Douglas Glover (born 14 November 1948)
from La Corriveau (The
Diminished)
I WAKE UP NEXT MORNING in my
rented tourist flat on rue des Ramparts with really terrible headache and a
strange dead man in bed next to me.
First, let me tell you that
nothing like this has ever happened to me before.
In bed with a dead man –
never.
Often they may have seemed
dead. You know – limp, moribund, unimaginative, sleepy or just drunk to the
point of oblivion. But until now I have avoided actual morbidity in my lovers.
I resist an initial impulse
to interpret his sudden and surprising fatality as an implicit critique of our
lovemaking the night before.
To tell the truth I don’t
remember our lovemaking, but the man and I are naked and the sheets are in wild
disarray and I am a bit sore here and there, which leads me to draw certain
embarrassing conclusions.
Embarrassing because I don’t
remember any of this and especially his name or anything else about him.
He is clearly dead and
naked. And a man. Beyond this I know nothing (although with his sinewy
slimness, protuberant eyes and thick lips, he bears a strong resemblance to
Mick Jagger, the man of my dreams).
To tell the truth, it makes
me a little panicky being in bed with a corpse (however handsome) and feeling
that I might be held responsible for him at some point, when in all honesty I
can’t say that I have ever seen him before in my life, though our having had
intimate relations before, and quite possibly after, his demise seems
indubitable. . . .
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