an old anemic doesn’t have enough iron to scrap even if his blood depends on it
seasonal appetite: a play in five acts
act one:
grizzled hang men have time. custom dictates they pause for a bite to eat in front of the crowd, savoring the flavor of their food while soaking in sobs and sobs and murmurs.
act two:
obscure paralysis falls into a landslide of limbs. the motel’s sign says “vacancy is the effacement of your genitals;” i imagine that the void they’d leave would sparkle pure azure and rebuke our senses, or maybe there’d be a plain vacancy and undifferentiated uniformity through which a rock appears – a radical form of primitive slime.
act three:
the carcass, wrapped in blankets, dreams about the small boy scattered in the field due west – pieces of him sprinkled throughout sprouting dandelions. his jaw breathes like a man whose lungs have inhaled a part of every day, sucking each day till its blue in the face.
act four:
a room full of mirrors; clumps of fur piled on the hay-strewn floor; half of its body is shriveled up, but it’s right hand clamps on her drunk husband’s ear and tells him his own autobiography as his eyes bleed – the blood seeping as invisible as a radio signal. somehow when you look into her husband’s eyes, you can see it reflected in the reflection of your eyes in his.
act five:
the gravity of history opens black holes in the space around your head. the mirrored walls reflect the deadly dilation of space-time for your one good eye. you watch your head elongate and bend in every direction – stretching and narrowing to peaks as it approaches the multiple event horizons. in this wormhole of pain, everything yellows like an autumnal leaf. bones scream in the streams of space, flooding time. the seasonal appetite of your borrowed eye gorges on the black grains of the pixelated you; her drunk husband vainly scratches at his maggoty crotch.
Zach Trebino populates the world with absurdly grotesque performances, plays, and texts. His work has been published in LIGHTHOLE, The Clockwise Cat, MUSES, POPPED, and Black Box Literary Magazine. His performances have been seen in cities throughout the United States, and his plays have been produced by Anam Cara Theatre, Homunculus, Muhlenberg College, and others. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD.