ALEXANDRIA

by Theodore Worozbyt

 

 

Your request for a renewal has been denied. All analecta must be returned to the Gorgon. Please walk on either lip of the systolic topos. So the signs read, as I took floor numbers from the occupants and pressed square lights the artificial color of forgetting. A caretaker or building engineer wheezed in a mushroom buff jumpsuit. He said: “Insecticide.” I tried to commiserate, though I don’t use it. The others, a couple, seemed to giggle. I smelled hydraulic fluid but the bitter almond smell came through. I wanted to smoke again. They seemed to be giggling. I fleetingly suffered an edge in my left lat. Now my cage is blue. My lips crackled and bled in one lower corner but I abjure, as you claim you do, public gestures, and stood with my lost vellums quietly. Sometimes it takes many tries before the book decides to open. And then the pages aren’t cut and one must return materials in identical condition or face the loss of privileges. It’s dark green in the basement. There is, at the lesson’s end, no tour. Take as exhibit catalogue a rope of onions in your aftereyes. Dr. Egypt, the search you undertake is unforgivable.

 

 

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