Thursday, September 29, 2016

Furnacy End of This Hollow Rope



Read that ▲ out loud.

William Gass describes his tunnel, his project, page 163. Only now is he starting to dig. I know you're too smart to have a clean conscience. Still, let Gass interrogate you. Lordy, when you laugh wince recoil in self-recognition. You will stare at the hole the hole has left.

I wish I'd taken The Tunnel, the punniest, angriest, funniest I've ever to Maine. I could have read it out loud - when Earthgirl was painting on the trail I could have wandered off to a rock, when Earthgirl was painting off in kayak I could have read aloud on porch. Here, I read this out loud, quick, look around, see there are no witnesses, try it:











THE FUTURE OF TERROR / 5

Matthea Harvey

If there were gamebirds in our gables,
shouldn’t we shoot them ourselves?
Thus we went glass-faced into glory.   
We had our hearts set on staying here,
so our steps seemed more hesitation
waltz than straight-ahead tango.   
We danced the hokey pokey on holy days—
put your left arm in heaven, your right leg in hell
and in the hubbub of shake-it-all-about,
we didn’t hear the hoofbeats. The illuminati
spoke to us over the intercom via interpreters.
Meanwhile we had iodine dribbling from
our wounds and itch mites in our blankets.
Ours was not a job to joke about.   
In the lantern-light, the lawn speckled
with lead looked lovely. We would live this
down by living it up. My pile of looseleaf
was getting smaller—I wrote in margins,   
through marmalade stains, on the backs of maps.   
I put a piece of mica in the microwave and before
the explosion it made the mirage I’d imagined.
I was hoping for a noticeable increase in nutmeats
or a one night stand in the oubliette. I outwept
everyone at the pageant, even the children
from the poorhouse playing possum.
We studied the protocol for astronaut removal
the minute we saw his spit hit planet earth
on the spaceship window. But though the scandal
reverberated round-the-clock, we had to let it
slide. He was up there turning somersaults
while we spun ever-so-slowly below.




1 comment:

  1. i was amused by

    Judge: Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court? Mae West: On the contrary, your honor, I was doin' my best to conceal it.


    Read more at http://knappster.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-choice-not-leppo.html#R2Qo0KohvItDWOOi.99

    ReplyDelete