It’s hard to read the rhymes this way, all flung out like some net, but they come and come and flood and flow because this is the one we get.
I looked at the letter and at Meg Caro. Her fat little toes were so unlike mine, barely reaching the tips of her sandals. Seeing her again I found that any resemblance to me or anyone in my family had faded. Murphy had come by the day before to check on me, he said. That was what friends did. He had his camera with him and though he looked into it from time to time it was clear he didn’t care to take any pictures. He talked about his new patient who was taking up so much of his time.
He sells drugs, he said. I can’t stand the man. I’m hard pressed to explain why I allow him as a patient. He’s despicable, pays me with camera equipment, and just like the idiots who buy his junk, I’m addicted. Leica and Nikon and Mamiya and Hasselblad and Zeiss and names that haunt my sleep. I’m carrying around this Leica now, can’t put it down. It’s all I can do to keep my eye from the viewfinder. I change lenses only to hear the sweet mechanical sound of the pieces connecting. I don’t sleep. There is film in the camera, was there when I took the camera from Donald or Douglas. I’m not so much confused now by the person as I am by the names. It’s clear that I have no descriptive material to connect to their respective names and so I have no idea as to which is who and who is what. I used to think they were identical, but disabused of that I believed that they were both simply fat, but it turns out that one, my patient, Douglas or Donald, is quite a bit fatter than his brother, Donald or Douglas. One of them, I will call him Donald, is the fat man who lies in his bed, and he is the man who encourages me to take cameras and he is the man who has the skinny, drug-addled consort whom he treats like shit and together, these statements together, should equate to his name, his descriptive marker, his designating phonetic flag. Maybe he doesn’t have a name at all or a different name, like Thomas, or Tomas, without the h, and I have never referred to him at all, though I have addressed him in his presence. Is his name a defining attribute of the man who is my patient? Does it matter whether he is Donald or Douglas? Would having one of these names or the other alter who he might be? A Donnie certainly would be perceived differently from a Doug, wouldn’t he? The present Donald is the king of France and he is bald. I might as well call him the fatter brother of either Douglas or Donald, if his brother is Douglas then he is Donald and if his brother is Donald then he is Douglas. I have been reading, always a bad thing with me, trying to understand how it is that I can refer to this man that I cannot even distinguish from another man who may or may not resemble him. I assume that there is a man such that that man is the fat man who is my patient. And for every man who is that man who is my patient and every other man, if both give me cameras, then that man is the same man. Any man who gives me cameras is the man who is my patient. See what all this has inevitably done to me. According to the truth.
Heroic
Viewfinder. Charlton Heston is playing backgammon with Nat Turner. They are sitting on the top step of the Lincoln Memorial. Black men are collecting the trash left over from the day’s activity. They are tired black men, hunched and wearing white coveralls.
Turner shakes the dice in his maroon cup. He does it near his ear so he can hear the bones rattle. Double sixes.
Lucky bastard, Heston says.
That was some speech today, don’t you think?
I really liked the part about little white boys holding hands with the little black girls.
Double fives.
Lucky bastard.
Lucky, my ass. I cheat. I always cheat. I cheat whenever I can. I have to cheat. Slaves have no luck.
Of course they do, Heston says. It’s just all bad.
They laugh, Heston and Turner.
Have you observed any changes in
I looked at the letter and at Meg Caro. Her fat little toes were so unlike mine, barely reaching the tips of her sandals. Seeing her again I found that any resemblance to me or anyone in my family had faded. Murphy had come by the day before to check on me, he said. That was what friends did. He had his camera with him and though he looked into it from time to time it was clear he didn’t care to take any pictures. He talked about his new patient who was taking up so much of his time.
He sells drugs, he said. I can’t stand the man. I’m hard pressed to explain why I allow him as a patient. He’s despicable, pays me with camera equipment, and just like the idiots who buy his junk, I’m addicted. Leica and Nikon and Mamiya and Hasselblad and Zeiss and names that haunt my sleep. I’m carrying around this Leica now, can’t put it down. It’s all I can do to keep my eye from the viewfinder. I change lenses only to hear the sweet mechanical sound of the pieces connecting. I don’t sleep. There is film in the camera, was there when I took the camera from Donald or Douglas. I’m not so much confused now by the person as I am by the names. It’s clear that I have no descriptive material to connect to their respective names and so I have no idea as to which is who and who is what. I used to think they were identical, but disabused of that I believed that they were both simply fat, but it turns out that one, my patient, Douglas or Donald, is quite a bit fatter than his brother, Donald or Douglas. One of them, I will call him Donald, is the fat man who lies in his bed, and he is the man who encourages me to take cameras and he is the man who has the skinny, drug-addled consort whom he treats like shit and together, these statements together, should equate to his name, his descriptive marker, his designating phonetic flag. Maybe he doesn’t have a name at all or a different name, like Thomas, or Tomas, without the h, and I have never referred to him at all, though I have addressed him in his presence. Is his name a defining attribute of the man who is my patient? Does it matter whether he is Donald or Douglas? Would having one of these names or the other alter who he might be? A Donnie certainly would be perceived differently from a Doug, wouldn’t he? The present Donald is the king of France and he is bald. I might as well call him the fatter brother of either Douglas or Donald, if his brother is Douglas then he is Donald and if his brother is Donald then he is Douglas. I have been reading, always a bad thing with me, trying to understand how it is that I can refer to this man that I cannot even distinguish from another man who may or may not resemble him. I assume that there is a man such that that man is the fat man who is my patient. And for every man who is that man who is my patient and every other man, if both give me cameras, then that man is the same man. Any man who gives me cameras is the man who is my patient. See what all this has inevitably done to me. According to the truth.
Heroic
Viewfinder. Charlton Heston is playing backgammon with Nat Turner. They are sitting on the top step of the Lincoln Memorial. Black men are collecting the trash left over from the day’s activity. They are tired black men, hunched and wearing white coveralls.
Turner shakes the dice in his maroon cup. He does it near his ear so he can hear the bones rattle. Double sixes.
Lucky bastard, Heston says.
That was some speech today, don’t you think?
I really liked the part about little white boys holding hands with the little black girls.
Double fives.
Lucky bastard.
Lucky, my ass. I cheat. I always cheat. I cheat whenever I can. I have to cheat. Slaves have no luck.
Of course they do, Heston says. It’s just all bad.
They laugh, Heston and Turner.
Have you observed any changes in
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