Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DEBORAH MEADOWS
BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
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Characters:
Philoctetes
Neoptolemus
Odysseus
Ghost of Fox
Anonymous Endangered Fisher
Cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev
HAM operator, Margaret Laquinto
Lorine Niedecker and Louis Zukofsky
Buck Euro
Dark Imagebase
Leo and Hercules (two chimpanzees)
Scene: Varied boulder wall, anthropocenic menace,
islands.
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Im fearless.
Ive already thought it over and know
my silence is more useful.
[Exit Ghost of Fox.]
*
[Philoctetes reads the following from off-stage.]
Philoctetes:
1. unclear: does no to austerity
mean leaving for Good?
2. cant live in clay vessels,
wont
3. it crumbles; a tooth is pulled
4. Dog philosophy or
Ethiopian Aesop?
5. mortal coil, that other
Claymation
6. grace, that other state
of management
7. a Sunday kind of love
[Enter Odysseus and Neoptolemus.]
Odysseus: He was left behind when he knew he was
essential to the entire effort. And, right when he
didnt bother to know, his work was at his best
utterly present without reflection.
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*
Lorine Niedecker: I talked him into it. He wrote back.
Louis Zukofsky: There was a second woman.
Lorine Niedecker: Why are you narrating this?
Wouldnt it become more accurate for me to say to
you: You married. Your prodigy son grew to be a
violinist?
Louis Zukofsky: I meant in the book. Im trying to
remember her characteristics, but artists represented
her as wingd and standing rigid in carvings that
come down from antiquity. Frightening.
Lorine Niedecker: I sent Audubons folio of birds to
the violinist son.
Louis Zukofsky: Was it wanted, that gift? Accurate,
detailed, a reference that somehow would always
stick out, not fit in, make its presence known in a tiny
New York apartment?
Lorine Niedecker: It seems a contradiction for
someone whose identity as a writer was so little
known, who would sit for two months on six lines of
poetry.
Louis Zukofsky: My old friend and I went to visit. It
was after her abortion and return to Wisconsin. To
Blackhawk Island.
Lorine Niedecker: As WPA writers, I wrote with Aldo
Leopold. The project aimed to map and catalog all
creation and history of Wisconsin.
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*
[Enter HAM operator, Margaret.]
Anonymous Endangered Fisher: (points to Cosmonaut,
Sergei Krikalev) Our Cosmonaut was told to stay put
on the Mir Space Station as the former Soviet Union
crumbled, December 26, 1991. Left behind, the time
added ten long months until his return. Amateur
HAM operator Margaret Laquinto in Australia (points
to HAM operator) and Cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev
were in daily contact for almost a year. He said upon
landing in a post-Soviet land, the change is not so
drastic. [Exits.]
HAM operator, Margaret: This callhow is it related
to truth? Ill use a packet radio. I can set up a bulletin
board for you and your colleagues with uncensored
news from the west, and items about your countrys
political turmoil.
Cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev: I will read. I am grateful
for the link. So far we have spoken every day.
HAM operator, Margaret: Correct. I will continue
contact if you have no objections.
Cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev: No objections. I receive
your call and know I have a friend. After training in
the Soviet states, it surprises me to have to come this
far to learn about the world. What is your area of
Australia like?
HAM operator, Margaret: You would find it bright,
the light, and plants that almost seem animal given
their luridly colorful parts. Somehow an earth-going
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