The Coast of Kansas
Published in Coconut
Scene 1
(Walking through a corn maze)
ELECTRA
According to this pamphlet theres some guy
in Greece who designs these mazes, this years theme:
Your mothers loverchaff or subsidized rye?
ORESTES
According to the bathroom walls, our regime
needs some old-time comeuppance. And Im just
the man for the job. What was that? A scream?
ELECTRA
Every puzzle has its constructive trust.
I think well be fine if we take a left
at the scarecrow and shun the blister rust.
ORESTES
Day after day we fixate on the theft
but let the thief run a thumb through Moms pie
you dont hear that growl? Sharp hooves? Something cleft?
Scene 2
(MINOTAURS lairORESTES and ELECTRA are chained to a wall)
MINOTAUR
And so I says to her I saysif thats
what passes for love in this mad world,
you can have it, sweetheart, this dog
has his bone into the padlock
of the laughing academys door
if you get my drift, and she says
ELECTRA
Who says?
MINOTAUR
Who says? Your Ma says, thats who says.
(Long pauseMINOTAUR flosses his teeth with the end from a ball of thread)
ORESTES
if you get my drift, and she says what?
MINOTAUR
What?
ORESTES
Finish your story.
MINOTAUR
The! End! Satisfied? Happy, now?
Helsinki! That Finnish enough?
(MINOTAURS cell phone ringshe answers)
If you get my drift, and she says
Im Clytemnestra, when I say
jump you say Van freaking Halen
and I say hold a seconal
I says I got ears, eyes and tusks
that tune your frequency, plus
I nabbed your kids, just like you asked,
so lets cold-cock these cynosures
I says and leave their corpses for gorp.
(THESEUS and the rebel army break down the door and rescue the kids)
THESEUS
A villain on a traina fierce wolflet
with spywareapple green sunlight
pods of tourists appear and reappear
there is a blue gittern-player plucking
strings pulled by a melancholy bull
a mother peels the pelt from her enemies
like skin from a tomatoa rock, a pram,
a sharp pair of scissors which a princess
uses to kill the poet who wrote his dreams
there is a boarded up ghost towngood folks
gather under a weak street lamp outside
the Palace Saloon as a platoon
of dead buffalo soldiers march into
the western skya train growlshooves cleft
scraps of verse float across our screenred flags
lift and are kissed by the windthe rebel cell
advancesred-eyeddown a dark labyrinth
towards a padlocked door and boom-boom-boom
here we are, Robespierre.
Scene 3
(ELECTRA, ORESTES and the ghost of AGAMEMNON walk hand-in-hand along the beach on the coast of Kansas)
ELECTRA
Above her left eye was a lightning bolt
AGAMEMNON
shaped scar, the kind you lick for luck, the size
ELECTRA
of a microchip and silver as smolt.
ORESTES
Her hair was yellow, her face was snake eyes,
AGAMEMNON
her breasts were weapons of mass seduction,
ORESTES
her white hands were always wavinggood-bye.
ELECTRA
She rode the waves of self-destruction
AGAMENON
like a wahine surfing a blue volt.
ORESTES
Hark! I hear the sounds of reproduction!
Epilogue
(The MINOTAUR sits in the soundproof booth)
MINOTAUR
Kalevala! Nokia! Aki Kaurismki!