MiPOesias Magazine

SARAH MANGUSO

Sarah Manguso is the author of two poetry collections: The Captain Lands in Paradise (Alice James Books, 2002) and Siste Viator (Four Way Books, 2006). These pieces are from a collection of very short stories, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, which is forthcoming from McSweeney's Books. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Pratt Institute.

I found myself among uncomfortable people. We took pains to be polite and considerate, but no one told jokes or laughed. One rainy day I stood on the porch and saw, at some distance, one of the other participants walking slowly toward the cabin. It was pouring rain, but she was walking slowly, head down and hunch-shouldered. To show my wicked sense of humor, and hoping finally to break the ice and foment camaraderie, I laughed heartily from my spot on the porch. I assumed the woman would hear me and look up to see I was on her side after all and that we would all be friends, but she didn’t look up. I kept forcing the laughter, assuming she hadn’t heard me. Finally, when she was only a few feet from me, I saw that the side of one of her legs had been mangled in a bad fall, and the rain had been washing the blood from her leg as quickly as it was flowing.

Their partners wait for them on opposite coasts while in the country they become friends, knowing the threat of transgression between them is impossible. They swim together every afternoon, changing clothes demurely under their towels. One night the man tells a story and strokes the woman’s face to illustrate what someone did once. Despite herself she closes her eyes during the touch, and afterward explains to the man and to herself that her response to the touch had been simply a physical reflex. Now they arm wrestle sometimes. The woman feels very close to this man yet does not want sex with him, as he must certainly shrink from the possibility of sex with her. But she feels drawn to the possibility of maybe falling asleep with him, touching hardly at all, waking up together as if something has been consummated.

There is one girl in the nursery I decide I love. I stare at her and try to think of what I should call her. I decide I will call her Benny, and I approach her. “Hi, Benny,” I say. Another girl pipes up. “Her name’s Becky, not Benny,” she informs me. But what she doesn’t know is that I got to within one consonant of the girl’s name just by looking at her.

A friend who performs her songs in nightclubs says she doubts everything but that she is a good performer. I go to her record release party wondering if she’ll be any different from the way she is in life. She runs onto the stage from the back of the club, smiling broadly and making obviously rehearsed gestures. She sings practiced flourishes on the final refrains, and delivers practiced patter between the songs. The audience fears she’ll lose control at any moment and have no idea how to proceed, and when she does lose control toward the end of the set, the audience takes a breath. Finally my friend really is performing! She loses herself in the last few songs, appearing dazed between the pieces, saying a few words if they occur to her. She finishes the set to wild applause. The next day we meet for lunch to talk about the show. I tell her how good the show was after she lost herself, after the rehearsed gestures disappeared. She looks angry and ashamed. Everyone has told her the end of the set was great, but this is only because they’re so mortified to have witnessed her onstage humiliation. The next show will include nothing that is unrehearsed, and soon she will cement her reputation as a great performer.