Prose

Ego: Remember it’s an author’s death if you can’t haul this out to the verandah. By cruel and unusual punishment too. This happens when you share your opinions.
 
Id: What gives? I’m just standing here. I think we should mix and match the vintage Alexander McQueen with the Armani jacket, and spice it up with that pair of Patrick Cox, in cadet blue. You were joshing, right?
 
Ego: No, the Christian LaCroix, with the lavender beading. Do I look like I’m laughing? The Automaton Suits should find a sewer and disappear. We’re already in The Last Exit to Brooklyn. It’s already written.
 
Id: Where is it written? This isn’t Yentl. But yes, it’s been written by the Homeboy Prophets. This is another slice of bizarre. Am I in South Park? Is this Angels in America? Or Glee? Yes, Glee.
 
Ego: No, you’re just being your immovable self. Before you go on, I know you’ve got feelings. Hector already talked about this, and subjunctive history, in The History Boys.
 
Id: Holy Milkshakes! You can’t talk to me like this. No, this can’t be a protected illocutionary act. Not in my emotional state. This can’t be real, like when you said you loved me.
 
Ego: Only in your lifetime of retextualising worldviews, and E. M. Forster covered that in Maurice. And my corn-fed cows are prizewinning bullfighters. Sean Penn, you mentioned Sean Penn.
 
Id: No, I said Milk-- okay, I’m going to take one step to the left. Very slowly. And I’m going to take Oscar Wilde with me, along with my mango pudding. All the verbals and pronouns and Belgian pralines too. And I’ll be on my way.
 
Ego: Don’t forget the milkshake. It’s laced with arsenic. It’s the plutonium you should worry about. Don’t forget the milkshake.
 
Id: I wish Vivienne Westwood made neck rings out of titanium. Or toe rings. In pink gold or rhodium. Do you think Rei Kawakubo will use pastels this season?
 
Ego: Right, forget the milkshake. I think my subconscious just skipped a beat, and delivered a nifty dactylic meter, slowly contracting at the end.
 
Id: Like Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”? No, I’m not that good. You could control it though, the way you deliberate over single and double offbeats for something more regular, as contrapuntal. As iamb as I am.
 
Ego: That’s like wearing Manolo Blahniks to Bowery Poetry Club. You can do a scansion of the streetlights too. When they come on in the evening. There’s a method and brilliance to the flickering. Pure cadence.
 
Id: And I’m James Franco playing Ginsberg in Howl. One day, you’ll think yourself into your rising inversions, right through the initial and falling ones. And become me.
 
Ego: Then I’ll really be free, and never need to anticipate where the accents should end up. I’ll safely inhabit the caesura, and I think you and I will actually like it there.


* This piece first appeared in the literary journal "Asymptote".