Trevor Bashaw

 

         SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT 

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Cast: SPEAKER, YOU*                      *these things are replaceable

Setting: ASTRAL PLANE

Speaker: Here is some mountain.

You are to be sacrificed.

Little linen briefs cinched up over hip-bones.White tennis shoes pummel a warm quagmire, splash pummel red pumice, brown pumice, black sands sparkle with quartz and sulfur. Around you green sticky plants’ grains blossom like sandpaper. Umbrella tendrils of ferns tangle together. You build a shrine, a circle of volcanic stone. Exalted: a plastic water bottle! That which is its own essence. The bloody turquoise of the mineral fact of things. You worship and then dig. Wind mists cloud through gnarled bark. Cedar quakes and the lilies bend at the knee, you dig while black white red and brown pheasants circle you, quick eyes clucking, your hands in the ground. You will dig until the bone is revealed on the fingers, until lava is reached, until it all caves in again. God remains silently tucked away in his own heaven.

You read, or perhaps hear, your fate uttered by Speaker. You reply:

 

You:         “     chef boyardee

     let me tell you what

            ill open my legs for you

            and if that is not enough

               you can slit me open and

           put your hands inside my guts

            drink my hemoglobin

              become my phagic hemorrhage

          you can wash me with salt iodine and diet pepsi ”

(P.S.)

     “ but my raviolis will still be cooked inside.

     and they look like chicken carbonara ”

Speaker: In your last moments, you breathe out an explication on 

  Queerness. It is all you can do.

You: Queerness is… Queerness is… Queerness is …

Speaker: You die and they move on.

 

But – first they shoot you with a camera. Snap a little  picture. Just before you die, they trap your soul forever  inside a  little square. They carefully crop the edges of the photograph so they can remember the moment how it   ought to be remembered, that is not  how it was. They will relive your death, re-use your death  over and over. When they see the  picture they hear your sweet  spectacular voice    singing to be returned to your paradise. They reminisce, and it brings a little smile to their lips. :)  A   notification pops up    on    your cell phone. God has texted you, you are unable to read the message (being dead). 

 

You:         [...]

 

Speaker: Go back to sleep and dream again.

You were driving in your car through the rain, you were driving your lover home. You were distracted, too stoned to see, through the windshield, tenements and cemeteries. Distracted by love, you navigated chaos: narrow roads, buses and bikes weaving together in exhaust. Temporal tapestry, pastiche of sheet metals, orange paint and rust. Curly hair and a lithe jaw. Was this the city of your lover?   This  whole  place  had  been  sacrificed  to  a  sweet  saint. You both were coming back from McDonald’s. The sauce was sticky. He was your lover. From the vents, a sickening smell of ylang-ylang and french fries. Coming back from McDonald’s there was a song on the radio.                  You remember it:

 

“Take off the skin of yesterday, 

Take off the skin of yesterday

I do not know how to fall.

Trees die standing up.

Take off the skin of yesterday

I do not know how to make myself fall.

Take off my skin with flashes

Take my mouth out of the honey

Take off the skin of yesterday

A shadow of flashes on your skin

Without you I know nothing.”[1]

 

Speaker:

Are you dreaming again?

 

 

 

You (dead):

You were crying in my arms. I was kissing you on the head and the neck, on your shoulders and your collar saying it’s okay, I love you, it’s okay, I love you, it’s going to be okay. But all you could think of was death. You wore jewelry, soft greys, sparkling coral geodes. I felt such love for you. But you were messing with the dead. You were contacting her from beyond the grave and trying to speak for her somehow. You spoke of an assault and how she was never the same after she got back from Israel. She is in paradise now. Would you feel better? If I went back to paradise. If I took her skin and gave it to someone else, so someone could walk around in her skin again. As if she came back to life, came back from paradise. For you. So it was.  A violent catharsis: something strutting around in her skin. And, walking down the street, you saw her. For a second, you thought you saw her. Again. But you saw it wasn’t her. You could see her skin but could see right through it. You did not see her in there so you screamed and screamed and said no no no no no come back you are not gone from me. Again.

 

Speaker: 

You were denying yourself reality.

I said I was sorry and I sang you a song.

 

 

Wow I wanna make you

Wanna cry

Poison                                            I vow

Keeps us alive                                  You pray

I love you so                                    Still love:

I let you go                                      never fixed

Do you remember?                           Love hurts

Do you remember?                           It swallows home

 

It-girl

Life time                             Insect hums

Small bombs                                    Yellow bugs

Lion songs                          Little ants that crawl

                                         Buttercup / syrup cup

Where has all my money gone             Put your ass against the wall

How have I mis(t)read           

All I know is  

                             You’re the one that’s trapped inside my head

 

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[1] Arca, Piel [translated from the spanish]