Featured Prose Writer vol 5 i.2
Paul Allatson
“My Head”
I am standing there, peering through steam and tarnish, when I discover hair. I shave it off. I see skin, reach for the knife, and scrape it away. I boil what is left until the meat lifts from the bone. A soak in bleach produces an object of startling cleanliness.
My discovery, now preserved, deserves some praise, so I take it to my father. “What’s that, a horse?” he asks. My laughter makes my head tremble in my palm.
So I take it to my mother. “What’s that, a bird?” she asks. My head shakes itself in my hand.
Baffled, I take my head into the streets. The crowds ignore it. I am about to take my head to the Museum of Natural History when a passing elbow knocks it to the ground, and a passing foot crushes it into shards.
A suited man stops to ask: “What are those beautiful fragments on the pavement?”
“They are,” I say, “the memories I no longer collect.”
Artist’s Statement
My poetry and prose focus on those small, ostensibly mundane incidents that merit further speculation and manipulation. My work is personal and draws on surrealism and dreamscapes, while talking back to other poets. Those I enjoy enacting dialogues with include Nina Cassian, Rainer Maria Rilke and Roberto Juarroz. There go my hands, severed at the wrist, approaching the blank page.
Bio
Paul Allatson is a cultural critic, writer and academic editor based in Sydney, on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. His poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies and literary outlets in Australia, the UK, and the USA. The above piece comes from a current project entitled “Little Intimacies.”
