Seacow

Invest In Phil Donahue
Barabosa Auto World
At The Edge Of America

Invest In Phil Donahue

Now he had everything he wanted, he was starting to
regret his great-grandson time traveling back to him and
showering him with predictions. Practicing swinging a
pine baseball bat, worried about his mortality, he took
a sip of glass water and rested on the seawall ledge,
where the lawn curve ended in the ocean. It wouldn’t
be easy, he thought, but whatever his fate would be, it
had to be done. The warm air cooled with the strange
sound of muted garbled trumpets, like a distant, weak
AM radio signal, and his back prickled with sensation.
The bat was tight in his hands as he turned to face
that direction he knew his relation would be appearing.
Soon he would be looking at a tall man in a silver suit,
a twenty foot genie vision from his family’s future.
It had started months ago…the ghostly visits…
out of nowhere, standing next to a flagpole, with
metallic head brushed by Old Glory, the giant spoke,
“Phil Donahue, it is I, Jesus Lord 12, traveling back
in time to your strange era…” At first, Phil had stared
up in wonder at the moving tin foil statue, then he realized
he could turn it to his advantage. He could ask questions
like, “Tell me what I should invest in so I can make a
fortune!” The giant always obeyed his requests and Phil
made hundreds of phonecalls to brokers and bankers
and ended up a millionaire. His riches were beyond limit.
He was the limit! Sometimes he would even be kindly
and warn people of an impending disaster. Tell the airport
not to fly, or warn a small town in Kansas to hide from
the wind. In a sense, Phil Donahue was becoming America’s
God. The TV stations voted him President of the United
States and finally Phil accepted the honor, modestly,
after three times refusing. Nationwide, there were
millions, billions of TV sets tuned to hail Phil Donahue
and his ringing words of prophecy. He had everything
because he could know everything and yet of all the
questions Phil could ask that would get him whatever
he wanted in this life, he was afraid of asking that
ultimate question…“How will I die?” He didn’t want
to know, he had to dispose of the temptation somehow…
What’s it like clubbing a twenty foot tin covered giant
in the kneecap with a baseball bat? Try picturing
arriving in New Jersey on the Hindenburg in 1937.
Phil Donahue’s ashes were piled together along
with some cat hair, slivers of coffee table, carpet fuzz
and seashell shards. The urn was shaped like an
eagle, painted with stripes and stars, colored
red white and blue. Postcards are for sale in
the lobby.




Barabosa Auto World

They were picketing
with their parents so
they would remember
with history what it
was like

Later on,
in school,
turning the pages
through American
Industrialization,
automatically
they would recall
that time
throwing
rocks at cars




At the Edge of America

They were sitting on the flat edge of the land with their legs
dangling over in the coolness of nothing, where all Manifest
Destinies ended and America with nothing left to conquer
slipped off the edge and fell away. They were on the last
standing rock and at their side an orchestra strung fishing
lines of opera out over the abyss. She wanted to show him
this waterfall, where it all ended, because she thought
he’d be interested. But she didn’t feel like him, that losing
a country was losing yourself. She could see it all as history,
America really nothing more than just time and sand that
filled an hourglass for a moment. He watched all things of
America, all of its history, all its brief television moments
pile over the edge…He could see everything from the
beginning: she pointed out the blood ship of Columbus
chasing gold, hundreds of years, people appeared and
were gone…He felt the loss of it as it went underneath.
Then he saw himself, not as himself but as bright
memories. Everything he had known: a purple thunderstorm
with the lightning of summer night, the buzz of airships in
the stars, a game of chase in the tall grass, summers
with oceans, white cold winters, everything spinning away
past him. Seeing the disappearance of all the shadows of
America, himself a part of the fall, that was it and he had
seen enough. He didn’t want to see anymore of America’s
falling, and so she took his hand, led him back to the roped
balloon. He was silent as she untied the lines and they
went the opposite way, as America crashed off the edge
behind him.




writing: allen frost in 1991