New Writing

Kim Rosenfield

from
Trama

XV.

When a burlesque performer loses her anima, it is proper to punt around the world trying to get it for her. Each sense becomes indulged with minute repressions that run like carriers of disaster. Each assassin hides within. No repose. Some people bust with violence because they are sensitive to rumors and take big breaths to fan themselves against persecution. But silence endures. Eventually, being busted leads youth to nothing—communicated by desperation to mix calcium with sugar at every portal.

If you see beautiful girls in windows with hair the color of turpentine and faces as white as an imagined Karloff, their eyes closed and hands crossed over their breasts, without moving the corners of their lips—well, then, this is a vocation from which the Venus’s of the world will arrive.

In this house, no one is anyone. Take me to them! I’m dead too. Dead? Well then, how much for the peek in the window? Wait and I’ll bring you to the cashier. Before another world was said, the girls disappeared and the window was slammed shut. O beautiful girls with turpentine heads, I will call you "dear ones", have compassion on a guy descended from assassins. But before he could finish his words without being led away by the collar, two little voices said menacingly: "This is the Time to Remove Your Shoes."

Whales are afraid of death when they look it squarely in the eye. They press on with tremendous force without trembling, as if they had legs and voices. Therefore? Demanded the Assassins. You opened your mouth, yes or no? Ah…not talking? Leave it be. This time we will have YOU running after US.

Some fortunes are made of hard wood although the motives seem lame. Spendthrifts have a million schemes for soul massage and keeping face. I understand, we need Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo! Repeat the others.

Debts paid, there’s noticed a lump in the throat. You can see there’s been no seduction on the grass. Instead, we’ve been waiting for a faceless gamine for three hours, with wide set eyes, a closed mouth, and a gambling record beyond bad.

Goodbye then, until tomorrow. When tomorrow rolls around, who will take out the garbage we find so beautiful?

XVI.

Intending to levitate impetus, sabbaticals are poorly enforced. Caged turkeys with acute spasms, scorched nests, and stringently simple goiters, expire at tableside.

Little by little, each eye apprehends that sebaceous sentiment convinces only the dead. Pure & Simple at that moment like rebel captors that were once impervious and are now screened for their help. Since when was waiting and waiting forever ever open for comparison?

Well then, that’s where the Mentors come in and mentor the poor. Being somewhat moribund, they do not have a caveat to give to each other. Closing their eyes and opening their mouths, they feel a stirring in their loins, and that is how they mentor.

Kim Rosenfield reads at SPT with Yedda Morrison on September 26, 2003