I’m a Believer

We walked through the valley of skeletons and bells, heads bowed with the weight of celluloid and small wires. We were re-enacting the Bible in stop-motion, taking hours to flutter our hands, and trying to remember when to arch a brow or glance to Heaven as the deluge came or our past indiscretions turned to salt. A two-headed wolf licked honey from a boundary post and a one-eyed crow hopped on razorwire, and although we couldn't place the omens – Exodus? Revelation? – we were sure we remembered them from Sunday school. Then we entered the kingdom of gummed shapes and fuzzy felt, of home crafting without a distinct purpose, and of collecting pine cones to paint gold and gather dust. The wolf and the crow danced like a Polish cartoon to hymn tunes and album tracks by The Monkees. This is how the holidays ended, with new shoes and all our visions frozen.

Phytology and the B-Movie Archetype

When I open the window, there are plants in my eyes, seeds and spores, haunted as a storyboard for an unmade movie. We’re in a clapboard motel with malfunctioning signs in unreadable blue, unreachable by customary means of communication. Lines are cut and satellites have been blown out of orbit by antagonists unknown. Behind locked doors, there are rumours of Russians and murmurs of Martians, but the twelve interchangeable men slipping from anger to ennui are placing small bets on the invasive species which has taken up residence in the vitreous. Out in the parking lot, teens in jeans and checked shirts fumble in convertibles, ignoring the makeshift screen that flickers with the faces of dead poets issuing warnings before the big feature. Long before midnight, they’ll have turned into cacti and other plump succulents adapted to the desert environment. Sap burns softly in my optic nerve, and I’m as guilty of photosynthesis as the next laid-off movie extra.