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BRIAN HENRY is currently working on an anthology of James Tate essays. His poems appeared in Slope #1. STILL LIFE WITH DUCT TAPE I have conquered many fears the thought of which scare me beyond "beyond words," and this creeping sensation on my spine but adds to the fright. "Debits and credits be damned!" she said, and then there was light, a flashing blue on the wall. Tax evasion is a crime. Tax avoidance employs card-carrying accountants and other crunchers- a column that won't foot or cross- foot. Her expense account was up, her number biting dust, she sold me down the hall with the rest of the monkeys. A mastermind at declension, she plastered the office and wallpapered the town. Her bathroom carpet began to raise suspicion, then the leather toilet seat covers and mahogany medicine cabinet full of alibis and prescriptions. As a pharmaceutical informant, I knew her aspirin was potentially poisonous, but when threatened with the authorities, she stupefied me with her paperweight. So yes, thank you, I could use some painkillers before I cop a plea. STILL LIFE(LESS) WITH TAPEWORM I made known to my host my troubles with his hosting several shades below the local average by burrowing another centimeter into the tissue lining his intestine, so often a corridor of plenty but now less cornucopia than reminder of an absence, a leg reached for and missed. My efforts, alas, led nowhere but further into a flesh growing somehow colder my resolve weakening from so much bother body aching like a rotten tooth for a mother (a sore issue, that of one abandoning another). Starved insane and reminded of balmier days days where nourishment positively surrounded me shivering along passages bereft of any company but my own soft and spineless thoughts I will myself to wander to the end of this tunnel narrow and narrowing. Of course it's harrowing. AVATAR They called me atavistic, something of a throwback to bygone times and genes, and the term stuck in their throats when I stoppered them with cotton balls soaked in isopropyl alcohol. The matter of violence seems salient if you bow to the paper chasers, images and stories that revel in the glory of mass destruction on massive scales, infernos in forests and churches, potential intruders lurking in mall lots and driveways, your excellencies packing heat in all but the most private of places. Such exposure diverts us from the true subject and object of violence, being pleasure, the pleasure obtained from a leisurely application of venerable techniques of administering pain. But back to the point of how to silence your enemies: asphyxiation, while effective, has unfortunate side-effects, death the most common. The threat of suffocation is preferable, especially when your hand is firm around the neck, the cartilege flexing under your fingers, the moons of your nails craters in that tender skin. Adjust the voice to reedy, set the eyes to narrow, and see if what you're holding doesn't tremble. |