“Don’t use the past tense son, like you did in the second chapter, it makes for a sad read,
keep it present, keep it wrapped in the present.” “Why did you hide a harpoon in the kitchen,
dad?” “Because you’ll need it when the rain stops. don’t let me down with the past tense
son.” “Who’s Mary, dad?” “Father.” “Father?” “She’s a scared little girl. She’s a desiccator.”
“a what?” “Something that removes moisture. Keeps it.” The policewoman on my porch
interrupts. Her throat has a dead turkey in it. “dreadfully sorry to bother you dear but we’ve
come to pass on our sadnesses for your father’s sad death.” I see she is accompanied by
her daughter and her daughter. The grandmother points to them, her finger like a boney
laser pen at a power point presentation. The youngest girl is busy cutting stars out of white
card using a pair of safety scissors. She lets the heavenly bodies fall to the mud, fascinated
with the leftovers. all at once the youngest mother opens her mouth and then falls onto the
breakwater of the grandmother in a spray of tears. Her daughter, a white seahorse in her wave, leans forward and says, “don’t cry, mommy.”
She has my eyes. All of this like it is projected by blinking pixels onto a white sheet. They
leave. Wallace’s toes sizzle with cold. That is that. now comes the harvest. Mary and I walk
outside towards the trees; the figs are finite notes in the midst of millions of dreamt
possibilities. notes that never left the head of the composer. I am warmed with
shock like I have alcohol in my blood, but it’s still early and I haven’t had a drop. I have
obstructed and avoided justice, learnt I might have a sister, lost my virginity, found a
harpoon and sent a pack of hounds packing with my apathy. The girl I know because she
stole smuggled parrots from my dead neighbour thieves the branches of my dead father’s
trees. We work in the boughs throwing blood clots into woven baskets as
white blood cells pour down our faces. Mary shouts to me through the infinitude of
transparent librarians all sshhhhing at once. “I THInKs hhhhIT’SshhhhhhhhraInInG!” Her
basket is brimming, her soaking yellow t-shirt is fingering her skin, her teeth flash a keen
white. I get down from the branches. The water divides off her skin and smaller rains hit
me, her broken glass on my shop floor. The water courses down her face like jubilant tears
as she gazes back at a bird’s eye into heaven’s screen-saver. She looks down at me
“Cold?” I shake drops sideways with my shivers. She transubstantiated me with a soaking
smile. We walk on the astro-turf of this ovulating planet as the nowhere-to-be-seen-sun
orbits us. everyone has stopped talking. We are centres of gravity. She stretches out like an accordion of curves, her breasts morphing from spheres to
ellipses. But we haven’t touched in the cold days of light. “Won’t your parents be worried
about you? You’ve been here quite a while.” “no…I live with my granny up the road, I doubt
she knows I am gone. Used to live in London with my parents. They had a car crash. Well,
he crashed into her. She was a teacher at my school, drove me home every
night, she was backing up against the wall of our pokey driveway when myfather’s
vorchsprungdurchtechnique comes careening around the bend and mashes her against
the back wall like one of those cans in those can crushing adverts. I remember the light
playing on her wing mirror as I guided her in. Blinding me. The details are so big. My father
had been promoted…and drinking. death is so…unnecessary.” The rain hangs in
little nooses of respect. In the morning we arose without sleep to the applause of the
cumulonimbus gods above the house. But we haven’t touched in the cold lights of day. We
waited on the porch for Mungo (Ceder, 1975, near the ditches) to pick us up to see my dad
off to heaven or wherever. a decaying white estate car with one working headlight swings
around on the gravel at such a rate that the passenger door comes loose and flies like a
white frisbee for a few feet. Mungo looks through the new space towards us with his single
defiant tooth attempting to grin for its lost colleagues. Mungo’s head is besmirched with
dried blood and sporadic, wiry white stubble. “I’ll pick it up later nick, I ain’t being late for
this.” His enthusiasm is infectious.I sit in the passenger seat watching the rain dribble around the frame of the car – a
diamond tablecloth coming loose at the seams. an empty bag of bereavement in my
pocket. We drive. I look at the lines of the buildings as their frequency increases. Their
coarse bricks and necessary cements frown back towards me through the boughs
of my hair. Then I remind myself that you can use grey to write the word green. See dad, no
past tense. The figs were your melancholy whores. They are all pregnant from you. Thick
waxy hides and vaginal insides. am I your scruff? Your magical thinnings? I don’t want to be
your fruit. I don’t want to be your inverted flower. There is nothing hidden here. If you place
your hand on this page for long enough you will feel water. It’s substance; it’s style – its
mixed metaphors. It’s mine. It’s desiccator.Figs, Figures and Figureheads continues next week……………ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005
Figs, Figures and Figureheads
