University of Northern Iowa

AnatomyAuthor(s): Christopher BakkenSource: The North American Review, Vol. 292, No. 3/4, The Annual Summer Fiction DoubleIssue (May - Aug., 2007), p. 20Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478899 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The NorthAmerican Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.31 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:21:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

N A R

"You hear me? I should smash you in the face." I fix him in my stare so tight he can't move. "You're such a bad driver," I say. "You'd probably miss."

I make sure I lean over the stretchy-necked microphone. "I'm here to claim my free ham."

"Jesus." The woman behind the counter is startled out of her

magazine. "Do you have photo ID?"

"Yes, I think you'll find everything in order." I hand her my passport.

"Oh." Her eyes narrow at the sight of a tanner me smiling into the camera. "I remember you."

She disappears into the back to, I assume, gather my ham's suitcase.

The sun slides down the oversized windows, dying. If you believed the sky, you would think it was warm outside but it is cold. It is cold as balls.

Through the windows, I see a girl in a pink coat on a mechan ical car pumping her fists and laughing. The man standing next to her is also pumping his fists. It is the same pair from the fire. I see them everywhere. They are so excited about the mechanical car that I feel my head coming apart. My head is coming apart. It will fall off in chunks like wood in fire. The ham lady will emerge and scramble for the phone. Managers will scurry down the aisle from the half-moon room above the cashiers and they will clutch themselves.

I look at my reflection for validation and am surprised at what I see: a small girl in her Great Aunt Sonya's coat whose head is

decidedly intact. I touch my ears, the top of my head. The ham lady returns with a vacuum-sealed mass of pink flesh

that looks like it can't even do a decent grand-jete. "This is it?" I am the kind of person who worries about the

feelings of a puny, dead pig so I soften my tone, but I am not

happy. "Why didn't you just give this to the runner-upV "What runner-up?" She punches in a few keys of the cash

register. "You're the only one who entered."

There is a wordless moment in which we exchange control and she ends up looking smug.

"Oh well." I lean over again. "I claim this free ham." She slides the microphone away from me. "Anything else?" "Yes." I look out the oversized windows, over the heads of the

man and his daughter, to a point beyond my sight where a dachs hund is no doubt chewing the interior of my car, "... some dog food."

On my way home, I park in front of our new/old house. The workers are gone but have left cigarette butts and coffee cups like

place markers on the lawn. The doors we picked pose smartly along the back fence. They will have different shuts and knocks in them. The experience of entering the house through these doors will sound new. I will have to get used to it. The innards of our house are exposed; the bathtub is in the driveway, the sink is on the porch. Everything that is supposed to be inside is outside, but the parts are beginning to look like something: home,

maybe.

CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN

Anatomy

1. The Will

The thing's dull, but ripe with possibility: mouse-gray, possum-tailed, reeking of whiskey, with the natty locks of a desert prophet,

playing its trump, obeying its own harmonics.

Though cozy as the tar in your favorite pipe, it becomes unsettled each time you stop to think.

Pick at it with your nail until it comes loose, like a strangeness scabbed over with some sense,

an oracle husked from its need for the future.

It's the root boring into your jawbone. You'll want another when this one's gone: last codicil, last thing to do, last will.

2. The Pupil

No dark-prowed vessel can cleft its way deeper than this vitriolic black, the last defense

against wonder, void and centerless as doubt.

The view from here is soiled by twaddle: abandoned whitewalls, oil-slicked feathers, and the erratic climate of a northern island.

This yolk is kept pickled in its own clear brine,

lolling in alabaster, bored by circumference, yet even when it quivers the edge holds fast,

though it can bear no perspective on itself, must survive on the inky sustenance,

what evidence it can muster sipping vastness.

3. The Pelvis

Suspended by strings, this mobile's shadow resembles Saturn first, then a broken lyre, and its music is nothing if not inspired,

this harbor for the out-of-body, a terminal port, part aperture, part keel, part contact sport.

Inlet and outlet, all our eggs in one basket.

When submerged in its basin, we play a part the sacrum decrees, hear our own heartbeat

doubled by its several, over-sized ears.

All circuitous tracts find conclusion here.

20 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW May-August 2007

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.31 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:21:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions