Sport 26: Autumn 2001
Kate Camp — On making people amputees
Kate Camp
On making people amputees
On the bus the simple man
was asking questions.
Do you have a mother?
he asked the tracksuit girl.
Everyone
has a mother
she said and it was a
reprimand
with which we all silently
agreed.
Why do trains have brakes?
he asked the driver.
So they don't go right through
buildings.
Outside was a red-faced man
with his trousers tucked into his socks
on the back of his bike his jacket
flapped like the jacket of a man back
from the war, a jacket without an arm
in it.
I read your story last night and it made me cry
but having already applied
substantial and unfamiliar eyeshadow
I ran and caught the teardrops with a tissue.
There are twenty-eight tears in the average cry
but there weren't quite as many as that.
After we had been to spill food on our nice
clothes we made some jokes about making people
amputees as in the case
where a story might benefit from judicious
pruning. It is no surprise then that I dreamed of wild
storms at the beach house and of the dog
that only part of my brain knows is dead
and how worried I was not remembering
what I'd done
with her.
I never see her now.
It's amazing
with what little regularity
you run into the dead
in town or just
around, they are different
from other people
in that way.