ROBERT KLOSS’ ORIGINAL:
Robert Kloss’ “The Clown Show” will be posted at the conclusion of the Remix Project.
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THE REMIX:
A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR RUNAWAYS OR: HANSEL GOES FIRST
Before the letter, this funeral.
Always a clown show:
mutes in white face and polka dots,
men banished beneath the ruffles,
mothers and grandmothers gone to dust.
It had always fed well on children.
Long days along the roads
of dust and concrete,
bent and vibrating in the heat.
Two more disappearances in the last week—both children.
Around a campfire,
long nights against the heat of flames.
And the air spoke: Come on. Turn off the waterworks.
Long days along the roads.
Animals found mounded and fly-swaddled,
does and dogs,
tossed and sweltering
in ravines and ditches.
It had always fed well on children.
He grinned a sour, crooked little grin.
And the air curled into his words: You ought to take a good look at this.
Long nights into the ravines,
wondering how far they had traveled
and where they were going,
wondering and forgetting.
Two more disappearances in the last week—both children.
She got a roadmap.
The girl, so star-struck she could barely talk,
managed to trace her best route.
Then he decided he didn’t like the story.
(It was a stupid story.)
He hurried on tip toes
to the howling of bears within the forest.
A tattered bit of cloth with a drop of blood on it.
It had always fed well on children.
Thereafter,
days wandering without thought.
No more forests.
No more moaning life.
Into the ragged swamps,
the rank and dying vegetation,
she wandered.
She sneezed three times, quickly and quietly, into her cupped hands.
Two more disappearances in the last week—both children.
Now, one Pierrot,
his belly caved in for hunger,
boiled his boots, nibbled the limp leather
and drank the brown brine,
in the city deteriorated into bricks and dust
and shards of glass.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel, closer and closer.
She supposed she could go now, if she was careful.
It had always fed well on children.
In a city of smeared and inarticulate graffiti
of buildings boarded over,
a queer disheartening
came to her.
Lost now and wandering
into the fallen apart
apartment buildings,
the bones of rats and houses not collapsed.
Two more disappearances in the last week—both children.
Lost and yet
how the vibrations of voice
pulled her along.
Lost now until this room,
with windows bricked over.
A portrait of a woman,
an etching of hues pink and brown.
It had always fed well on children.
And now from Pierrot’s pocket
The letter fell into yellowed dust.
She sat before him, and she said—
“Was it beautiful?
Were their elephants and lions?”
and Pierrot gestured these animals
and he gestured the tigers,
the brown bears and basset hounds.
Pierrot articulated,
hands bare and torn,
the shadows of the wall and the static within the air,
and this girl
is the last girl.
Two more disappearances in the last week—both children.
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Remixer’s process: I thought about a remix in literal pop-musical terms as something that maintains the bones of an original composition while playing with rhythm, tone, and structure, and can knowingly sample the compositions of others. None of the additive changes to [Kloss’] original piece are written by me: I sampled/spliced in single sentences from Stephen King’s It (I fear clowns) – which of course are all used without permission. I’m comfortable that it falls under fair use copyright law – de minimus and transformative usage – but figured it was my writerly duty to let you know that I Frankensteined “The Clown Show” with another published author’s work.
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Kate Racculia is a writer and researcher living the good life in Somerville, Mass. Her first novel, This Must Be the Place, was published by Henry Holt & Company in July 2010. She is morbidly averse to clowns.