The Spirit (after the comic strip by Will Eisner
When I was 13, I lived with the Spirit
and his boy companion, Ebony,
under the graveyard of Central City
in their secret apartment, protected from the wind
and mankind, a sanctuary nestled in the leaves
of the Sunday papers. Disguised beneath a mask,
the Spirit wandered through panelled windows, all
ebony-
streaked, and the shadowed crannies of the city,
fighting criminals, fighting the bitter winds
or sewers choked by decaying leaves.
It was always winter, with a cloying mask
of fog on the harbour and a despairing spirit
cloaking the rooftops. It was a brittle city,
full of souls that snapped in the wind,
threw their wives from buildings, and hid in the leaves
pickaxes and fiercer murder weapons. Their mask
of forced normality never fooled the Spirit.
He tracked them down, often by using Ebony.
Trapped, they poked out guns; if weaponless, they’d
wind
their fists around him, or ropes: sometimes they’d
leave
him to his imminent death, blood gushing through his
mask.
When they thought it was clear, hands grasped their
throats - the Spirit’s.
He always won, and limped, along with Ebony,
onto the next week, next adventure, the next part of
the city.
I sensed the danger these stories leave:
not the violence, the musclemen, the men in masks,
but the other criminals the Spirit
had to face - the svelte women who fluttered ebony-
lined eyes and wielded guns - the mistresses of the
city’s
gangs and offices. They fought by stooping to wind
stockings up their legs, by applying red masks
to their lips and cheeks. They overwhelmed the Spirit
just by standing next to him. (They hit Ebony.)
Rich with takings, the villainesses escaped the city
by kissing the Spirit till he was out of wind
or they were. At the story’s end, he was shown
kicking leaves.
I was as young as Ebony, and I wanted the Spirit.
Women were victims or evil - they passed through his
city like the wind.
What choice did that leave me? I learned how to don
red masks.
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The