LAZARINE

Extradited again to the Land-of-No-Return.
Like an extra on a B-grade horror flick:

Night of the Living Dead. The minor vocation
played-out through no unshakable conviction

or aptness to purpose. Perhaps we didn’t
choose our circumstances, but can stupidity

be survived? Stranded on a hillside in Gaza,
gulping at the hot sky, unable speak their

language; the smell of rotting avocadoes
under the avocado trees. A stranger asks him

why he isn’t dead anymore. Will Palestine be
free? The scriptwriter, wandering aimlessly

among a great many barefoot, in search
of the one just word, has nothing to say.

A camera crew stands idly by, watching the
peddlers, quacks, miracle healers. Their wares

stand as proof of the Modern Epic’s debt
to realism. Or as likely shouted down and

made an exhibit of our disbelief (the shoddy
special effects and flimsier rationale: men,

rising from the dead!) with nothing but
last night’s ratings to save it from the

cutting room floor. But the day after the fact
was already one too many.

By Louis Armand

 

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