Extending Boundaries

George Anderson

1

She wants to know

why he drinks so much

‘Doesn’t it affect your

memory?’ she asks

2

He tells her, ‘I’m trying to

extend the boundaries

of what a poem can or can’t be’

3

‘Sounds like a load of shit to me’

4

He tells her he uses everyday

experiences to delineate

the rhythm and subject

matter of his work

5

‘You mean you get pissed

and stoned and then turn

on the fucking computer?’

6

He tells her not to be so cynical

so elitist in her view

of what contemporary literature

can or can’t be

7

One day she offers to leave him—

‘That’ll give you

something SUBSTANTIAL to

write about for a change!’

8

He explains to her it has been done before

He tells her he is an automatic writer

He composes spontaneously

That he has absolutely no desire to artificially

construct an experience- that is, to have her leave him

‘The act would represent a corruption of the creative process’,

he argues

9

‘DOH! That’s fucken obvious!’ she says

10

She leaves the room

He twists open another beer

and types more words onto the page

He imagines that he is in a public

street flogging a horse but it is

actually a Corolla & he is thrashing

it up a steep embankment & as he throttles it hard

the blood  seeps from a wound in his lungs and he

is reminded of the endless vicissitudes of how

badly his health his writing his life is going