Theoretical Animals

Gary J. Shipley

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

Theoretical Animals by Gary J. Shipley Copyright 2010 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition ISBN: 9781935402701 Library of Congress Control Number 2009910030 BlazeVOX [books] 303 Bedford Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
2 4 6 8 0 9 7 5 3 1

Lying low on evening closing,

she directed her dark, heavy-browed son, rusty boathook and water shining with a slant of light impediment, her gaze as from a setting sun she eyed her shudder gone, and look was an eyes state, and, against it, floated a boat of matted blood, with no London appliance beyond a rope.

Horrored steamboats allied with ragged years,

and outlines of muffled faces in autumn waters. I see nothing instant. And every son a pier lying off of Southwarks curdled sands. Grizzled hair split on the tides red current darted a hungry f ilthy wilderness of ails. Im wearing the look of the covered, to a short time with things off your face. The harmless leaves veneer up the sides of another boat, the evening murk lapping rocking-horse eyes. Sad children bewitched by nodding hollow wooden sockets of their skulled toy.

As we cruise, I befriend the faces of dead sailors,

their water-logged torsos bobbing, plaintive jewels in rotten marrow-bled riverways. Wet and dirty men, brown blue-inked arms, settle upon her, all friends buried with the stockings of a bygone trade. Gutting-knives stretched out in smoke dust. Deadly faint in shadows and kindling lights of London Bridge before he put it in down river.

15

Barges every darkening hour or so,

and for the moment I held it was as if they werent your eyes in your ruffled head, turn quivered as in a squinting leer. He steered hard in the tide-washed prey. We converse drily without speaking and are of similar appearance: gnarled pieces of soulless wood adrift in the drink, hooded, hook-nosed, pale skin coddled in a dark cradle.

Fire that warmed tightened men stretched out,

dropped softly like silence. The tide drifted places, and we took the terrif ied moonlight downriver, rowing the wake, the shore howling tender yellow, washed in new spells. No view. Boat fell astern swallowed by offal, lunged, checked against the tide. Dead man hooked onboard still dressed in his skin, only the f ingers lost to the f ish unholy sailors, robbers ridding the ripples of their blank stares.

Clay pipe clenched tight in his black teeth,

cheeks drawn, he smiles, my son, my surly-eyed son stretching smoke up his face. My husband dead, dead, dead, but a moment in our bellies, risen in a belch to no hails, like the others drifting into us river-eyed ghouls gaff in their ribs flopping their wet wares onto our gunwale for every tomorrow.

Sneaking spirits and fainting bridge-men

all in for our boat-dropped future. Fingered provisions shuffling the timber boards, striking dust and then hovering as Joe, son Joe, a waterman born, spikes them down to the hull workshop for trimming poems in the furniture, candles dribbling

16

Floaters are business,

squirmers rare, some begrimed debt wearing a fatal freshness. Sodden lungs and hard faces made soft by the tide; the rivers soften everything but us. Unhappy children come to us by the pound, pink hands rising from the dark to greet us, faces stuffed with death. The harnesses whisper as the boat swings round, organ cradles clanking on their ropes: the slow, doleful music of amputated souls. Unseen mothers wail from the shore, the robbed stares of their loss hidden, aural guests coiling hair-brushed poison to our table.

The water: the swell of an uncoiled list,

a survey of false glances, the moonlight offerings of un-dropped eyelids, left objects Never too many: storeroom loaded with salt, a chemical abyss. A cultivated fusion of frosted knuckles and matted hair, driftwood of bent legs in the f ilthy water, broken foreheads, diluted blood, putting faces to two dark f igures in, terrif ic cargo (no false skin), gravely, dread lump skin of mature veins, tan like boat varnish a tender banquet of ship-swallowed weakness.

Our own perfect dark pounced upon,

and Joe, tending to, smoked, the dropped darts of pleasure now a muffled human form. Cook green matter down to pea soup sludge to throw the cats. Emboldened by their feed they scratch the air and give their human pattern bellies to the bleak sky.

It is, for sure,

a gloomy luck that offsets starvation with a frayed wire path of
17

bodies. Such melancholy bounty, but a meat barge is our shrugged lot and we must carry our smiles like armour. Allied to a half-dozen words and a hungry look, we go about our dredge and eat well on the misfortune of strangers. None wasted, dexterously processed down to bone and beyond.

Shabby rooks painted to the clouds

scoff ing at my parrot gabble the virtues of the profession of black enlightened murder, and the respectable staircases of our shoreline partners plotting our collections.

So sodden was the boys skill,

resemblance of savage rudder-lines, slack hands loose in her hands, shivered. Coloured logs of timber with every steady gaze. Advancing tide absorbed, wind met with sun-browned faces, and out. Head-way sitter: no paint, and eyes begrimed her, though broad, her bare chest bled out into the rotten stain, watched in every cargo and beat-lashed dress as out of it she rudder. Slime and mahogany f igures in these times of ours, of touch, of dread or her twenty compensations. Caught pulling a pair in the tide turned ooze with which it sweep, as touching a turn of scarred wrists, too crazy and too bottomed-out in knots of iron dread.

A sentence of diluted intensity and common violence

washed up and washed out. Joes trousers torn, branded in mans structures, his hood knitted into his brow, his eyes like two grey empty smears bearing the mark of nights obscurity. He pike poles us free of the bank, his balance impeccable; the cats snake around his feet in admiration.

18

We pass the warehouses,

their rusting roofs like moth-eaten fabric, their spotlights scouring fences and barking dogs perpetually spooked by our decomposing tides. The cats hiss disapproval and sharpen their claws on a discarded pelvis the faint sound of knives and forks devouring crockery.

Rendezvous with the Market Hulk is overdue.

Were sinking the Plimsoll line ever deeper with each bulging haul. Nasty cuts peering into the pluvious headwind, searching down the iron stomach, the corpse-farmers ready to trade, damp pipes f illed, feeling the rough gin go through, bread, real cheese. Our heads drooping with fatigue, sick from the howling shore.

The unheard keys of the murder off ices bleed bodies into our river,
keeping us here and them there everyone somewhere in this wet plan. Injury inspectors blinded with bribes and silent threats, their lines written for them: These are all clean. Bag them up! All a neat contrivance for the steady inking of time. The smell of fried liver clings to the damp air: the prize of Joes secret surgery.

Mr Is in charge of discharge structure.

He sees that the pockets we comb are empty: no identities, no money, no gleaming metal. Making Christian names for them is one of the dreadful things I try to stop. Raging, rattling, schoolboys forever lost in the days of trees and limp swings. Brightly lit rooms f illed with hollow, self-admiring clerks subscribing objects of
19

ambition. Just tell us where to look for quiet passengers; spare us the ripe ones and the raff ish gloss of plate-glass secrecy.

Praise the chubby,

the smooth, the splenetic tears of starving undertakers, for I see the docking lights of the Market Hulk, porters torches strobing on the dark water up ahead. So many dead: have to choke down the duty straight as I can, keep Joe clear of the f igure else hes liable to blow. Grunt boys hollering us in, shackling us up for entry. Ill dry my feet in the f ire, and burn my bottle-fed gullet while burnt bones boil brown in the forest.

We pass a shoal of rich society women and,

forced to let them go, dream their pockets full of lighter futures. Their braided hats and tailored suits taunt us all as we drift slowly into dock: theres a hooking ban this close in to avoid congestion. Its the safest place to be dead.

Pincers in the f ire

extracting offal for the terra dogs and low-grade shore-relief porters fresh from their overcrowded hovels who, before feasting, portend grander futures from their plates of waste. Bone-meal furnaces make lurid smears across the shoreline glow. Huge mincing machines work the old into paste, their worm remains coiling neatly into salt-lined barrels. The dull smoulder of habit, the sum of the dying, monotony of a slim divide, like the nets keeping bodies and f ish apart. Voices of f ield-diggers and grave-robbers hocking their scraps to the bone-merchants, the spite and bile of negotiations reduced to cabaret. Sallow faces cut away the black
20

tide, wearing the water like a shawl. Bodies heaped by doors like grisly bricks.

Church clocks strike in the distance

and heads bow momentarily as our amphibious haven makes time for this weeks god. Relative silence on the river as the garrulous tolls count their burdens down. I look over at Joe and we give our teeth an airing.

Green ghosts of little girls dance free of the f ire.

I see Joe watching them. I see them through him. Without that, all I see is smoke-singed beggars and fat shining red faces. Sluggishly frozen, my eyes waiting for a gift of gin supper, I see the sweet burn when all Joe sees are black tears. My decomposed manner an often untasted dish a delicacy, I hear. I'll follow the river, funnel my pupils to look and cast down her almost grin. Coloured remembrances, disenchanted partitions, then a trimmed breakfast, a fellowship of water-side heads, humming compound of rudder and death.

All the feet tar the bottom of the crime,

and red stomach-shaped customers move on against the passing floors, shaking aboard his throat. Mad drunk: more gathered wilderness, dropping the liquor into cruel hard meaning upon me and Joe. Black eyes cooking and a grinning porters sweet goodnight: You like good quietness, missus. Creep a couple in for me.

21

This body, it seemed loose a hollow pot blushing in the f ire.

But in the corner hour, putting that little surprise boy to bunk, she plucked at a mind and darted out happy. In the sound of robust sawing, his iron use set upright, sorrowfully. Was of a most wicked taint before gently salted custom from her into linen. Never young, the boy shake a look in sentiment that put some turn of physicality to mud. Setting aside the blank river slowly changed, amazed at her standing pure and draped in ill-fated disgrace.

I am murder and not wishing to be welcome

push the strongest dream. Entrapped by meat twisting itself free of a f ire, and abated by this good, you were not combed in the bottom of a certain room asleep, but by your son, back from the brink, lying alone looking in shift to get a half-grumbled word his way. An angry satisfaction to a man's dim distress, she leaves a clock speaking f illed moments to the endless corners of the bed.

Dirty brushes and boil heads,

and seeing into another woman's dark drink. Good looks or not, those what's gone with the knife and man see mornings pointed ends. And you had rid of this world, and told yourself to keep it going in a polite promise. The sun, blood-red on the church, suspicions bleed into your precious, small composure now drawing heavy wood into murder compost.

22