GRÁINNE “PAPRIKA” MCGIVENS 

It’s as many people as you could imagine: every color, in all dress, teeming in uncontained newness.

TERRANCE T. IRONS 

It was bluster and birds. It was bluster some sick god made me still to feel, despite the stone surrounding me; and it was birds, shitting. 

PAPRIKA 

No way of knowing how I get to be here. Which luck, which of God’s gifts, allows me a permanent looking glass, free sanctuary, in this green Eden surrounded by mountains of steel.

IRONS

I suspect my body was interred near the Chesapeake Bay, as made quite salient to Clara nearly every harsh morning we had spent together, as well as in plain language and right at the top of my will and bloody testament. 

Then many years later, Clara gone beyond bones, some fooled, dishonorable they had me exhumed. Me—whatever remaining—they cast in stone and dripped out a visage from one of the surviving oils at my estate. And they set me here. 

Likely in thank you for my work: pushing out the reds, connecting the wild canals, building the veins that would bleed life into this nation’s trade. It is true that they did owe me this: clear as glass, my work had an effect: just look at this damn city, all these unknown years later. 

But they placed me here in naive kindness, sycophantically unsound. They did not know I would live again, or near-live, for on into permanent time. And that all of it would be for counting birds. 

PAPRIKA

I’m stuck seeing that which is in front of me. A plane, 150 degrees wide, including my blurring vision at the edges. 

The view itself? A brick walkway, orderly grasses, buildings far taller than I knew to be possible. And as I said, the most beautiful people striding by: every color, every dress, in harmony.

I wish I could see even more. Perhaps if I were to just have the movement of my head. 

IRONS 

I suspect it was The Mooring of the Manifest, the oil they chose to cast my visage from, in which I am now contained in Gorgoned purgatorial unend. For this I do not begrudge. I was in dashing form then; in the oil, sure—that Dutch boy looked as dumb as to swig the paint, his words gargled and skipping, yet his mouth betrayed a steady hand I cannot fault—but also on the day itself, when we cleared the last of the canal’s soil. My cheeks red at the saltwater spray. My hair fair, hanging down near the scabbard at my hip. 

A conqueror: I suppose that’s what they had cast below my statued, stone form. Here was, is, Terrance Irons: capitalist, connector, conqueror. 

PAPRIKA

It ends at the globe-in-orb movement of one’s eyes. I can look up, right, in roving circles, at peripheries. 

But to track a specific beauty—say the fine, active uniform of what must be a soldier in this place (why else would a young man run for so long, in such scandalous fabric, but for country?)—I am lost to lose him when he passes the short span of my eyes. 

I suppose that’s the one hardship, my Tantalus. But, likely, there are worse thirsts and sweeter waters. 

IRONS

That day there was something flightless and worth watching.

I saw a man and a boy, presumably his boy, walking greatly slowly past the right side of the edge of my vision, walking leftwards. 

The man was speaking to the boy behind him without turning:

‍ ‍Burrough, your mom’s always saying to me: ‘Clover, baby, we’re so lucky to ‍ ‍
‍ ‍be here in this city. We made it.’ She’s right, but not all the way. 

Without ability to turn my head, these small patches of walking and conversation are all I could relate.

PAPRIKA

There’s no way of knowing where it is I am, given my visual constraints.   

IRONS

This was of course in New York City’s Central Park. 

This I gathered from the modern people’s clothes (I heart shape New York City), their speech (“Do not go north of Central Park”), and from the sign abreast of the great stone tortoiseshell just to the left of my view: New York, New York, Central Park. Naumburg Bandshell. 

As of which year it was when I saw the boy and the man, I am without number.

PAPRIKA

Despite my constraints, I’m seeing something new on this day. Walking on the left side of my periphery, going rightwards, just there: a boy and man. The pair isn’t strictly new—I have seen many a boy and man, father and son, uncle and nephew, grandfather and grandson, and other permutations of masculine kinship. 

It’s in the way they’re moving, in who they’re soon meeting: this is new.

IRONS

I had visited New York once, in softer flesh. The largest city in the world has since grown itself a steel spine, like a beetle daubed in mercury. It has multiplied, inbreeding in gangling ugliness, like that wretch, that Republican Representative: the Lincoln fellow. 

They let the colored ones walk wherever however now. Otherwise, the city was much the same.

PAPRIKA

The boy is dressed in denim threads so large they balloon behind him. He pulls out a portable box from his watch pocket. The box is illuminated by magics, the size of a deck of player’s cards, but the boy quickly places it back within his pocket at the scowl of his father. Or what I presume is his father. The man is twice the height of the boy. He wears a rather lax about-town suit jacket, white shirt, and black trousers with no tie, overcoat completely missing. Plus, the queerest thing: he has white tubes emanating from the outside of his ear holes. 

I suppose he is hard of hearing, perhaps aging too quickly. Evidence of a breaking mind: he speaks to himself, ignoring the son following closely behind: 

‍ ‍Yes, hello Jimmy, it’s Anthony Taylor from Bechter & Taylor. No, not Tony
‍ ‍anymore: maybe back in college, but no longer, you understand. Right.
‍ ‍Thank you. 

IRONS 

A bird shit on me right then, right as the Burrough boy and his flower-named father walked before me. I had to view the rest of the scene in a white powder cast. This goddamned city. 

PAPRIKA

The father in the about-town suit is surely hard of hearing, like my Da was. He would come home from the school rooms, where he worked into the late, and would wrap me in a great world of a hug. “Paprika,” he would say to me, “remember that you are to learn, just like the boys. The only difference between a man and a woman,” he would say, pointing to my heart, “is this.” I always thought he meant my small frame, thin as a willow, but, years later, after all of the marching and striking and ice cubes resting on my blistered feet, applying salves to bruised faces, drafts written over and again in inkstained labor, I understood he was speaking of more. He was speaking on our inherent prioritization of that which is right, that constant state of unjust unfair which sets this bend upon women: this reflex to struggle toward a kinder world. 

It may be a sin to say it, but I believe that is why I live again. I was brave in my first life, and that’s how I came to be placed here today, cast in bronze. 

IRONS

Through the white shit I saw this Clover fellow. A tall man. Mannish, I ought, for without petticoat or top hat or time piece, what makes a man? Still, he was clad in the basics—an ill-fitting hemp shirt with a hooded cap hanging off him like a sail, coal black; a pair of heavy-looking navy slacks; but, strangely, no jacket or overcoat. His ears he covers in a shanty boy’s cap, oddly, given our placement in the city. 

He had his boy in tow, Burrough. Or, I assume it was his boy, standing at half the height of his father. 

The boy himself was a wretch, in absolute disrepair—no coat, without proper slacks, not even a right-way shirt. His boots were bright, devil red, the tongues licked in cloying gigantisms. His shirt had what looked to be an oriental woman, some dark haired thing out of Indochina, slobbering herself, eyes bugged, and then herself multiplied by the tens and covering all places of his fabric. His trousers terminated at the knee, with some bread-sized, rectangular device bulging from his stitched pocket, capped by red and blue switches. 

PAPRIKA

This Anthony figure is properly dressed and red-whiskered, also like Da was. But I lose my father’s likeness there: this man’s countenance is not a cinnamon candy surprise under his palm, is not putting out the pipe because Ma is heavy with the weight ought'll be Donny Boy, and is not reading my grammar school essays in delight. This man walks forward, steps in front of his son, scowling. 

IRONS

The tall, mannish figure, Clover, spoke to his son behind his knees. 

‍ ‍I mean, Burrough: you have all the world in this one place. It’s the only ‍ ‍
‍ ‍liberal experiment, here in the US, that’s working. Portland: not working.
‍ ‍Chicago: ghetto’d worse than you-know-what, real 1940’s vibes. But New
‍ ‍York City, a Socialist Mayor, and what your mother doesn’t get: all of the‍ ‍
‍ ‍world’s most beautiful people. 

A woman walked by, at this moment. She was dressed and also not: her slacks were so tight around her skin that the fabrics made themselves unknown; in complete contrast to the heavy, hooded shirt covering her torso. Her hair was swinging proud and high, like a horse’s tail. She walked quickly in front of the mannish character and his son. 

‍ ‍And would you look at that? You’re about at that age…

The man calling himself Clover pointed, much to his boy’s embarrassment. 

‍ ‍Or maybe, if you’re gay, which is totally cool, you’re into that. 

I am unsure as to what he referred to here, as several boys, dressed in footballing gear, took off at a jog, entering and exiting quickly through the limited fan of my vision. 

‍ ‍But whatever you’re into, buddy, it’s here. Burrough, are you listening?
‍ ‍You know, this might not make much sense to you right now, but your
‍ ‍mother… she’s, uh, she’s alright. She’s, she’s great, really. God, but what I’d
‍ ‍give to be not so tied down to just her, to just your mother. 

‍ ‍It’s New York City, Burrough. It’s the most beautiful people in the entire
‍ ‍world, gathered together. You’re here, buddy. You’ve made it, and you’re
‍ ‍just at your start. 

‍ ‍God, what I’d do— 

And I lost the rest of it to the man’s turned head.

PAPRIKA

The suited man, Anthony, is still talking loudly, still to seemingly no one. He is saying words I cannot interpret all the way, to people not around him. 

‍ ‍It’s great. Your team has successfully transformed the marshmallows into
‍ ‍all these great shapes, and that victory is entirely on you and your
‍ ‍mouldings team. But the fruited wombs, the patriotic shapes you’re
‍ ‍making: the thing is, these are not selling. It’s a problem with the
‍ ‍branding, Jimmy. Branding. You’re the ‘support our troops’ guys. You’re the
‍ ‍military grenade as childhood confection guys. Every November, come the
‍ ‍11th, your numbers soar. You kill, much like our boys are doing overseas.
‍ ‍Right, God bless them.  

‍ ‍But the trouble is, no one wants to think about America’s heroes on the
‍ ‍other 364 days of the year. 

‍ ‍So that’s where my connection fits, glove-like, I’m telling you. You’ll love
‍ ‍him. You know, and it’s funny, his name’s Jimmy, too. 

And on he goes. Unsure of it, all rabble to me.

IRONS

The Burrough boy heard none of it, and all the well for that. His father, “Clover,” if that’s what the pair of open-loafers and blue-and-black-bed-sheet clothing claimed himself to be, was nothing but a dandy. 

But he was a dandy in a modern way. No lobster on leash or flowers in lapels. This one, he had a paperback novel bulging in one hand; a burning smoking paper, fat and short and rolled unprofessionally, was hanging out from the other hand. His hair and beard were long, but not like mine—it was a neck and head and hair blended into a single, slovenly being. 

I wondered if there is a word for this kind of man-shaped thing.

PAPRIKA

I spot the boy, whose name I do not know, cringing from the overbearing Anthony. 

I can’t understand the meaning of the word emblazoned on the boy’s sporting shirt. It is written in an odd, slanting font I can’t quite make out, though it’s there, simple enough, in King’s English. Succy? Sussy? Supreme. 

I can't make tails on it, but Anthony is still speaking to the air and his boy is priming and prepping himself, righting the lay of his rounded collar, fixing the swoop of his hair. It’s quite a process, being a young man in these modern times in this mystery city, or so I’m seeing. 

IRONS

I found myself disturbed by the boy. Even through the sheen of bird shit, the harem depicted by his clothing was the stuff of—. It was beyond despicable. Damned. 

The boy doesn’t show deference to his wilt of a father. For that, I cannot blame. Burrough pulled at Clover’s back pockets, stopping the father’s already slow gait to a dead stop. 

They spoke. 

‍ ‍What’s up, Burrough? 

‍ ‍That man, in stone. Who is it?

‍ ‍The statue? 

They both looked to me, avoiding my eyes. Afraid. Perhaps they felt me and my elongated life.

‍ ‍Says ‘Terrance’ something. Something about, uhh, ‘crafted key trade
‍ ‍routes, despite claiming native lands.’ Buddy: don’t mind it. He was just‍
‍ ‍some colonizer. You know, maybe you should read this book: The Ethical
Slut. There’s a lot in here you could use. All this stuff I’m saying and
‍ ‍showing you: it’s really important. This is New York City, bud. 

PAPRIKA

“Cinquanta dollari.”

A dago raps its knuckles and clucks and clowns, after money. What else would it be for? All this movement, this effort, it’s a rare thing back in my time. It must only move when there’s money at stake. 

Sorry. It distracts me for just the moment.

The boy pulls at his father’s backside. The man, still telling of marshmallows to no one, turns, doing his scowling, clicking one of the tubes emanating from his ear with the side of his thumb before the two begin to speak. 

‍ ‍What, Richard? 

‍ ‍Well… 

‍ ‍What could possibly be so important?

‍ ‍Well, I wanted to know if you knew who the lady on the statue is. 

‍ ‍Oh, I’m sorry Richard. I didn’t realize she was still alive. Try a proper
‍ ‍tense. 

‍ ‍I mean, who she was? 

Anthony, his jacket still billowing behind him from his previous clicking gait, stops. He gets down on a knee. I’m surprised at the man: the rough-looking cobblestones, surely they would molest someone at his advanced age? Scuff his slacks? 

The man speaks toward his son Richard, but not to him, clicking at his ear tube again. 

‍ ‍One second, Jimmy. Right, no. I know. It’s my boy. Right. Thank you. It’ll
‍ ‍be just the one second. 

The man, still on the knee, briefly turns to me, then back to his son, clicking the ear again. 

You’re smart. Read the nameplate.

‍ ‍The what? 

‍ ‍The little metal description of the sign, below the bust. 

‍ ‍The bust?

‍ ‍Below the statue. Read it to me. 

‍ ‍‘Gráinne “Paprika” McGivens. Educator. Mother. Suffragist. Born in—’ 

‍ ‍We don’t need all the little details of it, sport. We got the facts, now we
‍ ‍can move on to the next priority. See how easy that was? 

‍ ‍I guess. Wh—What did she suffer from? 

‍ ‍You guess? Listen here, Richard. No. Put your phone back in your pocket.
‍ ‍Come on, I’m on a call, let’s make this fast, let’s focus.

‍ ‍Dad, you’re embarrassing me. 

‍ ‍Oh, in front of your friends? 

Are all these people your friends? The man waved his head around, whipping it wildly to and fro, looking to make contact. First, he accosted a woman dressed head to toe in black, like a haunted coal miner:

‍ ‍Is this boy your friend? You know him? 

Then to the dago, whistling:

‍ ‍You hey, yes, you. You know this kid? You friends with this kid? No?

The father quit his theatrics and returned his attention to the boy.

‍ ‍See? No one cares. This is perfect, this leads exactly to my point: Sport:
‍ ‍this is New York City.

‍ ‍[The son does not respond]. 

‍ ‍Is that clocking for you? 

‍ ‍Don’t say clocking.

‍ ‍Richard? Careful. 

‍ ‍Sorry. 

‍ ‍This is New York City. 

‍ ‍Okay, Dad. 

‍ ‍This is New York City. 

‍ ‍Sorry.

‍ ‍Do you know what that means? 

‍ ‍I guess it means, uh, there’s lots of people. 

‍ ‍Yes. Good. And so, what? Let’s lead a horse to water here. 

‍ ‍And so… No one is my friend? 

‍ ‍Yes! Good boy, yes. If I shot you in the head, which I won’t do, I’m just
‍ ‍saying for example’s sake that if I shot you in the head right now, here in
‍ ‍the middle of the sidewalk, you know who would care? 

‍ ‍Um, Mom? 

‍ ‍Non-participant. Bad answer. Try again. 

‍ ‍So, no one? 

‍ ‍Almost. The sanitation team would care, because they’d have to work for
‍ ‍their $22 an hour, for once, to hose you off the concrete. 

‍ ‍[The son does not respond]. 

‍ ‍No, don’t. Don’t get all weepy on me. I’m not going to shoot you in the
‍ ‍head, it was a rhetorical example. Like Aristotle. 

‍ ‍Okay, Dad. 

‍ ‍Okay, Dad, what? 

‍ ‍Okay Dad, ‘I’ll learn, and I’ll do better, and I’ll reach towards future
‍ ‍achievement.’ 

‍ ‍That’s it. That’s what it’s all about. 

And then the man goes back to talking nonsense to the sky, marshmallow this and branding that, walking to the right edge of my eyeline.

IRONS

‍ ‍Burrough: you’re going to start getting these feelings. Funny feelings, like
‍ ‍priming a pump. But they’re not dirty, they’re not bad. In school they’ll
‍ ‍teach you what to do: knock her boots off without knocking her up, or uh,
‍ ‍or him—if that’s what you’re into—dodging the knock-up from a, ugh,
‍ ‍from a disease perspective. But the engineering of it, the physics: that’s no
‍ ‍tough thing. It’s like one of the ahegao anime girls on your shirt, you’ll
‍ ‍make it easy, you’ll solve it. 

At this point I completely lost the tail of the man, the top of the man, the chest of the man. I am not ashamed to say I had a complete lack of understanding of this Clover fellow at this point.

He continued his wasted words, not letting his son speak: 

‍ ‍Here’s what they won’t tell you in school, buddy. Take that feeling and use
‍ ‍it. Use it all up, like it’s going away. Because in a way, it will. 

‍ ‍Bam! You’re slinging it, and next second, Bam! you’re tied down. You're
‍ ‍tied down to Jenna Lane. Or, uh, to James Lane. And you beg, I’m
‍ ‍talking knees—you’ll get that, one day—just for a little open, just to take
‍ ‍the vacuum seal marriage monogamy agreement and just…let her
‍ ‍breathe. Let her ajar. And for you it's both ways, you know. You’re a
‍ ‍generous lover; you’re a leftist; you’re, ugh, an egalitarian intersectional
‍ ‍feminist. Let Jenna/James go and do her/his thing, meet other men or
‍ ‍women out there in the big city, you know, and you’re cool with it, you’re
‍ ‍a good guy, and maybe some nights you catch your own tail, maybe other
‍ ‍nights you smoke a little pot and play Elden Ring. It’s all cool. 

‍ ‍Just think to yourself: I’m Burrough. I’m a fucker. I’m, what, 13? I’m 13
‍ ‍in New York City. Holy god, holy hell.

‍ ‍Just remember where you’re at, bud. Biggest city in the world. Think
‍ ‍about the time you have. Take that burning in your chest and use it,
‍ ‍okay? For me? Get wild in my stead. 

‍ ‍Am I being based? You can tell me. Is this based?

And then this Clover character walked to the far left of my periphery, the black and blue of his ill-fitting garments forming like a bruised sty in the orb of my vision.

PAPRIKA

Then they stop. The scowling, suit-clad Anthony and his sweet Richard, cast like fuzzing phosphenes at the rightside edge of my un-moving vision

IRONS

It was difficult to make out. Had I just my flesh and bones, my curation of movement, natural good form, why: I’d hop off this self-same ledge and investigate! But I was stuck on this damned platform. I couldn’t move my eyes further left to track the pair, but I could listen to what happened next. 

PAPRIKA

I’m at the good fortune of being tilted just a touch toward my right. They could have cast me with my eyes stuck staring down, say at a union contract, or amendment rhetoric, or any of my various publications. And instead of Eden and its beautiful melting pot, it would be all bronze, for all time. But I’m blessed instead to see the park, just at a bit of a skew to the right. Although there is no sure way to know it, I believe they cast me on my feet, signage in hand, striking. 

And with that bust placement, the 150 degrees of my vision blurs just a bit toward my right side edge. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to make out, in the bare confusion of the just-there, two similar-looking figures approach the scowling Anthony and quiet Richard in his “Supreme” shirt. 

Of the two new, approaching forms, one form is much larger than the other. I can’t make out details, other than that the taller of the two is shaded in part black, part blue, the tint and ocean of blueberry wine. The new forms stop in front of Anthony and Richard. They begin to talk. 

IRONS

I was embarrassed to say that this experience was quite difficult to explain, given the fuzzing blur of it all, but I did manage to hear an exchange: the voice of the silly Clover man in the black coat and blue trousers, plus the voice of a new man. 

‍ ‍Tony! You fucker, wow. 

‍ ‍Please, it’s Anthony.  

The voice of the new character was deep, trustworthy. I could not sense this man past the build of his voice, but all the same I felt a kinship.  

PAPRIKA

The black and blue smear, it’s speaking to Anthony. I believe it’s a man. 

‍ ‍Tony, what the hell, wow. I—I can’t believe you’re here. 

He sounds affable and kind. 

Anthony, however, continues to play something of the Scrooge. 

‍ ‍Alan, please— 

‍ ‍—Wow! Shuck shuck shucks. It’s been, what? So long. Are you here
‍ ‍visiting? 

‍ ‍No Alan, I live here. 

IRONS

‍ ‍Un-fuck-ing believable. Mere miles apart for what, three decades? Oh,
‍ ‍and please, it’s actually still Clover. Still. 

“Clover” was shaking and frothing and giddy, the fool.

‍ ‍Still with the nicknames, fine. Yes Clover, Richard and I, we live in
‍ ‍Greenpoint.

‍ ‍Holy fucking GOD. That’s where me and Burrough live! No way you’re
‍ ‍also on West and—

‍ ‍We’re on West and Kent. 

‍ ‍—Kent. Holy Jesus fuck. We’ve been on the same street, all this time. Oh,
‍ ‍shit, want a hit of this?

‍ ‍Clover, please: Richard’s 13. 

‍ ‍Sorry, Tony. Holy fuck, it’s nice to finally meet you little buddy. Oh, wow,
‍ ‍and your Supreme fit? That’s nuts. You’re nuts. Want a hit? 

In his boyishness, in all that was the stupid of him, he forgot to introduce his own youngster to his peer. Embarrassing.

PAPRIKA

The men began discussing their careers. I tune out, opting for the conversation of the smaller figures, of little Richard and his new companion. 

IRONS

The idiot before me, Clover, was some kind of lay-about, someone for whom the reaching that makes us men has long come to its premature zenith. But this new man, this new man with the trusting voice just left of my vision, as if after my soul: he was a man of industry. 

PAPRIKA

The boy, Richard, begins speaking to the smaller form in front of him. 

‍ ‍Hey, Burrough.

IRONS

The little ones, the sharpness of their voices, I must admit they distracted me at the time. I lost the voices of their fathers. 

Burrough, despite his father’s ignorance of him, began to speak to the other little one, as if to a friend. 

‍ ‍Hey, Alex.

Perhaps, I thought, that the two lads knew each other.

PAPRIKA

My little Richard, his domineering father lost in some drivel with the taller form, reaches out to the small character in front of him, perhaps in friendship. 

The small form hands Richard something. He does so quickly. I—I can’t tell quite what the object is at this distance. 

IRONS

This Burrough, he handed something to the other boy without either of the men noticing. 

‍ ‍Zelda’s in there. Take your time.

A new voice appeared to my ears, even smaller. 

‍ ‍Thanks Burrough. I won’t get caught.

PAPRIKA

Richard holds up a rectangular magic box, all aglow, complete with red and blue switches on each end. He beams like I didn’t know he was capable, before placing it cleanly into the back of his denim’s great pockets. 

My heart, however it exists now, swells. 

IRONS

The boys finally got quiet, allowing the men to come to a closing agreement. 

‍ ‍It’s New York. The City. 

‍ ‍It sure is.

PAPRIKA

‍ ‍I mean holy fuck man, we’re in New York, the City. 

‍ ‍We are. 

It sounds final. An agreement, of sorts. 

IRONS

Perhaps there was a handshake, is a handshake. Goodbyes. Walked walking on. Paths finally crossed, crossing. 

GRÁINNE “PAPRIKA” MCGIVENS & TERRANCE T. IRONS 

From my left periphery into my centered sight…

PAPRIKA

From the right-most part of my 150 degree view toward the stronger center of my vision… 

IRONS

I saw the man whose trustworthy voice I had been hearing. 

He was indeed dressed as a man of business: the proper trousers, the shirt, the tie, coat: all he missed was the overcoat and proper cap. 

PAPRIKA

The second man finally takes form before my vision: his blue trousers, comfortable shirt, little logging cap. 

His son is dressed even more strangely than Richard. It. it is something I cannot begin to describe. It is all of these slobbering women? 

It is something I will not describe.

IRONS

The man of business bent down and whispered to his son, who hid something large in the back pocket of his huge work trousers. 

‍ ‍That man? You see that man Richard? 

‍ ‍Yes, his son— 

‍ ‍—Not another word. That man lives in a dream. He believes—just
‍ ‍because he lives here, in the city, on our street, with a wife and a kid
‍ ‍that he has made it in life. He believes he can now settle himself. Lots of
‍ ‍learning for you, today. Let me make this abundantly clear: everything
‍ ‍gets more expensive, everything requires more capital, everything inflates.
‍ ‍That man should have never stopped reaching. The world will soon catch
‍ ‍up to him and he’ll be stuck living in, oh I don’t know— 

‍ ‍—Queens? 

‍ ‍That’s it, sport. You keep that up, and I may just get you that video game
‍ ‍you keep talking about.

PAPRIKA

The new man bends down to his son, putting a large hand over the boy’s offending shirt. 

‍ ‍That fuckin’ guy? Did you get a load of him, Burrough?

‍ ‍Yeah, his kid— 

‍ ‍No need to make excuses for that man, buddy. That man’s doing it all
‍ ‍wrong. His wife left him, and what’s he sitting there talking to me about
‍ ‍all this time? Guess. 

‍ ‍Uh, work? 

‍ ‍Yes! Yup. Yuppers, my dude. This guy’s talking all about work, when he
‍ ‍could be slinging it. I mean slinging it, to whoever. He’s still young! He’s
‍ ‍good looking, but what’s he doing with it? Nothing. You want a hit of
‍ ‍this? 

‍ ‍No thanks, Dad. 

‍ ‍Anyways. Guy lives in New York City, surrounded by women or men or
‍ ‍fuckin’ kangaroos, you know, I mean, I don’t judge, and all he’s doing is
‍ ‍just working. Crazy. 

‍ ‍Yeah. I guess.

‍ ‍It is. Now come on, your mom called like 14 times. She’s gonna be pissed.

IRONS

Intelligent. Resourceful. Forward-seeking.

PAPRIKA

It’s good this man is so focused on the equal building up of his home. In his modern ways, I of course can’t comprehend all of it, but he seems to prioritize communication with his wife and prepares his son to be a future husband. This man sees his wife as a true equal and his son as a counted confidant. 

The son to become the father. And him to mould his own sonned self. And on. 

Wise. Thankful. Forward-thinking. 

IRONS

It makes me glad to witness, truly. The modern man is still focused on the good and the practical thing.

PAPRIKA

I am quite moved by the entire scene, and so, focusing on a dotted ledger within my head, counting lines on imaginary fingers, I draft the following verse: 

It’s young boy and man, to time. 
It is timed till modern. My knowing not what, 
nor when, but being just here. 
As if my life just stopped,
naturally, 
only to ring back in thimble-flicked bronze, 
in contending cloud, still sensate. 
Dreamers, drummers, soldiers, what weapons: 
all perceivable and before me. 

Just take them at the two: 
See the man, son’s hand reached for 
pointing, mouthing the names of 
the birds his Da could not know: 
Eastern flutter. Yellow warbler. Northern Cardinal. 
‍ ‍
The son is too old for derry-do games, 
his learnings already advancing my own, naturally, 
and him one day statued to watch the self-same 
all of it, the knowledge growing, 
students now grammar school’ed till 25, 
to these things passing me, passing us three, 
as so many steps in eyelash iterations: 
Clip. Till. Clip. He. Clip. Slows. Clip. Too.

IRONS

 Now if one of the indentured would get this shit out of my eye. 
‍ ‍