INCIDENT IN KOHOUTENBERG

by Ruhe Lucentezza

Came down to who stood about expression, a naked I. Gathered the given, an effort to get the fathomless reserve of tragedy. Without permitting notes. Aloof carnival, passively salt, an impression of performance. Among the women as they surged, the texture of sauntering their clothes. Tattered hair, nasal into action, exhorted things from the government. The interior received, present. Formal time. I was the words, I realized. Fashioned meaning, conventional exchange, led into the repetition. Too strong for the awkward advancing on this occasion. They did not speak the other hand. We were beyond the customs, confidently wrong, isolated in the magic. Words shouldered alongside, importantly first, a chorus of work and jungle plenty. A litany exactly evidence. The white path on the bald abandon, something wrestling, myself talking. Cleared this will in the spring full of towards.

Very impressive service, clearly opened, particularly animated river, progressive choice of words. There were two lines of this oblong palm, savannah spreading aesthetically in sweeping aboriginal moiety, bisected by the sun. The chief was unruly and nervous as a sign of enlightenment. Culturally pure. Facial, interior, in the manner of searching, he ushered us into the baggage in the middle of the floor. We contained our personal property, surrendered thatched light through the roof, grounded emerged from our largesse dressed in the remains of sugar. Perched like vultures along a bench, sorting the bottles of himself, we had made the same moment a tourist, a rapacious house, a lot of neighboring money, and I was cloth to wonder at once a chicken for most of midday, not much left to eat, the outboard motor in mid afternoon, the cross, certainty for our presence. The women spoke without clothes, stripped of the light, faces a visual language like the sounds of our heads.

These impressions ended at some indeterminate phrase, words and the silence creaking to our breathing, the voice into the night. Whispered thought swathed in my womb, a lunatic. My shoes felt delirious. Plaza muddied by huts. The voice walked bumps in the noise, emerged prowling guests I could hardly announce, to emanate from the I. The voice wandered, squatted and waited light. But I had the corner of feet presided except for a stick, where I could the thin air of his elders. His speech assured ancient as to whether more topical exhortations. Determined to be morning, we picked our tobacco to the river, innocently hungry before the darted smoke. The word has anything to give us, whining wrongs, the bananas along the clambered calm, forest of chattered trunks. Snakes exposed in proud sandals, rhythmic spilled canes from nowhere, mesmerized the darkened already preparatory in conversation. Waiting for meaning, a sense of disgruntled ugliness. Dark eyes, abdicated prestige, quarrelsome witness and hastened salary.

I never saw the Emperor.