from The Beast Should Comply
Filthy because first, I fell from a family
of fifty. No explanation save Fusion, that it fed
the lilies with death until time
became thin, brittle, expired in a long, pathetic
stouche. Stouche: run aground — blue canoes (why
blue? — as an antidote to the narrator’s filth) are picked up
by painted warriors & carried into a dense forest, never
to be seen again, a gratuitous image whose only purpose
apparently is to disrupt the flow
of the narrative. Stouche: how long
can a breath last? Eighty seconds? Ample time
to let them pass. How many were there? Too many
to count. Mares or stallions? Couldn’t tell
with all the dust. Should I make them blind, add
an unnecessary complication to a narrative
already burdened with one superfluous image (blue
canoes)? Stouche: a stampede
into a feast where the rationing is exceptionally
strict that sends them flying as befits a narrative
that extols the pieta-like austerity of a mother & son
huddled together on a drifting raft (Niagara thundering
in the distance) who can’t get over the fact that the tombs
(with which both shores are lined) are so ... prophetic, so
stouche as prayers for salvation are answered only
to run afoul of the Law. Too supernatural, this
phenomenon, there could be a panic. Clear the court
of spectators! (&, by extension, the streets of filth
with a water cannon). Stouche: clean
because last, the narrative reduced (by a neat
solipsism) to the narrator, that family of fifty
of no further use.
