Idle and Steam
Obligation exists as a stabilizing force. Without it, our flesh would slide from its bones. This suggests obligation is also a physiological force. And it is, at least insomuch as every social pressure is felt by the body. Sitting in this same spot on the sofa, the right side, the side closest to the hallway through which one can enter the kitchen, I heard reality loosen. The students are skeptical that historiographic metafiction, the term on the screen, could mean much of anything. The professor, too, is skeptical but moves, obligingly, forward. Something should be said about the combination of history, literature, and theory. Sitting on the sofa, I heard something from the kitchen and so I stood and made my way into the next room. With my bare feet on the salmon-coloured tile (sitting on the sofa, the morning after, I think that this is a distasteful colour for kitchen tile) I peer down at the cause of the noise. The crowd of people — mothers and fathers with their young children from the daycare next door, one crossing guard, a very tall man strangely well-dressed for this neighbourhood, a small gaggle of high-pitched teenage boys — are gathered in the middle of the intersection. The impatient automobiles, harnessed by the red faces of the drivers, idle and steam, unable to drive through or around so many bodies. What could be the cause? Say the sidewalks, to which any number of individuals in this crowd were aimed, have disappeared. We could say they caved in, for it is not unlikely that the institutional structures of this neighbourhood would be unsound. Say the object around which they gather is another body. We could conclude the subjectivity of the hurt figure has come to an end. An inventory of the room might begin with the little details:
……………………………………………….Campbell’s Soup, puzzle of
……………………………………………….Cards, sympathy
……………………………………………….Maple Syrup, scented candle in
……………………………………………….Tin Tin, figurine of
At my feet, on the salmon-coloured tile, was a small brown paper bag. I nudged it with one toe. Only when the very tall man entered the kitchen to ask “What was that noise?” did I bend down to retrieve the bundle and replace it on the lower shelf of a wooden counter some two feet away. “The potatoes — leapt.” The nose works quickly. The nose will know immediately if time and space, as presently coordinated, will be hospitable. But, and there are some who think this an unfortunate fact, the nose does not have the final say in governance of the body. The students in the class wonder why the professor has fallen silent. The professor, too, wonders about this halt of words. Thought presses on and the next term to appear is —
Author’s Bio
Jessi MacEachern lives in Montréal, QC, where she teaches English literature. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in CAROUSEL, Touch the Donkey, Poetry Is Dead, MuseMedusa, Canthius, PRISM, and CV2. Her debut poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021).
