Читать книгу How Festive the Ambulance - Kim Fu - Страница 12

Stagehands

I.

He’ll be a real Canadian yet.

In this toddler’s garden of innocuous nouns

emotions are drawn in just mouths and eyes.

Tense confusion

makes him seem innocent.

Unable to tell the difference

between What did you do last winter?

and What do you do in winter?

he does not reply,

I buried my wife.

He smiles,

thinking it is a general question,

a test of cultural knowledge.

And he knows this one.

What does one do in winter

here, where winter is a thing.

One skis, skates, snowshoes.

II.

At night, he rips off his Velcro eyebrows,

undoes the straps of his silicone belly,

and hangs it on the wall. The body hair

rubs off with a hard sponge. He gargles,

spits, and his accent—too thick

not to question its veracity, really—

sticks like phlegm to the edge of the drain.

Russia is not a real country. Then

he goes to the Club

for Beautiful Men.

Stagehands add one more layer

of orange cooking grease to the wall

behind the stove, take a fine chisel

to the filaments of the aquamarine

1970s fridge. The illusion

of slow appliance death.

They paint mustard stains

on his white undershirt, then rub them in

deeper, as though someone once

tried to wash them out.