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by David Aronson |
| Oedipus Blues It's depressing to realize that your whole life, or one aspect of it at least, has already been written; scripted by some long-dead Greek dude. To see that you really would like to yank open your mother's snatch, squinch in your head, and wriggle your way back up into her womb, like some breach baby in reverse. What's even worse is to know that to your mother, this is an acceptable state of affairs. It's like when you were three and you played that game with mom where you buried yourself head-first, curled up in your fetal pajamas, into the warm porridge-bowl space defined by her open lap; like the bugs you collected in jars that rolled themselves into blissfully slumbering balls until the coast was clear. The second chapter of the story finds you choking on amniotic fluid as you hack your way out of Grendel's lair, axe swinging, breathless with your very right to be. All the while with one fearful eye on the shiny table laid out for you by lizard-mom with sweet gooey custard and bologna sandwiches dripping mayonnaise, cartoons and comic books and a soft bed to sleep in til noon. The third act directs you to join the world of the fathers and dance Achilles? sun-dance but you've sprained your ankle and the men don't recognize you in your mother's wig and dress, and furthermore, it's too dark to see your feet and you appear to be walking on the surface of the moon. So now you're just this drawing in a book, peeled off the page and flapping about, and this goddess comes along and blows you back up, inflates you like a balloon into three dimensions. So you marry her. And imagine your surprise when you wake up the next morning with an evil hag next to you in bed; Baba Yaga or the Wicked Witch of the West like in some fucking fairy tale, and she's got your mother's face and your mother's voice, and the pussy with teeth opens you up and sucks you back in. Waving Bones Black cloth, white neck white specks sprinkle his shoulder like snow in July while air conditioners blow wet hair from furrowed brows, sweat-stain rivers God has plowed. Fisher-Price people fill his pews, each peg in their hole waiting for their cues to sit or stand. he feels his hand tremble, his thick-lensed scrutiny of the assembled petitioners of prayer, flakes fall from his hair like the sin-microbes he searches for, a Christian scientist, a surgeon for the lord. his head a strip-mined mountain sparsely covered with graying strands, his hands desperately grip the book which gives directions, orders from heaven. others prefer the evening paper to map out their world, a different plot with plenty of hot action; car crashes and murder and tits as solid as wisps of smoke or the ghost of the Jew that hangs on the wall and bleeds on his pages staining them red while from his head the flakes still fall as the room grows colder he shivers, though sure of his eternal reward he fears that final tap on the shoulder. Priests wave bones and give benediction but the truth is still that all truth is fiction. |
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