Читать книгу Alamo Theory - Josh Bell - Страница 13

The Last Critique

We think Elizabeth’s poems suck. We think Steve’s poems suck. And we think Rachel’s poems suck Elizabeth’s poems. We didn’t remember how or why the Stranger’s poems sucked, but we thought Holly was good, so it scared us when the Stranger’s poems refused to suck Holly’s poems. A lot of people want to suck Fred’s new poems, which suck, but they are too difficult for us to suck, and we’d rather suck his old ones, for though they are old, and suck, it is much easier to suck them. When she reads them out loud, Clarise’s poems suck pretty good, but we are reserving our final judgment until we’ve seen them sucking on the page. We think Martha’s poems suck. Sometimes when we think we’re sucking on one of Theodore’s poems, we’re actually sucking on two. We think Ed’s poems have that Girl Scout look, which makes us want to start a family when we hear them through the keyhole, sucking. Philbert’s poems suck like they’ve been sucking Annie’s poems too much. Annie’s poems sucked, but at least they brought something new to the act of sucking, we’d never seen a poem sucked like that before, and we thrilled to suck on them, as if sucking on household appliances. Many people enjoy the austere sucking of Terry’s poems. Still, no one pays to suck Terry’s poems like they pay to suck Anton’s. We think Tom-Tom’s poems suck so hard. We think Wendy’s mature poems suck near the unassailable power of the Stranger’s poems, and at first we are frightened, as if forced to suck an entire opera, when Wendy gets that Viking look and makes us suck her poems. Maybe we could arrange for Terry’s poems, Wendy will say, to suck the Stranger’s poems, but the Stranger’s poems are missing, and Terry is afraid, and we do not blame him, as some of us recall the first time we heard the Stranger’s poems, which enter sucking bird and beast and flower, sucking queen and beggar, Oldsmobile and go-kart, saying long-time-no-suck-me, saying Terry: suck Wendy, suck Holly, saying suck the redwood forest, saying suck me lonely mannequin, saying suck the abundant splendored thrice jismatic suck of lonely mannequin, saying suck theology, missile launch, stirrups and ballet. Some of us choose to recall, instead, how the Stranger’s poems seemed capable of sucking themselves, as if they no longer required us to suck them, and filled with obsolescence we had to run next door to suck our neighbor’s poems, real quick. But we all agree on the way, when the Stranger’s poems end, they appear to suck the entire round planet, all at once, the planet which — in the Stranger’s poem’s unhinged jaws — comes dressed up like the Bride who was a Sailor, but all in the white of clouds and with a metallic S&M rig peeking through underneath, showing the chaste girdle of skyscrapers inside of which we suck and sleep and suck the poems we’ve written in fear of sucking the Stranger’s poems, which go on sucking hard for us, through the disastered warp of Time, the Stranger’s poems uncanonized, built to be sucked in a way we will never understand, as the Stranger’s poems are a work of genius, and only our children’s children will ever fully suck them.