Lance Olsen - Head in Flames

Most Beneficent, Most Merciful, Most Gracious.

How is your little boy?

It’s like opening a window. I give you the only thing left I have to give. I give you Mohammed.

My question, evidently.

O Allah: open the hearts of every non-Muslim to the beauty and truth of Islam.

Even a peacock. Yes, even one of those. Can you see?

— until the ambulance—

King of the Day of Reckoning.

Train feathers: a series of eyes fanning splendidly.

Swallow this.

How once, when we were children, we stole two dark gray marbled eggs from the nest in the acacia, then returned them early the next day, flocked by guilt at what we had done.

A pudgy young man in the dark djellaba lifting a knee to brace Theo’s ribcage.

Kissing knife to neck.

And, afterward, a short perambulation through Doctor Gachet’s abundance of color, little Vincent’s head cupped against my bony shoulder.

Yanking back a shock of hair.

I evict you from your body.

Call it morning. Why not?

— imagine the, sirens , listen, strange pain, settle back, let it come—

Sawing.

Dayspring .

Resistance equal, say, to carving through a tough slab of steak.

A brief dream: this man on fire.

Once you start, there’s no stopping.

Dayspring: a complete melody in a single word.

Dear Everybody—

Although it is the night.

They were there in the videos, naturally, and when you practiced on goats in the basement during the holy days, but at close range they form another register of sloppy wheezing sounds altogether.

My brother: all the way from Paris.

— wait, what’s, wait, open your—

You aren’t prepared for the vertebrae.

All that distance. The inexplicable good fortune.

You thought you would be, but you aren’t.

Well , my Theo responds. Both Jo and little Vincent are doing well .

They won’t give under your weight.

The eggs having been contaminated by human touch, the mother magpie refused to take them back.

You grind down.

And so they rotted where they lay among the wild harpy’s hair.

Yet you can’t seem to crunch through.

You should drink something , Theo says, offering me my own water glass.

— the blueness of—

Harder.

Holding my hand while I sip.

And then deciding: this will have to do .

There wouldn’t happen to be a half bottle of absinthe on the premises, Monsieur Vincent inquiring, would there?

Two elderly women, arm in arm, weeping as they watch.

Good enough. Good enough .

— than to love people.

And, next: a pudgy young man in a dark djellaba is rising to his feet near the corner of Linnaeus Street and Oosterpark, knees popping wetly.

Letting your machete clink to the road behind you.

Monsieur Vincent refuses to paint the iron bars.

He consults the clock in the shop window selling washing machines.

8:51.

There are, after all, limits to what one might be willing to do. Aren’t there?

Reaching into his other pocket, as if in search of a match.

The morning still quite young. The day spanning out.

Listening to him talk, I remember how, sharing a bedroom as boys, we developed our own private tongue.

Extracting the smaller kitchen variety.

A child playing by himself among th—

An intricate system of illegibility for the rest of the world, about which the rest of the world cared not in the least.

Extracting the note.

Squatting once more, laying it out neatly on his chest.

Each letter living in a dwelling one to the left of its genuine address.

Inhaling.

Like a cloth napkin at an elegant restaurant.

A code no one was interested in breaking.

Inhaling and exhaling.

Gathering all the strength in your shoulder and upper back.

I haven’t thought about that for almost thirty years, Monsieur Vincent saying, pleased, smoke misting from his mouth as if hot coals were smoldering in his lungs.

And, with the knife, pegging the note home.

Bull’s eye.

Side by side, the two of us giggling through the Hour of the

Wolf.

Extracting a second piece of paper, unfolding it, letting it flutter down to join its companion.

Your poem.

To pass the time, I take in the bone structure beneath my brother’s face.

Then turning to the nearest bystanders and commenting quietly—

When you are born a woman, you must live as a woman .

The in-between hour when your babbling fears haunt you.

Mulling.

What token will you leave them with?

The hour of births. The hour of deaths.

Studying their scribbled expressions, he adds:

And now you all know .

Are you in any pain? Theo quizzing.

Minutes scraping against the morning.

You listening to them listening.

I close my eyes and dream, surrounded by everyone I know.

It’s that easy. That’s the thing.

To always be here.

The pudgy young man in a dark djellaba inspecting the body as if he might a rolled-up rug at a bazaar, and, an afterthought, delivering it a few hard kicks.

Then you simply turn and stroll away.

I painted two yellow books and a burning candle on Gauguin’s otherwise empty armchair: his portrait.

The crowd slowly converging on what has been left behind.

Without hurry crossing the road, cattycorner-ing for the park.

For mine, I painted my own empty wicker chair, on its seat my pipe and tobacco pouch.

The din of the world revisiting you as you become just another pedestrian among the general infestation of them.

Gauguin/van Gogh: like that.

Just another commuter on his way to his daily lifelessness.

I wish I could pass away exactly like this , Monsieur Vincent commenting, apropos of nothing.

The thing being not to run.

Don’t , Theo saying.

Not to glance back.

Please.

The thing being to become imaginary as the sirens flood the streets around you.

Twenty-four wooden planks. That’s it. That’s—

And then—

A visual duet.

And then—

Look: Monsieur Vincent appears to be having some difficulty catching his—

— this is where your plan simply ends.

White light vaporing the room.

Walk into the park, they told you. Misplace yourself, they told you.

Snow dusting a plowed field.

But not what to do next.

My Vincentness having, it would seem—

And so you keep pushing forward, brain blind.

Three shrill red rectangles hanging in the air.

The world all at once becoming—

My Vincentness having usurped the environment of other people and objects.

The world all at once becoming greener, commotion everywhere, the grassy field and dark pond widening before you.

Pulling pipe from lips, I answer:

You move up a wide concrete path.

Yes. I believe so.

An elderly couple strolling arm-in-arm in front of you. A teen boy pushing a pram.

How the roses—

A terrier walking its owner.

Thinking in images.

They see me, if they see me at all, as negligible visual dissonance in their surroundings.

Or might it conceivably be past noon already?

Oblivious of history blazing around them.

Will the wonders nev—

You progress north, autumn soiling every inhalation.