the war reporter paul watson
the war reporter paul watson
and the poet try to have fun
pays the poet a compliment
with the usual boys of summer shooting slapshots like rifles. Puck-scuffed Plexiglas rebounding off Paul’s gaze. The Somalian kid in the chopper crewman’s goggles grins at us. The top of another boy’s head’s been sliced open like an egg, his skull wiped clean inside by bullet fire. The infant’s head twists off its chest, topples from the bed to the warped wood floor. Sand is snow. Let’s go okay? This lighting’s for shit and these damn kids keep knocking my camera. How many hands you have? I have two, you have two but what happened to Paul? Oh well, he was born that way. Just like you were born Inuit and I was born with anxiety. Help him! Help him! Why won’t you help your friend? See that hole in the wall, Dan? Most people notice that and think someone’s been drilling. I see a bullet hole. How fucked is that? Fording flumes of snow indistinguishable from celestial dunes. Wondering who is that man following us? Why don’t we try to find a shaman, Paul? I’ve read the Inuit still believe that shamans can turn themselves into animals, seals and bears. Into other people too. All in the pursuit of exorcising ghosts. An Arctic hare like a newborn standing weirdly upright in the skidoo’s sweeping glare. When the light’s gone, hare’s gone also. Oh, which reminds me, Dan, I’m trying to set up a sled ride with these Inuit hunters. 500 dollars but I’ll pay it, or the Star will I mean. While flakes of snow drift down like dust off the high shelf. Wasted men in doorways let us pass. Graffiti warning, Arctic for life! Because the Internet’s calling for snow tonight, but we’ll try to have fun tomorrow if the weather’s any good.
Two strangers emerging from the Arctic ice. Into the cozy horn of smoke-plumed slums. The older one shouldering the camera asks, How do you do what you do? Some days I can barely lift the phone to my face for a story. My arms quake, voice shakes. See that lone figure gaining on us like Death out of the setting, noonday sun? across this shortcut of the frozen bay? That’s Rex the Inuit sculptor. He carves outside in the wind so granite flecks will flurry away from his lungs. I interviewed him yesterday, and now he walks right past me without saying a word! Maybe I should have bought a walrus tusk off him. Stumbling like a revenant or an alcoholic up the driven, alabaster shore. Past the grounded schooner that used to ferry his kids to school. I really don’t know how you can spend your life in a room speaking to nobody. If only I could live without paychecks, pensions, health insurance and remove myself from the world and write something about myself, for myself—that would take some real courage. But that’s something I’ll never do. Two strangers emerging from the Arctic ice. The stupid one asks, Why can’t you?
Dan O’Brien is a playwright and poet whose work has appeared in The Moth, Malahat Review, Grain and many other periodicals. He lives in Los Angeles.
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