NATALIE KNIGHT

ARCHIPELAGOS (EXCERPTS FROM A NOVEL)

PREFACE
I.
II.
III.
IV. LETTER, FOUND AFTER MANY YEARS, IN THE MUD
V.
VI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

Filling the rapture with an unheard of pulse. A bugle cries. Sixteen fillings in a metal casket, thirteen flies and a twisp. Banff cries loudly. Should we reconsider the messenger to the gods? Have they all fallen snow? Have we kissed them.

An Hawaiian archipelagos. Sixteen feet under desires in the red-rocked choral. Shot the foot further. Swimming through and on the table dried seaweed. I called you far further, father. I called you yesterday –break it— (into)

Little dots on the radar. Moving through the clouds. Outer space our backs to it, enter the atmosphere. From here it looks tranquil, so many quiet lagoons. Our wretched wrenching will says go Zeus, you ruin it all with knowledge your sight. Ah well. What's done is done.

Enter new cast. Caricature of inhabitants. The foliage. The father. The mythic language –

On Sunday there is little time for forgottenments. Bewilderment is better. Don't let in description, this archipelagos is serene. Enter the domesticulating orating, the pronouncements, fillings and metal caskets. Enter our blunders and minis. Refer to Zeus in black.

Sun black sun is constant. Reminder of the artificial storyline. Presented graphs in CEO headquarters, it is incredibly, ours. Relief. Ownership, the red-rock choraled chorus drowned beyond.

The form (into) the willed (beyond) the hopeful.

I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, the seashore looked beautiful from such a distance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I.

 

The kidnapped man has great respect for the hospitality of the country. Enough of a belly to notice when times are rough; they only want to promote peace and satisfaction.

I couldn't look backwards. There are guns growing out of our bones. I couldn't understand their wishes any more than the plants. This was a strange planet. Enough belly to notice how many days since the last ship left, the last meal on a wooden floor. We're all Astorians now, they said to me.

I pulled myself off the carpet. I pulled myself off the canopy floor. I was here because there was a trail that led towards endless possibilities lined with the red flowers of the impossible magnolia. They liked the way the word sounded so we landed here. I had my own mission.

Can't you hear the explosions in the distance? That was just the sound of the last engine. A sound signified eight days. It took that long to reach forward and wake up. My arm was certainly broken. The gun poked out sideways. Things like this only happen when people get clumsy, they'd told me that already. This had been the most precise hour, the result of all planning. I couldn't believe their perspective, so went looking for the red magnolia.

I carefully arranged my vocal chords and imagined a rapid flight above the canopy. Screeches become a conduit for imagination. Birds and other things before you. Would gifts be passed across increasingly permanent edges, a cup or feather or piece of snow.

How much time passed. Underhand, one-and-a-half thousand days melted. Banff's screams died in the distance. What further father was I searching for, I'd forgotten. Today wasn't Sunday so memories must wait. I waited for a gap between expectation and occurrence.

Waking from a tall dream of cold forests. I could be lying on the carpet. Sculptures were visible in the distance, elegant and unnecessary ways to beckon us toward the horizon. A cool wet black sun hung closely and stuck to my fingers. Sixteen magnolia petals drifting, headquarters and tables away, dried seaweed and a coded recklessness was enough to stand still or move forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.

 

When did we ever think we'd free ourselves from all this pretty stuff. The words that are killing are mostly hard to spell. And what corrodes us is seeming beauty. I'm sure there is a possible.

Always imploding a statistic to seal something to, autonomous centers. Lack of discretion. Did you know what was said in our absence? This is an apostrophe: one shouldn't even identify with oneself.

Troops stop to tell us this is a wide net towards freedom. There are others the world over. In the barracks and factories fifty feet forever. What corrodes us is seeming beauty.

He could go back to film the fall of goats. Yet we are victims of variation. I flaunt my worn legs, I write all of this down. Testimony is an impossible dream. Elastic geography of the imagination.

Outside the corridor you could hear people yelling. It was colloquial, like listening to a story in armchairs. Difference of hearing and listening, to pay to attend the event. A vessel for soundwaves to lap through, you are always within the corridor as well as without. One is either in the armchair telling the story or in the armchair hearing it, always both.

Don't worry, I'll smile at you even if your extremities bleed through the concrete city. I'll aim the smile at least.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III.

 

These interesting questions crowd the house. What house, I want to hold you, to kiss you, don't have time for that now. We dress like students. In the apparatus of dreams only certain old men have the privilege of burning furnaces, feeling wise in the flames. An inappropriate mode of questioning, a thousand Germanies and only the same distance to execution. Social approval and sodden hands.

There were fourteen wishes for a stop. You hung your head. We swung into the jungle searching for the bleeding magnolia, we swung in twos and fours like the rhythm of the moon. The incredible lightness of the task before them. Who dated this. Who got here. Who answers our questions towards the wreckage of our plane. How have we landed. How many, how much.

There were as many hopefuls as regrets. As an answer to the rewritten verb, we sat still and pondered. The ponds went dry. Ninety-nine hills mounded in their vision, there was just one more planet to end by. It was all about, well, everything. It was all about anything. It all bled through their maps in shapes that resembled the food they missed most from home. Mostly there was absence, new, nostalgia, mysticism. And what you always wanted: adventure.

How come they insist on maintaining the same nautical course, their starchart took them west when they threw the farewell party and said, 'lead me onward to the unknown, upwards.' In the astral chart certain directions might be found inconsistent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IV. LETTER, FOUND AFTER MANY YEARS, IN THE MUD

 

I can hear their whispers like stories from the back of the head, they are translucent and opaque too. In their language direct contradiction meant nothing because it was only a playful word like unicorn. When you get to the field hang a left and stare straight out to where you'd insert the horizon line. Here you're hard pressed to find any sure and reassuring distinctions. Keep it in mind, Franz, as you wander through, this jungle will not lend itself to your blue backpack or red one. This is not just language here, the red magnolia is not your wistful metaphor. We are finding quite often a place that grows but does not cut. Can you imagine that? Don't bring separation with you, don't bring anything. Bring everything you need which is. Start it and keep going or don't believe that there is a segregation, you'll never get there; red magnolia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

V.

 

The window reflected no one. Where was I? Couldn't it be here. He'd told me to take this turn off, the sails were down and the fog was up. Soldiers get antsy and the messages from the top had been delivered. We knew what we had to do which was don't get lost. Except that was just a joke they said at the beginning. It was irresistible. I will always love pollen.

We made declarations of flag colors and planted posts for finality. We erected structures and posted sentries. There were military jeeps brought in from the future to keep it all up to date. The women and the men. The children. From certain points of view it was prosperous especially with efficient harvest. The young boys with rotten bones died off quickly or were exterminated, there hadn't been a rotten birth in years. Large words and larger heart attacks were invented. Up one down one.

Staircases grew out of the carpet and canopy, it provided a similarly useful relationship to the vertical axis. In all these years I'd never seen or heard from them but still we persisted. It couldn't have been much farther. So the staircases grew up into the canopy and made intricate starred patterns through the lattices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VI.

 

                    We called
         home once they
                   discovered water,
   or something called
   fluid, something we
     didn't have a word
                               for. It was out of place
                      with our
             expectations.
                        Out of the corner
                                    of Franz's eye
     we developed into
      a string of islands
                                    and then invented
                                    isolation.