Fall 2009, #16
       "Woodchuck vs. the Hank Williams Zombie"
HOT #16 FILMS HOME PAGE

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ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF DYING BODIES*

     by Kimberly Ruth

*Title appropriated from Albert Einstein’s essay “On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” which introduced his theory of special relativity.

CONSQUENCE ONE

It is titled War Execution. His face is contorted with one eye shut and the other only half- so, like a broken window stuck ajar, yet he stands straight, shoulders down, hands behind his back. If they are tied, I do not know. He is young, in his twenties, maybe, and a gun is pressed against his head. FLASH. Capture iniquity. FLASH. Expose truth. FLASH.

The moment the shutter is released: visible light is reflected from the objects in the camera’s field of view: an objective moment of brutality

until a man with a red, white, and blue pin breathes a sigh of relief.

 

CONSEQUENCE TWO

What if it were now, as they thought it was then,
when the earth was still flat and you
could walk around barefoot, with unpolished
toes and teased hair. But, the force is too strong,

when the yellow lines become invisible and
when there is no place beautiful left to go,

that she who stands still will fall
faster than she who just came back
from getting her hair cut.

 

CONSEQUENCE THREE

The streets were empty, grey, except for a few red boots churning up droplets of water on the wet street. The man already knew the ending, without ever having seen it. Everyone did. It was that story about that bad man who brainwashed a whole country, and some other countries, to believe that one type of person, and some other types of people, were not worth living. So, the man yawned and went to bed. The wife sobbed, feeling a new connection to the past through a woman who was not worth living. She remained on the couch as she watched the characters move backwards, under her control, to the first love scene, or, maybe it was the last.

CONSEQUENCE FOUR

“Seven confirmed cases
and seventeen more awaiting
confirmation,” says someone.

”By comparison, last January
there were only five
suicides in the Army”

the voice continued because
the clock on the wall was ticking
faster than the watches of those

falling from the sky.

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