Alphabetique, 26 Characteristic Fictions
Page 8
There it was: the Satisfactory, the sweetest manufacturing plant of all.
So, it’s not a myth … Z had heard rumors about the Satisfactory all the time from the botanists at the lab, but plants hadn’t been his field.
The turtle slowly nodded its head before it went its horizontal way, motioning toward the top of the ziggurat. Through the half-light sprouted what looked like smokestacks. Z indulged in a bit of zoolatry and took his cue from that leisurely nod. Despite his creaky joints, he seemed to find the energy to climb.
As he ascended higher and higher through the greeny haze, an exhaustion unlike any he had ever known zapped him. Z felt about a zillion years old. He heaved, zlipping and zlopping. Using his last bit of zest to crawl to the zenith, he made it.
There he rested, inspecting the tall greeny columns. They weren’t smokestacks at all. They were welcoming slides, green and inviting as reeds, hollow and cushioned. With a second wind, and ever the scientist, he couldn’t resist experimenting. He slipped into one.
Down he zlid, hollering zyzzyva-a-a-a-a!
Zhud!
He found himself deep in the belly of the Satisfactory.
Light filtered through its living walls.
All around him lay letters, why, they were just like himself—tired and limp from living. The letters zlumped, zprawled, and zlouched in leafy loungers. The Satisfactory served for his fellow letters as his bungalow served for the critters he fostered. It was a spa of rejuvenation, a treehouse-y rest stop where those required to stand all their lives met the pleasure of being sat down and succored by fronds.
Z watched as they loosened and lightened, emancipated, beaming and calm, and he, too, began to beam in response. He thought of how much of his existence he’d spent zinging into place, just like charging into the road to ztop traffic that morning. What if I just didn’t have to zing for a time? he asked himself. He put his observational skills to use. The Ys weren’t yodeling, he noticed, nor were the Xs xylating. The Ws didn’t wassail, the Vs didn’t vibrillate. Neither did the Us ululate, or Ts timbrellate. Inside the Satisfactory, as Z surveyed, Ss needn’t simulate, Rs needn’t roll. He noted that the Qs could quell and the Ps simply be pooped. Os eased their buttons.
All the letters were relaxing.
Z found a spot in an inner lounge in the midst of Ns who had ztopped nudging and Ms who had ztopped merging. A repast was laid on a grassy banquet table near a group of liberated Ls and softly keening Ks. As Jell-O slid down the throats of Js, Is ate ice cream. An H drank a soothing herbal tisane, while a G imbibed ginger tea. An F lay fainting next to a heavy-eyed E. Ds dozed. Here a C quaffed a café au lait; there a B bowed over a bowl of borscht.
An A had fallen asleep with a piece of apple pie almost slipping from a plate. Z caught the plate and put it on a ferny end table. Then he tucked into the zabaglione and drank a glass of Zinfandel.
After his meal, Z, too, took a nap—not for a quick shuteye, but for an immeasurable ztretch of time. A bottomless rest. Z proved the heaviest snoozer of them all, emitting a steady stream of z-z-z-z-zs from his slumber. He slept what seemed a geological age, deep as the core of the earth.
Each layer of sleep returned him to the essential fact of himself. And the longer he slept, the smaller he got … smaller and zmaller until he was just a whit of a letter, a wizp, a fraction of his old being.
When he reached his tiniest essence, he bobbed in place for a while, breathing deeply, and then he began the long, long float up to the surface of waking. He zigged and he zagged, borne on somnolent currents that lightened and glowed until …
Zounds! Wee z was awake at last, renewed and ravenous. As soon as his fresh eyes adjusted, he zoomed to the breakfast bar and devoured a diminutive zucchini muffin. z’s future was in the air, his next life story. What would he become? Plant? Animal? He couldn’t wait to grow into himself.
Even though he was hardly more than a particle, z felt part of a plan—and the fact that the plan would never be revealed to him made him insatiably curious. He revved up his infinitesimal engine of energy, determined to find his new place in the world.
With the zest of the inquisitive, z zoomed past the sleeping letters in the belly of the Satisfactory, toward the green entrance. On the whoosh of an updraft he zipped back up the reed. Zappety-zap, he was airborne! Though he was but a speck, his eyes were sharp—look:
Through the green of the glade lay a sparkling pond.
Inside each of the multitude of drops that made up the pond swam a spangle of a reborn letter. The current carried him toward it, and z dove in—Zplash!—received by a droplet of water. He had slipped back into the alphabet.
Soon z would embody the first word of his next life. What would he pick? Naming my first word, he considered, will be my most original act this lifetime. He lay back to float and consider. Because he had all the time in the world—nothing was hurrying him—he entered a zone of pure choice. Words glided past from zeppelin to zodiac. Perhaps he could choose contemplatively with zen? Make a zany selection? Zombie? Or zedonk? Let passion be my guide! thought he. And at that, z’s word appeared.
Zygote, the infant zoologist decided, the first unit of life—of course! If there was one thing he’d learned at the Satisfactory, it’s that the beginning is always in the end. Zeal sealed his fate.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alphabetique is not only a collaboration between a writer and an illustrator, but between a writer and her editor, and an illustrator and her art director. As a quartet, we moved forward into the music of this book. The first notes of the tales began as poems. Then they transformed into stories, as if from space to time, with the radiant guidance of editor Lara Hinchberger. When the tales became formed in their imagery, CS Richardson, art director and author of the inspired abecedarian novel, The End of the Alphabet, stepped in with a brilliant layout. He then encouraged the visual poems of Kara Kosaka, collages that not only realized the images in the tales, but magically returned the stories to their imaginative source. It was an enchanted intuitive process, one that held us in thrall as it took place, and we all thank each other from the bottoms of our hearts.
Some of the very early verse versions were published in the following literary journals: Barrow Street, Cerise, Margie, Painted Bride Quarterly, PN Review, Poemlemon, Poetry International, Rattle, River Styx, The Southampton Review, and Washington Square. The current versions of “The Poet” and “Q’s Quest” appeared in Poetry. Thank you Kathleen Anderson for representing this book. Thank you Anne Holloway for your copyeditor’s conjuring. Thank you Ruta Liormonas for your steady hand as Alphabetique enters the world. Thanks always to Mike Groden and to Phillis Levin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Molly Peacock is a poet, essayist, and nonfiction writer. Her latest work of nonfiction is The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 She is also the author of the memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece. Her most recent collection of poems is The Second Blush. She serves as the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and as a Contributing Editor to the Literary Review of Canada. One of the creators of New York’s Poetry in Motion program, she co-edited Poetry In Motion: One Hundred Poems From the Subways and Buses. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays, The Private I, and the author of a book about reading poetry, How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle. Widely anthologized, her work appears in The Oxford Book of American Poetry, The Best of the Best American Poetry, and The Best American Essays. A dual citizen of the US and Canada, Molly Peacock is a former New Yorker who makes her home in Toronto with her husband, two cats, and a jam-packed terrace garden. Visit Molly at www.mollypeacock.org.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Kara Kosaka is a designer and illustrator who loves the aesthetic of collage. She holds a BFA in New Media from Ryerson University, where she developed her interest in book cover design; her debut was the cover of Kate Taylor’s award-winning novel, Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen. Kara’s passion for art began a
t an early age, thanks to her mother and the love that she shared with Kara for art in its many forms – from foreign films to art galleries and fabric stores. Kara lives with her husband and daughter in the Greater Vancouver area, where she works for a local art publishing company and is pursuing her next book project. Visit Kara at www.karakosaka.com.