Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

In YEAR-PSI-THREE, it was discovered that atoms have feelings: meaning that the molecular structure we call a “hat” can be sad, that atoms in a leaf can fall in love, that hockey pucks can cry, and orange peels think, et cetera. There is no difference -- emotionally and electromagnetically speaking -- between any animate and inanimate object in this or any other world.

In time a crossover (or miscegenation, if you will) took place between the animate and the inanimate. Some of these early attempts were on a physical rather than on a molecular level and were, to say the least, painful and embarrassing.

I give but one early example: a boyhood friend of mine was having an affair with a cereal box. One morning his mother walked in and caught him screwing the Wheaties box.

‘What, in heaven's name, are you doing?” the startled woman asked. Of course my friend had to lie. “I’m looking for the prize, he informed his mother. From that day on, needless to say, my friend had to eat breakfast in a locked bathroom.

By the time I was twenty, however, the period of tension between the living and the dead had pretty much worked itself out. In the old days if a man or woman was seen going out with a typewriter or coat rack, everyone would turn and stare. By the time I reached manhood, such pairings were looked on as perfectly natural

It was the day after my twenty-first birthday that I myself met a gorgeous piece of red granite. I have a real weakness for redheads and this one was really built. When I picked her up in Central Park, I knew right from the start that she wouldn’t be hard to make. She was, I might mention, from New England originally and her family was from an old mountain-core. Good stock. Even with her overall hardness, I felt somehow easy and relaxed in her presence. She was light-colored, relatively resistant. A modern rock, she was one who gave as much as she took. That type of woman definitely turns me on.

After carrying her in my pocket for a day or two, we had our first exchange of molecules. She really knew a few tricks, I can tell you. For the next month, we were constantly in each other’s company. It was pure sex -- or so I thought. But one day she stayed home on the coffee table and I found that I missed her terribly. Then I knew that our relationship was something more -- much more. I had fallen hopelessly in love.

We got married and went to the Cape for our honeymoon. It was just after Labor Day and the crowds had thinned and the weather was still summery. I’d take her to the edge of the beach and let the water run over her while I held her in my hand. She’d love it. After I’d set her on the sun deck of our rented beach house and let her dry out in the sun. Every so often, I’d turn her on another side so she’d dry nice and even.

The feel of her while she was drying really sent me. Sometimes I just couldn’t wait. “Wait till after dinner,” she’d say. But I’d laugh. “Before and after,” I’d answer. And we would make love. It was the happiest time of my life.

I forgot to say that our beach house was near Walden Pond, around which we’d walk every evening. During these walks, we heard, from a nearby people-couple’s house, a lovely Rachmaninoff concerto. As the lovely slow movement of the concerto washed over our co-mingling souls, we made love by the pond’s edge. The sky had by now darkened so that the reflections of the water were close to black. I held her over the pond for a last look when PLUNK, I dropped her!

Wading in and thrashing about frantically, I called to her in vain: “Red! Red! Red! Where are you? Can you hear me?” When no reply came, I dived to the bottom of Walden Pond -- only to find the mud and beer cans so dense that visibility was down to practically zero. As it was, I could barely read a watery Pbast Blue Ribbon. By nightfall, I had to accept the inevitable: I had lost my true love forever.

My lease on the beach house would be up by the end of the month. I spent my time in taking long walks on the beach during the day and, in the early evening, in strolling about the pond. And then it happened. It was strange I had never noticed it before. But next to the house of the Rachmaninoff couple was the structure that now caught my attention: a brick shit house. And on the seventh row of the south wall of it, third brick from the right end, there she was: a smooth brick, red, beautifully laid, beautifully shaped. She was sending out electrons to me charging me up and up and up! This was it. The real thing. True love.

I bought the brick house, tore it down and took this one brick with me back to New york. We’ve been married three years now and have three children: a grey sandstone, a red shale, and an adopted Korean mica schist.

Since this document is not meant for publication till after my death, I can say I do occasionally take a day off and go to Walden Pond to get a blow job from the Rachmaninoff lady. But other than that, I’ve been true to my true love. She’s a brick. May all of you have as good a life.                                                                        D. E. Bug                                                                         (Aram Boyajian)