Football Field Overture, with Prelude
ANNIKA WEBER
as it was said,1
I’ve been having an aneurysm.
For four weeks now!
That’s almost a month
and a couple of reasons,
that, I can provide.
First, the fast class,
the last class,
where I wiggled my finger
and left,
the wrist, so still,
Left the letters loitering.
I wanted to draw some shape
with the fog
so I moved three spots to the left.
I was curious about laughing
a little less,
my back to the glass and my eye
to the teacher’s ear.
I drew circles through the
blinds but couldn’t manage
to shave anything from the cracks.
My plan was this,
was that,
if I did enough shaving,
I could wrinkle the peel through my nails
until it washed away,
into a dense heap.
I brought a bowl,
for next time, but this time
I noticed the earlobes,
lingering left.
They were quite small,
two figures
beside myself,
Soldier like seahorses.
I asked them about peeling.
Twenty minutes daily and
you’ll start,
groaning, you’ll start,
growing, you’ll start
fruiting from furling fingernails.
When it gets a little cold,
exhale,
rub them through
your breath and one, at least,
Will one erase the evidence.
I asked the soldiers if they ever got whiskers.
Could I take one?
I don’t remember
what, he said
all I know, he said,
all I know is that,
I ended,
up a whisker on my finger
and a whisper on my toe.
And the window was fogging up,
And the boiling blooms were curling their
way down the wall.
When I glanced at my hands,
all I saw was fruit.
So suffice it to say,
I took a bite from my finger,
scratched my tooth
against the glass,
removed the abscess.
Coated in shards
of swiftly swirling
sky, which told me to admire
the knob of neck, kneeling
toward the corner, all wound up and winding.
So I sank beneath the table,
the counter
to disperse whatever was
going on and
On, with the clippers in hand,
sliced the hopping hooligans into little, tiny
bugs that I could almost stamp.
The room was crawling.
Then the girl from the graveyard on sixth street,
she shouldered up to the hawling,
making laughing
guard, by the door.
More than fourteen feet tall
and covered in sheaths of rose,
the kind you can only find in the
wonder weather.
So I asked,
if she wanted to find somewhere
more quiet, where we could talk
about the birds
and the bats which,
She seemed suspicious.
About the possibility that insects could know
the legs of the tables better than we did.
There were shards of glass, too,
shared in parcels, two
more grains of sand.
They mingled around the ears of
Each visitor,
had two eyes.
As is the way
it is, of course, but still,
I wondered if she might have another.
So I asked.
My friend, so I said,
Where were they,
and I couldn’t figure if the green
came from her eyes
or the sandpipers curled up in the rafters
which had been plastered over,
some years ago, of course.
I glanced up and down just to let her know
that I knew about the sandpipers.
But I don’t think she noticed.
She touched her forehead and eyed
her finger, like maybe something was stuck.
Took her left in her right and
started to inspect
each and every ring.
A pile of lilypads severed from where
There were no bubbles or gurgles but
instead, thin lines of silver string
falling and failing to wind round
the fingers fast or far enough to break them.
I noticed that her right palm was closed,
clasping something that looked, like
it lurked upon the rounds.
I felt that I loved lilypads,
which surprised me, because they must
Remain quite still,
Must require the kind of water
that pretends to last.
I noticed my palm,
cast it in a similar shape,
wondering weather
if I waited, something like lilypads would appear.
I did not imagine
a grain of sand or
its more quickly querying counterpart
ingesting kernels of muck
and the skin of thick river rocks.
The other ears were moving now and
I was supposed to leave,
creaking with
everyone
stretching,
the whole bog was bounding.
I worried, whatever it was
might latch onto the floor and
stare open about.
I wanted it to peak
from between my knuckles.
I wanted it to grin.
I wanted my palm to crack to pieces so
I made it meet the wood,
So that the bounding would crack too.
But which stayed clasped,
then, just like before.
But the graveyard girl had,
Noticed, she looked up from her rings
and glimpsed from between the grey, gleaming lines.
The door kept flinging open and shut so
whatever wind clouded the class
had a chance to find its way
down, it would have been quicker to
just open the shades, too.
Which I had been trying to do,
off course, with all that peeling.
But I became distracted,
and for good reason, by my palm,
which she had taken in her hand.
I wondered if my finger needed a word
now, with everyone left.
She didn’t think so
She took my smallest
and started bashing it on the table like
maybe,
that was where the organs were.
I thought that organs seemed so slim and slick,
not the kind of things
that would look to the ground
or careen through the banister so
The wind had no choice but to encounter all the wood of the world.
I was surprised at the strength
of my pinky.
How it could meet the surface
so many times
and remain so still,
than howling at the great grafts in the mottled ceiling,
swirling with corners of all the hairs that had
come courting
and met their match in the plaster.
I wondered why no one noticed
that the surface of the precious table was flailing,
Into the floor,
that the legs were cracking and laying about.
Maybe they knew that it wouldn’t last
long, that the splinters
would return longing,
there, again,
the next day,
no matter.
She grinned then,
which was good,
because I don’t know how.
How much I could take without some recognition of the thing in my hand.
That which,
Nodding toward her hair,
and then mine, she seemed to indicate.
We could try to prepare the chalkboard.
For words, I asked for my hand
from which the whole table was teeming,
a glistening gloss.
It sliced through my hair,
a chunk, in my palm where
I was wondering if she could write with her eyes.
I moved toward the board and began
smoothing out the corners and
working at the edges
of the side notes and crossovers
and stiff stacks of signatures you heard last night
and thought to lay there, to wrinkle
to curdle.
For a while, so that when the sun came up,
So that by the time we were listening, perhaps,
the smell would seduce the
slices of sediment streaming side to
side, I wasn’t worried.
That the room was empty with
That, with her feet on the chair,
she had turned.
No, not toward the wall,
nor that weird twisted chest which kept
persisting despite my best efforts
to instill some strength around and
Around the ceiling, almost counting
each finger,
she turned then.
Pointer against pointer and thumb
against thumb,
she turned them
so that every tip touched
and the knuckles tangled to the tune of the
soft scratching I was doing,
up there,
where, I remembered
My friend had coated small stamps,
Already seeping away before
everyone had come
streaming down the stairs.
I wanted to join her,
I wanted to leave the board behind
I wanted to stop scratching
even if she needed them
for whatever she was
doing
there, I left them lingering,
left then, loitering.
Because I knew,
thanks to my friend,
that they would last,
For long had I wanted
to lay on a table
and feel it falling.
At the apartment, the scene of the exchange
He didn’t know that she was a musician. They were usually open about the fact, musicians. This struck him as disingenuous, because wasn’t that the whole point: to let the music command their attention? It would be better to remove the performer, thought Eric. If he were a musician it would be absolutely inessential that anyone notice him. He wasn’t so crass as to propose something that he wouldn’t try, himself.
So it caught Eric’s attention, that he hadn’t known.
But there they were, the drums. Right there, in the middle of her living room.
“You play the drums?” said Eric.
“No, I just leave them there for the effect. If there was too much empty space, I’d have to host parties.”
“Can you teach me?” said Eric. She shrugged.
“Maybe another time.” He didn’t need the music to know she was a performer.
Her roommate was gone, circumambulating the park.
“She does that every evening,” said Ada.
Eric blinked twice, he yawned. He wondered what would happen if the circumambulation occurred to the beat of a drum. An ant circumambulated his right pinky.
The dubious drummer passed the set and shut the screen door that led to the balcony. Ada opened the top drawer of her dresser. She closed it.
“Can I get you anything?” Ada said.
“Like underwear?”
“Well. That was forward.”
“You were the one who opened the drawer.”
“Fuck, Eric, I was just looking for the book, just a book.”
He thought ideas were supposed to be sexy.
“If a posthumously distinguished scholar knocked on your door at 11pm and asked if you wanted to have sex, would you say yes?”
“Fuck, Eric, take the book.” She’d found it now, in the bottom drawer, with the exercise clothes. He didn’t know she exercised. As far as he knew, there wasn’t enough time in life to exercise and do politics.
At least, that’s what the ancients said. Oh, wait--
Eric took the book.
“Thanks,” he said, “enjoy your exercising.”
“What if I told you that I don’t exercise?” Eric thought that maybe she would die earlier than other people. Not earlier than ants, though. Or maybe, just as early. He thought they probably died relatively quickly, but they did seem to exercise a lot.
“I’d wonder if you were dying quickly or early,” said Eric.
“Sounds like you need the book, then.” Eric shoved the book in his backpack.
“Care to exercise with me?”
“Yet again. Forward.” Ada slammed the top drawer shut, then the bottom drawer. Eric wanted to go for a walk with her. There were only so many drawers to open and close.
You could take lots of steps, though.
Eric blinked twice. She yawned.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she said. “Or else I might fall asleep.”
Mosquitos circumambulated the lighted foyer. Through the apartment doors, two friendly watchtowers hid their intention, unsuccessfully. The towers were fans of the voices on the sports field, but Eric only heard shouts. A rather large bug circled their faces, trying to find an entrance, observing the features. Eric noticed one big bug. He wondered whether the bug noticed the shouts, or maybe the bug only heard mosquitos.
In the fish restaurant, the scene of a fascinating political situation
The room was buzzing!
Up at the bar, sat Helene. Helene watched toward the windows, where a woman’s left foot moved, then her right. Her right heel tilted, then her left. The woman wore ballet flats. Helene wondered if the nonmemorable man seated across from the ballet woman said something movable, and then something tiltable. Or, as the ballet woman peered down his left nostril, was it the pair three chairs over—the red-shirted ones—who made them move? Were the shirts a particular shade of movable red? Helene could think of two shades of movable red: one, donned by the person always on your mind who suddenly turned the corner; the other their doppelganger. Then, a tiltable change of the lights; they were whiter now, probably LEDs. The woman was speaking, a man passed, an apple exploded. Helene eyed her apple. A faint blemish erupted from its core. From his palm, the apple flew.
The woman named Helene always ate dinner alone. Was there a war? A goddamn war, in the fish restaurant on Pike Street? Why else would you eat dinner together? Why not: the war becomes the measure. Her grandma said that she could eat alone. “Just make sure to accompany the corner with at least seven varieties of potatoes weekly.” Yukon Gold every night and you couldn’t be sure any flesh was the measure.
Two tables over, one man was talking about kinesiology and one woman was talking about critical theory. One man watched quizzically. One woman watched hesitantly.
“Look at that!” said Helene, to the server.
This was a fascinating political situation.
At the opposite end of the table, a collection of history bros was talking about sex and ideas. The quizzical watcher and the hesitant listener leaned back in their chairs.
Their comfortability was in question.
The quizzical man turned toward the hesitant woman.
“How was your day?”
This was it.
“I woke up and biked to work to find out if it was Labor Day. Turned out it was Labor Day, so I biked back and then drove to a vacant lot associated with non-job work. The non-job boss told me about her vision. I told her that I’d love to be involved, because nothing was there.”
“That sounds like a good use of time,” said the quizzical man. The woman shrugged.
The critical theory woman waved her hand in their faces. “Hey, are you coming to the pool?”
“Can’t. I’m on my period.”
“What about tampons?”
“Do you seriously believe I would put something like that in my body? What about God?” The critical theory woman went straight back to her discussion with the kinesiology man. They were talking about travel, and whether her stint at labor counted as farming.
It all appeared so typical!
In the foyer, the scene of continuation
Eric knew he had to say something.
“What do you play on the drums?”
“For fifteen years I played only Shostakovich.”
A distinguished composer.
“My dad said it was revenge, since my teacher fled the USSR. But I’ve heard there’s some ambivalence about his relationship with the Soviet government.” Eric wondered, whose relationship: Shostakovich, or her dad?
“At first glance, Shostakovitch’s music doesn’t sound like an air conditioner.”
The kind of hum that bleeds into your shirts until you notice the bugs circumambulating.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m crazy?” said Eric. “You played Shostakovich, only Shostakovich, for fifteen years.”
A lot could happen in fifteen years. So many trips to the river. Along the way, people who preached about abstaining from southern salmon for breakfast, well, they spent 80 dollars a pound on northern salmon for dinner.
He thought, they were the same fish.
“Do you know Rostropovich?” said Eric.
A distinguished musician.
“Not as well as Shostakovitch.”
“Are you sure? It’s likely you’ve fiddled around with all the same pieces.”
“Not together. I think he’s dead, too.”
“Quickly or early?”
“What about neither?”
“Not possible,” said Eric. “What if you killed him, the minute you started playing Shostakovich? The man’s deed was done.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
Chances are, there’s always been some kind of air conditioner and a bug and at least two friendly sentinels.
At the concert, the scene of a fascinating political situation
The fish restaurant was reeling, it was bumping. The woman named Helene wondered who was running the aux. Shostakovich seemed a strange accompaniment to halibut and fries.
In the last two years, there had been three volcanic eruptions, at least one tsunami, and a handful of earthquakes.
On November 21, 1937, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky led the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5. According to distinguished scholar Elizabeth Wilson, the ovation lasted over an hour. If a slight earthquake had graced the performance hall at the same time, would anyone have noticed?
In 1937, when he released his fifth symphony, Shostakovich was nonadditionally preoccupied with going to rivers, preaching, fishing, and preaching to fishes.
In addition to writing books, Wilson studied at the Moscow Conservatoire under Mstislav Rostropovich.
Fifteen years ago, an earthquake graced the suburbs of Los Angeles, California; an ovation of sorts, cheering the life of Rostropovich. Elizabeth Wilson, the great chronicler, silenced the crowd with a swift tap of her quill, beckoning Rostropovich to play Symphony No. 6 throughout the childhood of all the small Los Angeles fishes.
According to the equivalently distinguished Laurel Fay, in 1939, Shostakovich spoke to the press.
“I wanted to convey in it the moods of spring, joy, youth.”
Most likely, the Soviet Union lasted longer than an unusually extended ovation.
At the park, the scene of strongly directional lighting
Ada’s apartment building lived on a side street next to the park. A few cars lined the curbs. None sat beside the others. Above the opposite curb, a neat metal fence circumambulated the space between the sidewalk, the mottled mulch and speckled grass. Down three steps, and she turned right, leading him past a row of drowsy brick buildings and a parking garage.
“Do you ever get scared, walking alone?”
Ada cast him a quizzical look.
“Scared? With the football players to keep me company?” Eric wondered if the park trees got tired of football practice. He wondered if they pitied the white lights down below, thinking it was reasonable to crush each other, once the sun set. Or maybe they became increasingly frustrated, like the NIMBYs over on the other side. Could they be a little jealous? The lights only faced one direction.
Everyone heard shouts.
She needed a talking point. “The NIMBYs are getting all worked up about them—the lights and the football players—but it’s not actually the city that owns them. City trees, up here, religious school down there.”
“Do you think everyone would chill if they turned off the lights?”
They were at the corner now. She stopped and pretended to contemplate the satellite circumambulating a lonely cloud.
“That’s a fascinating question.”
Then, he was happy that he asked her for the book.
He could have borrowed it from the library.
Ada cast Eric a knowing look.
You could be a football player too, you know, but you’re here with me.
A leaf flitted lazily from a branch of the nearest tree. Halfway down, something intercepted it. The leaf moved to the side. A kind of passenger. Ada tightened her pony tail and whipped around. A staircase led from the city to the field. She grabbed a railing by each hand and flung her body down three steps, then four. Eric wanted to run.
Outside the fish restaurant, the scene of a fascinating political situation
A woman named Helene ate all of her fish. Outside, mist began to gather, up there among the luminous necklaces. In other words, the mist mingled between eyeballs severed from their feet. It was no-go time so she stopped to observe the goings-on of the town. The happenings slowly melted into the power line’s meaty thigh. Across the street, a middle-aged woman wore an ambivalently unequivocal blouse. She punched the crossing button three times but it didn’t stop going. She glanced over, and over, and over, and the lights blinked twice. Time to go on. The cross, crass, and ultimately crossed woman hurried by. She disappeared into the nearest parking garage. The number 41 bus trundled up the hill and ground to a halt. “Bus” was a new friend for the attentionally-indecisive grey building. Building was a sort of tinted mirror for the disembarkers. The first woman off the bus wore a purple scarf and texted into thin air. The second man off the bus removed his earbuds halfway down to the curb. The third one off the bus (one of the bus) sported a thick grey suit, a collector of rain.
On the steps, the scene of scheming
Ada didn’t know the football players, but she was familiar with the vicinity.
“Believe it or not, that down there was my high school.”
“You didn’t move very far,” said Eric.
“No, I guess not. I learned to like the general area. We could walk down there, right now. Maybe we’ll run into my roommate.”
“What’s your roommate like?” asked Eric. “That’s a fairly unique characteristic. To circumambulate every night.”
“Some might call it going for a walk.”
“Some might call it that. Let’s go then. If we find her, we can ask her.”
“Which is which, you mean?”
There, on the stairs, it seemed evident that the asking was already possible. Why else would you ask alone? Why not: the asking becomes the measure.
At the meeting, the scene of a fascinating political situation
There was a woman, who, from now on, will be named Helene. She was running five minutes late. There were clear procedures for this, outlined in the principles and processes to potentially peruse; ratified August. She looked down. A versatile tool, she thought.
Think again.
Streamlined, really. It was magical, the way you could express yourself when you were already on the move, and even when you weren’t. The expectation: accountability. The expression: effort. The interpretation: care and commitment. The definition: we meet here, together. The ritual: lines of communication. Helene arrived five minutes late.
The meeting ended. The woman named Helene knew that she could sit in a chair, dying, but the sounds of erupting cardboard received her exit with a tumultuous serenade.
Through the windows in the downstairs foyer, Helene noticed a middle-aged woman loitering beneath a lately-illuminated streetlight. The woman wore a light blue blouse, neither tight nor loose. She stood outside the revolving doors, watching for signs of life. Watching life and forewarning life signs.
Helene took a seat on the slightly shabby, wooden bench outside the slightly flat, smudgy building.
Her legs wore orange pants.
Helene crossed one leg, but it wasn’t right. She uncrossed her legs and crossed the other.
The middle-aged woman glanced at the nearby crosswalk, one of the unique, urban kinds painted a plethora. Unfortunately for the woman, every crosswalk as far as the eye could see loitered between the no-go stage. The sky seemed pretty open. The middle-aged woman shifted to the right something like the distance of sixty circumambulating ants. She crossed her arms, she looked both ways, but it wasn’t right. She shifted sixty ants further. She couldn’t cross. She resolved to continue considering the subtleties of the faint clouds above. They were the kind that shoot off one way in South Africa and another way in Iceland, but that’s only if you stick fairly close to your rocker.
At the religious school, the scene of the random rendezvous
It was evening, and one by one people entered the nearest door. The time they spent inside accommodated approximately five whistles out on the football field.
“I sort of wish there were after school programs for everyone,” said Ada.
There’s always the prospect of watching football.
“Do you want to go see the garden? I helped build it with my tenth grade history teacher.”
“Sure,” said Eric.
A gate stood solitary between the parking lot and the raised beds. So solitary that there was no fence. Eric couldn’t decide which was aspirational: the exceptional entrance or the lack of anything else.
There was a shed too. A man was stacking shovels and folding gloves. Eric guessed the students had been gardening.
Ada clapped her hands. She clasped Eric’s.
“Hey! That’s my teacher. That’s what I call commitment.”
“So not your roommate?”
“No. Better! You should meet.”
Ada called his name.
“Hey, Jeff!” Jeff turned.
“He’s sort of a spunky guy. He tends to capitalize words.”
Jeff closed the shed, he locked it. He made his way toward the gate.
Ada grinned. “Hello, Jeff! Long time, no see.” Ada turned to Jeff.
“This is Eric, we were going for a walk, and I wanted to show him the garden.” Ada turned to Eric.
“This is Jeff,” she said. “He teaches history to tenth graders.”
Jeff offered his hand and chuckled.
“Well, not to, per say, I’m not FEEDING them!”
Jeff nestled his words carefully throughout. He could have, instead, flung them around until something stuck.
“He also runs the compost program,” said Ada. “The one next to the football field.”
“Exactly, right,” said Jeff. “We’re pretty determined about decomposition around here. It’s sort of like taking care of your feet.”
What other emphasis could there possibly be? Fishing, running, rivers, they all had to do with feet, if you thought at it.
Eric cast a line.
At the bench, the scene of a fascinating political situation
There was a woman. She was named Helene who lingered on the corner, looking, a routine rambler. Across the street, a grey-suited man wheeled right. He paused, he delayed, he curled, he whirled. Specifically, he faced an ambivalently-sized young person seated on a slightly shabby, wooden bench. Her legs wore orange pants. Her hair couldn’t be considered, even by a thousand overlapping pencil strokes.
You might as well circumambulate.
The interlocutors traded a single, crisp handshake. Number 41 traded a sigh and set off on its way. The suitable man and the orange-panted woman set off on the street beyond the great, grey, greasy building.
Helene and the man named Jeff continued down the street. They found another parking garage, a pasta restaurant with no windows, a mid-priced donut shop, a high-priced French bakery, and a brick facade with two large windows. Helene wasn’t looking for any of these things—an open, inside place would have been nice—but they were interesting (seriously, interesting). At the next corner, the shops suddenly merged into park. Helene and Jeff merged along with them, at a traffic circle. They had to wait a little, though. That was due to all the SUVs making their way down the side street. Helene thought the point of circles was to slow traffic, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. What did it matter, the pedestrian at the corner, when you could go around and around and around and--
“Thank, God” said Helene, under her breath.
A break in the flow. The park wasn’t looking too appealing, though. A little dim. Helene and Jeff hopped on the current, downstream toward the football field. They disembarked at the parking lot between the field and the religious school.
At the school garden, the scene of whirling worms
Ada and Jeff were chatting. Eric was reeling.
Ada was waving her hands in Eric’s face.
“Hey, Eric. Are you just going to float, or what!”
The game was halfway through. Someone blew a whistle and the players screamed.
Eric figured he should contribute. He turned to Jeff.
“Wait, Jeff. I think we know each other!”
Jeff smiled, a little bemused. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his grey overalls.
“Oh?”
“From the bus stop, I was thinking.”
“What bus—”
Just then, a man and a woman skidded to a halt, right beside them. One grey-suited, one orange-panted.
“Hey! You!” Eric pointed.
The grey-suited disembarker raised his eyes.
“Do we know each other?”
“I just saw you getting off the bus.”
“Oh! Well, that’s observant of you, and sort of surprising that we’ve crossed paths again.” The grey-suited man laughed. He kept talking.
“Anyways, checking out the garden? Us, too! Well, not CHECKING OUT, I guess. They’re checking out over there at the after school program. It’s just a garden. Somewhere to go, or, somewhere to be, or, somewhere. Depends.”
The orange-panted woman rolled her eyes. She was the one with the nonreplicable hair.
Jeff looked a little taken aback, or held up as the case may be. He eyed the grey suit. He eyed his own grey overalls.
“We were going to do some composting, if you want to join us,” said Jeff.
The grey-suited man nodded, like it was the most enjoyable thing in the world.
“Well, yes. Us, too!”
It was possible that nobody’s hair could be replicated.
Eric looked up, he offered.
“You’re all welcome to circumambulate.”
At the football field, the scene of a fascinating political situation
Can’t we just let them play in peace?
The players cheered.
Then, something hissed.
One by one the lights blinked lazily. They said goodbye.
The bugs blinked at the moon.
The moon blinked back. “You fools!”
Ada hovered by the garden gate.
Eric hovered way up above, scheming on the stairs.
Reeling on the stares.
The lights hovered above Ada and Eric. But they weren’t exactly lights anymore.
“Did the power go out?” said Eric.
“I can’t think of any further explanation!” Ada stamped her foot.
“Sort of uncreative, but okay.” Eric hopped down a few steps. He lingered against one railing.
Ada loitered against another.
The football players started to boo. Practice! Interrupted! The glare of the city cast some leftover mist over the field and over the garden and over and over and over and,
“I can’t see anything.”
“Me neither.”
“Should we join the football players?”
At the religious school, the scene of absolute exasperation
First, it was quiet. Then, a man inside stopped checking out. Then, the football players began booing. Then, a woman and her son backed their bikes against a wall. They stopped, they stared, they ceilinged, searching for circumambulating satellites. Then, someone yelled,
“Earthquake!?”
“It’s just the lights, you fool!”
“I’m hungry!”
“They’ll come back on.”
“Just wait a few minutes. It’s only the lights. We’ll have dinner soon.”
You could hear their voices because the football players were getting tired of booing.
On the stairs, the scene of the end-of-date
Ada leaned against a railing, Eric leaned against another. No more lights and they were getting tired of circumambulating. It was still quiet. Where was the ceiling? Where was the sky?
“Hey, Eric. Where are you?” Ada listened for his voice, the distance of approximately circumambulating ants. Eric sighed. He laughed.
Aneurysm. Aneurysm aneurysm aneurysm.
They’re common, I’m told.
even, intuitive,
how the weak part,
clearly needs a home in the--
Shit! There goes my head. It’s stuck,
rolling over and over and over and,
Out there, I thought I would find it.
All I found was,
For four weeks now!
That’s almost a month
and a couple of reasons,
that, I can provide.
First, the fast class,
the last class,
where I wiggled my finger
and left,
the wrist, so still,
Left the letters loitering.
I wanted to draw some shape
with the fog
so I moved three spots to the left.
I was curious about laughing
a little less,
my back to the glass and my eye
to the teacher’s ear.
I drew circles through the
blinds but couldn’t manage
to shave anything from the cracks.
My plan was this,
was that,
if I did enough shaving,
I could wrinkle the peel through my nails
until it washed away,
into a dense heap.
I brought a bowl,
for next time, but this time
I noticed the earlobes,
lingering left.
They were quite small,
two figures
beside myself,
Soldier like seahorses.
I asked them about peeling.
Twenty minutes daily and
you’ll start,
groaning, you’ll start,
growing, you’ll start
fruiting from furling fingernails.
When it gets a little cold,
exhale,
rub them through
your breath and one, at least,
Will one erase the evidence.
I asked the soldiers if they ever got whiskers.
Could I take one?
I don’t remember
what, he said
all I know, he said,
all I know is that,
I ended,
up a whisker on my finger
and a whisper on my toe.
And the window was fogging up,
And the boiling blooms were curling their
way down the wall.
When I glanced at my hands,
all I saw was fruit.
So suffice it to say,
I took a bite from my finger,
scratched my tooth
against the glass,
removed the abscess.
Coated in shards
of swiftly swirling
sky, which told me to admire
the knob of neck, kneeling
toward the corner, all wound up and winding.
So I sank beneath the table,
the counter
to disperse whatever was
going on and
On, with the clippers in hand,
sliced the hopping hooligans into little, tiny
bugs that I could almost stamp.
The room was crawling.
Then the girl from the graveyard on sixth street,
she shouldered up to the hawling,
making laughing
guard, by the door.
More than fourteen feet tall
and covered in sheaths of rose,
the kind you can only find in the
wonder weather.
So I asked,
if she wanted to find somewhere
more quiet, where we could talk
about the birds
and the bats which,
She seemed suspicious.
About the possibility that insects could know
the legs of the tables better than we did.
There were shards of glass, too,
shared in parcels, two
more grains of sand.
They mingled around the ears of
Each visitor,
had two eyes.
As is the way
it is, of course, but still,
I wondered if she might have another.
So I asked.
My friend, so I said,
Where were they,
and I couldn’t figure if the green
came from her eyes
or the sandpipers curled up in the rafters
which had been plastered over,
some years ago, of course.
I glanced up and down just to let her know
that I knew about the sandpipers.
But I don’t think she noticed.
She touched her forehead and eyed
her finger, like maybe something was stuck.
Took her left in her right and
started to inspect
each and every ring.
A pile of lilypads severed from where
There were no bubbles or gurgles but
instead, thin lines of silver string
falling and failing to wind round
the fingers fast or far enough to break them.
I noticed that her right palm was closed,
clasping something that looked, like
it lurked upon the rounds.
I felt that I loved lilypads,
which surprised me, because they must
Remain quite still,
Must require the kind of water
that pretends to last.
I noticed my palm,
cast it in a similar shape,
wondering weather
if I waited, something like lilypads would appear.
I did not imagine
a grain of sand or
its more quickly querying counterpart
ingesting kernels of muck
and the skin of thick river rocks.
The other ears were moving now and
I was supposed to leave,
creaking with
everyone
stretching,
the whole bog was bounding.
I worried, whatever it was
might latch onto the floor and
stare open about.
I wanted it to peak
from between my knuckles.
I wanted it to grin.
I wanted my palm to crack to pieces so
I made it meet the wood,
So that the bounding would crack too.
But which stayed clasped,
then, just like before.
But the graveyard girl had,
Noticed, she looked up from her rings
and glimpsed from between the grey, gleaming lines.
The door kept flinging open and shut so
whatever wind clouded the class
had a chance to find its way
down, it would have been quicker to
just open the shades, too.
Which I had been trying to do,
off course, with all that peeling.
But I became distracted,
and for good reason, by my palm,
which she had taken in her hand.
I wondered if my finger needed a word
now, with everyone left.
She didn’t think so
She took my smallest
and started bashing it on the table like
maybe,
that was where the organs were.
I thought that organs seemed so slim and slick,
not the kind of things
that would look to the ground
or careen through the banister so
The wind had no choice but to encounter all the wood of the world.
I was surprised at the strength
of my pinky.
How it could meet the surface
so many times
and remain so still,
than howling at the great grafts in the mottled ceiling,
swirling with corners of all the hairs that had
come courting
and met their match in the plaster.
I wondered why no one noticed
that the surface of the precious table was flailing,
Into the floor,
that the legs were cracking and laying about.
Maybe they knew that it wouldn’t last
long, that the splinters
would return longing,
there, again,
the next day,
no matter.
She grinned then,
which was good,
because I don’t know how.
How much I could take without some recognition of the thing in my hand.
That which,
Nodding toward her hair,
and then mine, she seemed to indicate.
We could try to prepare the chalkboard.
For words, I asked for my hand
from which the whole table was teeming,
a glistening gloss.
It sliced through my hair,
a chunk, in my palm where
I was wondering if she could write with her eyes.
I moved toward the board and began
smoothing out the corners and
working at the edges
of the side notes and crossovers
and stiff stacks of signatures you heard last night
and thought to lay there, to wrinkle
to curdle.
For a while, so that when the sun came up,
So that by the time we were listening, perhaps,
the smell would seduce the
slices of sediment streaming side to
side, I wasn’t worried.
That the room was empty with
That, with her feet on the chair,
she had turned.
No, not toward the wall,
nor that weird twisted chest which kept
persisting despite my best efforts
to instill some strength around and
Around the ceiling, almost counting
each finger,
she turned then.
Pointer against pointer and thumb
against thumb,
she turned them
so that every tip touched
and the knuckles tangled to the tune of the
soft scratching I was doing,
up there,
where, I remembered
My friend had coated small stamps,
Already seeping away before
everyone had come
streaming down the stairs.
I wanted to join her,
I wanted to leave the board behind
I wanted to stop scratching
even if she needed them
for whatever she was
doing
there, I left them lingering,
left then, loitering.
Because I knew,
thanks to my friend,
that they would last,
For long had I wanted
to lay on a table
and feel it falling.
At the apartment, the scene of the exchange
He didn’t know that she was a musician. They were usually open about the fact, musicians. This struck him as disingenuous, because wasn’t that the whole point: to let the music command their attention? It would be better to remove the performer, thought Eric. If he were a musician it would be absolutely inessential that anyone notice him. He wasn’t so crass as to propose something that he wouldn’t try, himself.
So it caught Eric’s attention, that he hadn’t known.
But there they were, the drums. Right there, in the middle of her living room.
“You play the drums?” said Eric.
“No, I just leave them there for the effect. If there was too much empty space, I’d have to host parties.”
“Can you teach me?” said Eric. She shrugged.
“Maybe another time.” He didn’t need the music to know she was a performer.
Her roommate was gone, circumambulating the park.
“She does that every evening,” said Ada.
Eric blinked twice, he yawned. He wondered what would happen if the circumambulation occurred to the beat of a drum. An ant circumambulated his right pinky.
The dubious drummer passed the set and shut the screen door that led to the balcony. Ada opened the top drawer of her dresser. She closed it.
“Can I get you anything?” Ada said.
“Like underwear?”
“Well. That was forward.”
“You were the one who opened the drawer.”
“Fuck, Eric, I was just looking for the book, just a book.”
He thought ideas were supposed to be sexy.
“If a posthumously distinguished scholar knocked on your door at 11pm and asked if you wanted to have sex, would you say yes?”
“Fuck, Eric, take the book.” She’d found it now, in the bottom drawer, with the exercise clothes. He didn’t know she exercised. As far as he knew, there wasn’t enough time in life to exercise and do politics.
At least, that’s what the ancients said. Oh, wait--
Eric took the book.
“Thanks,” he said, “enjoy your exercising.”
“What if I told you that I don’t exercise?” Eric thought that maybe she would die earlier than other people. Not earlier than ants, though. Or maybe, just as early. He thought they probably died relatively quickly, but they did seem to exercise a lot.
“I’d wonder if you were dying quickly or early,” said Eric.
“Sounds like you need the book, then.” Eric shoved the book in his backpack.
“Care to exercise with me?”
“Yet again. Forward.” Ada slammed the top drawer shut, then the bottom drawer. Eric wanted to go for a walk with her. There were only so many drawers to open and close.
You could take lots of steps, though.
Eric blinked twice. She yawned.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she said. “Or else I might fall asleep.”
Mosquitos circumambulated the lighted foyer. Through the apartment doors, two friendly watchtowers hid their intention, unsuccessfully. The towers were fans of the voices on the sports field, but Eric only heard shouts. A rather large bug circled their faces, trying to find an entrance, observing the features. Eric noticed one big bug. He wondered whether the bug noticed the shouts, or maybe the bug only heard mosquitos.
In the fish restaurant, the scene of a fascinating political situation
The room was buzzing!
Up at the bar, sat Helene. Helene watched toward the windows, where a woman’s left foot moved, then her right. Her right heel tilted, then her left. The woman wore ballet flats. Helene wondered if the nonmemorable man seated across from the ballet woman said something movable, and then something tiltable. Or, as the ballet woman peered down his left nostril, was it the pair three chairs over—the red-shirted ones—who made them move? Were the shirts a particular shade of movable red? Helene could think of two shades of movable red: one, donned by the person always on your mind who suddenly turned the corner; the other their doppelganger. Then, a tiltable change of the lights; they were whiter now, probably LEDs. The woman was speaking, a man passed, an apple exploded. Helene eyed her apple. A faint blemish erupted from its core. From his palm, the apple flew.
The woman named Helene always ate dinner alone. Was there a war? A goddamn war, in the fish restaurant on Pike Street? Why else would you eat dinner together? Why not: the war becomes the measure. Her grandma said that she could eat alone. “Just make sure to accompany the corner with at least seven varieties of potatoes weekly.” Yukon Gold every night and you couldn’t be sure any flesh was the measure.
Two tables over, one man was talking about kinesiology and one woman was talking about critical theory. One man watched quizzically. One woman watched hesitantly.
“Look at that!” said Helene, to the server.
This was a fascinating political situation.
At the opposite end of the table, a collection of history bros was talking about sex and ideas. The quizzical watcher and the hesitant listener leaned back in their chairs.
Their comfortability was in question.
The quizzical man turned toward the hesitant woman.
“How was your day?”
This was it.
“I woke up and biked to work to find out if it was Labor Day. Turned out it was Labor Day, so I biked back and then drove to a vacant lot associated with non-job work. The non-job boss told me about her vision. I told her that I’d love to be involved, because nothing was there.”
“That sounds like a good use of time,” said the quizzical man. The woman shrugged.
The critical theory woman waved her hand in their faces. “Hey, are you coming to the pool?”
“Can’t. I’m on my period.”
“What about tampons?”
“Do you seriously believe I would put something like that in my body? What about God?” The critical theory woman went straight back to her discussion with the kinesiology man. They were talking about travel, and whether her stint at labor counted as farming.
It all appeared so typical!
In the foyer, the scene of continuation
Eric knew he had to say something.
“What do you play on the drums?”
“For fifteen years I played only Shostakovich.”
A distinguished composer.
“My dad said it was revenge, since my teacher fled the USSR. But I’ve heard there’s some ambivalence about his relationship with the Soviet government.” Eric wondered, whose relationship: Shostakovich, or her dad?
“At first glance, Shostakovitch’s music doesn’t sound like an air conditioner.”
The kind of hum that bleeds into your shirts until you notice the bugs circumambulating.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m crazy?” said Eric. “You played Shostakovich, only Shostakovich, for fifteen years.”
A lot could happen in fifteen years. So many trips to the river. Along the way, people who preached about abstaining from southern salmon for breakfast, well, they spent 80 dollars a pound on northern salmon for dinner.
He thought, they were the same fish.
“Do you know Rostropovich?” said Eric.
A distinguished musician.
“Not as well as Shostakovitch.”
“Are you sure? It’s likely you’ve fiddled around with all the same pieces.”
“Not together. I think he’s dead, too.”
“Quickly or early?”
“What about neither?”
“Not possible,” said Eric. “What if you killed him, the minute you started playing Shostakovich? The man’s deed was done.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
Chances are, there’s always been some kind of air conditioner and a bug and at least two friendly sentinels.
At the concert, the scene of a fascinating political situation
The fish restaurant was reeling, it was bumping. The woman named Helene wondered who was running the aux. Shostakovich seemed a strange accompaniment to halibut and fries.
In the last two years, there had been three volcanic eruptions, at least one tsunami, and a handful of earthquakes.
On November 21, 1937, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky led the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5. According to distinguished scholar Elizabeth Wilson, the ovation lasted over an hour. If a slight earthquake had graced the performance hall at the same time, would anyone have noticed?
In 1937, when he released his fifth symphony, Shostakovich was nonadditionally preoccupied with going to rivers, preaching, fishing, and preaching to fishes.
In addition to writing books, Wilson studied at the Moscow Conservatoire under Mstislav Rostropovich.
Fifteen years ago, an earthquake graced the suburbs of Los Angeles, California; an ovation of sorts, cheering the life of Rostropovich. Elizabeth Wilson, the great chronicler, silenced the crowd with a swift tap of her quill, beckoning Rostropovich to play Symphony No. 6 throughout the childhood of all the small Los Angeles fishes.
According to the equivalently distinguished Laurel Fay, in 1939, Shostakovich spoke to the press.
“I wanted to convey in it the moods of spring, joy, youth.”
Most likely, the Soviet Union lasted longer than an unusually extended ovation.
At the park, the scene of strongly directional lighting
Ada’s apartment building lived on a side street next to the park. A few cars lined the curbs. None sat beside the others. Above the opposite curb, a neat metal fence circumambulated the space between the sidewalk, the mottled mulch and speckled grass. Down three steps, and she turned right, leading him past a row of drowsy brick buildings and a parking garage.
“Do you ever get scared, walking alone?”
Ada cast him a quizzical look.
“Scared? With the football players to keep me company?” Eric wondered if the park trees got tired of football practice. He wondered if they pitied the white lights down below, thinking it was reasonable to crush each other, once the sun set. Or maybe they became increasingly frustrated, like the NIMBYs over on the other side. Could they be a little jealous? The lights only faced one direction.
Everyone heard shouts.
She needed a talking point. “The NIMBYs are getting all worked up about them—the lights and the football players—but it’s not actually the city that owns them. City trees, up here, religious school down there.”
“Do you think everyone would chill if they turned off the lights?”
They were at the corner now. She stopped and pretended to contemplate the satellite circumambulating a lonely cloud.
“That’s a fascinating question.”
Then, he was happy that he asked her for the book.
He could have borrowed it from the library.
Ada cast Eric a knowing look.
You could be a football player too, you know, but you’re here with me.
A leaf flitted lazily from a branch of the nearest tree. Halfway down, something intercepted it. The leaf moved to the side. A kind of passenger. Ada tightened her pony tail and whipped around. A staircase led from the city to the field. She grabbed a railing by each hand and flung her body down three steps, then four. Eric wanted to run.
Outside the fish restaurant, the scene of a fascinating political situation
A woman named Helene ate all of her fish. Outside, mist began to gather, up there among the luminous necklaces. In other words, the mist mingled between eyeballs severed from their feet. It was no-go time so she stopped to observe the goings-on of the town. The happenings slowly melted into the power line’s meaty thigh. Across the street, a middle-aged woman wore an ambivalently unequivocal blouse. She punched the crossing button three times but it didn’t stop going. She glanced over, and over, and over, and the lights blinked twice. Time to go on. The cross, crass, and ultimately crossed woman hurried by. She disappeared into the nearest parking garage. The number 41 bus trundled up the hill and ground to a halt. “Bus” was a new friend for the attentionally-indecisive grey building. Building was a sort of tinted mirror for the disembarkers. The first woman off the bus wore a purple scarf and texted into thin air. The second man off the bus removed his earbuds halfway down to the curb. The third one off the bus (one of the bus) sported a thick grey suit, a collector of rain.
On the steps, the scene of scheming
Ada didn’t know the football players, but she was familiar with the vicinity.
“Believe it or not, that down there was my high school.”
“You didn’t move very far,” said Eric.
“No, I guess not. I learned to like the general area. We could walk down there, right now. Maybe we’ll run into my roommate.”
“What’s your roommate like?” asked Eric. “That’s a fairly unique characteristic. To circumambulate every night.”
“Some might call it going for a walk.”
“Some might call it that. Let’s go then. If we find her, we can ask her.”
“Which is which, you mean?”
There, on the stairs, it seemed evident that the asking was already possible. Why else would you ask alone? Why not: the asking becomes the measure.
At the meeting, the scene of a fascinating political situation
There was a woman, who, from now on, will be named Helene. She was running five minutes late. There were clear procedures for this, outlined in the principles and processes to potentially peruse; ratified August. She looked down. A versatile tool, she thought.
Think again.
Streamlined, really. It was magical, the way you could express yourself when you were already on the move, and even when you weren’t. The expectation: accountability. The expression: effort. The interpretation: care and commitment. The definition: we meet here, together. The ritual: lines of communication. Helene arrived five minutes late.
The meeting ended. The woman named Helene knew that she could sit in a chair, dying, but the sounds of erupting cardboard received her exit with a tumultuous serenade.
Through the windows in the downstairs foyer, Helene noticed a middle-aged woman loitering beneath a lately-illuminated streetlight. The woman wore a light blue blouse, neither tight nor loose. She stood outside the revolving doors, watching for signs of life. Watching life and forewarning life signs.
Helene took a seat on the slightly shabby, wooden bench outside the slightly flat, smudgy building.
Her legs wore orange pants.
Helene crossed one leg, but it wasn’t right. She uncrossed her legs and crossed the other.
The middle-aged woman glanced at the nearby crosswalk, one of the unique, urban kinds painted a plethora. Unfortunately for the woman, every crosswalk as far as the eye could see loitered between the no-go stage. The sky seemed pretty open. The middle-aged woman shifted to the right something like the distance of sixty circumambulating ants. She crossed her arms, she looked both ways, but it wasn’t right. She shifted sixty ants further. She couldn’t cross. She resolved to continue considering the subtleties of the faint clouds above. They were the kind that shoot off one way in South Africa and another way in Iceland, but that’s only if you stick fairly close to your rocker.
At the religious school, the scene of the random rendezvous
It was evening, and one by one people entered the nearest door. The time they spent inside accommodated approximately five whistles out on the football field.
“I sort of wish there were after school programs for everyone,” said Ada.
There’s always the prospect of watching football.
“Do you want to go see the garden? I helped build it with my tenth grade history teacher.”
“Sure,” said Eric.
A gate stood solitary between the parking lot and the raised beds. So solitary that there was no fence. Eric couldn’t decide which was aspirational: the exceptional entrance or the lack of anything else.
There was a shed too. A man was stacking shovels and folding gloves. Eric guessed the students had been gardening.
Ada clapped her hands. She clasped Eric’s.
“Hey! That’s my teacher. That’s what I call commitment.”
“So not your roommate?”
“No. Better! You should meet.”
Ada called his name.
“Hey, Jeff!” Jeff turned.
“He’s sort of a spunky guy. He tends to capitalize words.”
Jeff closed the shed, he locked it. He made his way toward the gate.
Ada grinned. “Hello, Jeff! Long time, no see.” Ada turned to Jeff.
“This is Eric, we were going for a walk, and I wanted to show him the garden.” Ada turned to Eric.
“This is Jeff,” she said. “He teaches history to tenth graders.”
Jeff offered his hand and chuckled.
“Well, not to, per say, I’m not FEEDING them!”
Jeff nestled his words carefully throughout. He could have, instead, flung them around until something stuck.
“He also runs the compost program,” said Ada. “The one next to the football field.”
“Exactly, right,” said Jeff. “We’re pretty determined about decomposition around here. It’s sort of like taking care of your feet.”
What other emphasis could there possibly be? Fishing, running, rivers, they all had to do with feet, if you thought at it.
Eric cast a line.
At the bench, the scene of a fascinating political situation
There was a woman. She was named Helene who lingered on the corner, looking, a routine rambler. Across the street, a grey-suited man wheeled right. He paused, he delayed, he curled, he whirled. Specifically, he faced an ambivalently-sized young person seated on a slightly shabby, wooden bench. Her legs wore orange pants. Her hair couldn’t be considered, even by a thousand overlapping pencil strokes.
You might as well circumambulate.
The interlocutors traded a single, crisp handshake. Number 41 traded a sigh and set off on its way. The suitable man and the orange-panted woman set off on the street beyond the great, grey, greasy building.
Helene and the man named Jeff continued down the street. They found another parking garage, a pasta restaurant with no windows, a mid-priced donut shop, a high-priced French bakery, and a brick facade with two large windows. Helene wasn’t looking for any of these things—an open, inside place would have been nice—but they were interesting (seriously, interesting). At the next corner, the shops suddenly merged into park. Helene and Jeff merged along with them, at a traffic circle. They had to wait a little, though. That was due to all the SUVs making their way down the side street. Helene thought the point of circles was to slow traffic, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. What did it matter, the pedestrian at the corner, when you could go around and around and around and--
“Thank, God” said Helene, under her breath.
A break in the flow. The park wasn’t looking too appealing, though. A little dim. Helene and Jeff hopped on the current, downstream toward the football field. They disembarked at the parking lot between the field and the religious school.
At the school garden, the scene of whirling worms
Ada and Jeff were chatting. Eric was reeling.
Ada was waving her hands in Eric’s face.
“Hey, Eric. Are you just going to float, or what!”
The game was halfway through. Someone blew a whistle and the players screamed.
Eric figured he should contribute. He turned to Jeff.
“Wait, Jeff. I think we know each other!”
Jeff smiled, a little bemused. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his grey overalls.
“Oh?”
“From the bus stop, I was thinking.”
“What bus—”
Just then, a man and a woman skidded to a halt, right beside them. One grey-suited, one orange-panted.
“Hey! You!” Eric pointed.
The grey-suited disembarker raised his eyes.
“Do we know each other?”
“I just saw you getting off the bus.”
“Oh! Well, that’s observant of you, and sort of surprising that we’ve crossed paths again.” The grey-suited man laughed. He kept talking.
“Anyways, checking out the garden? Us, too! Well, not CHECKING OUT, I guess. They’re checking out over there at the after school program. It’s just a garden. Somewhere to go, or, somewhere to be, or, somewhere. Depends.”
The orange-panted woman rolled her eyes. She was the one with the nonreplicable hair.
Jeff looked a little taken aback, or held up as the case may be. He eyed the grey suit. He eyed his own grey overalls.
“We were going to do some composting, if you want to join us,” said Jeff.
The grey-suited man nodded, like it was the most enjoyable thing in the world.
“Well, yes. Us, too!”
It was possible that nobody’s hair could be replicated.
Eric looked up, he offered.
“You’re all welcome to circumambulate.”
At the football field, the scene of a fascinating political situation
Can’t we just let them play in peace?
The players cheered.
Then, something hissed.
One by one the lights blinked lazily. They said goodbye.
The bugs blinked at the moon.
The moon blinked back. “You fools!”
Ada hovered by the garden gate.
Eric hovered way up above, scheming on the stairs.
Reeling on the stares.
The lights hovered above Ada and Eric. But they weren’t exactly lights anymore.
“Did the power go out?” said Eric.
“I can’t think of any further explanation!” Ada stamped her foot.
“Sort of uncreative, but okay.” Eric hopped down a few steps. He lingered against one railing.
Ada loitered against another.
The football players started to boo. Practice! Interrupted! The glare of the city cast some leftover mist over the field and over the garden and over and over and over and,
“I can’t see anything.”
“Me neither.”
“Should we join the football players?”
At the religious school, the scene of absolute exasperation
First, it was quiet. Then, a man inside stopped checking out. Then, the football players began booing. Then, a woman and her son backed their bikes against a wall. They stopped, they stared, they ceilinged, searching for circumambulating satellites. Then, someone yelled,
“Earthquake!?”
“It’s just the lights, you fool!”
“I’m hungry!”
“They’ll come back on.”
“Just wait a few minutes. It’s only the lights. We’ll have dinner soon.”
You could hear their voices because the football players were getting tired of booing.
On the stairs, the scene of the end-of-date
Ada leaned against a railing, Eric leaned against another. No more lights and they were getting tired of circumambulating. It was still quiet. Where was the ceiling? Where was the sky?
“Hey, Eric. Where are you?” Ada listened for his voice, the distance of approximately circumambulating ants. Eric sighed. He laughed.
Aneurysm. Aneurysm aneurysm aneurysm.
They’re common, I’m told.
even, intuitive,
how the weak part,
clearly needs a home in the--
Shit! There goes my head. It’s stuck,
rolling over and over and over and,
Out there, I thought I would find it.
All I found was,
1 In the spirit of orientation (please don’t get accustomed to it)—the prelude is set in a classroom and partway through, most everyone leaves. The overture circulates a football field and a collection of characters who leave and return in different forms, mostly around each other and around themselves. In the spirit of definition—an aneurysm is an often routine and asymptomatic but sometimes suddenly life-concluding shock sparked by blood pressure in the space between the brain and the tissues surrounding it. In the spirit of citation—I went to Jordan Kirk’s office hours and told him that I had been thinking about Marie de France. Marie de France was a 13th century French poet writing in England. Keep in mind that, for Marie, it’s always the servants who connect people. I couldn’t get over the moment where this knight, Guigemar, is totally overcome by a prophecy, given by an animal he’s wounded in the hunt. The animal establishes love as a cure and tells Guigemar to leave, and he does. In fact, he leaves all his admirers, searching for nothing, absolutely no security. There just happens to be a boat in the harbor, there happens to be a bed on the boat, and Guigemar goes to sleep. It’s barely behavior and seems wrong in a war-torn world, but since the warlords are in the business of imprisoning women and surrounding them with images of restraint, the slumbering and disembarking also seem seriously noncomplicit. And even more so when Guigemar stops both, regardless of any vessels. So, instead of all this, I told Jordan Kirk a Marie de France story: not this one, but one which contained it. It was about not being able to stop thinking about someone despite multiple barriers—space, words, numbers—but realizing that the thinking had more to do with the barriers than I wanted to know (and to do with visions of vessels, for that matter, including ones created by words). So I wrote a story, or three, and I felt that I could make those visions real, and actually, I think our friendship grew stronger absent some degree of influence by the warlords. Beyond the stories, though, I did not realize how much I was directing away from another (political) vision we were supposed to be sharing until I had become more irresponsible than I knew, regardless of what I wanted and not completely by my doing. Which brings me to more than a relationship, and not much more at all. So on that progressively opaque note, like Marie de France, I edited the story and added a prelude.
Annika (PO '27) is a Pomona junior from Seattle, WA. She loves running, arugula, sometimes politics, and often overlooked creatures of the water.