Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 30

by eds. Kelly Link

  Here in Times Square, THE VAMPIRE reigns quite literally . . .

  Just kidding, here in Kermit, Texas . . . a Wordsworthian specificity prevails . . . this is not your grandpa’s socialist realism . . .

  Please forward this to the appropriate parties . . .

  Expecting your response at the earliest convenience . . .

  Yours (forever in death),

  (With a bell-like sound),

  THE NOVELIST . . .

  WHO SMELLS LIKE HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS . . .

  The Vampire and the Mermaid Converse

  VAMPIRE:

  THE NOVELIST BECOMES THE SIREN MELUSINE, WHO IS VISIBLE ONLY FROM BEHIND

  HEAD-ON, SHE APPLIES HERSELF DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD

  SHE DISSOLVES INTO SEAFOAM IN ONLY MOMENTS (IN THREE INSTALLMENTS OF 29.99)

  FOR INSTANT RELIEF—

  (O Melusine!)

  (Thou rewinding VHS tape of love and chance!!!)

  (Apply now for additional GREAT savings! The girls of summer are here to stay!)

  HER LONG HAIR FANS BEHIND HER WITH GENTLE FORMLESSNESS

  SHE DOESN’T KNOW TO HANG UP HER COAT AT THE DOOR, THAT URCHIN

  HER LEGS ARE SEWN TOGETHER

  IN THE MOST LOW-BUDGET WAY

  WHO HAS SET OUT THESE GALLONS OF SYRUP IN PREPARATION?

  MELUSINE’S SIGIL TAKES AN INDIRECT OBJECT

  AS DELIBERATE AND SINISTER AS A PRATFALL . . .

  HEY, MELUSINE:

  The Vampire Drives a Hard Bargain

  DEAR NOVELIST,

  This LYRIC represents THE VAMPIRE. If you are represented by LYRICISM AS SUCH, please direct this letter to SAPPHO immediately and have SAPPHO notify us of such representation, REAL or TRAILING VIOLETS.

  You are hereby directed to

  CEASE AND DESIST ALL DEFAMATION OF

  THE VAMPIRE’S CHARACTER AND REPUTATION.

  THE VAMPIRE is an educated, respected professional in the community. He has spent years serving the community in his profession and building a positive reputation. THE VAMPIRE has learned that you have engaged in spreading false, destructive, and defamatory rumors about him.

  Under THE AEGIS OF LYRICISM, it is unlawful to engage in defamation of another’s character and reputation. Defamation consists of

  a statement that tends to injure reputation;

  communicated to another; and

  that the speaker knew or should have known was false.

  Your defamatory statements involved [PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON SWINGING IN A CROSS-BREEZE].

  Accordingly, we demand that you (A) immediately cease and desist your unlawful defamation of THE VAMPIRE and (B) provide us with prompt written assurance within ten (10) days that you will cease and desist from further defamation of THE VAMPIRE’s character and reputation.

  If you do not comply with this cease and desist demand within this time period, THE VAMPIRE is entitled to seek monetary damages and equitable relief for your defamation. In the event you fail to meet this demand, please be advised that THE VAMPIRE has asked us to communicate to you that he will pursue all available legal remedies, including seeking monetary damages, injunctive relief, and an order that you pay court costs and THE PRICE OF [THE] LIVING. Your liability and exposure under such WROUGHT, TENDER, RUEFUL ACTION could be considerable.

  Before taking these steps, however, my client wished to give you one opportunity to discontinue your illegal conduct by complying with this demand within ten (10) days. Accordingly, please sign and return the attached Defamation Settlement Agreement within ten (10) days to

  THE WORKSHOP

  THE WIND-BENT TREE

  PROSODY, MASSACHUSETTS 01002

  I recommend that you consult with a SPECIALTY TEAM OF WELL-REGARDED MFA PROGRAMS regarding this matter. If you or your TROUBLING OF LIMPID POOLS, ETC. ETC., has any questions, please contact me directly.

  Sincerely,

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, SYNECHDOCHE, ESQ.

  The Vampire Listens to Woody Guthrie

  THERE ARE SOME THINGS

  [THE VAMPIRE tells me]

  FOR WHICH THERE IS NEITHER TIME NOR PLACE, AND CERTAINLY NOT ON ANYBODY ELSE’S DIME

  THE VAMPIRE’s teeth gleam fixedly in the lamplight . . .

  THE VAMPIRE’s nearsightedness causes him to confuse agitprop for Emily Post . . .

  So it is Woody Guthrie tonight, but never The Almanac Singers . . .

  THE VAMPIRE thinks this is grade school stuff, and he’s not wrong . . . THE VAMPIRE’s failure to be sad or to react by curling his arms protectively against his carapace is a hallmark of his genre . . . THE VAMPIRE’s body is inassimilable for this reason . . .

  It’s like he gets paid to wear those designer sunglasses . . .

  It is like vellum onto which I have projected disgust and desire . . .

  Or printer paper with a longer shelf life . . .

  I send out a reminder email . . .

  THE VAMPIRE thinks he is out of propaganda’s reach and scope . . . which is the source of his terrible beauty . . .

  THE VAMPIRE was crushed when Pete Seeger died, he tells me, chewing on a raw leg of lamb . . . wool still attached . . .

  THE VAMPIRE is a locovore . . . Nothing is lost on him . . .

  I ask THE VAMPIRE how the addition on his mausoleum is going . . .

  Outside . . .

  The weather continues to be regular . . .

  We are smothered by no particular perfume . . .

  The trumpet blasts have been casually muted . . .

  Undead Temporality

  Another day—another VAMPIRE . . .

  THE VAMPIRE extant, as he is, serially and continuously . . . O flipbook made flesh . . . !

  But eventually forming a dreadful circle . . . in the Jim Jarmusch biopic of his life, THE VAMPIRE was a great and gloomy pal of Borges . . . he tells me . . . as I lie on the factory floor with my flashlight . . .

  He likes to sit on the forklifts and make the forks go up and down . . .

  He has been reading Antler again . . .

  A box of candles goes into the distribution plant. When it comes out, many of us have health benefits . . . this, THE VAMPIRE has explained to me, is the Satanic miracle of transubstantiation . . .

  (THE VAMPIRE has been a teenager.)

  (For how long?)

  (For awhile.)

  THE VAMPIRE does not know what it is . . .

  “Biochemistry” . . .

  You might think that if you pressed your thumb into THE VAMPIRE it would leave an indentation, therefore . . . but all he does is . . . shout “CONVULSION” with great pathos . . .

  * * * *

  The Endless Sink

  Damien Ober

  Sheep floating out on their tethers, the milk cows too. Ears flapping and skin and wool fur rippling as our rock sunk endless through the void. It was the day the boys of the rock would choose and so everyone had gathered to see what each would do. All the boys of leaving age lined up on the edge with the teacher there beside them. In front of everyone he had ever known, my brother Kyle was about to decide: rise or sink.

  From the back of the crowd, I watched, my mother there with me and on my other side, my father standing stoic as he always liked to be. “Such a shame,” my mother said, “that little Frederick will never have the chance.”

  My father grunted his grim consent about my little brother Fredrick, back at the house and too sick to come and see his older brother leave the rock. Frederick didn’t have much time left; he would be dead long before he reached the age when boys decide. And me? I would never reach it. Because only boys are made to sink or rise. Only boys leave the rock.

  My father’s eyes thinned. Which meant he was seeing something no one else was seeing. A moment later, a boy on the stage broke down. “Sad,” my father said. And off he ran, this boy, down off the stage and into his mother’s arms. Through the crowd they scuttled, avoiding eyes, back to their house on the other side of the rock.

  When we looked back,
the other boys were getting ready. None of them wanted to become the next to lose his nerve. And then, off they went, all of the boys deciding simultaneously to rise. Kyle too, my brother. A cheer came up from the crowd, watching the boys get smaller, waving as they went, off for other lives on other rocks somewhere above.

  I think I was the first to see it. It happened right then. Amidst the boys getting smaller, a new speck appeared. And this speck was getting larger. I could see it had arms and legs, a head—it was a sinker. The first sinker to come to our rock in as long as I could remember.

  A circle spread in the crowd. The sinker landed perfectly in the center, stood a moment with the people reflected in the visor of his helmet. He had a sword strapped to his back, tucked tightly beside a small backpack. And then the helmet came off and the sinker was a woman. Had been since that moment when I was the first to see her. Through them all she came, right up to my parents and said, “You have beds on this pueblo, I heard.”

  And before they could answer, she looked more directly at my mother than I had ever seen a person do. “I have a letter from your brother.”

  The sinker had laid herself out straight on top of my bed to sleep. Her body was like an insect’s, condensed and hollow-seeming. On the floor sat her sword and tightly-wrapped pack and on top, her helmet. And though I knew it was wrong to touch people’s things, I picked the helmet up and turned it over and pressed my finger against the sharp point at the front.

  “Please put that down.” The sinker’s eyes were the only bright specks in the room, watching until the helmet was back on her pack. “Thank you.” She rolled over and I could see the lines of muscle crackling. There was nothing extra about her. She was exactly what was needed for her purpose and nothing more.

  “Have you come to help my brother?”

  There was a long silence. I wondered if maybe she had gone back to sleep. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He got cut by the meat knife and it’s got his leg. Mother says it will be his hip and then his heart next.”

  The sinker got up. “Where is he?”

  I led her into the room my brothers used to share. But now it was just Fredrick, sweating and dying slowly in his bed. The sinker reached out her hand, but I saved her, grabbed her wrist and held it back. “You mustn’t touch him.” Inside her forearm, I could feel each tendon, each wound muscle.

  “It’s ok,” she said. And she moved my brother’s hairs so they were all together on one side of his face. When she took the blanket down, it revealed how black his leg had become. It wasn’t to the hip yet, but it would be soon. “Infection,” the sinker said.

  “At least he didn’t decide to sink, that boy. Because staying right where you are, well, that’s better at least than sinking.” My mother was talking abut the boy who ran from the stage that morning. It happened every deciding day to at least one, but every time it happened people acted like it was the first and the last. My mother paused her chopping and looked up, as if seeing through the roof, to the spot where Kyle had vanished into nothing. “My boy,” she said, “a riser.”

  My father was sitting opposite me at the kitchen table. He looked asleep except for his eyes. I suppose I had not thought until then, that Kyle rising would have the effect of him no longer being there.

  “Your father was a riser.”

  “I wanted to be a sinker, though, when I was little.”

  “Don’t tell her things like that.”

  He shrugged. “What’s it matter? Didn’t do it. Rose instead and here I am.”

  “What was your first rock like, Daddy?”

  “Not like this one,” my mother said. “That’s why men rise instead of sink.” She went back to cutting things up. “Through generations of male linage, the family eventually reaches Center City.”

  “But what if Center City is down?”

  My mother laughed. “If you want to get somewhere, you have to rise. Put out some resistance and all these rocks sink right past. You get somewhere. It takes five days of sinking to get where you can in one of rising. By rising, you move further, faster. You show you’re more adventurous.”

  “What about her?” I asked. “Her, the sinker?”

  My mother shook her head. “I don’t know why we must let her sleep here.”

  My father sighed. “That’s the law, hon. A sinker brings a letter, the sinker gets to sleep the night.”

  “I know it’s the law, told down from those people up at Center City who don’t know what it’s like down here for us real people.”

  I wasn’t sure if my mother understood what she’d just said, how it related to other things she was always saying. I was about to ask when I heard a voice. “Listen to your mother,” it said. And the sinker cut into the room without disturbing even the stillness of the air. “Thank you for the bed. Here is your mail.” She put a single letter on the table.

  My mother opened it and began to read. Her younger brother had left the rock the year he came of age. He had chosen to rise.

  The sinker was seated now at the table’s other chair. The way she did things was she didn’t really do them, they just changed, like it had happened in the past. My mother continued reading. My father watched her. “Where has he settled?” Mother finally asked. “From how far up did this letter come down with you?”

  “A pueblo a day’s rise from here.”

  “One day’s rise?” The letter hung there in her hand all finished.

  “Have you been to Center City?” I asked.

  The sinker looked at me and shook her head. It made me think she wasn’t saying everything when she said, “No.”

  “But it’s up there, right?”

  My mother turned from the counter to both see and hear the answer. My father too, left his head sunk, but lifted his eyes to gaze at the sinker.

  “That’s what people say, isn’t it?”

  “But you haven’t been there?”

  The Sinker looked at me again.

  “Of course it’s there,” my mother said. “We pay our tribute to risers headed there. We obey the laws passed down by magistrates. Who could pay those magistrates, where would the things go? Where do the laws come down from? If there’s no Center City?”

  My father put his hand on my head. “Don’t worry, sweetie, Center City is real.”

  The boys of the rock were gathered in the meeting house for their weekly lesson about the future of their lives and the need to begin to prepare now no matter how far away the big day seemed. It was there that the boys all learned how to become the kind of risers our rock was surely known for. The man in charge of their lessons was called the teacher.

  Standing atop an empty barrel, peering through the room’s back window, I could see the teacher at the front of the rowed desks. “Though you will not reach Center City yourself, by your rising, perhaps some day your sons or the sons of your sons . . .” Behind him was the drawing which every boy was made to learn and draw from memory—a pyramid pattern of rocks like ours with Center City up at the top and biggest of all.

  One of the other girls was tapping the back of my calf so I climbed down because it was the next girl’s turn to stand on the barrel and look in. “Hey,” one of them said to me, “It’s the sinker that stays in your parents’ house.” And there she was, the sinker, standing way over at the very edge of the rock.

  “My parents said not to go near the sinker and that it would be better if she wasn’t here at all or never came.”

  “My parents said the laws say your parents only have to let the sinker stay for—” But I was leaving those girls behind. I crossed the rock to stand beside the sinker. The milk cow was out there on its tether. It looked over at us from way past the edge. The wind made strange temporary shapes of its udder. The sinker was leaning over the edge, letting the rushing wind hold her place. Her gaze aimed deep into the darkness, her hair pointing back up at distant rocks above, back at all the other lives she must have crossed. And soon, off she’d sink, off to where ever it was sh
e was headed, somewhere far below.

  “How many rocks have you been to?” I asked.

  A single tear got sucked up and vanished from her face. “Lots,” she said.

  I moved right to the edge, got down on my stomach with my head poking over. “My brother left yesterday. He chose to rise. And I’ll stay here, until a riser comes up to marry me.”

  The sinker sat down beside me, let her feet dangle.

  I had to speak loudly with the wind howling past us. “One girl was made to leave this rock. It was before I was born, but everybody knows about it. She had betrayed her family. Did you betray your family?”

  The sinker was looking out straight and I had never considered until that moment that in addition to other rocks below and above ours, there could be ones out to the side, out to all the sides. Other rocks with other families on them, in every possible direction.