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Weather Report, With Commentary
By
Andrew S. Taylor, Oct 11, 2009
This morning, the light was cold and mean. Knives rotated at the edges of perception. The fish-tank swarmed with
bolts of molten lead. Family portraits clutched at one another, their teeth bared. A parcel that had arrived at
my doorstep while I slept burst forth in a cluster of vines and thorns. Wasps crawled across the walls like
semicolons of pure, inhuman poison. The coffee maker dripped blood. The ceiling cracked. The telephone coughed
and sputtered. Dark mud seeped through the floor and caked the bottom of my feet.
This was wrong. The weatherman had predicted a good day, sunny and kind. He had predicted warmth and laughter.
There was going to be a festival, a parade, bare feet running through grass, young lovers, lithe bodies on the
beachside. The city was planning on it. There was going to be kite festival. The sky would be filled with a
thousand luminous colors. The plan had called for crystalline blue, sugar and lemonade. Flowers and blossoms
would fly from the smiling mouths of silver dolphins. Sweet rivers from the eyes of children. Luminous music from
swaying trees. The moon would ripen to a bright gold, would land on the beach under the midday sun, would open it
passages and explode with streamers, would fill its orbit with clouds of birds. The golden moon beneath the
golden sun would reveal its love, its circles and magnitudes, and we with our kites and our children would enter
the bright moon and drink from its hidden heart its pure oceans and lush forests, would know its secret peace. We
would pluck the stars and throw them into the ocean and speak with whales and grow fins and breathe water and
watch the clamshells and the oysters and fat-clawed lobsters carry our briefcases into underground volcanoes and
burn them forever. We would press sweet-scented leaves and petals into the pages of books, and fill the libraries
with mirth. We would open the windows of the buildings and bury the plastic and the glass. We would irrigate the
city and float orchids in the streets. There would be butterflies and laughter and life again. We would light
lanterns on the window sill, and sleep in our beds with sand between our toes.
And yet now the morning is wordless, and moonless. The sky is the color of a bloated corpse, and the air as
stubborn as an illiterate cop. Horizontal rain pelts the windows like hard pebbles on a naked brain. Empty
plastic bags commute from corner to corner in malicious spirals of naked lust. Carnivorous umbrellas consume
their human hosts. Lottery tickets, when scratched, reveal the faces of lifelong enemies and scenes of Biblical
carnage. Giant boars with yellow tusks and law degrees rut against rusty fences on destitute city blocks.
Lampreys of despair cling to the slippery ribs of foul-smelling sharks. Language regresses to the sound of mere
foam. Numbers and letters bleed and dissolve, taking the form of talk-show hosts. The mouths of trash cans sing
deeply in unison of their unending slavery. On the corner by an empty fruit-stand, I meet an idiot savant,
sans savant. Vehicles slither. A powerful man addresses the nation and pulls the flesh-mask from his face,
revealing a one-eyed triangular head like the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill. He patiently explains that
resistance is futile. Neon flickers and small animals combust. Millipedes fall from the rooftops. Astronomy is
forgotten forever.
Andrew S. Taylor’s new novella Swamp Angels appears in the anthology Needles & Bones,
recently published by Drollerie Press. His story “The Entropy Room” was published in the May 2009 issue of
decomP. His fiction has also appeared in numerous other publications, including Pindeldyboz, Thieves
Jargon, Mud Luscious, Word Riot, Menda City Review, Ellery Queen, and The Dream People. He lives in
Brooklyn, NYC. His blog can be found at
fablesandriddles.blogspot.com.
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