Contributor: Richard Osgood
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Ivan Chemalski stands at the center of a blow-up kiddie pool, naked, feet spread, penis erect, defecating in the water. A metallic rendition of The Entertainer cycles over and over from the loudspeaker of an ice cream truck as it approaches, passes, and fades under napping pine trees and languid American flags. Coitus, he calls her, the young Slovakian woman with burlap hair and volcanic skin, who sits in a folding beach chair, fully gowned, feet over the inflated edge of the pool, washing dirt from soil-burdened toes. A glance at the paperback within arm’s-length grasp of fruitful clover, her fingertips callused by fractured asphalt, she anticipates locked doors and drawn shades. Sunrise weighed down by iron skillets and uncharitable destinations serves blood sausage and beets to former transmission assembly workers in dungaree overalls and infertile white t-shirts, and thick-skin widows with dehydrated eyes eat cabbage and ground veal in submissive surrender to the orbital trajectory of dominant genus. Stained water links the two, she and Ivan, in impossible neutrality, a headless allegory of love and a parody of copulation. He masturbates, ejaculates, an orgasm at the endpoint of humanity, at the farthest reaches of pathology—"I am the origin of things," he says. She claps her hands and splashes her feet and sings epic sonnets of mountains and oceans and virtues and sin.
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Richard Osgood lives in a city on a river where the north meets the south. Publication credits include Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Hobart, Dogzplot, Night Train, Mudluscious, among others. He continues to mourn the deaths of Steve Marriott and Syd Barrett.
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Ivan Chemalski stands at the center of a blow-up kiddie pool, naked, feet spread, penis erect, defecating in the water. A metallic rendition of The Entertainer cycles over and over from the loudspeaker of an ice cream truck as it approaches, passes, and fades under napping pine trees and languid American flags. Coitus, he calls her, the young Slovakian woman with burlap hair and volcanic skin, who sits in a folding beach chair, fully gowned, feet over the inflated edge of the pool, washing dirt from soil-burdened toes. A glance at the paperback within arm’s-length grasp of fruitful clover, her fingertips callused by fractured asphalt, she anticipates locked doors and drawn shades. Sunrise weighed down by iron skillets and uncharitable destinations serves blood sausage and beets to former transmission assembly workers in dungaree overalls and infertile white t-shirts, and thick-skin widows with dehydrated eyes eat cabbage and ground veal in submissive surrender to the orbital trajectory of dominant genus. Stained water links the two, she and Ivan, in impossible neutrality, a headless allegory of love and a parody of copulation. He masturbates, ejaculates, an orgasm at the endpoint of humanity, at the farthest reaches of pathology—"I am the origin of things," he says. She claps her hands and splashes her feet and sings epic sonnets of mountains and oceans and virtues and sin.
- - -
Richard Osgood lives in a city on a river where the north meets the south. Publication credits include Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Hobart, Dogzplot, Night Train, Mudluscious, among others. He continues to mourn the deaths of Steve Marriott and Syd Barrett.
Author:
Richard Osgood
This seems a sad story of lovers not connecting. I love the imagery, especially the "soil-burdened toes." Nice work!