The Coast of Kansas



Published in Coconut

Scene 1

(Walking through a corn maze)


ELECTRA

According to this pamphlet theres some guy

in Greece who designs these mazes, this years theme:

Your mothers loverchaff or subsidized rye?

ORESTES

According to the bathroom walls, our regime

needs some old-time comeuppance. And Im just

the man for the job. What was that? A scream?

ELECTRA

Every puzzle has its constructive trust.

I think well be fine if we take a left

at the scarecrow and shun the blister rust.

ORESTES

Day after day we fixate on the theft

but let the thief run a thumb through Moms pie

you dont hear that growl? Sharp hooves? Something cleft?




Scene 2

(MINOTAURS lairORESTES and ELECTRA are chained to a wall)


MINOTAUR

And so I says to her I saysif thats

what passes for love in this mad world,

you can have it, sweetheart, this dog

has his bone into the padlock

of the laughing academys door

if you get my drift, and she says

ELECTRA

Who says?

MINOTAUR

Who says? Your Ma says, thats who says.

(Long pauseMINOTAUR flosses his teeth with the end from a ball of thread)

ORESTES

if you get my drift, and she says what?

MINOTAUR

What?

ORESTES

Finish your story.

MINOTAUR

The! End! Satisfied? Happy, now?

Helsinki! That Finnish enough?

(MINOTAURS cell phone ringshe answers)

If you get my drift, and she says

Im Clytemnestra, when I say

jump you say Van freaking Halen  

and I say hold a seconal

I says I got ears, eyes and tusks

that tune your frequency, plus

I nabbed your kids, just like you asked,

so lets cold-cock these cynosures

I says and leave their corpses for gorp.  

(THESEUS and the rebel army break down the door and rescue the kids)


THESEUS

A villain on a traina fierce wolflet

with spywareapple green sunlight  


pods of tourists appear and reappear

there is a blue gittern-player plucking

strings pulled by a melancholy bull

a mother peels the pelt from her enemies


like skin from a tomatoa rock, a pram,

a sharp pair of scissors which a princess  


uses to kill the poet who wrote his dreams

there is a boarded up ghost towngood folks  


gather under a weak street lamp outside

the Palace Saloon as a platoon  


of dead buffalo soldiers march into

the western skya train growlshooves cleft


scraps of verse float across our screenred flags

lift and are kissed by the windthe rebel cell


advancesred-eyeddown a dark labyrinth

towards a padlocked door and boom-boom-boom


here we are, Robespierre.




Scene 3

(ELECTRA, ORESTES and the ghost of AGAMEMNON walk hand-in-hand along the beach on the coast of Kansas)


ELECTRA

Above her left eye was a lightning bolt

AGAMEMNON

shaped scar, the kind you lick for luck, the size

ELECTRA

of a microchip and silver as smolt.

ORESTES

Her hair was yellow, her face was snake eyes,

AGAMEMNON

her breasts were weapons of mass seduction,

ORESTES

her white hands were always wavinggood-bye.

ELECTRA

She rode the waves of self-destruction  

AGAMENON

like a wahine surfing a blue volt.

ORESTES

Hark! I hear the sounds of reproduction!



Epilogue

(The MINOTAUR sits in the soundproof booth)


MINOTAUR

Kalevala! Nokia! Aki Kaurismki!

last updated Tuesday, June 06, 2006 @ 6:00 PM