Animal, and: Automaton, and: Bruce’s Faith

Animal

Veined question marks of shrimp,legs yanked from a chicken, musselsclattering into the pan after monthsclinging to a sunken rope with whatlooks like quiet desperation. It’s Derby dayand on the radio Bruce hears the callfrom the ’73 Belmont—Secretariatmoving like a tremendous machine.Meat, muscle. Cutting through the darkeyes of a potato, Bruce looks downat his wrinkling hands. Last nighthe dreamed he was commanderof a deadly sub, and killed a spyby spraying her with inkfrom a poison pen. Every murder beginswith a murderous thought. In between,we eat. Bruce longs for a defunct erawhen we roamed savannahs, filthyand amazed, when a gas burner flaringto life would have been as improbableas a dead bird getting unsteadily to its feet,shaking its feathers and flying off—the sort of wondrous sight that led usto religion. Bruce is skepticalabout the soul, but some eveningshe feels a little bow-legged creaturewallowing in the tar pits of his body,some mornings it frees itself and boundsaway in the grass or climbshaltingly to the top of a broad treeand overlooks the burning plainswhere animals run in frightened circles.

Automaton

There goes another mountainsideof trees, mown down by orange rovers

and burned to fuel Bruce’s mouth—an enginedesigned to run forever

like Edison’s fabled bulb,like Takeru Kobayashi,

who downed fifty-seven cow brains once.When Bruce eats a hamburger he can’t stop

picturing the bolt pistol. The Frenchon the other hand fork up blanquette de veau

while lovingly remembering the birth, the Hadron Colliderwhirling below their houses, simulating the vast forces

between Bruce’s ears. The Amish won’t go near it.They believe modern machines

are the devil’s work—probably right. They believethe universe is a spinning wheel of stars

designed to separate the living from the deadlike an Iranian centrifuge. In the future

only the Amish will be famous. The rest of uswill live happily underground, protected

from falling satellites and the ultravioletsky. The sun’s sick furnace roars, agitating every

molecule of Bruce’s body. He spreads his faded lungslike wet wings.

Bruce’s Faith

The secret is to be looking forwardto something beyond Friday night,to the Sunday long run,or sitting in a pew to prayaway two thousand bloody years.Bruce dozes among the sinners,imagining the fun he might have hadwith Sally Wen if he hadn’tbeen such a mouse. He blamesthe hymn for filling his headwith rapture, blames the ministerwho mounts the stage, his hair in shambles,like Kurt Cobain’s might look if hehad been allowed to age.A glowing teenager joins himat the pulpit. She wants them allto like the church on Facebook.She uses Twitter as a metaphorfor prayer. Bruce staresat the shadows of birdspassing over the stained glass,still one piece of evidence away.