15 April 2009

Arielle Greenberg

[from Arielle Greenberg's My Kafka Century, Action, 2005]

Please Be Good

Something big and ugly with a long thin tail, something white with mottled fur, something barrel-bodied. Something went shuffling fatly into the brush at the side of the road tonight. And then there was a silver field mouse being horrible and small on the driveway. Then a waterbug with its bristle of silky, tickling arms by the fridge. A secret let out. A scream. I am slightly drunk, slightly more or less like a girl: is this a door? A keyhole? A handle? A pervert? When I lean over my blood is in my ears. I sleep with my fear in there, vertigo, also blood again. I lean over as an experiment -- sudden flush of pass-out ocean? Bug? Rodent? Yes, pervert. Yes, with a tail. Cockroaches actually inside my canals. Dreams actually swarming with vermin trying to come in all the window screns. I have come out of the walls. The rat is more or less a migraine. I am all suited up in roadkill: stole, collar, purse. I keep an insect here. These are my cleanest sheets.

My Kafka Century

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