The Needle’s Anxiety When the Record Skips
We sit on the steps of the front porch and whittle, since there’s not much else to do when it’s April 31st and somehow already muggy enough to have drowned the local ephemeroptera population wholesale. We survive on pickled eggs from the chest freezer; if anything needs to cook we’ll just butterfly it and toss it on the walk. The radio in the window plays static, most times. A word bubbles up here and there. No one knows where the transmitter is. Jessie’s almost finished the ball in the cage when the radio spits out “unite”. We all look up for a second, go back to our blue jays, gnomes, and Dale’s… what looks like it might be a pine tree if you dropped enough acid. And then we hear it again: “unite”. First time it’s been other than static more than once a week in so long none of us can remember. Then it picks up a rhythm, slow, like the flat tire you try and limp off the road with. “Unite. Unite. Unite.” We sit and look around, look at each other, look at the trees, the balustrade, the rusted hulk of a Dodge Dart in what was once the driveway. We seem pinned, as if the humidity kept us rooted to the wood, “Unite. Unite. Unite.” and it almost seems like two or three of us try to raise our hands above our line of sight but can’t, the hiss of air that tries to escape vocal cords that haven’t been used in long enough they’ve forgotten how to form words, the quiver of legs and elbows that might have been a seizure were we not so confined, “Unite. Unite. Unite.”, until Dale stands up, crosses the porch, opens the screen from the outside, and turns it off. He goes back to his spot on the third step, sits down, and picks up that… whatever it is, once again applies the blade. The rest of us just sit there for a few minutes, get our strength back, pick up our own balsa once again.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Collective Unrest, Cough Syrup, and Blood & Bourbon, among others.
We sit on the steps of the front porch and whittle, since there’s not much else to do when it’s April 31st and somehow already muggy enough to have drowned the local ephemeroptera population wholesale. We survive on pickled eggs from the chest freezer; if anything needs to cook we’ll just butterfly it and toss it on the walk. The radio in the window plays static, most times. A word bubbles up here and there. No one knows where the transmitter is. Jessie’s almost finished the ball in the cage when the radio spits out “unite”. We all look up for a second, go back to our blue jays, gnomes, and Dale’s… what looks like it might be a pine tree if you dropped enough acid. And then we hear it again: “unite”. First time it’s been other than static more than once a week in so long none of us can remember. Then it picks up a rhythm, slow, like the flat tire you try and limp off the road with. “Unite. Unite. Unite.” We sit and look around, look at each other, look at the trees, the balustrade, the rusted hulk of a Dodge Dart in what was once the driveway. We seem pinned, as if the humidity kept us rooted to the wood, “Unite. Unite. Unite.” and it almost seems like two or three of us try to raise our hands above our line of sight but can’t, the hiss of air that tries to escape vocal cords that haven’t been used in long enough they’ve forgotten how to form words, the quiver of legs and elbows that might have been a seizure were we not so confined, “Unite. Unite. Unite.”, until Dale stands up, crosses the porch, opens the screen from the outside, and turns it off. He goes back to his spot on the third step, sits down, and picks up that… whatever it is, once again applies the blade. The rest of us just sit there for a few minutes, get our strength back, pick up our own balsa once again.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Collective Unrest, Cough Syrup, and Blood & Bourbon, among others.