54

ABCS

Susan Yankowitz

AN APPLE

Manuelo Manchik admires the apple before de-
vouring it. He cups the thing in the palm of his
hand, turning it this way and that; the light
bounces off the curves of its golden skin. O
golden delicious, you make a mouth water! The
fruit is round and firm and fully packed: unlike
the mealy banana, it will resist his teeth just a
little. Again his mouth waters as he delays the
coming pleasure. He cups the thing in the palm
of one hand, stroking it with the other; it is
smooth and cool beneath his fingers. O golden
delicious, you do tempt a man! Yes there is no
doubt, you were made to be eaten. He opens
his mouth wide and chomps through to the core
in a single bite. Two black seeds slither in a rill
of juice down his chin.

BREASTS

At a gathering of talents, artistic and profane,
MM had spotted across the crowded room his
own dreamed-of Olympia, half-reclining on a
fat settee. The exquisite naturalness of her
Manet pose enchanted him no less than her
near nudity. Under her see-through blouse her
breasts were classic. O wonder. O no wonder
that they pushed out the silk (or was it cheap
nylon?) of her blouse exactly like breasts; that
to exploring hands (at other hours of course for
now she was half-reclining naturally alone) they
were as round and firm and full as round firm
full breasts; and that the nipples which tipped
these breasts resembled nothing so much as the
nipples which tip such breasts. In short and in
sum, her breasts were truly like breasts. But MM
had no interest in the obvious. He was a man of
imagination, of poetry even. The excesses of
similitude multiplied by their exact number his
pleasures. He saw what he saw: Olympia with
breasts which were breasts and at the same time
various other roundnesses not breasts. And
roundness was all, preferable even to that com-
monplace of literature, ripeness. Only one fact
was crucial and he had ascertained it, subtly
brushing his fingers against her shoulders: she
was not made of wax. So when MM opened his
mouth wide one night days later and bit with
gusto into the breast on the left, that same
breast bled. Damn, he had erred in his distinc-

tions! But Manuelo Manchik was not a man to
hang fire. With a gesture of magnificent un-
concern, he wiped his chin and continued
eating.

CHYME

Olympia had accepted that name, accepted too
the play of tongue and teeth, accepted even the
discomfort of her body crushed beneath him
when poing! she was punctured. Too late to cry
foul! she fell, undone by mastication. Softened
by saliva she travelled in mouthfuls through his
gullet and into the fat sac of his stomach. There
she lodges, divided against herself.

Fool, she chides herself, to have come to
chyme!

Her head is separated from her body. Her legs,
each in one long piece, are severed from her
crotch and from each other, Her two loose
breasts bounce from wall to wall, free-floating,
as his stomach contracts and dilates in diges-
tion. Pressed against the locked pyloric door
she is grateful at least that she will not be further
fractured by the cleaving peristaltic actions of
his intestine. There is no disguising the situa-
tion: she is split, sundered, she is not in one
piece. If she does not want to sour in his belly
(and why would she desire such a fate?) she
must somehow (but how?) reverse the process
herself. But herself is not. From deep inside
Manuelo’s stomach, she surveys the chaos of
her members and thinks: | must pull myself
together!

DREAM?

Maybe it’s all a dream, she reasons reasonably
enough, and when | wake up I'll find myself me
again, just me, no one’s Olympia, in toto. And
so she falls to sleep so she can fall awake. This is
the dream she finds: she is standing in water
being fucked in the ass by the shameless beak of
a crane. His long legs pinion her hips. He wades
and fishes, taking his time. It hurts. What can
she do but submit? Her name is not Leda; the
power is all his.

ESCAPE

She wakes up gagging with her left foot in her
mouth. No use sucking on the toes, they’re not
sour balls, they won’t dissolve or sweeten her
palate. Her mouth is dry with sleep and anxiety;
she could have suffocated during that night-
time shift. There is no escaping the fact now:
she must escape! But how? She wags her head a
few times to float the foot free as she ponders
the ins and outs. The nearest exit is the rear.
Can she deliver herself through there? MM is