The Singing Man
We like Tom. It is winter, hot. We meet him more often in winter, Tom. We don’t cry, he would die, and he doesn’t. He does.
Days before are like dogs. I skin them, behead them, set them free in impossible woods.
Days before come again, asking of themselves: what skin, what headless body, what wood. They ask Tom, Tom, not the singing man, not the man you beat to death. Dogs come, absently. Tom collects broke teeth, we like teeth, it’s winter, hot. It’s the mouth that comes back with an almost bark. You would say, he died, Tom, but then why is he here, in goddamn winter for all I know.
Hell, we like Tom, not as crazy as free as eddied into a kitchen in the 60s, or that red car whose doors were welded so we got in through the back and only in dark, but hell we like Tom, I raise a hand for no longer than a second, and I know it’s a kind of dance, Tom.
I pretend I am younger, maybe a woman, and she is young, too, and a pretty one. I pretend I could say here, Tom, it’s three of us that die, crazy, who would think a raised hand doesn’t stir the wheel but a winter breaks its teeth and laughs. I pretend it’s hot, Tom, it’s hot and goddamn winter, it danced, in dark.
Days before are like dogs. I skin them, behead them, set them free in impossible woods.
Days before come again, asking of themselves: what skin, what headless body, what wood. They ask Tom, Tom, not the singing man, not the man you beat to death. Dogs come, absently. Tom collects broke teeth, we like teeth, it’s winter, hot. It’s the mouth that comes back with an almost bark. You would say, he died, Tom, but then why is he here, in goddamn winter for all I know.
Hell, we like Tom, not as crazy as free as eddied into a kitchen in the 60s, or that red car whose doors were welded so we got in through the back and only in dark, but hell we like Tom, I raise a hand for no longer than a second, and I know it’s a kind of dance, Tom.
I pretend I am younger, maybe a woman, and she is young, too, and a pretty one. I pretend I could say here, Tom, it’s three of us that die, crazy, who would think a raised hand doesn’t stir the wheel but a winter breaks its teeth and laughs. I pretend it’s hot, Tom, it’s hot and goddamn winter, it danced, in dark.
Mariya Nikolava works in the area of transnational literature, theater and film. She writes/films dirty characters because she doesn't believe that anything other would deserve the cleansing of pen, paper, and film...and perhaps the claustrophobic Bremen, where she is now, does its part (there are two seasons here: rainy and unbearably rainy).
