Oni Buchanan |
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Dear Lonely Animal, I’m writing to you from the loneliest, most secluded island in the world. I mean, the farthest away place from anything else. There are so many fruits here growing on trees or on vines that wrap and wrap. Fruits like I’ve never seen except the bananas. All night the abandoned dogs howled. I wonder if one dog gives the first howl, and if they take turns who’s first like carrying the flag in school. Carrying the flag way out in front and the others following along behind in two long lines, pairs holding hands. Also the roosters here crow from 4am onward. They’re still crowing right now and it’s almost noon here on the island. Noon stares back no matter where you are. Today I’m going to hike to the extinct volcano and balance on the rim of the crater. Yesterday a gust almost blew me inside. I heard that the black widows live inside the volcano far down below in the high grasses that you can’t see from the rim. Well, I was going to tell you that this morning the bells rang and I followed them and at the source of the bells, there I found so many animals all gathered together in a room with carved wooden statues and wooden benches and low wooden slats for kneeling. And the animals were there singing together, all their voices singing, with big strong voices rising from even the filthiest animals. I mean, I’ve seen animals come together and sing before, except in high fancy vaults where bits of colored glass are pieced together into stories. Some days I want to sing with them. I wish more animals sang together all the time. But then I can’t sing sometimes because I think of the news that happens when the animals stop singing. And then I think of all the medications and their side effects that are advertised between the pieces of news. And then I think of all the money the drug companies spent to videotape their photogenic, well-groomed animals, and all the money they spent to buy a prime-time spot, and I think, what money buys the news, and what news creates the drugs, and what drugs control the animals, and I get so choked I can’t sing anymore, Lonely Animal. I can’t sing with the other animals. Because it’s hard to know what an animal will do when it stops singing. It’s complicated, you know, it’s just complicated— ** The Lonely Animal I visited the animal I visited it in its hole I visited it till the dawn when it sunk its razor teeth into the dawn’s throat, tore, and the sky began its spill of blood I visited the animal I ran down the hillside of wet grass and found it where it lived It wasn’t sleeping (for it never slept) It stayed awake all night soundless and still I visited the animal without a sound I visited the animal by day I brought it twigs and ferns It lashed the branches with a lanyard woven in and out; it perched upon its bramble throne It folded closed its sanitary paws, its paws scrubbed clean down in the cold waters of the stream I scrubbed with the animal, scrubbed at the stream scrubbed away the bits of dirt scrubbed my matted fur, scrubbed the goblet gilt in gold, the shard of pottery wedged into the earth; for everything must be cleaned and readied for the ritual of tears I drank with the animal, from the gilded goblet from the cold and flowing stream where a single goldfish swam: a bright and sudden flash as quickly gone. The lonely goldfish cries and its own tears stick to it like sparkling pins that make it shimmer, like it wears a shawl of diamonds I cried with the animal in midday over the water while below the lily pads gently swooned and shuddered I cried swooning with the animal as the evening fell like autumn leaves as the moss grew damper, deeper and more still Quiet I watched the animal cry into its goblet I watched it catch each sliding tear as carefully as liquid gold and together they pooled and made a surface where I was not reflected, where the animal could watch itself crying, crying, crying— *** Dear Lonely Animal, Sometimes I could just burst into tears. I found some friends, but they don’t understand I just don’t care about baseball and cupcake bakes and beer pong. And I don’t “hang out.” I don’t like hanging out. And I don’t like bowling. Sometimes I get in these moods, Animal, and I become intolerable even to myself. But I become very anxious about my brain cells. I feel that I need all the brain cells I have. Because I need to remember all the things I saw and heard, and I need to remember all the things I memorized. And mostly all the people, especially the people whom I miss the most. I need to remember their voices and faces, their real faces talking and laughing and not some face from a photograph of them. It’s like all the real faces, when they’re gone for a while, they always tend toward those photo faces and then they become the photo faces and then I know I’ve forgotten. And I could just bury myself in the ground! I could just burst into a million tears, sharp tears like daggers that turn back on my body and stab, stab, stab—tiny piercings like tiny mouths biting all at once. Like that Canadian goose somebody found sitting by the side of the road, just sitting there. Somebody lifted up that huge bird and brought it in to us at the Bird Rescue. The goose didn’t so much as honk or give even the slightest whisper of a honk. It didn’t flap its wings or snap at anybody with its beak. It looked tired, Lonely Animal. Very tired. My aunt extended one of the goose’s wings to see if the wing was broken and there, under the wing, in the dense body of the bird, was an injury where some car or other had hit it and driven away. And in the injury there were scores of maggots, teeming there, boring into its soft body, devouring it alive, mouthful by mouthful with their tiny, smacking maggot lips. You know that sound maggots make when they’re eating, and mealworms too. A tiny wet smacking like that gross sound when you stir up macaroni and cheese. I have one friend who does a great maggot impression. But mostly my friends go on big road trips and have dinner parties. They talk about NPR. They ask me if I read Billy Collins. NO I DO NOT READ BILLY COLLINS. And anyway, how can they forget their work like that? Walking down the street with me, one friend yelled “Fuck you” at a stranger because he drove by in a Hummer. Well, I hate all this political bullshit and I could just cry a million billion tears but what good would it do? If one person does not know how to treat one other person, what good are my million tears then? |
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