SoMa Literary Review - Golden State

Golden State

By Jackson Bliss

Sometimes my college feels like an Electronic Label Maker and I just can’t deal with theory life, I can’t stomach another conversation about obscure garage bands with stupid garage band names that sell out to fascist multinational hegemonic corporations and the radical feminist critique of marginalized hermaphroditic voices in children’s 18th century Caribbean literature and the cultural rape of white djembe drummers at rich hippie schools and the Gaze in Western Orientalism and the political chauvinism of rightwing conspiracies and the plight of blue Bengali cubs in the illegal fur trade and the dangers of cooking with non-stick frying pans. Today, I’m writing a paper with tire tracks. There is nothing I love more than playing Portishead in my car and driving solo, coasting to Sacramento with a cigarette in my hand. I’m not in love with that city, I haven’t found a single café yet. Instead, I study in hotel lobbies, I pretend I have a rich girlfriend. She’s taking the elevator, I tell the concierge, she’s like that, swooping down from the penthouse in a flash of studied elegance. Oh, you’re wearing that dress? It’s my favorite one, I confess, the only fabric that doesn’t obscure you. The sad thing is, the elevator doors only open once I leave. But this space, this paused life on the highway, the brackets between the smoothie stands of Berkeley and the wasteland of Sacramento, between textbooks and hallucinations, is almost perfect. It’s a timeless moment, a courageous flick of the wrist, a place to exhale in the trenches of old wars.

Jackson Bliss is an MFA student in fiction at the University of Notre Dame. His work has appeared in Cadence, The Oberlin Review, The Bend, BlazeVox, The Voice, 3am Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Syntax, The Pittsburgh Quarterly and Ink Collective.