poetsquib.com

(dedicated to victor shklovsky)

a married couple, more habitual than drink drivers, liars, offenders, credit card spenders on today tonight, sit in a restaurant. three courses pass as a mime (at other tables couples can be observed leaning towards each other loquacious and laughing-vine-like). at a fundamental level, the essence of the married couple’s passion lies uneaten in the cold vestiges of  béchamel sauce on their plates. they pay, retreat home, and as they do she remembers to ask, did you take the bins out?  he remembers to ask, did we get any mail? at this unbearable point, we reach into the cringing self-help reaches of time and rediscover a book that was lost indefinitely while waiting for dewey decimal clarification. to cut a long story short it was a long story cut short, updated, foreworded by oprah, and re-released as part of gargantuan books’ nano-classics series. the formalist’s guide to conjugal strangeness. it explains that the familiar can be made strange again but only if the techniques suggested within are not already routine. it advocates tattooing ostranenie on your buttocks, wearing a pirate hook to bed, singing hello dolly while making love, serving fairy bread for dinner, taking a pet sheep for walks along the promenade, turning the tv off, playing russian roulette, having raspberry jelly baths. it concludes by saying that these and many other devices may slow the automatism of love and ultimately turn marriage into art

© meredi o