huge mastiff, he tunneled so good, blocked escape, that mountain, that Pullman car, your avalanche, your true home, these months, coming to term, as if escape were evenNNNNN!.OORI4O M#3WC6M? A#WWOCR>Q
were even possible
reason for the summons, the telegram, thirty-two weeks ago today, no inkling of that. Such knowledge by grim necessity ruthlessly and unconsciously suppressed, you^<EA^ES< 4^^QWPCPW3}W@> 46ZXMU 4SXEERPAPPC C#6M
you and your wife smiling like jerks, seats of plush velvet, first-class passage already booked, years of brutal, near-fatal immiseration behind you. Actor’s art long abandoned, more soup
Obies soon to glint from the appurtenances and drainage holes, fourth wine cellar, the wife free to ululate, turtles will silence her, now an endangered specI?WPZ<A {W}56,/ S
thanks to the wife, her hunger, her mania, turtles a nearly exctinct species
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my wife deep down with your wife, fourth cellar, two wives, their new living quarters, you soon in second cellar, the theater I’ve constructed, my star, my wretch, immiserated to the point of death, I broke you down, sent you packing, waited years then called you back via telegram, buried you on the mountain, left you stranded, you and your wife, Pullman car, soon a life gestating inside her, now again you’ll be my
The Pentecost. And our two wives, dead or alive in the fourth cellar, my new child playing in the corner of the third cellar, plastic horses, safe from
Sent private dicks to monitor your love rituals, record her sleeping temperature, monitor her cycles, at last the moment came, a telegram
first night, weeping, the wife stroked my face, this is not it can’t you see that it’s just not it anymore. I said, we’ll get the servants back. Said I’d change, listen, love her again, the two of us children again togetherRRRR!EROO#SXO. PEUOPSOOW!./
find again our nocturne, our hand-crank record player, among all the rubbish, and I searched, I searched
opted for a week facing Kidd, travel a mile in my wife’s shoes, not only excruciating but psychically destabilizing, the wife swapped out Kidd paintings nightly, Untitled #18 for Untitled #5, Untitled #77 for Untitled #18, eyes
the eyes
that halt, Pullman car high on the mountain, an avalanche of my own arrangement, your wife came to term, every courtesy shown, no service denied, you could not leave or kill yourselves, that was all, eight months, your mountain, your Pullman car, then on tZM <S4QC3.RER} ZU<MM{R4A ZEP?ZQRM/
Then to the Copper Beeches, this dining room, turtle soup, trapdoor below, other doors locked, Baccarat chandelier suspended above, paintings of Granger and Kidd, tape recorder, a locked room
shrugged off the throng of porters, threw out elbows, one telegram and you came running, you and your Tonya ideal assholes, suitcases empty, you saved room for cash money, bags of money you imagined awaited you here, and which do in fact await you, in the telegram no mention of cash money, studiously avoided it, but between the lines, that studiousness pressed to breaking, something gleamed, like money, wouldn’t you
each day erase your memory, sharp crack to the skull
first night, pearlescent, profile view, an understanding, Hello Roger, she said
judge from that crash, your eye tracking down, the sconce below Kitt Kidd’s Untitled #43 broke free. Won’t glance back, even now, never lo/OO KOOWOWWW?>@ E6{II#<^CPRZ,Q}CE{>RX >ZQRX5S#AA^A5XZ 6PSXEROK
Kidd behind, Granger in front, never again Kidd, no looking, not a glance, the Baccarat chandelier dozens of feet overhead, it will not fall, you and I together again, Limoges porcelain and green-fired Meissen porcelain, silk jacquard tablecloth, high windows spilling blue light, or sepia, sun falling through different panes, hours pass, a multiplicity of panes configured just so, always a single color, depends on the hour, blue or sepia or dull white light. Blue now, soon dull white, then sepia at last. And mirrors to reflect our light downward, ingenious cellar mirrors, thus did my parents arrange things here at Copper Beeches, no reason to part with it, keep the finest traditions, eliminate the rest, blue light dropping through the trapdoor to the first cellar, valet perched between second and third, the darkness there, turtle shell pressD>Z4APMZOMC A/ ^M.Z/.@UMQEPXZ M/?PW>RP}@E MZ@OST.
shell pressed conch-like to lips, at ululations or screams he’ll signal with a
parents made a gift to me of lies, this play I gift to my son, my new son, a gift of truth.
Run it every night, each night until his fourteenth birthday, you in each performance, and me just offstage, listening to last night’s playback, speaking it to you as I hear it, a microphone, an earpiece, and you repeating my words, and your words recorded again each night, next night I listen to the latest tape, speak them again, microphone, earpiece, and you repeat what I say, each night
each night, degrading
each night, degrading at the truth
My son, he won’t see it, not a single performance, tape degrading, cracking and falling to pieces, spliced back together again each day, re-recorded each night, then at last, fourteenth birthday
Fourteenth birthday, my son onstage, takes the valet’s role, plays you, while you again play me. I’m just offstage, listening to previous night’s tape, speaking words into your earpiece
one night onstage at last
The Pentecost. And our two wives, dead or alive in the fourth cellar, a new child to play in the corner of the third cellar, plastic horses, safe from
miss him so goddamn much, I miss my boy, so much.
something of the actor’s art. It burned in the infant’s eye, faint but true, would have had to break him down if not for the wife, pumpkin patch, an end to all that. My boy no actor, you see, a news cycle boy, that empire. My scion, not yY!!.E CO^MOC@E,OU / @3#XOP E/ P46/ E/
yours. But the actor’s art, genetic faggotry, you tainted him, I think, this new one free of the taint, he’d better be
first night, her bedroom, at last I saw it, a turtle shell. She lifted it, sipped. I understood how she’d survived, floor parqueted in turtle shells, living turtles, dead turtles, must have blockaded herself in, then survived on turtles, she returned the shell to a Bunsen burner, I said, What’s with all the turtles, she lowered the flame, O these really don’t know where they came from one day, and snapped her fingers, such contrast to her otherwise languid demeanor that I flinched, there were just turtles
first cellar, reception and box office, second cellar, theater, your quarters, third cellar, my quarters, also my control room, also the boy’s quarters, plastiICICICCOXSA O4^SQR5/{S5WMO RPAPPC C#6MXWI< Q5PSQ/P}US4 }EQ{O>QR^ EP,MWRCQ<Z#.AS >.{WRRX<QEZUE
play running night after night for years, full house, empty house, no matter, it’s not for them, live audience or none at all, but fourteenth birthday, perhaps a live audience
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