THE EVENING MEAL

A recreated image of Pacman's skull. Reposted from Next Nature

a fascinating site which explores the notion that "There may even come a
moment that our connection with an industrially
manufactured coke bottle may be richer
and more mythical than our relation
with a genetically analyzed and manipulated rabbit in the woods."

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One of the things that I hoped to do with this blog is to post works as they evolve, to illustrate the development, mis-starts, epic wrecks, double-backs, wrong roads, and (hopefully) eventual successful conclusions of works-in-progress. I suppose it is a bad thing for my 'career', however, I guess I don't care. I'd rather engage in meaningful dialogue.

Yesterday, I posted a prose piece entitled "Why I Write." It was, itself, a development from a poem that I published in Vallum magazine a couple of years ago. (I've appended the poem at the bottom of this post.) Today, I've revised both of them and created the following text. Is it the final version? Each version loses something of the previous. Each version gains something. I'll have to wait and see.


THE EVENING MEAL


My father rolled up our house and walked into the forest. When he arrived at the world’s edge, he turned, pulled up the road, cracked it once like a whip, and folded it into his suitcase. Then he turned and folded up the night.

”I’m going now,” he said, and left.

I pointed to where our house once was, to where the road once was. I pointed to where there once was night.

“We are inside a suitcase,” I said, “a vast suitcase surrounded by birds. The suitcase has neither up nor down, darkness nor night. The suitcase is neither going nor returning from a journey and so contains neither sweaters, undergarments, nor time. Golden clasp light shines from every direction and so our shadows are made of light only; they cast themselves upon every surface. There is flight but no birds, song but no voice, and here in the endless day, we fold ourselves until we are but a single dimensionless point, neither matter nor energy, time nor sorrow, though inside our spaceless chests, we contain a tiny forest, a house, a road. We have a tiny family. We place our serviettes on our miniscule laps, some of us first wiping the corners of our mouths, and the evening meal begins.


*
(original draft)

WHY I WRITE


In the forest, we were not able to see the trees.
My teacher put them in his suitcase
and walked into the night.

When he got to the edge of the world
he turned and pulled up the road
cracking it once, like a sheet or whip.
He held it under his chin and folded it right.

I pointed. This is the way out of here
but there were no roads.
I pointed. This is our forest
but there was nothing.

The crickets said something that I will not repeat

Six jeweled piglets lapped at the droplets of my brow.
Seven azure swallows brushed their wings against my shadow.
T-shirts are silent, cotton, and easy to launder.