Dispatch from the Future Read Free Page B

might
    have dysentery. Figures.
    June 17: Some days
    I feel like I’m just a character
    in a game played by a sick,
    sick person, who has sent me
    on this journey only to kill all
    my loved ones along the way.
    June 18: help came, but
    in the night they stole our oxen.
    Guess we’ll just have to walk
    to Oregon now. Are you there,
    God? It’s me, Mary Jane.
    Send me some oxen and
    a son who likes to shoot things.
    June 19: Lost Prudence
    to dysentery. Should we
    eat her? Tough question.
    June 20: Another river!
    You have got to be kidding!
    June 21: Managed to swim
    across with diary on top
    of my head so it wouldn’t
    get wet. Jon and I have found
    a tribe of Indians who will let us
    stay with them. At least,
    we think that’s what they said.
    We don’t speak their language.
    They seem to have indicated that
    tonight we must follow them,
    blindfolded, into a grove of trees,
    and in the addled darkness our
    dead will return and speak to us.
     
MAROONED
    Mother, I have been devastated all my life. I never said anything.
    That’s why I wear a parachute. Why I tiptoed from my bedroom
    to yours, and lay my head on the beige carpet for fear of worse.
    Were there sirens? There were. Were there familiar songs? Yes.
    I am afraid of the beds I have been in. In the morning there was
    the heel of your boot sharper than before. Mother, what do I do
    with your mail? Do you want to keep this snake in the basement?
    What about the kitten? Do you want all these photographs of other
    people’s children? The temperature in the lizard’s cage is dropping.
    Let’s be realistic. If I open the windows the birds will come in and
    eat out the eyes. Mother, I am bereft. Mother, I wear your necklace
    and nothing else. Mother, I never. Nevermind. Let’s be fatalistic.
    The neighbors know I’m down here. I can hear them watching.
    Mother, after they take your eyes I will sew the lids myself.
     
CIRCUS MUSIC
    Count back by sevens beginning with the last number
    you remember. I’ll wait, said the Serbian Jew to the lame girl
    who blushed at her wet shoes. West 72nd Street was a puddle
    from Broadway to the Hudson and the traffic came and returned.
    In Brooklyn you could lie in the street in front of the hospital
    and not die. Sixty-three, she said, like a question of him.
    For the last eleven hours I had worn a feathered headband
    and taken dictation from a woman in Utah. I wanted
    to know what had happened to the girl’s leg, but I was also
    thirsty. He had to know. If I were him I’d ask her every day.
    The night the circus marches the elephants through midtown,
    the girl would say, have you ever been? Yes, I would say,
    once. Well, she would say. No. Yes. No. She might say
    it wasn’t an accident. Pretend to hold a knife in your hand
    and people will think it’s your own. Her cane was on my foot,
    but I stood still. Fifty-six and forty-nine. If she had picked
    a larger number to begin with, I could have stood with the cane
    on my foot forever. I was so cold then; I wore so many hats.
    Can I get you something? His yarmulke was secured to his head
    with gold hairpins. No, I said. I don’t know what I want, I said.
    The girl stopped counting and apologized for her cane. Don’t
    apologize, I said. Please, I said. It was a lion, she said. Forty-two,
    I said, right? It was a land mine. I didn’t ask, I said. It was my mother,
    she said, in our bathroom. Thirty-five? It was me. I did it. It was me.
     
ANOTHER SPECTACULAR DAY WITH PLENTIFUL SUNSHINE
    Good news: you still won’t leave your wife for me,
    but there is a horse tethered to the scaffolding
    in front of my building and I think he might be mine.
    Stealing horses means never having to say I love you,
    are you as awake as I am, will you pat my head or
    something. Stealing horses means never having to ask
    to be asked what you’re thinking. Like now, for example,
    when all I can think of is this neighborhood boy named
    Morris, the one I can see from my window at night;
    he asked