Isaac Richards​

A Catalogue of Quirks to Curb the Chaos

​I must use lotion after washing my hands. I must remove my watch and ring before lovemaking.
I bounce my knee incessantly. I always keep precisely four things in my pockets: wallet and
ChapStick in the left, phone and keys in the right. I sometimes feel like bursting into tears for no
reason at all, but I never do. Perhaps it has something to do with an imperative that lingers from
my childhood: learn to be happy doing things you don’t want to do. So, I drink one can of pure
vegetable juice for breakfast every day. I’m currently marshalling support for an “Intuitive
Sleeping” campaign. I shower, shave, and change my underwear only every other day, and trim
my nose hairs whenever they start to impress me. I chew gum after most meals, take a mucus
suppressant morning and night, check my email compulsively, and scavenge for unwanted books
after professors retire. I clip my lunchbox handle around my backpack strap so that I don’t have
to carry it, and the sound of cutlery clanging against Tupperware matches the rhythm of my gait.
I often take pictures of my meals before eating them, if they particularly excite me, and my
phone automatically creates memory videos titled: “Meals Over the Years.” In the unlikely event
that I ever become scarce or historically interesting, archaeologists will be able to reconstruct
from my personal records alone an anecdotal diet of a twenty-something in the twenty-first
century. My journal entries should also be helpful in this regard. And at night—well at night I
​ride seahorses, breathe purple, and juggle geodes. At night—an oblivion void of imperatives. 
Erotology

What is an apartment if not an art gallery? Oft deserted, under-appreciated, with frequent nudity.

At dawn, an unmade bed murmurs of last night’s love, whispers of morning rush. Stone-still,
blouses and neckties kiss in the closet. Socks snuggle in drawers. A hanger models a damp
dress—slowly drying—longing to be admired.

The shower curtain bartends with soaps and shampoos, hoping for water droplet gratuities.
Books play Jenga. Leftovers swim in Tupperware, a pool backlit by the fridge. Pillow eyes on
the couch never blink. The carpet collects souvenirs like resentment.

You should know what all this is about by now, though I’m holding you at slight remove with
third person. This is a study of love after all.

A television watches the wall, binging the day-long play of light and shadow, wanting to be
entertained. Plastic tulips bloom from marbles, or do they wilt? Blinds wink slowly at the
window. A card table pedestals softening fruit. Butter and bread hide in their respective caves.

I’m trying to say that not only writers, but lovers, must discern Duchamp’s Fountain, hiding in
plain sight. I’m trying not to take things, and people, for granted. Can that be learned by
practicing personification?

How the windowsills wish to be dusted off, how they envy the light-switches’ frequently
fingered caress!

Stars, faintly green, stucco the ceiling. Nesting dolls for pots. The torture device for toast.
Mosaic tile floor. A knife block sheathes medieval weaponry.

Hours of neglect. Empty. Locked from nine to five.

A tired lightbulb burns out. A fuming guitar string snaps the silence with a twang.

​How I hope they’ll submit their maintenance requests to each other soon, and politely. How fine
the line between appreciation and contempt. But tonight, the indifferent co-owners, critics, and
curators—who are primarily the janitors—return after hours as usual, to sit their gorgeously
ordinary bodies in proximity, debrief the day, and without so much as a thank you, crack open a
cantaloupe geode.

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Isaac James Richards is a PhD student at Penn State, a contributing editor for Wayfare, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared in LIT, OxMag, Constellations, Stoneboat, Red Ogre Review, Amethyst Review, Aethlon, El Portal, and several other venues.