6.06 / June 2011

Summer Sunday at the Fair: a Rebuttal to Water for Elephants

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_6/Foster.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Here’s the elephant, scooping her trunk across the earth. Here’s the girl, in a dress, scooping peanut shells from around the elephant’s feet. Here’s the banker, fucking the girl from behind. Here’s the banker’s wife, tapping her Coach heels in the dirt, moving her sunglasses onto her head. Here’s the tiger, in his cage, pacing, golden eyes on the heels as they tap. Here’s the boy, feeding the tiger raw flesh, loving the girl who scoops the shells. Here’s the old couple, middle-aged really, holding spotted hands, eyes curious over the raw meat. Here’s the couple’s daughter in inappropriate jeans, sweating. Here’s the rock she sits on, decaying under ass and foot. Here’s the girl scooping the shells, peering through her thinly muscled thighs at the couple’s daughter in inappropriate jeans. Here’s the boss, making inquiries of the couple’s daughter and her inappropriate jeans. Here’s the banker’s wife, turning, noticing the stylish boss with his gleaming teeth and full head of hair. Here’s the full head of hair, smirking. Here’s the tiger, ripping into the meat, imagining the boss between his teeth and beneath his tongue. Here’s the banker’s meat, struggling against his weekend jeans. Here’s the boy wiping maggots from the meat, loving the girl scooping the shells. Here’s the pile of maggots, writhing and white. Here’s the sky, white with writhing clouds and the governing sun. Here’s the middle-aged couple, coated in SPF 30, burning. Here’s the couple’s daughter, ignoring the boss’s inquiries after her pleasure. Here’s the boss, shouting at the boy with the meat. Here’s the boy with the meat, swiping his hand beneath the tiger’s mouth. Here’s the tiger’s mouth, chomping at the hand. Here’s the banker’s wife, turned on by the boss and his manliness, taking her husband’s hand to lead him away. Here’s the banker, fucking the girl scooping the shells, fucking her over the post that holds the ropes and the patrons away. Here’s the girl’s thigh, tickled by the rope. Here’s the couple’s daughter, ignoring the girl’s thigh, and the rope, and the clouds writhing in the sky, and the banker and the boss and the boy with their meat, and the tiger with its teeth in the banker’s wife, and the banker’s wife with her teeth in the boss, and the elephant blowing air at the dried earth, sending puffs along the ground, and the middle-aged couple, mistaken for her parents, holding spotted hands. Here’s the daughter’s mother and father, watching TV on a love seat with the curtains closed. Here’s the TV, the one she never watched for fear of missing this. Here’s this, the bent, the blessed, the blurred.


Hazel Foster writes and laughs on a floor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This piece is inspired by a trip she took to Texas last year. Among other things, she visited the beef jerky capital of the world. For a vegetarian, it was epic. Her work has appeared in >kill author, Knee-Jerk, Metazen, decomP, TRNSFR and elsewhere. You can visit her and her blog at hazelfoster.com.
6.06 / June 2011

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