{"id":5019,"date":"2014-12-15T14:50:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T14:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:45","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:45","slug":"down-by-swansea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/down-by-swansea\/","title":{"rendered":"Down By Swansea"},"content":{"rendered":"

a play<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

SCENE<\/h2>\n

[describe waking town] <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nI am one missus, and she’s another. We keep the high secrets of the town to ourselves. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nIn the summer it’s packed with tourists. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nIn the winter its cold as ashes. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nEmpty as a milkbottle. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nI like the winter sea. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nAll the cheap establishments jammed with commerce. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nSo little to do but keep our secrets from ourselves. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nThere’s Timmy. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nAnd Billy. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nMy Marjorie and Alex. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nAnd Doris and Alice my blessed twins. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nAll the boys and girls in their goings and comings tumble about the town today as everyday. All alive and alone in the holiday sun. All the boys and girls…. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nAnd my Shawn. [pause] <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nI never saw such a beautiful boy. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nAnd there he is in the front door now. [Light appears on an empty doorframe.] <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nMind yourself; you’ll bake red as a roast, your nose fat as a radish and your armpits still pale. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nAw, Mom. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nFinn, who is in the stodgy process of owning half the sleepy seaside town— from the sky-stretching white of the sleepy church steeple to the rotted docks snoring in the deep blacks of the ocean water— keeps a canary by her bed by her window to sing her asleep and awake. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nPip, pipe! Oh, it runs like a zipper up and down my spine. Pip, pipe! By the grace of God, I can hear it in my own house plain as the telephone. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nPip, pipe! The mean spitting chatter that pings from the shrunken golf ball of its chest! I mean…. I’d sooner believe an oak exploding from a pea. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nMy little Shawn himself is attached to the wretched thing, for the sake of throwing rocks. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nHe dawdles to a stop under the sill. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nHe imagines the lilac skull in his hands. He examines the eyesocket and all the orbiting, rayed lines of its empty sight. He tries on the bone wings skinney as widow Maggie’s spinsterish fingers, and takes a quick, panicked flight around the room with the uncaged bird. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nThat wild boy. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nThat dear chimp. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nFlying a skeleton around my good sitting room! <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\n[correcting] Flapping the white hollow bones himself. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nThat wild boy. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nThat dear chimp. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\n…Babystrollers ominous as whirlybirds on the dank planks of the warped boardwalk resound to the strong march of his eleven-year-old heart. In the silk ash rags of dawn, floating on the female sea, Benny the town bounceabout is jogging against the light for the recuperating sake of his heart and thighs. He pauses on the thundering boardwalk to salute Shawn in his Raider’s cap while last night’s date still lies topseyturvey in his bungalow bed. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nOver the dunes and down to the receiving sea progresses young Shawn, all cartilidge and sneakers, with his battlescarred knee— flips round the wide corpse of a dog examined on elbows all yesterday, curls across the scolding seashelf of small speckled rocks, talking in washes, leaps conspicuous spikes of dunegrasses, bristling in swishes on the white spine of the continent, and, removing carefully the blood dot of his red Raiders cap, tumbles sunlovingly into the blue mutable surf. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nThat’s how Shawn walked in the acres of his knowing. His eye was as tall as the clouds in the sky; and sweet and simple were his curses and wishes. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nLook at me. I’m a rum-runner smuggler that has come to this pirate’s cove with a tasty blade in my teeth. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nHe emerges from the surf. <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nARRGblabbldiiigrrrrahhhh!!!!<\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nShawn arranges the whirls in a winking pond full of the ghostly bodies of jellyfish panting beneath the swirled surface flaming in glitters. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nGhost! It’s a ghost. <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nThe creepy spirit of dead Mr Finches. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nThe scolding schoolmaster of the ill-educated town drawn to a study of stamps and empty seashells. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nPassed away with his snoot in his books. He bends like a weary reed, quiet as an indian ambush, and glares like the sun into the tidalpool full of stones and blotched coral. He paddles the water with his coin-enjoying palm ready to buy Tony Andagili’s icicle licks with the warm quarter his mom had outfitted him with among the hydrangeas at breakfast. Wet sands slither through his fingers and a sandy cloud opens under the smoked glass. And the pinkeyed jellyfish squishes past his angry hand and pumps into a little dark hole small as a pupil in skirted distress. Shawn is tired of playing with ghosts and turns tiredly away from the opaque pond. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nO I am a pirate that’ll slit your gizzard! <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nHe shouts, running like an alleycat to where Timothy Turves is whistling through grassblades in the windy lee of the bluff. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nI am a pirate that’ll slit your gizzard! <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nOh. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nPrepare for a doom of ferret’s teeth and shark’s gullets. <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nI am prepared for my doom. <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nMarch to the plank. [Timmy marches to the nearest rock] <\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/strong>
\nNo, that rock. That rock. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nTimothy scissors his yellow arms in the air, balletstepping to the flat rock that’s the plank in his duck jacket. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nHe believes in the eternal veracity of his demise. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nHis head is full of cowboys and heroes. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nSamurais and sixshooters and noble endings. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nHe stands prepared. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nHe totters on the rock. <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nhis hands go out before him. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nHis heart full of death, he hops in the water. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nDead as a doornail. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nExtinguished as matches. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nBut like a seabird he gets up. <\/p>\n

TIMMY<\/strong>
\nARRBLBBLLRR! <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nHe shakes his head like a fish. [pause, the boys pantomime burying treasure] <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nBoys bury treasure. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nAnd dig it up in the dark. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nPatrick Kinney and me in the nude snow past the harvest hills and farmers asleep in their coats, milking the moon-bellies of splaylegged cows, spent a heated evening in the blank, snowwhite, snowblind night of my first, and most silent, marriage. God, in the toasty loaves of his arms I felt somehow loved and listened to at once. He chest roared and rolled and yearned like a furnace while his sparking eyes stared and smiled under muddy brows thick as cigars under the star-stabbed sugar-dome of the seasprayed night sky swirling above midges and winter and our soldered embrace hid in the quiet dark of the bed. On that syrupy evening, above green thistles and below the timed departures of the sobbing stars, making one by one their queued exits, was the sweet sodden lump of my Shawn conceived. Time stabbed and passed. Patrick Kinney knew the child was made that night, that that was the night of creation. Dandelions and frostbite, whispers and kittens, the years themselves came rolling in and out and I heard not a word from that travelling man. Shawn’s shape by that time had changed and he’d grown into a fine young thing. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nThey rose to race on bicycles humming down to the drumming boardwalk. They were caught, for a moment, with the wheels and spokes like spiders, in the amber sunset before I lost sight of them. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nThey leapt, my Timmy and your Shawn, about the rocks all afternoon being pirates and werewolves as the sun fell in blazing licks and they ate their jam sandwiches. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nThey bulled about the foxtails in the tarry marsh and practiced their howls for the moon. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nWhich one grew fur? <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nWhich one got big teeth? <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nDid their snouts stretch out long as foxes’? <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nDid their child’s ears tuft? <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nPads harden over their palms? <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nDid their hearts shift in their ribs? <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nDid their howling bring down the moon? <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nYes yes yes. All the magic happened. The crabs creeped sideways from the sea; they cooed to the moon as sister and mother, low and fat in the rum-black sky of summer. Their swift claws knew the sin of blood, and sandpipers and infants dripped from their fangs. The moonlight on the snow frail as eggshells. <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nOr ashes. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nAnd pale and yellow as eyes, she listened to the high wild cries of their hearts. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nBut soon enough they all tumbled exhausted to home and their warm human beds after supper.<\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nAnd there is Shawn’s burrow under the burying dark, under the burning sun, in the grave ground by the park where my people are. <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nThe boys have come running over hills bunched as mittens, hunched against winds and wails and schoolmasters’ ghosts. And against the slap and sigh of the sea which buries us all they are hunched. In their shivvering boyskins bluecold under blankets they watch the clouds change shapes as they fall asleep. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nImagine my Shawn while the moon’s winking bone is still flying over marshes and midges, indulging our wishes, and the deep sea cradles up to the shore. Imagine my Shawn, boneweary eleven, closing his skyhigh eyes on the couches of heaven— after a day full of mysteries and spices and unassailable seas. Imagine my Shawn, in his britches and stitches, his brittle blood and rough laughs, climbing to sleep over pirate treasures in the feathered quilt we’d all sewn together. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong>
\nAll the world drowned in the sound of sleep. <\/p>\n

MRS 1<\/strong>
\nAnd there’s my Shawn sleeping. <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nDogs and fishes skip through his skull. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nTrilled bug-thumpers fly east to west and spring to winter in his sloshing noggin. <\/p>\n

MRS 5<\/strong>
\nA rubbed thumblestilskin unknown, unnamed. <\/p>\n

MRS 2<\/strong>
\nHe watches a bird with a clock in its belly. <\/p>\n

MRS 3<\/strong>
\nHe watches a clock with wings for hands. <\/p>\n

MRS 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

\r\nHe watches Mrs. Finn's blind canary, Sam.\r\nBirdslayer.\r\nPrestidigitator.\r\nJellyfisher.\r\nFinch mincer.\r\nMoonhowler.\r\nCaptain of tidepools.\r\nKing of green hills.\r\nPrince of beaches.\r\nSweet as an apple.\r\nTurned over in dreaming.\r\nCrying in sleep.\r\nAs if wounded and bleeding.\r\nNoseful of weeping.\r\nBleared eyes shut.\r\nSweet as an apple.\r\nPale and sleeping.\r\n\r\n
[END]<\/h2>\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a play SCENE [describe waking town] MRS 1 I am one missus, and she’s another. We keep the high secrets of the town to ourselves. MRS 3 In the summer it’s packed with tourists. MRS 4 In the winter its cold as ashes. MRS 5 Empty as a milkbottle. MRS 1 I like the winter […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1740,1753,1735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-down-by-swansea","category-maybe-plagues","category-1740-id","category-1753-id","category-1735-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7512,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions\/7512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}