"Good Bones"
Jul. 8th, 2024 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiefoeI started off thinking these would be mere well-crafted bagatelles, but soon changed my mind -- the rubbing sheeting man that requires a tire pump is just too brilliant. Bravo Ms. Margaret Atwood.
__ So then what? I know what the story says, what I’m supposed to have said: I’ll eat it myself, so kiss off. Don’t believe a word of it. As I’ve pointed out, I’m a hen, not a rooster.
__ You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.
'The Female Body'
__ Is this the face that launched a thousand products? You bet it is, but don’t get any funny big ideas, honey, that smile is a dime a dozen.
__ She’s a natural resource, a renewable one luckily, because those things wear out so quickly. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Shoddy goods.
__ Then it comes to him: he’s lost the Female Body! Look, it shines in the gloom, far ahead, a vision of wholeness, ripeness, like a giant melon, like an apple, like a metaphor for breast in a bad sex novel; it shines like a balloon, like a foggy noon, a watery moon, shimmering in its egg of light.
'Making a Man'
__ Usually found on wedding cakes, these formally dressed minigrooms require painstaking attention to detail, but it’s worth the time you spend with the paintbrush and the food colouring to see the finished result smiling at you with deceptive blandness from the frothy topmost layer of Seven-Minute Boiled Icing!
__ Why shouldn’t you concoct one of these cunning fellows for your very own? No reason at all! Just coat your hubby with plaster of Paris, and
'Epaulettes'
__ In addition, a song must be sung, a dance must be danced – though a solo on the flute or cello will suffice – a skill-testing question must be answered; and each world leader must describe his favourite hobby, and declare, in a well-modulated exhibition speech, what he intends to do in future for the good of humanity.
__ in addition to a sinister manual device termed a “fly swatter.” It is agonizing indeed to watch one of these instruments of torture and death being wielded by the large and frenzied against the small and helpless; but the rules of diplomacy forbid our intervention.
'Men, At Sea'
__ And there I am, back again at the eternal table, which exists so she can put her elbows on it, over a glass of wine, while he says. What does he say? He says the story of how he got here, to her. She says: But what did you feel?
And his eyes roll wildly, quick as a wink he tries to think of something else, a cactus, a porpoise, never give yourself away, while the seductive waves swell the carpet beneath the feet and the wind freshens among the tablecloths. They’re all around her, she can see it now, one per woman per table. Men, at sea.
__ In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction, want and have, compassion begins.
__ They offer nothing. They offer the great clean sweep of nothing, the unseen sky during a blizzard, the dark pause between moon and moon. They offer their poverty, an empty wooden bowl; the bowl of a beggar, whose gift is to ask. Look into it, look down deep, where potential coils like smoke, and you might hear anything. Nothing has yet been said.
'My Life as a Bat'
__ I’m heading to my home, to my home cave, where it will be cool during the burnout of day and there will be the sound of water trickling through limestone, coating the rock with a glistening hush, with the moistness of new mushrooms, and the other bats will chirp and rustle and doze until night unfurls again and makes the hot sky tender for us.
__ O Dracula, unlikely hero! O flying leukemia, in your cloak like a living umbrella, a membrane of black leather which you unwind from within yourself and lift like a stripteaser’s fan as you bend with emaciated lust over the neck, flawless and bland, of whatever woman is longing for obliteration, here and now in her best negligee.
__ More and more, I think of this event with longing. The quickness of heartbeat, the vivid plunge into the nectars of crepuscular flowers, hovering in the infrared of night; the dank lazy half-sleep of daytime, with bodies rounded and soft as furred plums clustering around me, the mothers licking the tiny amazed faces of the newborn; the swift love of what will come next, the anticipations of the tongue and of the infurled, corrugated and scrolled nose, nose like a dead leaf, nose like a radiator grill, nose of a denizen of Pluto. <> And in the evening, the supersonic hymn of praise to our Creator, the Creator of bats, who appears to us in the form of a bat and who gave us all things: water and the liquid stone of caves, the woody refuge of attics, petals and fruit and juicy insects, and the beauty of slippery wings and sharp white canines and shining eyes.
'Theology'
__ Religion, it seemed to me, could get out of hand.
__ The angels vary according to what they have to say: the angel of blindness for instance, the angel of lung cancer, the angel of seizures, the destroying angel. The latter is also a mushroom.
'Poppies: Three Variations'
__ Though sometimes you heard things anyway: the man beside him whispered, “Look,” and when he looked there was no more torso: just a red hole, a wet splotch in mid-air. That uncle’s gone now too, the number of vets in the parade is smaller each year, they limp more. But in the windows the soldiers multiply, so clean and colourfully painted, with their little intricate guns, their shining boots, their faces, brown or pink or yellow, neither smiling nor frowning. It’s strange to think how many soldiers like that have been owned over the years, loved over the years, lost over the years, in backyards or through gaps in porch floors.
'Homelanding'
__ if it weren’t for this I would have gone away, gone back. It’s this knowledge of death, which we share, where we overlap. Death is our common ground. Together, on it, we can walk forward.
__ Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.
On Camus:
__ then harvested and bruised and fermented for a moment of warmth;
__ Higher up are the limestone mountains, dry and covered with tough and pungent shrubs, the maquis they’re called, and gullied by time and sparse as aphorism.
__ An abrupt bush is what he has, with dark cryptic foliage, one of the mountain shrubs. No hope, no armfuls of petals. This is what there is, he says, or fails to say. You are what you do. Don’t expect mercy.
'We Want It All'
__ We want it all to go on and go on again, the same thing each year, monotonous and amazing, just as if we were still behaving ourselves, living in tents, raising sheep, slitting their throats for God’s benefit, refusing to invent plastics.
__ Every system is self-limiting. Will we solve ourselves as the rats do? With war, with plagues, with mass starvation? These thoughts come with breakfast, like the juice from murdered fruits. Your depression, my friend, is the revenge of the oranges.
__ It was a dance of supplication, a numb dance, a dance of hopelessness and resignation. Also: a dance of continuation, a dance of going on despite everything, a stubborn dance. An awkward, hampered dance. A fluid, graceful dance. A clumsy, left-footed, infinitely skilful dance. A cynical and disgusted dance, a dance of worship, naïve and joyful. A dance.
Ah lepers. If you can dance, even you, why not the rest of us?
__ So then what? I know what the story says, what I’m supposed to have said: I’ll eat it myself, so kiss off. Don’t believe a word of it. As I’ve pointed out, I’m a hen, not a rooster.
__ You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.
'The Female Body'
__ Is this the face that launched a thousand products? You bet it is, but don’t get any funny big ideas, honey, that smile is a dime a dozen.
__ She’s a natural resource, a renewable one luckily, because those things wear out so quickly. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Shoddy goods.
__ Then it comes to him: he’s lost the Female Body! Look, it shines in the gloom, far ahead, a vision of wholeness, ripeness, like a giant melon, like an apple, like a metaphor for breast in a bad sex novel; it shines like a balloon, like a foggy noon, a watery moon, shimmering in its egg of light.
'Making a Man'
__ Usually found on wedding cakes, these formally dressed minigrooms require painstaking attention to detail, but it’s worth the time you spend with the paintbrush and the food colouring to see the finished result smiling at you with deceptive blandness from the frothy topmost layer of Seven-Minute Boiled Icing!
__ Why shouldn’t you concoct one of these cunning fellows for your very own? No reason at all! Just coat your hubby with plaster of Paris, and
'Epaulettes'
__ In addition, a song must be sung, a dance must be danced – though a solo on the flute or cello will suffice – a skill-testing question must be answered; and each world leader must describe his favourite hobby, and declare, in a well-modulated exhibition speech, what he intends to do in future for the good of humanity.
__ in addition to a sinister manual device termed a “fly swatter.” It is agonizing indeed to watch one of these instruments of torture and death being wielded by the large and frenzied against the small and helpless; but the rules of diplomacy forbid our intervention.
'Men, At Sea'
__ And there I am, back again at the eternal table, which exists so she can put her elbows on it, over a glass of wine, while he says. What does he say? He says the story of how he got here, to her. She says: But what did you feel?
And his eyes roll wildly, quick as a wink he tries to think of something else, a cactus, a porpoise, never give yourself away, while the seductive waves swell the carpet beneath the feet and the wind freshens among the tablecloths. They’re all around her, she can see it now, one per woman per table. Men, at sea.
__ In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction, want and have, compassion begins.
__ They offer nothing. They offer the great clean sweep of nothing, the unseen sky during a blizzard, the dark pause between moon and moon. They offer their poverty, an empty wooden bowl; the bowl of a beggar, whose gift is to ask. Look into it, look down deep, where potential coils like smoke, and you might hear anything. Nothing has yet been said.
'My Life as a Bat'
__ I’m heading to my home, to my home cave, where it will be cool during the burnout of day and there will be the sound of water trickling through limestone, coating the rock with a glistening hush, with the moistness of new mushrooms, and the other bats will chirp and rustle and doze until night unfurls again and makes the hot sky tender for us.
__ O Dracula, unlikely hero! O flying leukemia, in your cloak like a living umbrella, a membrane of black leather which you unwind from within yourself and lift like a stripteaser’s fan as you bend with emaciated lust over the neck, flawless and bland, of whatever woman is longing for obliteration, here and now in her best negligee.
__ More and more, I think of this event with longing. The quickness of heartbeat, the vivid plunge into the nectars of crepuscular flowers, hovering in the infrared of night; the dank lazy half-sleep of daytime, with bodies rounded and soft as furred plums clustering around me, the mothers licking the tiny amazed faces of the newborn; the swift love of what will come next, the anticipations of the tongue and of the infurled, corrugated and scrolled nose, nose like a dead leaf, nose like a radiator grill, nose of a denizen of Pluto. <> And in the evening, the supersonic hymn of praise to our Creator, the Creator of bats, who appears to us in the form of a bat and who gave us all things: water and the liquid stone of caves, the woody refuge of attics, petals and fruit and juicy insects, and the beauty of slippery wings and sharp white canines and shining eyes.
'Theology'
__ Religion, it seemed to me, could get out of hand.
__ The angels vary according to what they have to say: the angel of blindness for instance, the angel of lung cancer, the angel of seizures, the destroying angel. The latter is also a mushroom.
'Poppies: Three Variations'
__ Though sometimes you heard things anyway: the man beside him whispered, “Look,” and when he looked there was no more torso: just a red hole, a wet splotch in mid-air. That uncle’s gone now too, the number of vets in the parade is smaller each year, they limp more. But in the windows the soldiers multiply, so clean and colourfully painted, with their little intricate guns, their shining boots, their faces, brown or pink or yellow, neither smiling nor frowning. It’s strange to think how many soldiers like that have been owned over the years, loved over the years, lost over the years, in backyards or through gaps in porch floors.
'Homelanding'
__ if it weren’t for this I would have gone away, gone back. It’s this knowledge of death, which we share, where we overlap. Death is our common ground. Together, on it, we can walk forward.
__ Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.
On Camus:
__ then harvested and bruised and fermented for a moment of warmth;
__ Higher up are the limestone mountains, dry and covered with tough and pungent shrubs, the maquis they’re called, and gullied by time and sparse as aphorism.
__ An abrupt bush is what he has, with dark cryptic foliage, one of the mountain shrubs. No hope, no armfuls of petals. This is what there is, he says, or fails to say. You are what you do. Don’t expect mercy.
'We Want It All'
__ We want it all to go on and go on again, the same thing each year, monotonous and amazing, just as if we were still behaving ourselves, living in tents, raising sheep, slitting their throats for God’s benefit, refusing to invent plastics.
__ Every system is self-limiting. Will we solve ourselves as the rats do? With war, with plagues, with mass starvation? These thoughts come with breakfast, like the juice from murdered fruits. Your depression, my friend, is the revenge of the oranges.
__ It was a dance of supplication, a numb dance, a dance of hopelessness and resignation. Also: a dance of continuation, a dance of going on despite everything, a stubborn dance. An awkward, hampered dance. A fluid, graceful dance. A clumsy, left-footed, infinitely skilful dance. A cynical and disgusted dance, a dance of worship, naïve and joyful. A dance.
Ah lepers. If you can dance, even you, why not the rest of us?
