Dutch Boy

 
 

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.


 

Object

Headless Dutch Boy Figurine

Body of Water

Dead Horse Bay

About the Artist

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