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    What Weaponry
    What Weaponry
    What Weaponry
    Ebook83 pages44 minutes

    What Weaponry

    By Elizabeth J Colen

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What Weaponry is the story of a man who moves to small-town America with his lover after his parents die. They experience many social, emotional, and mental trials. Are the neighbors throwing dirty looks? Are they being watched? Is someone stealing the mail? As the situation intensifies, feelings of paranoia deepen, mental and physical brutality grows between them, and their connection to reality falls into rapid decline.
    “ Handsomely forged like the best scenes of the best art films.” Debra DiBlasi
    “ Colen has done something more nimble than write a book of prose poems. She has created a wonder, a linear circularity 'We haven't slept but tired's come back to wild elation the way all things circle back to meet their opposites.'” TC Tolbert
    “ What's constant in these dazzling lyrical vignettes is the desire for intimacy in the throes of love's changing face. It's a remarkable book.” Oliver de la Paz
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlack Lawrence Press
    Release dateAug 1, 2016
    ISBN9781625571700
    What Weaponry

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      Book preview

      What Weaponry - Elizabeth J Colen

      (1)

      LOW CLOUDS

      We build a place to be safe, start talking in circles and so build that way. We start with small stones, then large. We work quietly. Our concentric circles grow. Wet sand cold under our toes. We move on to driftwood, again starting small: with what we might use for fire if we stay too long. Then the big ones: white logs as big as we can haul them. Fourteen circles in all, crabs lumber over them, dry kelp blows at one edge. The dog is careful, having been told. She goes back into the ocean, which is ruining the last, widest circle into a C. We lay in what we have made, minute fleshy bullets in the target we have made.

      When we see it from above we will know the sea is near, as is the grey, as is the end. When we see it from above the plane will be circling, destroying low clouds. When we see it from above we will be listening, we will be watching, we will go there as fast as we can.

      WAITING FOR THE DAMAGE

      I will say everything I can say and then you will say something too. There is anger in both of us, fusing the closer we get. For now we stand at the lip of the world, waves lapping grey stones under a grey sky: our little world. There is something to this. Something that wants to be calm, to be easy. Look at that, you say, pointing out far in the ocean. I nod, but see nothing. I’m willing to look anyway.

      The dog brings a stick. There is bravery to the womb of her mouth keeping wood in, seawater out as she huffs the stick back in from where we toss it: out there.

      BREADFRUIT

      You choose any moment rather than this one. Listen to the cat hemmed in by dogs who won’t do anything. They tease, you say and still stare out at the sound. It’s a few blocks over and still you stare. You know that painting? you say. What one? Cezanne’s Paysage. I have no idea what you’re saying and so shrug like I don’t care you’ve made another reference I can’t latch to. I want trees, you say. But we both know how we go to fresh air like fish, gasping. And the time we tried to make love in the back of the truck, which had filled partly with dropped plums, overripe and messy. Juice stained our skin and our clothes. We looked butchered. And then there were the ants. You don’t want that, I say. And you say, Sure I do, which is also what you said about living together and look how that’s gone. I think she got away, you say, face to pane, but then the mewling starts up again.

      FANCY THAT

      For this she thanks God, your sister, little wonder. Little mercy, ten fingers, ten toes. In sin we learn to count again. How many messes made at another’s expense. How much does an abortion cost? you asked back then. But she’s new now. And how many? Like, a girl never tells her age. She might have said Fuck You, but you told her it’s something you’d never know. Not without a phone call. Baby’s on hold; it’s called sleeping. And what did you name him? Her. Then the baby cries. What did you name her? Fancy. All the love you’ll ever need.

      CARTOGRAPHY

      You are six years old. Your brother is blind. Your brother is blind with his hands over his eyes. Your brother is not really blind. The divorce has done this to him. Dust and sadness has done this to him. Motion

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