Underwater New York

Dutch Boy by Bridget Talone

Dutch Doors open disjointedly: a dark Cartesian dream. Say hey: the head swings here without the body. While down below, a body beasts beneath the head: wild as the waters, beating its chest. All brawn: bah dum bum dum bum dum.

Open the top door: I want to tell a story: (a bee walks its weeping seams, getting his black gams gummy). In the beginning, to be headed anywhere was to be alive: believing in the here to there: the better to best soft traps along the taffy path.

In the beginning we lived in the city. In the end we died inside a child’s drawing of the water: impaled on the sharp Vs that spelled out our oblivion. I thought I’d shell the story: I thought I’d seek its secrets in the soup: a pilgrim: I would trouble it like a fork.

Treading open water, I tried to yell the story: Helicopters, help me not! The command came down anyway, choppered: Try using I statements. But the trick to Dutch Doors is togetherness: one without the other and you’ll never keep the weather out:

you’ll never batten down. In the end, the only way to quell a story is more story. Truth truth truth truth truth truth: I slapped at it, trying to stay upright. You took my precious head with you— But what does it matter: Disengage: the bottom door is mine.

I’ll be all we swallowed: be figurine and miracle: be pregnant with the dregs. Who lives headless inside the word until: whose feet scrape together: a rusty obsessed song—And Still.

 

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About the Author

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Bridget Talone has an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She lives in Philadelphia and is an Assistant Editor for Saturnalia Books.

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Tags: Bridget Talone, Dead Horse Bay, Headless Dutch Boy figurine