Improv 1, Week 12

(PERHAPS THE REASON WAS REALLY THAT)

The following morning she had grown. There was futility in the
narrative and her voice broke. It was a challenge. Like the continuity
of a fallen history like her eyes locked into his like his body locked
into hers like the fear of. Elle est dehors,la Vie, avec ses balencoires, ses
alcools et ses monstres. It was not a theatrical gesture surrealism it was
referential anguish it was just uninspired. She hung over the clashing
format of a limb-crushing performance and his early desire clutched to
paradoxical pleasures. The question was not her emotional modernity.
The question was not the crumbling of the Georgian landscape. He
sensed her resistance to shambling close-ups and there was absence in
their ballad.

Brigette Byrd

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(DARWIN'S BLUNDER OF MARRIAGE AND SCIENCE)

The weekly considering of the barnacle’s sex was his uptight ritual. So much so
that one morning he awoke, head in a petri dish, and discovered his wife’s
favorite question gone. It was a Tuesday. The night before they had roasted duck
for dinner and now he faces evenings locked in the light of his personal science
without the comfort of a overcooked foul. Had he paid attention to his wife’s
facial modernity, seen the freckles inch closer to her eyes, he would have replaced
his barnacle for her hand, however feminine it may be. His wife once hung her arm
over his shoulders and peered into the back of his head—a ritual of hers that meant:
the landscape is ill, you uninspire me, please forget about its sex, but not mine.
He told her he rather hammer his barnacles to wall and use them as coat racks
than forget the nature of his quest, which was to rediscover voice, evidence, and bodies not humans. From this utterance his wife closed her eyes,
letting the freckles wilt into one brown scar, and boarded a train for the inland. She hung over the clanking wheels of the last rail car and forgot all about the duck she was supposed to cook, leaving her ring in the petri dish.