Prose Poem by Kim Silva
By Kim Silva
The
pariah grows without limitations; with satin fur and glossy fins, with dark
green veins in the leaves for pushing, for kneading, for making milk flow. Circus
days over. No longer will he jump through hoops of fire. Or seek the favors of
those with long legs and arms and heads that sit like peanuts upon their stems.
All kinds of animals—neighing, barking, scrabbling, snuffling—peacocks’ harsh
cry like claws on bark; crocodiles simmering in a guttural pot of swamp. Pariah’s
natures blend and integrate in his body. He lacks a skin; he lacks a computer
brain. But, his heart beats like footsteps on solid earth. Neighbors shout, their
white teeth flashing, chewing up their lawns to a one-inch carpet. Trees erased
from memory in twenty minutes. Leaves blown and brushed and snorted in white
lines. Butterfly cocoons boiled alive, making soup that giggles in the pot. Animals
gleaming and pink-skinned in the fridge, dripping watery, pale lines of blood
onto the tiled floor. The fox is a bear is a whale was once a lizard. Is a
mountain. Is cold skin like a dynamite-blast. Is a green forest, raped and left for dead. Crippled
scenery like corpses left to rot. The pariah dives from his pot through the
living room window to the outside, towards the driveway, into the bed of rhododendrons.
Splintered glass sparkles like diamonds all over the sleeping street and snoring
lawns. The neighbors fly awake—the pariah; mangy, nasty, ticks, fleas. Rabies! The
community communes—guns, knives, poisoned bait, steel traps. Don’t sleep, watch
out for your pets. The pariah stumbles. His eyes sting. Tall steps; he feints
left and right, through poisoned rivers, over bald forests. Scoops up coyotes
and wolves that tremble behind trees. Using their eyes full of bullets, the neighbors
aim at the creatures. Down go wolves, down go foxes, down go squirrels, possums.
Down go talking rocks, big shots, semen in the cooler, down go grizzlies in
their dens. Arms and legs and fists and spit. Darkness and moisture, poisoned earthworms.
The pariah keeps running, past lazy boys and plywood splinters. The animals tumble
and fall and scatter. The pariah casts a shadow like a long amnesiac, a twilight
nap; picking up each and every hated and feared creature. Tucks them under his
wings, disappears into clouds full of golf balls and missing shoes. A pariah
who is a fox is a bear is a whale is a bird is a pariah. Flying to a gossamer
hole in the sky, which opens like a mouth to swallow them all. And the
carcasses are carried by the living up up up into the split hole of
gossamer silk showing the brilliant blue that lies beyond and all the animals go
through the hole and when it is done the hole closes up and the seam is
seamless. And the streets are left empty and there is no sound to be heard,
except of course for the eternal sound of the blower of leaves.
- Kim Silva is an artist and writer who lives in Providence, Rhode Island. She
graduated with an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design, and with a BFA
in Writing and Painting from Vermont College. She has focused on painting for
years and now prioritizes writing, especially prose poems which are highly
imagistic. She is vegan for the animals. Her writings and artwork have been
highlighted or upcoming in publications such as Gone Lawn, unbroken, MONO
Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Litbreak, Poor Yorick, BarBar,
and others. Nominated for Best of the Net 2023. “The Pariah” was previously published
in the South Florida Poetry Journal, and you can hear Kim reading the work
Here.