Sufficient to Create a Phobia

Eulalie stands thigh deep in the river. There is a roar like the axle of the Earth close by. Mist emerging where the rest falls over. Perhaps she is considering the almanac. Where does it originate? What can you make it say? And so the factor of belief increases precisely as the disparate pieces increase. As those that can not go together go together and the sutures stand out like knuckles on the hand. I call to her from the bank, promise all devotion will be covered in blankets. It’s no secret we have dreams sometimes with Eulalie in them. But she has someone else’s eyebrows -- taped in place. Abysmal. Monstrous. Like something in the films of the 1930’s. An archetype with no right to the name. 

All the Ursulines

I find myself haunting this neighborhood almost daily, nodding and looking over people’s shoulders even when I long to connect with them in some more meaningful way. Say by inviting them to Lake Erie, by showing them where the walleye hang in the murky water like dirigibles. Just waiting for something to flash by. To stir their instincts in some primordial way that we can document but no longer truly take the measure of. We have lost that ability in trade for others more circumspect and ultimately unnecessary. Fine glossy adornments that cost a great deal but don’t fetch much on the other end of the market. Where people are busy selling their cucumbers and their squash. And relating tales of things that seem to have happened directly to them – marvelous, uncanny adventures that almost always end with someone mistaking one name for another. Becoming confused about who is in the room and who has only recently left it to go check on the children. We know the life that slips between our fingers when we are looking right at it is only a portion of the life we have been allotted. And we’d like to reverse the process somehow. So that our pillows don’t always wind up stained a light gray. And the windows might stay open this time, at least, for an hour. Until the men show up with their spray canisters slung over their shoulder. And they tell each other riddles that have no concrete answer. That seem, in fact, to demand the kind of attention you might otherwise pay to the heavens when they have altered their normal movements. When Venus, say, travels the same unruly route Mars does. Even circles it on occasion as if it were trying to get its attention.

A Problem of Taxonomy

1.

The last thing you want to decide is how the umbrella failed, why there are moments that seem like they last an eternity when in fact they do. Why must we be called on to explain such things? Where is it written that the dark mysteries of the universe should expect some unraveling from the likes of us?

2.

Eulalie stands by the tent flap, her goggles already pulled down into place. And you’d think there were two versions of this scene. The one exactly as it appears and the other slightly altered, but close enough to the original that only an expert could tell the difference. He’d point to the slivers of tin beneath the fingernails on her left hand. The suggestion of plummeting temperatures in the color of the fruit on the trees behind Eulalie. The plums, for instance, turning such a deep mauve as to suggest they had been touched up by an invisible painter’s hand.

3.

Of course, I have accused Eulalie in the past of pretending to be more regal than she actually is. Of wanting to enlist the assistance of otherworldly beings so as to seem one herself. But all such accusations come from that place inside me that looks like a fish tank. That filters out the waste and debris using equipment that hasn’t been altered, fundamentally, in over forty years. The same design, the same exhausting sound coming from inside it somewhere, and no matter how thoroughly you search, there is no discovering its exact origin or how to mute it.

4.

Still, we’ve seen situations where the skin begins to heal itself by way of proteins that haven’t been identified by science. But are reasonably well known to its enemies. Particularly the vacation Bible institutes where they show movies to little children who don’t remember five minutes later exactly what it is they’ve seen. They know only that it has something to do with transformation, with men turning their hands over and discovering they have grown enormous quantities of fur there. That their palms are basically pelts like those you see sometimes on wild animals. If you are lucky enough to get out of the city and into the country where the camels and the aardwolves make their homes.

5.

It is a lost art this -- suggesting one thing by pointing to another. Eulalie says it can be resurrected, if only we pay attention to the words we use and to what’s lying on the sidewalk. By way of illustration, she closes the tent flap, begins humming something to herself inside. I think for a moment I’ve heard the tune before. When I had season tickets to the opera. When I used to love to dress up in baggy clothes. But then I realize it is something that doesn’t hold together. She makes it fall apart because Eulalie doesn’t ultimately believe in harmony. She thinks it something someone invented once in Zurich so as to convince the rest of us to move there. To lay our lives aside like plastic bags, and come strolling down the Bellerivestrasse.

Charles Freeland teaches composition and creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. The recipient of a 2008 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, he is the author of a half dozen e-books and chapbooks, including Grubb (forthcoming from BlazeVOX), Furiant, Not Polka (Moria), and The Case of the Danish King Halfdene (Mudlark). Recent work appears in Otoliths, Poetry International, MiPoesias, Spinning Jenny, Offcourse, 580 Split, Harpur Palate, and The Cincinnati Review. His website is The Fossil Record (charlesfreelandpoetry.net) and his blog is Spring Cleaning in the Labyrinth of the Continuum (charlesfreeland.blogspot.com).

POETRY