Make an Effort to Remember. Or, Failing That, Invent, and: Rage, and: No Object Can Float without Some Part of It Being below the Surface, and: Haibun in Which a Small Thing Dies, and: So Close Is Still So Far out of Reach, and: I Can Look at You from inside as Well, and: After I Stopped Counting the Days

Abstract

Make an Effort to Remember. Or, Failing That, Invent, and: Rage, and: No Object Can Float without Some Part of It Being below the Surface, and: Haibun in Which a Small Thing Dies, and: So Close Is Still So Far out of Reach, and: I Can Look at You from inside as Well, and: After I Stopped Counting the Days Jennifer Perrine (bio) Make an Effort to Remember. Or, Failing That, Invent i do not remember a life without guns there was no yesterday into which i can make my escape no homeland to go back to except this one was i always so afraid when did i learn to make up this face to pretend a call a whistle from across the street doesn't make my skin crawl do i really have to paint the picture of a man with a gun it doesn't matter if it is bad form to say i do not want to punish him it doesn't matter what i want is a daywhere any of us out for a jog at our jobs sitting at our desks at school watching for the bird that flew past still hear its song let it arrive without a thought of himthe man with the gun coming for us consider what it means to say he was fed up and at the end of his rope i am also not without hope not without compassion thisspring day where the sun is merciless does not spare us as we march again what is ever enough what will satisfy this hunger to be just left alone for once what can i offer my aunt my grandmother worried to go for a walk this is what hedoes even now we watch out for the bird it must exist we saw it we did we did [End Page 11] Rage I've been told my placid attitude must hide some menace.Mostly, it doesn't. Mostly, I'm content to kick back in the sun,flicking at any mosquitos bold enough to sip at my skin. I getmy fill of excitement gazing up into the waving limbs of the oldwalnut, watching the oak with its galls full of wasps jettisoncatkins. Mostly, I've adopted sloth as my vice of choice, so if my voice comes out too brittle or loud, it could be thegrowls I've stifled when townsfolk scrutinize me, checking forpoints to my teeth, for fur tucked up my sleeves. It could bewhen their torches set fire to neighbors' houses, I've extinguishedmy cries. I've gotten wind of their jokes, their critiques of myeyes: too golden, too lupine. I keep my wild from busting out. I know what could happen if my steadiness drifts into a snarlor shout. I've learned not to leave the house when I feel acertain set to my jaw, an untamed pulse in my chest. I can'texcise the beast. I don't transform. It's part of me, as much asthe skin in which I was born, as much as the soul pleased topass a day in study of a covey of quail at play in a zealous dust bath, all shimmy and flapping wings. I wish for such jubilant,haphazard abandon. If fury stings my throat, I try to pay itno mind. My kind was taught to wait out pitchforks and plotsthat paint us as villains. But I still know how to bound throughmoonlight, to transfix a mob with chilling howls, to slash aquaking thing to ribbons. I'll gut what I must to go on living. [End Page 12] No Object Can Float without Some Part of It Being below the Surface dear mother you send no cards from the afterlife to your two children born in may i cannot be the only one to notice this neglect of etiquette i did not call on your birthday or any other day for years forgivemy quarters slipped into fountains instead of pay phones dial tones i severed afraid you would not answer i've kept the message...