Of A Sudden, and: Big Madge, and: Of Our Age

OF A SUDDEN / Larry Kramer In the hills it's never "suddenly," but "of a sudden," as though change were condition born of itself: of a sudden the sky bruises and falls, a man is driven beyond anger, murderous, without other cause. Of a sudden is fate in a stony land, a strict translation from archaic Greek, a way of just sitting in a chair as though possessed of a religion, chair. It's not like believing in God, it's long before that, a Chinese monk couldn't learn it, too restless; anyone our side of history is too late. Remember when there were gods in the furniture, little killer spirits everywhere, and the good ones were almost as bad, spoiled and gorged on blood? That was childhood; now you are free, can believe always there is a cure, that you can change your life suddenly, but here, there, the valley is more acute, the old ones with bodies like warped boards live the river's risings as blinder and blinder mobs of flood; they'd still put their dead away behind the barn if they could, and when they laugh, often, it sounds like a fatal cough. Of a sudden everything happens and nothing; a landscape of despair but not of desperation, the iron hills like hulks of machinery, the bridges with their death rattles—a fine place to come of a Sunday for their bronze pears and apples, but leave far beyond home your nostalgias, lame pities: the spirit white houses are off plumb as you will be; a man waits for you near the bank's extremity, 294 · The Missouri Review almost human, and his pUe of muskmelons are a wealth for your perusal, dirty, big and serious as half-cleaned skulls. Larry Kramer THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 295 BIG MADGE / Larry Kramer What's this like a whale ripped this morning from beneath our feet, and cut into commandments by torches of a sapphire flame?— something we forgot, some deep holding tank with a squat, ugly tower like a submarine. Clasp your hands before you, bow your head and believe, a dumb structure has a soul— That's why it screams as it's disemboweled, that's why the machinery mourns and howls over the smoking ribs of the prey, that's why the workmen curse you like a beast when you get this close. But up comes a trapezoid of flank, to just tip there on the brink, taking half a turn with the big wench, and bucking like a ship fouled on a reef. You couldn't fall back faster from any prophet's wrath or more desire to be crushed out by a purer moment of idea or lust. Let's say it's like a moon, an obscure story in its pitted, time-varnished crust— or any one of the black freedmen hung by the bridge that strutted across this very spot, or just another dozer of modern art like the great sail chunk, Picasso's Song. Well, "Watch your ass here it comes!" Our huffing new red crane roars with its airbrushed nude slouching at the door, and the dirty man in her cab of blood swings it up and over, leaves it kicking 296 · The Missouri Review while even the workmen pause and stare at the iron kite suddenly lighter than this fearsome, summer Missouri air. You wanted a goddess for your acts? Probably one clear-eyed, classically wise— this nude's like those on WWII bombers, her tits are stone age, her lips are pouty, her name, Big Madge, is bold and glossy: she doesn't know anything and doesn't care; that's why we love her, that's why we feel so good when she lowers that huge hunk and lets it crash like big money into the bed of our shuddering, snub-nose truck. Larry Kramer The Missouri Review · 297 OF OUR AGE / Larry Kramer Her ankles cheered the leaves as he watched, her hair The color of coiled anchor rope, their dog Beside her white, cool porcelain to touch. Later along the lawn's blanched edge he heard Her crying and thought the source must...