Author: Jim McGhee

We hear crows cawing in the darkness as a spotlight comes up on Jasmine, a young woman, in The Girl and The Crows.  She begins by telling us that “once upon a time” there was a girl who was afraid of crows, dreamed of them, and threw rocks at them to chase them from the cornfield.  She thinks the crows are following her and has nightmares about them coming out of a mirror at her.  Jasmine tells us that the girl was walking down railroad tracks at sunset and heard a train approaching behind her.  We hear the sound of the train as Jasmine tells us that the girl couldn’t tell how fast the train was coming and heard a voice in her head telling her that no one would ever love her.  She stood on the tracks as the train got closer and the whistle blew louder and louder.  (We hear the sounds of the train and the whistle and then a loud flapping noise of wings.)  Jasmine says a crow flew at the girl’s face and buried its claws in her hair.  Jasmines mimes the action of the girl slapping at the crow as it comes back a second and a third time, finally forcing her off the tracks.  Jasmine falls as the train goes by and we hear the sound of the train fading.  The girl, Jasmine, says, looked up at the crow and asked why it kept flying in her face.  The crow asked why the girl threw rocks at them.  The crow tells the girl he didn’t let the train hit her because she was a child and he had children.  The next day the girl went to the cornfield and told the crow she had decided not to throw rocks.  The crow asks if she would like to meet the crow’s children.  The girl stood up with the crow on her shoulder and from that day on, and for the rest of her life, was never afraid of crows.

Ben, in his sixties, speaks to us from his study late at night, surrounded by darkness in Evenings Near Kiev.  He says protestors are being burned alive in Kiev and Gogol has been whispering to him.  Refusing to eat, Gogol has almost finished the second part of Dead Souls, his masterpiece, but he is tormented by “an incredible confusion of voices and visions” that cause him to make things.  Ben says that when he was a teenager, long before he had heard of Gogol, he would write in notebooks for hours and then take the notebooks to the trash barrel and burn them.  Ben goes back to the imagistic effusion of Gogol’s voices and visions and then tells us of Ruskin burning hundreds of erotic drawings of his idol, Turner.  Ben returns to a series of images related to Gogol and then tells us that the wife of the translator and explorer Richard Burton burned thousands of pages of his unpublished manuscripts and journals when he died.  More visions of Gogol precede Ben telling us that Savanarola “made a huge mountain of books and paintings” and burned them as Botticelli cheered him on.  Ben narrates more of Gogol’s nightmarish visions and tells us that Joyce tried to burn the first draft of A Portrait of the Artist but his wife Nora, who could not read, pulled it from the flames.  Ben says the Devil whispered in Gogol’s ear that creation is evil and he must destroy what he loves so the world can’t take it from him.  Gogol throws the manuscript into the fire.  Ben says he sits in an empty house, alone, with his life’s work around him and it all seems a mockery.  Protestors are being killed, set on fire, in Kiev and when he closes his eyes he sees a girl dancing naked for him in front of the mirror.  The stars disappear from the sky as the Devil sneaks towards the moon, burns his fingertips on it, and eats it.

Della, a woman in her forties, speaks to us from a circle of light surrounded by darkness in Fragments.  She tells us she makes dinner for her husband every night, urging him to have more gravy.  She tells us he buys land cheap, digs wells, and sells the land for a profit.  He tells people that the drilling will be “minimally invasive,” a phrase that doesn’t mean anything.  He told his wife that poor people are stupid and don’t read the fine print in a contract.  Della says she looked the other way as the environment was destroyed until her grandchild died.  She says her husband doesn’t talk about it, or anything; he hasn’t been feeling well.  Every night when she feeds him she puts in something special, a little bit of something they inject in those wells.  He is slowly turning yellow and throws up at night.  The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him.  She says she tells him to finish his dinner, that it will make him feel better.  “Have a little more gravy.”

In The Descent of Man a 40-year-old teacher, Maloney, speaks to his high school science class about the school board’s decree that Creationism or intelligent design be added to the curriculum.  He defines Creationism as the theory that a Supreme Being created the universe, an idea with which he assumes they are familiar.  He says that they are less familiar with the principles of science.  He tells them his wife has left him for a “newer and more powerful model,” and, since he has no self-respect whatever, he is going to share what he knows about that grotesque stew of superstition, ignorance and fairy tales called Creationism because he will get fired if he doesn’t.  He explains the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, and theory that seems to explain phenomena until contradictory evidence is discovered and a new hypothesis is suggested and tested.  His example is his observation that people who step in front of charging rhinos tend to get their epiglottis ripped out.  When this hypothesis seems to be confirmed, he says he feels justified in stating The Charging Rhinoceros/Epiglottis theory.  If this theory is contradicted then a new theory is needed.  Religion, on the contrary, tells people what to believe so they don’t have to think.  He tells his students that his ex-wife, Felicity, thinks he wants to get fired and is acting like a child.  But he thinks religion is a desperate retreat into the fantasy world of childhood, while science is a rational way of investigating a universe that is indifferent to our wishes.  He explains that the theory of evolution relies on tiny genetic variations persisting over nearly unimaginable epochs of time.  He says that those who reject evolution believe in the economic survival of the fittest, the so-called Protestant ethic.  He confesses that he has been hearing voices telling him that reason itself is as pathetic, arrogant, and futile as blind faith.  He asks the class if they want to believe in a God “who’s responsible for centuries and centuries and centuries of unspeakable carnage, the relentless slaughter of the innocent, of hunger, grief, unspeakable physical and emotional suffering, severed limbs, eyes gouged out, dead children, grieving mothers, devouring, devouring, devouring . . . . a homicidal maniac.”  He says it is easier to believe in random selection, in an impersonal and meaningless process.  But, since he is required to tell them the story of the world according to the disciples of this homicidal maniac, he will begin at the beginning.  “And the earth was without form and void.  Just like us.”  The lights fade and go out.

The setting for Yeti is a tent on a mountain in the Himalayas at night during a snowstorm.  The face of the speaker, Juliet, 30, is illuminated by the light of a lamp beside her.  We hear wind blowing as she tells us that “it” is out there, stalking them.  One by one the others have disappeared.  She thinks they should not have come to the only place “they” have left.  She says it’s a terrible thing to be where you’re not wanted.  She came here because she wanted to be with him, but she was only a warm body to him.  She says she knew something was following them and when she woke up she was alone.  She wonders if “it” is lonely like her.  She says she was never drawn to men who loved her, only to those with a coldness in their eyes.  She wonders if she has come there to die or because she knew something was waiting for her.  She wonders how long “this pathetic bearlike thing” has been up in the cold and whether its loneliness is like hers.  She says she has a dream in which an avalanche covers her and some lost creature lies on top of her, protecting her.  She wonders if she should invite the creature in.  The lamp flickers and goes out, and in darkness we hear the wind.

The Bogeyman in Lamentations of the Bogeyman speaks to us from the shadows of his unspeakable loneliness, trapped in houses, lurking in the attic.  He says he likes the words to “Stardust” but thinks it is a mistake to sing it too fast.  He wonders how such a song could have been created by a “whorehouse piano player.”  He says the song is about memory and that association leads him to Shelley and his wife who wrote Frankenstein.  He remembers seeing the movie on TV as his babysitter copulated with her “rotten boyfriend.”  He says he is deeply in love with Elsa Lanchester, but she is a shadow, as he is, and he cannot touch her.  He says everyone is made of stardust, “a temporary coagulation of intergalactic dust bunnies.”  He wants to touch somebody and wonders what crime he has committed.  He thinks children are the most terrifying thing because he knows they will never be loved enough, that there will never be any love.  He wonders why people get the comfort of warm flesh while he is trapped.  He says he will fix the bastards by scaring the living crap out of them.  He says he reaches out his claw-like hand to touch “her—(Pause.  Quietly. Sadly.)  Booo.”

In Miss Havisham’s Wedding Cake the protagonist, an old woman in a moth-eaten wedding dress, speaks to us from a circle of light. Referring to Miss Havisham in the third person, the old woman tells us that she was jilted on her wedding day and spends the rest of her life plotting revenge against men, to make them feel that same horrible sense of humiliation and betrayal.  “This,” the old woman says, “is what interests me.”  She tells us how Miss Havisham adopts a pretty little girl and teaches her to break hearts, and then she finds a poor boy that she can have completely in her power and watches the girl, Estelle, torture him for loving her.  The old woman says that, although Miss Havisham feels pleasure and power in watching the boy suffer, her satisfaction in her revenge is hollow, false.  She is trapped and cannot be comforted.  The old woman explains that what really interests her is Miss Havisham’s attempt to stop time by preserving the wedding cake, wearing her wedding dress, changing very little in the house, and setting up an eerie, reversed reenactment of her betrayal and humiliation.  Miss Havisham does this, the old woman, says, because she is an artist, a playwright, like God, trying to conquer time, to triumph against all odds, to redeem the world through art.  But she fails because art does not save us.  It is an attempt at revenge against those who have abandoned and betrayed us.  Art cannot make us happy or comfort us.  It is “just a foul, stinking, moldy wedding cake, crawling with vermin.”  Miss Havisham knows that art and love are lies, that she has not stopped time.  Yet, the old woman says, Dickens, who wrote the novel in which Miss Havisham is trapped, supplied two endings to the story.  In one, the boy goes back to Estelle and she cannot love him so they are both miserable.  In the other, the boy goes back to Estelle, finds that she is lonely and unhappy, and believes that, if he is patient and good and forgiving and loves her with all his heart and soul, then it is remotely possible that she will join him in the mutual delusion of love—a happy ending.  But, the old woman reminds us, this is ridiculous; there are no happy endings.  Miss Havisham cannot throw out the wedding cake because she still loves and grieves, the living image of dementia.  Miss Havisham, the old woman tells us, cuts herself a piece of the rat- and vermin-infested cake and begins to eat.

Mabel in the Woods is narrated by Ben, a tall man in his late fifties, who speaks to us from a study in his house by the woods.  He tells us about Mabel, a cat, remembering her life as a kitten with her mother and two sisters, blissfully happy with the old woman who put out food for her until one day the old woman died and no one put out food any more.  Then a coyote came and the four cats ran off in different directions.  Mabel found shelter in an old log in the woods.  She didn’t know how long she had lived in the woods before an old tomcat appeared and, long after he had left, she gave birth to four kittens, three boys and a girl.  When her kittens were about three weeks old, she found two black boy kittens and allowed them to nurse and join the others.  She gives each of them a name and, Ben tells us, one of the black kittens, Panther, brought them into contact with the tall man by finding the refuse pile where the man threw out edible garbage including chicken wings and pork chops.  Soon, Yellow Cat, Fuzzy, Cookie, Albert, and Louie were eating at the pile, lining up on a log to wait for the tall man.  Mabel stayed hidden but as time passed the man started putting bowls of cat food by the back door of his house.  One day the man came out to work in his yard and left the back door to the garage open.  Four of the cats went in and the man closed the door, trapping, in Mabel’s mind, four of her children.  The man sets up a cage-like device with food and, one by one, traps the other cats.  Mabel deliberately goes into the cage but is let out in the garage where she finds all her children.  The man puts out a long piece of clothesline and the cats learn to play with it.  Eventually the man leaves the screen door to the house open and the cats start exploring.  Then he uses the cage with food and traps each of the cats, taking them away in his car.  Mabel thinks he is going to murder them, one by one, but each evening the man returns with a cat, finally trapping Mabel who had previously bitten his hand.  She is taken to a place full of cages with other dogs and cats and when she wakes up her stomach hurts and some hair has been shaved.  The man takes her back to the house and all seven cats are back together.  One day, Fuzzy lets the man pet him and later Mabel realizes that the man is lonely and together they look out the back window at the woods and one night she lets the man pet her and she chases the clothesline the man offers.  She curls up at his feet and purrs, understanding that she is at home.

In Apologia, a distinguished-looking man in a suit, His Honor, speaks to the audience from a lectern, thanking them for coming so that he can offer his sincerest apologies to the Girl Scouts, goats, cannibals, Millard Fillmore, the people of Finland, roaches, Woosocket, Rhode Island, his mother, cows, cheese, hand puppets, his nose, God, Fox News, and his cat.  He apologizes for apologizing and for not shooting himself in the head with a nail gun.  He says he is sorry for all those who had to sit on their fat asses and listen to this bullshit and asks if they have nothing better to do with their time.  He says he needs a drink and is sure he will see them all tomorrow when he apologizes for whatever he is going to do tonight.  He says he feels better, getting all that off his chest and asks if anyone knows where he can find a prostitute.

As she makes lasagna in her kitchen, Anna Palestrina speaks The Sheep Of Anzi as if to her grandson, Ben, in the summer of 1962.  She says that Agni, the village she lived in in Italy, was up in the mountains near Potenza.  A rich old man got himself the title of Minister of Agriculture for the area and believed that sheep would save Italy.  He offered to pay double the value of any sheep that anyone in the area would buy and raise.  The farmers, to get the money, tried to raise sheep but many fell off the steep mountainsides.  When they learned that the Minister was sending a man to count the sheep so he could figure out how much money each farmer was going to get, the farmers discovered that the whole village had only about one hundred sheep.  They decided to put them all in one herd and move them from farm to farm as the government man walked around the village.  Antonio Maranzona had only one sheep left which he called Guidolina and allowed to sleep in his bed.  The Minister sent his great-nephew Napoleone to make inspection tours of the villages.  Napoleone played the cello and bragged that he had the biggest collection of dried tapeworms in the area.  To make sure Napoleone didn’t notice that the 100 sheep were being moved from farm to farm, the villagers fed him spaghetti and meatballs and home-made wine at every house he stopped at.  They had an old taxidermist stuff some dead sheep to make the herd look bigger.  Things were going well until Napoleone got dizzy and lay down in Marazona’s bed, soon joined by Guidolina.  Napoleone dreamed he was with the mistress of the Chief of Police and began kissing Guidolina, waking up to realize what he was doing and, screaming, ran out of the house and fell down the mountainside.  The sheep program was cancelled; the farmers never got their money.  But the rich old man left money to put up a statue in honor of Napoleone which they put up in front of Marazona’s house.  It resembled Napoleone with his cello and a big rolled-up tapeworm and Guidolina by his side.  Once in a while a half-blind ram who had liked Guidolina would go to the statue, pee on the cello, and then mount the stone sheep.  One day, Anna tells Ben, as she and her father walked past Marazona’s house the ram was on top of the sheep working as hard as he could.  Her father said she should learn the lesson that sheep are just like people, stupid as hell.