Visual Radios

The gigantic ghost scissors clacked away at the Olympic Team on the glacier, youngsters engrossed in their summer beverage. Screened by sandy lashes, their eyes vanished under their upper lids, up, up. Slick but not quite right—maimed buck look. But that’s what comes of years of flopping down anywhere, California-style, new professions zinging past, combinations and possible combinations that make you drool (gasp), aghast. Dumb come-on, none-the-less, to bank on the built-in climax that comes from realizing the death seizure is just a simulated orgasm moue.

Had to add screech-of-brakes, a shadowy forest for the secret police in black raincoats, alternating with white stone streets (parched Old World). One-to-one visual ratio teeters. The stone streets take over, shutters bang shut, doors slam like crazy, inside locks click. Some outrage no civilized person wants any part of is about to be committed. A monster must be loose.

Climbing into my bathrobe is like putting on a window—two windows, to be exact, one front and one back, a window with just enough give for one’s body contours, a window with regular panes. Blue sky view. It’s two (sundial). The bride has confetti in her hair and veil. The hippie groom must have a sweet tooth—he’s sneaking white icing into his mouth behind her back. In the distance, pyramids. Big statues of watchdogs form a circle around everything. So much vastness in one fell swoop, desert vastness, makes me want to cry when I look at it reflected, having, sandwiched myself between two mirrors.

Good. The maintenance men, rhinestone studs on their boots, monicker studs, are flushing out the feeder tubes with their mouths. The gland extracts should be coming through any second, front and back. The little teat wants more, more! Yaow! Ruff, ruff! Now its twin wants more too. Fair is fair, but, new feeder sequence inserted, they’ve packed up their gear. No more severed arteries today.

Shutters bang open, doors too. The whole slaphappy town is pouring out into the streets. Some delirium no civilized person would touch with a ten-foot pole has just been set into motion. The scissors must have savaged the monsters on the glacier.

Credit

Poems by Kenward Elmslie are used by permission of The Estate of Kenward Elmslie.