilly. I make French toast anyway and it is delicious. Vanilla extract and a touch of cinnamon is the key. Brioche doesn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

I get back to my carving and finish the piece I\u2019d started that morning. Upstairs, my wife is already in bed and I peck her on the cheek before we turn away from each other and do not say good night. We aren\u2019t say-goodnight people. Never have been.<\/p>\n

Screams wake me at three in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe baby monitor! I heard noise!\u201d She is hysterical. I pull a knife I keep by the bed. A knife is safer for home defense so bullets don\u2019t go through the walls and kill your neighbors or your kids if they aren\u2019t dead already. Then you\u2019re up for manslaughter. I, also, am an expert with knives. I walk across the hall to the orange room where the baby would have lived and see no one. Hear nothing. I whisper into the monitor, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, only a bad battery.\u201d We got it for free from some previous infant owners and hadn\u2019t checked the batteries. You can\u2019t count on a newborn for much.<\/p>\n

My wife won\u2019t eat, not even cubed golden honeydew, she\u2019s fine with the benzos her doctors gave her and tea in her study.\u00a0 She needs me when she needs me but not when I need her. Isn\u2019t that like the main reason relationships don\u2019t work out? That night, she asks me to sleep on the couch. I acquiesce. The drugs make her snore anyway, so I get cozy and fall asleep to an infomercial about a kitchen gadget. Nearing three, she wakes me screaming again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s someone in the house,\u201d she screams. I bound upstairs and knock on our door and she won\u2019t open it. \u201cIt\u2019s me, your loving husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what an invader would say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a 5-leaf clover tattooed on your lady parts.\u201d She opens the door. I try to hug her but she pushes me away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear the noise from there,\u201d she says, pointing to the baby\u2019s room. \u201cLike white noise, like a radio station but you can\u2019t hear the words or the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo back to bed,\u201d I say, \u201cI\u2019ll fix it for us, my macaroon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t call me that again, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes ma’am.\u201d<\/p>\n

I go into the room and sit cross-legged on the ground trying to listen for noise when I notice a crackling. A buzzing. A hard-to-pinpoint sound, almost like my wife had described. I put my ear to the floor, to the walls, I stand up in the crib and listen to the ceiling. I make sure everything is unplugged. I go down to my shop and get a hammer and crowbar. Back in the room, I find a spot on the wall where the noise is coming from and I smash it with the hammer. Then again. And again. My wife stands watching. She says, \u201cDon\u2019t let me stop you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I keep going all around the room, prying back chunks of sheetrock until only studs and insulation are left, plus two beer cans in the walls. Construction workers often leave little tokens so people will find them one day, some kind of glimpse at immortality. I sit, covered in orange and white dust, exhausted. I leave the room the way I made it because it\u2019s my room and not my baby\u2019s room because my baby\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n

I go to the workshop to do some carving, but every piece I start has a large head, big round eyes and tiny little digits. Finally, I just carve my baby. I carve her perfectly from memory, from just having touched her one little time. All that went into the planning and preparing and physically making the baby was wasted, but this labor is not. I make our baby. I make her. Upstairs I show our baby to my wife who knocks it out of my hand and lies in bed. She has eaten very little and I\u2019m worried she\u2019s not taking her medicine. That night, she wakes me up from the couch. I need to sleep outside, she says.<\/p>\n

I pick up my bundle of blankets and pillows and go to the porch where I make a moderately comfortable bed. I hold my baby close to me as I sleep. Again she wakes me up and again she hears it\u2013the noise.<\/p>\n

I put my baby down and I put my ear to the floor. She walks back into the room asking if I hear it. I shout that I do. I get the crowbar and pry up the hardwood floors, finding beneath that linoleum. I spend most of the night pulling up the boards and hauling them to the roadside. I carve again after I\u2019ve rested, I carve our baby, again. My baby is all I can think about. The little Swedish fish, the red semi-solid candy, not the pickled kind, but also kind of the pickled kind. I wish I could have saved her. I wish I had never said I hated kids. I love my baby and she\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

That night at bedtime, my wife wakes up me up and tells me I can\u2019t sleep on the porch, I need to go farther outside.<\/p>\n

I do what she says. I love her. I can\u2019t imagine her pain. She lost the baby. Her body said no. I simply lost her. My body doesn\u2019t ever say anything. I didn\u2019t even have her yet and I lost her. I put down a tarp in the yard and sleep fitfully, waiting for sunrise. When she yells for me, the noise is in the clocks, the refrigerator, the toaster.<\/p>\n

I tear it all apart, piece by piece, I smash the televisions, I tear down shelves, I gnaw on the curtains, until all there is, is noise. I don\u2019t even look at the mess I\u2019ve made\u2013I simply go to bed. Before I\u2019m even comfortable, she says, \u201cYou can\u2019t sleep here,\u201d and points to the shed. This is taking it too far, but I\u2019m a strong man, I can tolerate it. She\u2019s dealing with immense trauma. I don\u2019t even go to sleep, I work on carving another baby, bigger this time, to plant in the yard and grow into a tree of babies.<\/p>\n

At three o\u2019clock, she is more hysterical than usual. The noise is everywhere. It\u2019s everywhere. I go back to the shed and bring a sledgehammer and a long, curved knife, which I leave on the counter. I smash the piano. I smash all the windows. I smash the toilets the sinks the mirrors. I destroy it all.<\/p>\n

Then I hear it, the closer she gets to me I hear it louder and louder. She doesn\u2019t speak, but steps around the clutter as I backpedal to the kitchen counter. She goes upstairs and the noise she\u2019s emitting is so deafening I barely hear her say, \u201cIt\u2019s gone. You can come up.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I ascend, the only sound is the light scratch of my knife against the railing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife, she writes children\u2019s books. They\u2019re educational and give the kids practical advice. Her bestseller is Pete The Pedophile, which teaches children to stay away from grown men who wish to have sex with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":25027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-r-allen-abshire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24059"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25028,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24059\/revisions\/25028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}