Friday 19 April 2013

'The World Is a Waterloo ' by Kyle Hemmings

When the para para soldiers with almost no cabbage patch punch left, take the last town, Zin & Zeke hide in corners they have never touched. When the para para sergeant yells out, "Come out, boys & girls. Your world is about to end," Zin says to Zeke, "I think somebody went radioactive with a mutation of love." When a young para para soldier finds Zin & Zeke cuddling & shaking in a room of slowly disappearing walls, he will avert his gaze to two glass figurines of ballerinas in the center of the half bombed-out floor. He will drop his para para puff-gun & run his hands over each ballerina, the lips, the outstretched arm, the life balanced on one toe. He will smile with an anguished pleasure. His lower lip will tremble the way it did when he was first dropped into this world or when he learned that the heart of his younger para para brother had only one working valve or when his mother could no longer walk thanks to a headbanger's stray bullet that could never be dislodged. Zin & Zeke will rise then turn to ice sculptures that will not melt in a hot war. Never to dance again. They don't want to be taken alive. The soldier will return to the same spot many years later. He is aged by guilt & war-ravaged memory overload. He will kneel before the Zin & Zeke who once were something so much more than the amnesia of not-moving & he will surrender.

1 comment:

  1. I always love reading your work, Kyle. Fantastic, as always.

    ReplyDelete

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