Russell Edson (Video)
- I will be reading
- Ape by Russell Edson.
- You haven't finished your ape, said
- mother to father,
- who had monkey hair
- and blood on his whiskers.
- I've had enough monkey, cried father.
- You didn't eat the hands,
- and I went to all the trouble
- to make onion rings
- for its fingers, said mother.
- I'll just nibble on its forehead,
- and then I've had enough, said father.
- I stuffed its nose with garlic,
- just like you like it, said mother.
- Why don't you have the butcher
- cut these apes up?
- You lay the whole thing
- on the table every night;
- the same fractured skull,
- the same singed fur;
- like someone who died horribly.
- These aren't dinners,
- these are post-mortem dissections.
- Try a piece of its gum,
- I've stuffed its mouth with bread,
- said mother.
- Ugh, it looks like a mouthful of vomit.
- How can I bite into its cheek
- with bread spilling out of its mouth?
- cried father.
- Break one of the ears off,
- they're so crispy, said mother.
- I wish to hell you'd put underpants on
- these apes; even a jockstrap,
- screamed father.
- Father, how dare you insinuate
- that I see the ape
- as anything more
- than simple meat, said mother.
- Well, what's with this ribbon
- tied in a bow on its privates?
- screamed father.
- Are you saying that I am in love
- with this vicious creature?
- That I would submit
- my female opening to this brute?
- That after we had love
- on the kitchen floor
- I would put him in the oven,
- after breaking his head
- with a frying pan;
- then serve him to my husband,
- that my husband might eat the evidence
- of my infidelity?
- I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape
- every night, cried father.