Let Us Consider

Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....

Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in
vanity....

Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
dessert served himself a chilled fedora....

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Let there be a God as large as a sunlamp to laugh his heat at you.

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from “The Octoroon” by Albery Allson Whitman

18

These creatures of the languid Orient,—
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I
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I.
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Pro Femina by Carolyn Kizer

ONE
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