Tall Tales - David Gairdner

(3 mins)

Tall…

T a l l

-Mayfield is 20 minutes

away oh no.

-The dish washing

Man.

-He will not wait in

this heat.

-slowly wait.

-Do you always wait

slowly

-Quickly waiting.

-Adjective needed

-Impatiently wait

Dish washing

Man waits as I

look for right

adverb.

An adverb may not

be needed.

17 minutes

-The ocean is out there.

-The idea of ocean is here.

Inside.

-No don’t say that.

-Susan Sontag said that she would wait to hear a voice. Words spoken by a stranger in her mind.

-Tall, short…words

-Language breeds itself.

-Masturbaroty?

-No, keep it clean…

-Polite company sitting at the dinner table with friends. Yes friends by don’t push you luck. You want to be invited next year.

-‘Dave, look at your finger nails.’

That is my mother’s voice.

What words emerge, above the dripping keys of Michael’s phone.

‘David, look at your finger nails.’

My mother asks me how I am.

I said I’m doing all right.

My childhood stutter returns.

Words

The mouth reveals the truth in the hesitations.

The mouth reveals the truth the cuticles cut and nails gnawed.

Mother, I’m doing all right.

‘It must be the heat.’ Words told by my mother.

‘A lie agreed upon.’

‘Yes, it must be the heat.’

‘It must be the heat.’

The feeling of being pinned and pressed is solely the heat. We do not talk of the stain, genetic or otherwise. The stutter, the belittle [ing?] self destruction of nail biting are effects of the heat.

Temporary, circumstantial. An inconvenience of summer’s day without a cloud in the sky. They that must be it. Yes that must be it. The eternal reoccurrence of the stammer.