Ben Pease

The Wichman wavered. The Wichman gulped. The Wichman went against his word and shuffled into Daphne's apartment across the hall, stumbling over a mess of brown paper mache, nearly bursting through a Prince of Tides movie poster painted over to make it look like Nick Nolte was embracing an increasingly arborescent Barbara Streisand.

“Are you going to continue holding onto that one-hitter until your knuckles turn white?” The Wichman replied by extracting a lighter from his shirtfront pocket and holding a flame to the small tube of metal until his fingers burned.

Daphne led The Wichman into a living room of taxidermy waterfowl, complete with fern and sage thicket, and asked The Wichman to remove the doors from ceiling-high cabinets built into the room. The Wichman enjoyed using his muscles in such dark recesses where a dim orange light saw only his torso, compelling Daphne to recite Rilke. The Wichman, however, jangled about the wire coat hangers and heard instead:

We cannot throw his legendary bread
wisely with kippers and fruit. And yet he's more so
stellar fused with bullion and fromage,
like an amping witch his glaze, nocturnal,

gleaning all its flour. Mother I'd
cure the breast in cold, not dazzle you naked
or mild or thorough. Lake Placid hips and thighs,
two tap dark at the pre-creation fair.

Other guys this home would seem defaced
beneath the train's recent cascade. After, she would
and walnut listen a while. Be astir,

Walnut, for all the boredom of itself,
burp like Ester, forbear Ferris. Nonplussed
the hat does not see you. You must charge your wife.

It sounded to The Wichman that Daphne had lost it. Removing the last of the doors, The Wichman’s strength cut out, and he crashed to the floor as the hinge separated and broke free. Daphne exited with a sort of curtsy, and an overweight bald man stepped out of her bedroom wearing a diaper, plumed wings extended, bristling the fletchings of a gold arrow in his quiver.

The TV flickered on startling The Wichman out of his thinking man pose. He couldn't tell how he got there, if he was beside or outside himself or why every channel had nothing but a black screen and the thrum of a female operatic choir. The Wichman tried to mute the damned thing but the voices rose out of various antique radios he at one time liked to collect. He picked up the phone to complain but the voices were there too. He went to his closet to find a hammer or book suitable for smashing, but the voices came from all directions, filled every appliance in every house and flooded the streets so The Wichman decided he had no choice but to sit back and listen, and he might as well watch too. The Wichman enjoyed staring into the black screen, it reminded him of when the world all at once spoke to him. The screen flashed white, an American Flag flapping in the wind, then the voices in unison broke into speech.

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it The Wichman.

A street sweeper shoots down one side as the cars one by one return to their parking spaces. The voices return to a thrum, cut to the replay from the football game, the ball end over end sailing upwards until it is freeze-framed within the moon, the female choir again compelled to words.

The moon allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets The Wichman speak for itself.

Above the freshly re-parked cars, a red and blue cyclone parallel to the ground rushes through the air. The crowd waiting at the bus stop scatters into nearby bars and shops, those stuck in their cars crouch beneath steering wheels and cover their heads with their hands. The Wichman stands prominent in the middle of the street, looks around dazed, smiles. The far-winged bluebirds sound out from the aviary double helix and cheer The Wichman. The cardinals chip-chip with delight. Drowning the incessant drones of the choir, the birds whirlpool around The Wichman, each cardinal intertwining with a bluebird, filling the street with feathers, blinding the camera until all is again white. The American Flag waves across the screen, and the songs of the birds are stilled in favor of the choir:

The moon does her job
and then stops.
She understands that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the current of The Wichman.

Host: Welcome back to Think Forward in the Morning. Terisa Gedo, what kind of mishmash of the animal kingdom have you prepared for us today?

Gedo: Dinner is over, sweetheart, it’s time
for dessert and a stiff drink.

Host: The Wichman and his crew are less than half an hour from the moon.
What is his mission? Is this meant to be the capstone of his astonishingly- built career?

Gedo:    Forever The Wichman’s beauty is made
            of last moments. The Wichman will flee
            yet The Wichman will stay. The Apollo 11
            lunar module knocked over the flag its crew
            planted there, and The Wichman returns
            so that it may stand again. Man follows
            the earth. Earth follows the universe.
            The universe follows The Wichman.
            The Wichman follows only itself.

Host: What is the significance of this particular flag? Why is it so important for us
as Americans?

Gedo:     The Wichman will eat and The Wichman
             will be eaten. You know the root of patriot
             is patris, father. The Wichman reunites
             the father flag with the mother moon
             who in turn consumes herself until once more
             covered in light. The Wichman drives the flower.
             The Wichman is dark and unfathomable.

Host: Before we went on air, you spoke to me briefly about how this signals a
change for The Wichman, could you elaborate?

Gedo:     Not a change but a consummation.
             Where procreation flares death is lord
             of the dance and The Wichman
             has just put on a new pair of shoes.
             What once grew around The Wichman
             will now shrink away.

Host: What’s that? My producer has informed me the lunar module has touched
down, The Python has landed. Now, here we are live on the moon.