Mannequin Envy
a journal of visual and literary arts
~fall 2006 ~
| Shift “Next to a gravestone/a green tin cup brimful of shadows./Must we drink?” Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser from Braided Creek We used to talk of death as if it were Tahiti or the Balkans. It was that remote. Now, the mirror is unkind and the women, in their skirts, don’t even turn around. Up, on Stage At five a.m., moving around in the house he is a ghost, a spirit invited there, to feed the dog, to make the coffee. Then suddenly he sees him- self in the house as if he were across the street looking in. The yellow glim of the kitchen light illuminates his small gestures as if he’s on stage. He looks a fool to himself then, and the house, dark except for where he is, seems a foreign place, exotic, dangerous, suspended over the abyss, the kind of place he would, soon perhaps, want to visit. |