Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 4: Autumn 1990

Phyllis Janowitz — So Rare No Others

page 47

Phyllis Janowitz

So Rare No Others

Don imagines he
is like Tom. He is
not like him. Tom has
a job, tractor, two
guns, wife, also a
recreational

vehicle. He is
happy. No one is
unhappy as Don
is unhappy. No,
no one is like Don,
who imagines his

boiled, detachable
collars, plus fours, and
beetle crushers are
au courant: no one
dresses like this this
year — and his clove

cigarettes, the foul
smell of them driving
waiters to search for
fires in wastepaper
baskets while he tokes
puffs and drowses in

a balloon of smoke:
he is one of a
species so rare no
page 48 others are even
endangered. When he was
a child, what deceptions

were practised, what lies
arrived through wires and
tubes to make him feel
so universal?
And yet, so
uncomfortable?

No one has ever
lived so near
extinction
with so little
premonition, so little
idea of it.