Study for a Flat Earth

Abstract

Study for a Flat Earth Charlie Bondhus (bio) The Alien Cathouse is a Nevada brothelwhere the girls dress in glowing latex, big black contactlenses, pulling sad-eyed men with jawslike donkeys. One grumbled lines from Hart Crane—"A jest fallsfrom the speechless caravan"—and I thought about the planet and my needto invent proverbs—"Blessed are the lighthouse keepers, for theirs is the beam that cutsthe flat earth," or "you would hate it in the desert where the saguaro's yellowflowers bloom only at night." Nevada makes me think of streptomycin,and when I left Brooklyn all I remembered was a bookon a shelf and orange tabbies on a fire escape.The title was Study for a Flat Earth and I wanted very much to take itwith me but the voice of God—common to deserts—spoke of "the nightsky's indigenous smell" and how virtue in its highest form resembles "lightscircling a UFO's perimeter." Later, [End Page 46] when she removed her maskI saw she was neither beautiful nor plain:the kind of lady who, if pressed, I would have to describe as"A most handsome woman." [End Page 47] Charlie Bondhus Charlie Bondhus's second poetry book, All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), won the 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, and The Bellevue Literary Review. He's the poetry editor at The Good Men Project (goodmenproject.com). Copyright © 2017 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents