from Vague Swimmers
From this point, nothing occurred that could not be converted into an
event isolated from the flow. Several pieces fit with two or more, most
matches on one side messing the other side up. It seemed they were
eventually all supposed to fit with none left out and no space. Each in its
place. Each trapped.
The chicken pecks the button food falls out. The chicken pecks the lighted button. It pecks it.
This is not about her but she is an example in this. At this show of
kindness the person begins to cry. Crying happens to be my favorite
sound at night. Crying in the night forms a kind of pillow or muffler for
joy that might be trying to get through different flaws in the night like
stars--pinholes through which crying is holes in the night and the sound
of crying, when there is not other sound, is holes in the muffler so the
neighbors hear and feel relieved that someone's sorrow is worse than
theirs.
"The subject of sorrow," she began. It started raining. Big drops from
which smaller drops escaped up when it hit, five or six making the
pavement unsuitable for chalk. Pedestrians stepped over the outline.
Parts arms legs drooled into shapelessness. Vague swimmers swam by,
shyly bleeding together. None of the people cried yet. Because the
heroine was crying it took away our responsibility to cry. This, the
actor proudly stated, and we were embarrassed not to have known that
already. That is often what mothers do because mothers do not have
feelings like the rest of us. Fathers and brothers are silent. The phone
rings.
In the home of interviewees, at a card table, hidden away in the house in
Queens where the young man showed up, I took his hand and gave him an
awkward kiss on the cheek, sound of static, recognizable, unrevokable. The
carpet starts unraveling, I'm sorry I can't see it out. Stop interrupting I'm
telling the story, I'm big big big, back and forth through an intercom the
neighborhood hears and breaking into sobs bang bang [the door] I don't look
so strong bang bang.
|  |
