Bud Grossmann’s Words of the Week for the Week of July 3, 2005 Poem published as Words in Progress dated March 12, 2002. © 2002 by Bud Grossmann. All Rights Reserved.   Gecko on Hand, 1984 © 1984 by Bud Grossmann AN UNIDENTIFIED BODY The eleventh day of March, in the year two thousand two. A long half-year has passed since “Nine-Eleven.” Flags have been prodigiously (and profitably) produced and presented. Good has not yet triumphed over Evil, but, by God, we have made a start! In my home here in Hawaii is a rusted G.E. refrigerator, the freezer and the chill compartment side-by-side, with an ice dispenser in the freezer door. The ice maker no longer works, but I dump cubes from trays into the big bin on the top shelf of the freezer. A selector switch in the window on the door offers whole cubes or crushed. Crushed is what I choose. The crusher, on the front of the bin, consists of two sets of thin steel blades coming together like fingers about to interlock for prayer. When I press a cup against a curved lever in the window on the door, an electric motor turns an auger to convey cubes into the crusher, and the ice then falls down a funnel and slushes into my cup. At suppertime tonight I received with my ice an extra treat that turned my stomach even as it made me smile: a lizard’s tail, an inch in length or maybe a little more. It did not wiggle or wave. Turning and tipping my clear drinking glass, I found the sum of the gecko’s parts— a pair of hips and hind legs, a little length of belly, and, way at the bottom of my glass, the head, shoulders, and the forefeet with splayed and padded toes. A golden eye, magnified by a chip of ice and the curve of colorless glass, stared out at me without malice or accusation. “I must report a tragic accident,” I said, holding the glass out toward my teenaged daughter. We concealed the carcass from my wife. I carried the glass out to the patio and slung the ice and little lizard into our herb garden, out in the tangles of rosemary and trespassing grasses. A star shone in the sky. A breeze rustled palm fronds. My dog pressed his nose to my hand. And as those bits of reptile meat flew through the air, I imagined, somewhere in this world, human flesh blown to bits by bombs bearing the U.S. flag, while somewhere on this planet fingers engage like gears, and heads humbly descend in prayer.  ♦ Back issues of Words of the Week Send Bud a comment Top of this page

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