By Ben Greenman
from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled
A young-un (that’s what the sheriff calls her—that’s what he calls any of the town’s residents aged under twenty—though to be fair to him he’s said that same thing since he was twenty—it’s not discriminatory—it’s affectionate—there were times that the town would have agreed) comes to the microphone. She unfolds a piece of paper and slowly reads the essay she has written in school on the subject of “Moderate to Severe Views Of The World In Which We Are Trapped.” The school principal and an English teacher beam in seats onstage as the young-un speaks:
Not everyone is Nostradamus. Not every present is branches in a box. Not every episode is cardiac. Not every explanation is either valid or invalid. Not every invalid is reading. Not every reader understands Nostradamus, especially the quatrain where he wrote “branches in a box” but meant our modern world, crisscrossed through with possibility, with hope, with life, but sealed into darkness, wood dragooning wood. It is thick sadness. It stops the heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment