One-Act Play In Which Everyone Takes Moral High Ground, Except My Cucumbers, & All Suffer

James Bowden

YOU: Everything worth saving cannot be set on fire.

ME: Everything that exists cannot avoid entropy.

            [Every single cucumber falls out of ME’s sandwich.]

ME: Fuck.

ME: …

ME: They were jammed in last, like an afterthought.

YOU: How do you think they felt, being but an afterthought?

ME: Look, cucumbers can’t feel. The point is my sandwich—

YOU: How do you think they felt, falling out first?

ME: I didn’t used to have feelings.

YOU: Well now you’re being useful. Ask him then.

            [ME stops looking at YOU. Looks down. Looks up. CHEKHOV hobbles onto the stage holding a window.]

ME: How do you think people felt falling from the windows of the World Trade Center?

ME: The concrete was stained red. The air pink and misty.

ME: I’d rather leap first, floor white like heaven. Like still-warm linen.

            [CHEKHOV runs off stage, continually and furtively glancing back while guarding window with his torso, as if afraid that ME will try to use it. Screen zooms out, so that ME and YOU are perceived to stand 1,362 feet above the audience.]

YOU: You need therapy. It’s just cucumbers, dude.

            [ME looks distantly, cocks head. Breaks trance to speak, still distant, didactically:]

ME: Did you know that there are five different types of therapy?

            [ME and YOU slowly walk diagonally, forward and toward each other, and begin to clasp hands as the lights dim.]

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This follows the form of Dalton Day’s “One-Act Play In Which We Float Facedown In The Center Of A Lake, A Position Known As The Dead Man’s Float”, as well as the second poem at the aforementioned link in the form of reference to Chekhov’s gun, which I thought would be a fun form to play with. I don’t know if one can still call this fun. I enjoyed writing it though. The 9/11 imagery comes in large part from Brian Doyle’s short piece Leap. I think I described it, when sending a link to a friend, as pain, but good. That description probably goes for a lot of things I like, e.g., Dostoyevsky, Ocean Vuong, etc.
This reminds me of another incredibly dark but casual? poem I wrote a while back, “What’s your damage?”
I keep editing this piece, it feels so understated in a good way that it seems like there’s so much that can be done with it.