Backbone > Quarter to Three
Fat: A Play

illustration by Thomas McDonough

Interview with an Angel
Through connections in the Adventist Church, I was able to interview an angel. Her name is Clara. (Actually, a woman I will call Helen Y served as intermediary; she repeated the angel’s answers to me.)

Sparrow: Thank you for speaking to me.

Clara: May I also thank you?

Sparrow: What is your role, as an angel?

Clara: I am spreading peace, in the world.

Sparrow: How do you do that?

Clara: This is difficult. I wish I knew more ways. I spend most of my time with children under four years old. They play with balls and toy trucks and drapes and hair curlers. As I watch, I laugh; this pleases them. Children can hear the laughter of angels.

Sparrow: How does that create peace?

Clara: I hope my happiness has some effect.

Sparrow: Aren’t all angels happy?

Clara: No, many angels are on the Celestial version of Prozac.

Sparrow: What is Celestial Prozac?

Clara: Technically, it is a form of prayer, although your nation would not recognize it as prayer.

Sparrow: What else do you do, to create peace?

Clara: I write letters to Time magazine, but I usually don’t send them, and when I do, they never print them.

Sparrow: May I hear one of your letters?

Clara: Yes. Let me see. Here’s one:

Dear Time,
Peace can make progress, if the following rules are followed:

1) Wash your face regularly.

2) Gargle three or four times a day. (Gargling activates restful
centers in the brain.)

3) Eat in a quiet place. Avoid television, or even reading, while you eat.

4) Give away money each day, even a small amount. If 40-60 percent of the population took these simple steps, peace would soon come.

Salutations from Heaven,
Clara

Sparrow: What a lovely letter.

Clara: Actually, I was an English major during my life.

Sparrow: Thank you again, and good luck in your peace effort.

Clara: “Luck” is the wrong word, but I appreciate your wish.

Book-Eating
Open a book to a favorite passage.
Spread saran wrap over the pages.
Pour food on the saran wrap and eat.

Marcus,
Here are my latest studies of Amelia Earhart (from National Geographic of January, 1998):

1) Amelia was married! And not just married, but married to George Putnam, “the publisher and public relations whiz.”

2) She became famous for being the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane—but she didn’t actually fly! Two men flew, and she sat in the back like a “sack of potatoes,” to quote her. (“My status, in fact, was slightly below that of the back-seat driver, because I couldn’t even shout loud enough to annoy the pilot.”) Nonetheless, she received a ticker tape parade in New York.

3) Why was she chosen (to fly on a plane called “Friendship”)? Because she looked like Lindbergh, “then the most famous man in the world.” Both were “blond, tall, and slim, with strong jaws and high foreheads, and the same direct look of confidence in their blue eyes.”

4) Later she vowed to actually cross the Atlantic alone; she did, and received another ticker tape parade.

(Landing in Ireland:

Amelia: Where am I?

Dan McCallion, herding cows in Gallagher’s pasture: Have you come far?

Amelia: From America.

McCallion: Holy mother of God!)

5) She was a lousy pilot! “Her courage was phenomenal,” notes Elinor Smith, who was voted best woman pilot in the US in 1930, “but as to her flying skills—well, those were laughable.”

6) Why was her plane lost after rising up from Lae, New Guinea? Because on Lae she jettisoned her “lucky elephant-hide bracelet” embellished with silver (“so as not to add extra weight to the plane”), although the bracelet “weighed next to nothing.” This article of jewelry now lies in a display case at the Oklahoma City headquarters of the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of women pilots Amelia helped found in 1929.

7) Amelia was a clothing-designer! (The label read “Designed by Amelia Earhart.”) Her clothing had “tiny silver propellers for buttons.”

Love, Sparrow

Fat: A Play
A fat man sits on a chair.
Slowly the chair lowers, under his weight.
Finally the bottom of the chair is three inches from the floor.
Curtain.

Contest Report
The Plant-A-Textbook Contest, in which entrants separated words to reveal new words, has birthed these new examples:

Cur rent
Bat her
Spar row
—Donovan Miyasaki and Barbara Hansen

Pa pal
—Sven Nordess, Dyer, CT

Yield Bog Contest
Also, the Yield Bog Contest, in which new holidays must be created, evoked from Phoenix:

“My idea for a new national holiday: ‘Love Your Hairy Woman Day.’ Living in my little pocket of Woodstock/Phoenicia, it’s fine, but go outside of the pocket and lift your arm and hear gasps of disgust, in a culture that honors androgynous little girls. It’s time for the “real woman” movement. This holiday should be in summer, when you can truly bare your leg and armpit hair.”

—Phoenix

Innocent Trieste Contest
And now…the Innocent Trieste Contest!
Here is a modern challenge:
allow numbers to enter sentences.
For example:

“I 80cakes.” (“I ate teacakes.”)

“Sally 162bas.” (“Sally won sixty tubas.”)

Send entries to:
Innocent Trieste Contest
c/o Chronogram,
PO Box 459, New Paltz, NY 12561,
or e-mail info@chronogram.com.