Mannequin Envy
Rebecca Schumejda
~fall 2006~
Dissecting the Tongue
Ice Water
~fall 2006~
Dissecting the Tongue
Ice Water
| "My newest work is upcoming from sunnyoutside and also check out www.rebeccaschumejda.com" Dissecting the Tongue A seashell’s porcelain pink canal pressed against the ear speaks of the currents that brought it ashore, in contrast to the predictability of conversation—the divorce lawyer’s wet dream. I know more about the Chatty Cathy cashier at the grocer than I do about my mother-in-law. What I do know is that her phone has been disconnected more times, in the past year, than most people will have orgasms this month. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. My husband and my brother shave their words like their beards—infrequently and with caution. They prefer to let the answering machine pick up. No one gives credit to Elisha Gray or Antonio Meucci— the two men Bell beat to the Patent Office. These men are forgotten like what was said yesterday and the day before. My mother handles conversation like good china—takes it out for holidays and other special occasions, but prefers to dine on paper plates and drink red wine from plastic cups. My father drove conversation like a Harley along winding country roads until the gas ran out. My fingers, quicker and wittier than my tongue curved dangling above this keyboard, waiting always waiting to dissect what they think they hear. Ice Water What is the difference between want and need; who selects the referees that make the calls? The people in hell need ice water; I’d settle for a chilled beer and decent conversation. We always want what we don’t have and when we have what we don’t want, we whine until we drive everyone away. We all have our defense mechanisms: worms their ability to regenerate, skunks their pungent scent, bright-winged butterflies their toxins, humans their lies. Tonight, as a granddaughter of a practicing Catholic and the daughter of an atheist, I will have hedonistic sex with my husband for hours, the man I moved in with years before we married. I was a bastard child, a bastard wife, and am destined to be a bastard mother. I wore white, anyway. I would think that the people in Hell would prefer vodka martinis, dirty with extra olives, shaken not stirred— the way I like them. I guess we settle out of desperation, out of predestined location and vocation; when I was a child, my father gave me a shovel, after I lied to him, and told me to dig a tunnel to hell to preserve Satan’s energy. He didn’t believe, but he scared the devil out of me— yet another successful modern day exorcism. |