Cone

by tristram fane-saunders

Only a prototype, but the results have been

wonderfully promising. Volunteer T is now

strapped to one end of a tapering funnel,

the narrow end, naturally, black on the inside

and thirty feet long, for the singular purpose

of making him long for that widening vista,

too far to view clearly but nonetheless shimmering.

His views on the process are hopelessly muffled

of course, by the cone, but see how he blunders,

barking his shins (this time, blood – make a note

of that) forward and forward, constantly chasing the

light at the wide end, perceiving those subjects

who actually touch him only as obstacles

darkly unknowable. Look how he stumbles!

Banging his knees on the here and the now.