SHARON MCCARTNEY

After the Chuck Jones Tribute on Teletoon

Sharon McCartney has an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a law degree from the University of Victoria. Her work has been published in The Fiddlehead., Prism International, Event, Frain, sub-TERRAIN, Prairie Fire, Iowa City, and other journals; and she is the author of one book of poems, Under the Abdominal Wall. Her wry fantasia "After the Chuck Jones Tribute on Teletoon" appeared in the Fall 2002 edition of The Malahat Review, published by the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

—T. W.

Swan-diving off the crewcut mesas of Monument Valley in an Icarus contraption of fluff and paste, roadrunner bull's-eyed far below, coyote can't help it—it's an addiction, a disease, beyond his control. He's resigned to pain, the blacksmith's anvil stuka-ing his skull, the Sisyphean boulder snowballing down each time he shoulders it upward, his crabbed frame of bones and hide steamrollered, accordion-folded or simply incinerated. Hope is the thing with feathers, he grumbles but he can't get Prometheus out of his craw; his scrawny belly cringes under the eagle's talons, cold avian claws on his abdomen. He paws the packed earth of the river gorge, fear and sorrow a garment he can't shed, a raiment, his scratchy winter coat. What else is there to do in the desert? Experience tells him he can't win and yet he persists. Who can predict the actions of the Gods? The chances are slim but statistics mean nothing to the one who succeeds. He splashes a false horizon on sandstone, sets the sun precariously low, dots the vanishing point, steps three paces back with his Picasso beret and palette, thumb up to correct the perspective, and plummets off the predictable cliff.

proofed by Erky /// 23-08-2004