Sir Réal sits
contentedly in a bathtub of black garlic and white truffle mayonnaise, armed against intrusion with a battery of pointed, buttery croissants. He remains ceremonious, outside a small circle of friends, all serious contenders for Sycophant-of-the-year. There’s a surfeit of silence among the gathered, sensing, perhaps, a dark current is sluicing its way into the surroundings, and surrender should be a word on all susurrous lips. On the surface such survivalist annoyia needs no polishing. Has no future beyond the moment that is. Street sirens mocking Scylla and Charbonay, wailing in low overtones rather than klaxoning their message. Mirthology combined with blood-orange flavored gin and Greek muthos. The real deal of meaning mixed with message divided by actual history. Sir Réal resists pulling the plug with his hallux, though his innermost hindfoot digits are serenely dexterous. What matters most is the mayo and body temperature which, if rising, could become problematic in ways epidemic. In years past, accusations from his nemesis, Sir Leon, played big in the press: poisoned daggers, superheated words. Narrowing syringes of malice injected by a vain bastard.
The Journey
to the car has taken longer than ever before. Winter passed. Made a U-turn. And returned. But the snow remains, especially where the plows have banked it against the driver’s side, making entry that way impossible. He feels the rearview mirror watching him, and now notices light flashing off the passenger side mirror as it turns his way. If only he can gain entrance through one of the two visible doors. He could then start the car, he hopes, the battery is newish but you never know, and warm himself inside until such time as the snow, and ice have melted away. May or June. Whichever. From that position of strength, he could travel north, he thinks, towards the hospital where he works as an orderly. At least he does on those scheduled days when travel is easier, possible, even uncomplicated by the absence of his fellow commuters. He wonders out loud if he has missed something important. An event perhaps catastrophic with sirens, or one that requires all people to stay indoors. Martial law imposed. A curfew. Loaves of bread being air-dropped in neighborhoods by National Guardsmen in stealth choppers. He'd cut the cord and has done well he thinks without the hundreds of cable channels. Never enough time. And the language! Coarse. Often non-grammatical. For weeks he has enjoyed the silence. No radio alarm. A strict regimen from light to dark. Natural sleep. What could be better? His neighbors have been considerately ignoring him, not intruding. He thinks someone might have rolled his trash cart back off the street but doesn’t remember taking it there in the first place. This journey is like life, he surmises, except it seems to have no end. And I . . .I? Where did that come from? Why the sudden perpendicular pronoun? And I’m no longer sure when it began. It can’t have begun without me. Journeys can’t do that, can they? I might have caused it to happen, to somewhat spontaneously occur. That would be acceptable. But why? And where? Never mind when. Did I have a mission? A divine purpose or plan? Or was mayonnaise, its emptiness, behind this? If so, somewhere I must have a list. If only with a single word on it: mayonnaise. The real stuff. Not generic. But I, no longer he, have no lists just as I have no pockets, and nowhere to put a list. It is darker now. Suddenly. I am even further from my snowbound car. Standing alone. Hesitant in moonlight.
When he was born without
fingerprints or toeprints though he had both fingers and toes, we were disappointed, the wife and I, disgusted with the blurred smudges of curled toes and soles on our exiting papers. Not unique. Nor admissible in court. As dutiful parents, we did our best. We research the possibilities: could highly-skilled artists, preferably not money counterfeiters, create a template of finger whorls and friction ridges? Could a 3-D printer transfer a permanent Pollock-like pattern to our son’s paws? We saw too well the horror that lay ahead for him in this terrorizing world. Unable to prove his existence, even retinal scans would be useless, since eyes can be harvested and reinstalled. What to do? We considered a tattoo in Esperanto: I am Me. But any fool could copy that. We debated the efficacy of an implant, a RFID chip with its own unique identifier and systemic virus filter. But the life expectancy proved too short. In the end we did what parents must do: We made the hard choice and renamed him Junior. His prints and mine are now identical.
We must remember
a carpenter whose six remaining fingers, one formerly a great toe, were more than adequate to the task of creation: sawing, rasping, planning, sanding, aligning, leveling and hammering in place the many board feet of his private family ark, only to watch it burn to the ground before launch, victim, it seems, of a carelessly tossed lightning bolt. We should dedicate ourselves to the memory, both past and future, of another who publicly revealed two milk-swollen breasts in Neiman Marcus during a sale, and who could not be bribed to leave, even when offered a lucrative tax-free incentive. We are obliged to acknowledge those who came before we were able to know them, those who will come after, but are damned if we will speak to pissant relatives, or family members whose pettiness, compounded with great care over the long years, remains unpaid. We seek cosmic recompense from others all named and known, who have wronged us repeatedly over the years, conspicuously, inconveniently, and habitually without ever so much as a soupçon of regret, and iota of admittance, or a smidgeon of guilt. We gather today to commit to this hungry earth, each and every one of us. Coroner’s verdict: death by product displacement.
The refrigerator purred
its malcontent with what it held inside: rotted and rancid vegetables and a side order of limp lamb testicles in a humpbacked Petrie dish. The gas stove had disliked its adjacency and taken a vow of silent mutterings with the single exception of expressing amusement at the house of horrors in which it finds itself contained. Fortunately, it has hooked up with a clown/balloon twister who hooked him up with twinned tanks of righteous sweet N2O. Hip Hop happy gas. Stove is often happy. Smirking. Snorting. Winking its lights subliminally. Meanwhile, the disposal continues to cough-up hairballs. Not the ones from Seneca folklore made of human heads. A more subtle version made of buckskin choiced with animal fur, whatever was in season. Truth be, it hates its existence. Especially the wall switch. It was unnerving to the kitchen faucet that despite its best effort at dripping, fast then slow. Off for hours. Hot then cold. As steady as dawn happening. At no time did anyone respond or upbraid him. Not for wasting water. Not for splattering or ping then ponging against the stainless steel sink. Not even for stuttering.
Richard Weaver - Until recently, the author has been the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. He has flipped coastlines, and hangs at Hooley’s Public House (San Diego) on occasion. Some of his other pubs include: OffCourse, Misfit Mag, Burningword LJ, Slippery Elm, Loch Raven Review, and Spank the carp. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). As one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its 1st Poetry Editor, he is proud to note that it’s 100+ issues old. Mugshot available upon request. (Mug not included). The author’s 600th poem was recently published. His first poem was published 50 years ago in Poetry Magazine (April 1975).
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