The Tunnel

by Russell Edson

  Thus falls the attention into itself; the lens of the attention withdrawing from the distance; lives in the foreground, having broken from extreme depth.

  Chair and table become textures. The eyes grown tactile read the room as Braille. The attention flutters like a moth caught in a room; neither through the window nor into the head of the dreaded self …

  All out there the night …

  The Turkey Happening

  There were feathers growing on his wall. Thickly. And with pink turkey flesh beneath.

  The feathers were spreading across the ceiling. And the floor was beginning to protrude in scaly bird toes like the roots of trees.

  He could not tell if he had not now become himself feathers and turkey flesh.

  He wondered if he was not now feathers and turkey flesh.

  Vomit

  The house grows sick in its dining room and begins to vomit.

  Father cries, the dining room is vomiting.

  No wonder, the way you eat, it’s enough to make anybody sick, says his wife.

  What shall we do? What shall we do? he cries.

  Call the Vomit Doctor of course.

  Yes, but all he does is vomit, sighs father.

  If you were a vomit doctor you’d vomit too.

  But isn’t there enough vomit? sighs father.

  There is never enough vomit.

  Do I make everybody that sick, sighs father.

  No no, everybody is born sick.

  Born sick? cries father.

  Of course, haven’t you noticed how everybody eventually dies? she says.

  Is the dining room dying … ?

  … The way you eat, it’s enough to make anyone sick, she screams. So I do make everybody that sick …

  Excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick, she says.

  Oh where is the Vomit Doctor? At least when he vomits one knows one has it from high authority, screamed father.

  When Science is in the Country

  When science is in the country a cow meows and the moon jumps from limb to limb through the trees like a silver ape.

  The cow bow-wows to hear all voice of itself. The grass sinks back into the earth looking for its mother.

  A farmer dreamed he harvested the universe, and had a barn full of stars, and a herd of clouds fenced in the pasture.

  The farmer awoke to something screaming in the kitchen, which he identified as the farmerette.

  Oh my my, cried the farmer, what is to become of what became?

  It’s a good piece of bread and a bad farmer man, she cried.

  Oh the devil take the monotony of the field, he screamed.

  Which grows your eating thing, she wailed.

  Which is the hell with me too, he screamed.

  And the farmerette? she screamed.

  And the farmerette, he howled.

  A scientist looked through his magnifying glass in the neighborhood.

  IV

  from The Childhood of an Equestrian 1973

  The Automobile

  A man had just married an automobile.

  But I mean to say, said his father, that the automobile is not a person because it is something different.

  For instance, compare it to your mother. Do you see how it is different from your mother? Somehow it seems wider, doesn’t it? And besides, your mother wears her hair differently.

  You ought to try to find something in the world that looks like mother.

  I have mother, isn’t that enough of a thing that looks like mother? Do I have to gather more mothers?

  They are all old ladies who do not in the least excite any wish to procreate, said the son.

  But you cannot procreate with an automobile, said father.

  The son shows father an ignition key. See, here is a special penis which does with the automobile as the man with the woman; and the automobile gives birth to a place far from this place, dropping its puppy miles as it goes.

  Does that make me a grandfather? said father.

  That makes you where you are when I am far away, said the son.

  Father and mother watch an automobile with a just married, sign on it growing smaller in a road.

  The Childhood of an Equestrian

  An equestrian fell from his horse.

  A nursemaid moving through the wood espied the equestrian in his corrupted position and cried, what child has fallen from his rocking-horse?

  Merely a new technique for dismounting, said the prone equestrian.

  The child is wounded more by fear than hurt, said the nursemaid.

  The child dismounts and is at rest. But being interfered with grows irritable, cried the equestrian.

  The child that falls from his rockinghorse refusing to remount fathers the man with no woman taken in his arms, said the nursemaid, for women are as horses, and it is the rockinghorse that teaches the man the way of love.

  I am a man fallen from a horse in the privacy of a wood, save for a strange nursemaid who espied my corruption, taking me for a child, who fallen from a rockinghorse lies down in fear refusing to father the man, who mounts the woman with the rhythm given in the day of his childhood on the imitation horse, when he was in the imitation of the man who incubates in his childhood, said the equestrian.

  Let me help you to your manhood, said the nursemaid.

  I am already, by the metaphor, the son of the child, if the child father the man, which is involuted nonsense. And take your hands off me, cried the equestrian.

  I lift up the child which is wounded more by fear than hurt, said the nursemaid.

  You lift up a child which has rotted into its manhood, cried the equestrian.

  I lift up as I lift all that fall and are made children by their falling, said the nursemaid.

  Go away from me because you are annoying me, screamed the equestrian as he beat the fleeing white shape that seemed like a soft moon entrapped in the branches of the forest.

  The Exile

  The young prince is placed under a bed.

  He wonders if he is an heir, or the residue of the maid’s neglect?

  Should he sleep? Or should he simply do nothing?

  Even so, time empties out of the banishment. The solitude grows weary and decays out of caring, and the kingdom in the distance merges with other distances.

  One cannot help wondering if he had not been meant to be someone else.

  And now the laughter of women in the hallway. The movement of feet, the rush and the flush of the living.

  And he wonders if he is not just some of the darkness that floats in a dark room, that hangs by mirrors and drifts through the spokes of chairs …

  Time gives the blossom its final ornament …

  In All the Days of My Childhood

  My father by some strange conjunction had mice for sons.

  … And so it was in all the days of my childhood … The winds blew, and then abated, the rains fell, and then climbed slowly back to heaven as vapor.

  Day became night as night became day in rhythmic lengthenings and shortenings.

  Time of the blossoming, and time of decline.

  The sense of permanence broken by sudden change.

  The time of change giving way again to a sense of permanence.

  In the summer my brothers’ tails dragged in the grass. What is more natural than their tails in the grass?

  Upon their haunches, front paws feebly paddling air, whiskers twitching, they looked toward father with mindless faith.

  In the winter father would pick them up by their tails and put them in cages.

  The ping of snow on the windows; bad weather misunderstood …

  Perhaps all things misunderstood?

  It was that understanding came to no question.

  Without sense of the arbitrary no process of logic was instigated by my brothers. Was this wrong?

  Again in the spring we moved out of doors, and again dragged our tails in the grass, looking toward father with mindless faith.

  … And so it wa
s in all the days of my childhood.

  Metals Metals

  Out of the golden West, out of the leaden East, into the iron South, and to the silver North … Oh metals metals everywhere, forks and knives, belt buckles and hooks … When you are beaten you sing. You do not give anyone a chance …

  You come out of the earth and fly with men. You lodge in men. You hurt them terribly. You tear them. You do not care for anyone.

  Oh metals metals, why are you always hanging about? Is it not enough that you hold men’s wrists? Is it not enough that we let you in our mouths?

  Why is it you will not do anything for yourself? Why is it you always wait for men to show you what to be?

  And men love you. Perhaps it is because you soften so often.

  You did, it is true, pour into anything men asked you to. It has always proved you to be somewhat softer than you really are.

  Oh metals metals, why are you always filling my house?

  You are like family, you do not care for anyone.

  The Pattern

  A woman had given birth to an old man.

  He cried to have again been caught in the pattern.

  Oh well, he sighed as he took her breast to his mouth.

  The woman is happy to have her baby, even if it is old.

  Probably it had got mislaid in the baby place, and when they found it and saw that it was a little too ripe, they said, well, it is good enough for this woman who is almost deserving of nothing.

  She wonders if she is the only mother with a baby old enough to be her father.

  The Death of an Angel

  Being witless it said no prayer. Being pure it withered like a flower.

  They could not tell its sex. It had neither anal or genital opening.

  The autopsy revealed no viscera, neither flesh nor bone. It was stuffed with pages from old Bibles and cotton.

  When they opened the skull it played Tales from the Vienna Woods; instead of brain they found a vagina and a penis, testicles and an anus, packed in sexual hair.

  Ah, that’s better! cried one of the doctors.

  The Delicate Matter

  … As to the courting of a fat woman … An old man loves a plump piece of fruit now and again, a pear-shaped goody with big plum bosoms.

  … As to the courting of a fat woman … One says, oh my chicken bone!

  No no, that will sound like a piece of garbage from the feast.

  No no, he will say, oh my skinny thing, I want to bite you!

  No no, she will think the old man mocks her heft.

  It is best to ignore her bulk.

  It is best to think of her as a great sailing ship; and to stand on her and sing some national anthem.

  Women are enthralled by patriotism.

  Will she say, get off of my body, you cruel thing?

  But you are like a huge water vehicle in which I would sail to paradise!

  Will she say, if you do not get off of me I shall not let you get on me for love?

  I shall say back to her … But I cannot think what.

  So I shall sing another national anthem.

  … As to the courting of a fat woman … It is a very delicate matter .. .

  The Description

  In a garden there arose an old man sitting in a chair.

  At first, breaking the earth like a leather egg, his bald head. Day by day, gradually the brow and the unblinking eyes pushed out … The grey hair, the earth-filled ears, the nose, earth clinging to the hairs in the nose; then the shoulders, the shawl about the shoulders, the back of the chair encrusted with earth and beetles.

  In the moonlight an old man half buried in the earth. In the dawn a man sitting in a shallow sea of mist.

  When he had risen completely there was green mold on his shoes and fingernails.

  One night we saw him yawn. He stood, and walked quietly away.

  For some time now his chair has been sinking back into the earth. We wonder if it is not some kind of elevator of the dead.

  A Journey Through the Moonlight

  In sleep when an old man’s body is no longer aware of its boundaries, and lies flattened by gravity like a mere of wax in its bed … It drips down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a cheek … Under the back door into the silver meadow, like a pool of sperm, frosty under the moon, as if in his first nature, boneless and absurd.

  The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud shaped like an old man, porous with stars.

  He floats through high dark branches, a corpse tangled in a tree on a river.

  The Keeping of the Dead

  In the cellar the instrument is best hung by its heels like a ham.

  As for the mold that forms on the memento, set aside one day each year for mold scraping; call that day the Memorial Mold Scraping Day.

  If a dryer lay is sought for the instrument, the attic serves well. However, a shoetree must be pushed down its throat to keep the organ of complaint from curling up; and mothballs in the grey hair, remembering hungry moths; and baited rattraps in the underwear against the sensuality of rats.

  Yet, some like to keep the grandmother in the dining room. They fold her away like a tablecloth of ragged lace and gravy stains; they fold her along the natural wrinkles of her face, placing her gently among the napkin rings and serving spoons.

  Be prepared to hear her murmur as she worries whether the upstairs window is closed against the rain …

  Old Folks

  There was once an old man and his wife who lived deep in a wood to guard themselves against the hurt of the young, who are of the brutal joy for they are with nature, and come as does nature. They from the outside, nature from within, to hurt old folks, who must build deep in a wood that place which is defended by its secret.

  The old folks also have guns, and have laid traps, and put bags of acid in the trees.

  And are we safe? cries the old woman.

  It’s the flesh that I fear, guard it as one will, still it dies inside of itself, says the old husband.

  We are to be gotten to no matter what we do, screams the old wife.

  Your screaming doesn’t help, screams the old man.

  What helps? screams the old wife.

  Nothing, save the hope of a life beyond this one, roars the old man.

  But all I have is an old brain wrapped in grey hair; how can I know what I need to know? yells the old woman.

  Yelling doesn’t help, yells the old man.

  What helps? roars the old woman.

  Nothing, save that which was before us, and shall continue after us; that cosmic Presence which us so made — But not even It lifts one star, or changes the order of one day in our behalf — No, we are alone, and there is no help … And so we set traps and keep guns, and make ourselves secret, sighed the old man.

  But what helps? screams the old woman.

  Certainly not you, luxuriating in an old man’s logic, hanging to his wits, which he loses in your incessant questions, roared the old man.

  The Smell of Hay and Stars

  … Some policemen who are chickens … Let me explain:

  One night as a cow sang a love song to a farmer (the moon, of course) the farmer removed his hat from the bone of thought, and thought, my head must seem sister to the moon; and the moon, that satellite of milk which marries the cow to rapture as cows are married to men by way of their milk, that commerce between the species.

  Still, the cow’s voice is not bad as against an extreme of bad. So that we take the cow’s lowing as a pleasant assault upon a modesty fast dissolving in lieu of the love engendered by the lowing.

  Soon the farmer was kissing the cud-slick lips of the cow as the cow rolled its tongue about its mouth, bellowing through the farmer’s kisses.

  So that the police were called to chaperon the farmer and his cow.

  You are chickens, you are chickens, cries the farmer.