toward heat or light? Are we better people when someone might be dying, and if so, why? Are we weaker, or stronger? Are we beautiful, or abject? Serious, or cartoon? Do we secretly long for death to remind us we are alive?
He shivers. What the hell was that about? Was that his sister’s voice, or his? He claps three times and says, “Okay, people—you’re not the center of the universe here, right? Everybody get a grip .” He walks over to the pile of performance artist and painter. “We shouldn’t all be trying to stay here this way. It’s not helping her. It’s pathetic. Look what comes of it. We should just take shifts. Come tell me your work”—he glances at the performance artist—“or whatever , schedules. I’ll call everyone. I’ll make a visitation chart.”
But that’s not what he’s typing.
He’s typing out stage directions.
A doctor steps into the room, as if on cue.
Nightmaking
In her sleep, the night sky stitches a story through the girl.
Her brother is a fox pup chasing a mouse over a snow-covered field. The fox pup leaps straight up into the air where the mouse tracks end and plunges nose first into the blanket of white. The fox emerges and shakes its head to free the snow from its fur. The fox is laughing. A mouse in its mouth.
Her mother is a moon eye in the sky. Not perfectly white, but bruise-hued. The moon eye casts a gaze over all of the world, over violence and lovers with equal compassion, over living and dead, over children and old men curling into brittle-boned fetal positions in bed, curling around what used to be their wives, taking their last breaths, over chickens and badgers and snakes and trees, over rivers and rocks and breath.
Her father is not a tree.
Let all the other fathers before hers be trees.
Her father is a door.
Anywhere.
Anytime.
Opening or closing, depending on the story and the girl’s place in it.
The Filmmaker
The filmmaker is beating a heavy bag to death.
Having recently clocked the painter, he finds that slamming the heavy bag feels more satisfying. In the backyard behind his house, at night, his blows land and thud. He pictures the chest and gut of a man. Fisted speed dug deep from a bellyful of rage and jabs extended until they’re shot-strung back to the shoulder. Again. Again. The throbbing sound so familiar he doesn’t recognize it. Comforting.
It’s what he knows how to do in the face of inertia.
What if a man’s body is all that drives action, and not the stupid heart?
Anything but the heart.
So he beats the holy hell out of this simulacral man in the backyard for hours, until he’s spent, until he’s just a man bent over and panting. His breath fogs before him in the cold night. It seems good that he can’t kill the heavy bag. He hangs hishead. This is killing him. No, not killing him. But it is some kind of crucible he doesn’t understand.
His wife. How can there be nothing he can do to fix it? It makes him want to hit things as hard as he can.
He looks at the back of his house. It stares dully back at him. Wifeless. Sonless. Without life. He goes inside, and when he looks back through the window to the backyard, all he sees is black, like the screen before the film begins, the moon a white projector’s beam.
This is the first night in seven he has come home from the hospital. It’s the only respite he has given himself. A night to fight and release the chemical chaos of things. Without turning any lights on, he walks through the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, removes a Newcastle beer, twists the cap off, drinks most of it standing in the fluorescent glow. Then he removes his Everlast workout gloves, carefully unwraps his hands, the black bands falling to the floor like tired-out snakes. They sting from the gap between cold night air and warm domesticity.
He grabs another beer, then walks through the dark and lifeless house to his wife’s writing room. He stands in front of her bookshelves. He stares at the shelf
He shivers. What the hell was that about? Was that his sister’s voice, or his? He claps three times and says, “Okay, people—you’re not the center of the universe here, right? Everybody get a grip .” He walks over to the pile of performance artist and painter. “We shouldn’t all be trying to stay here this way. It’s not helping her. It’s pathetic. Look what comes of it. We should just take shifts. Come tell me your work”—he glances at the performance artist—“or whatever , schedules. I’ll call everyone. I’ll make a visitation chart.”
But that’s not what he’s typing.
He’s typing out stage directions.
A doctor steps into the room, as if on cue.
Nightmaking
In her sleep, the night sky stitches a story through the girl.
Her brother is a fox pup chasing a mouse over a snow-covered field. The fox pup leaps straight up into the air where the mouse tracks end and plunges nose first into the blanket of white. The fox emerges and shakes its head to free the snow from its fur. The fox is laughing. A mouse in its mouth.
Her mother is a moon eye in the sky. Not perfectly white, but bruise-hued. The moon eye casts a gaze over all of the world, over violence and lovers with equal compassion, over living and dead, over children and old men curling into brittle-boned fetal positions in bed, curling around what used to be their wives, taking their last breaths, over chickens and badgers and snakes and trees, over rivers and rocks and breath.
Her father is not a tree.
Let all the other fathers before hers be trees.
Her father is a door.
Anywhere.
Anytime.
Opening or closing, depending on the story and the girl’s place in it.
The Filmmaker
The filmmaker is beating a heavy bag to death.
Having recently clocked the painter, he finds that slamming the heavy bag feels more satisfying. In the backyard behind his house, at night, his blows land and thud. He pictures the chest and gut of a man. Fisted speed dug deep from a bellyful of rage and jabs extended until they’re shot-strung back to the shoulder. Again. Again. The throbbing sound so familiar he doesn’t recognize it. Comforting.
It’s what he knows how to do in the face of inertia.
What if a man’s body is all that drives action, and not the stupid heart?
Anything but the heart.
So he beats the holy hell out of this simulacral man in the backyard for hours, until he’s spent, until he’s just a man bent over and panting. His breath fogs before him in the cold night. It seems good that he can’t kill the heavy bag. He hangs hishead. This is killing him. No, not killing him. But it is some kind of crucible he doesn’t understand.
His wife. How can there be nothing he can do to fix it? It makes him want to hit things as hard as he can.
He looks at the back of his house. It stares dully back at him. Wifeless. Sonless. Without life. He goes inside, and when he looks back through the window to the backyard, all he sees is black, like the screen before the film begins, the moon a white projector’s beam.
This is the first night in seven he has come home from the hospital. It’s the only respite he has given himself. A night to fight and release the chemical chaos of things. Without turning any lights on, he walks through the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, removes a Newcastle beer, twists the cap off, drinks most of it standing in the fluorescent glow. Then he removes his Everlast workout gloves, carefully unwraps his hands, the black bands falling to the floor like tired-out snakes. They sting from the gap between cold night air and warm domesticity.
He grabs another beer, then walks through the dark and lifeless house to his wife’s writing room. He stands in front of her bookshelves. He stares at the shelf
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