The neighbors are outside wrapped in their chemical warfare protective wear
watching Apocalypse Now. Brando is muttering under his breath, “The Horror.
The Horror.” From here, it sounds like he’s saying ‘whorewhore’, the way Conrad
intended his man to. In the baseboards, the cockroaches are making love and eating
one another. They make so little sound; you almost forget they are everywhere.
And will outlast us, the joke goes, along with Keith Richards. The Stones go by
on the street outside singing, ‘we all need someone we can lean on.’ The world
will be over in the blink of an eye, and yet a woman leans into her bathroom tile
cleaning out grout. Somewhere a committee convenes to sell her a better way
of life. She uses a child’s toothbrush and the ‘tsk,tsk,’ of the bristles reminds her
of the backseat of a Sedan in July and a boy whose name she’s forgotten.
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