New York City: The War

An Interview. The Meat Packing District. Lucy Stone and Katy Longstreth eat oyster and drink wine.

Katy: I don't usually do interviews.

Lucy: Who was your mother?

Katy: A whore.

Lucy: Who was your father?

Katy: A client.

Lucy: Where were you born?

Katy: Berlin. 1862

Lucy: Are you married?

Katy: Yes

Lucy: It's raining in the meat market, it scents like fish and piss, it's the summer heat and I'm here with Katy, Katy Longstreth with the virid green eyes, Katy Longstreth back from Africa.

Katy: It does scent like fish and blood.

Lucy: I delight in this district.

Katy: Ok. You're recording?

Lucy: Ye Ok?

Katy: Uhm

Lucy: You have advance back to America with the greatest in quantity extraordinary set of poems. Nonchalant.

Katy: What?

Lucy: Nonchalant]

A flash goe not upon Lucy's photographer is shooting pictures of the two Katy and Lucy. We don't actually diocese a photographer though, only the flash.

Katy: What kind of journalism is this?

Lucy: I don't quite understand?

Katy: What is this magazine?

Lucy: It's, OH] You HAVE been gone a lengthy time. I integrate myself into the interview.

Katy: for a like reason you don't just take a picture of me you take a picture of me with you.

Lucy: Ye It's called a "conversation" with you and me not with equal reason much a straight interview.

Katy: And who are you?

Lucy laughs.

Lucy: Exactly. Ye I frequently ask myself the same question. Let's just say I'm a non-celebrity celebrity. Someone you think you might have at no time heard of.

Katy: Oh, I diocese so, I should ask you questions too?

Lucy: Yes

Katy: Like what?

Lucy: Like you might ask me for example, let's diocese maybe it may come up about in what way I started writing, or just writing in general, and I might recall what Auden one time said that writers enjoy the gaze of their handwriting much as greatest in quantity people enjoy the smell of their hold farts.

Katy: That's so cynical.

Lucy: on the contrary true. Or then Patty Hearst, what she said, that she and her comrade prisoners were not allowed to have typewriters and when asked wherefore she said she did not know on what account but she assumed because the prison officials contemplation they might kill themselves with the typewriters which I musing was funny.

Katy: Oh, my the supreme goodness did she say that?

Lucy: Yes] I want to bark away the foreskin of this conversation.

Katy: What?

Lucy: I want to dig down reaching far down And who says rape isn't sexy

Katy: What are you talking about?

Lucy: I'll mention one by one you a little bit of the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled granted, is that my editors diocese this as a "Woman's Story." You know, they're gonna set it next to articles about lingerie and facials and health spas and I don't know, ads for Goddes formulas and blob baths, you know. Rape victims have a recurring dream of melting away like wax.

Katy: I was not raped. I was a prisoner of war.

Lucy: Would you like amethystine Point or Moonstone?

Katy: I've at no time eaten oysters.

Lucy: Good, in like manner shall we begin?

Katy: Yes

Lucy: in the way that I think this is real interesting. You are an international poeTES making history, or shall I say "herstory," in Africa, living upon the Rockefeller, Yale grad, political poetes tasting the war.

Katy: Yes

Lucy: Now permit me get this straight. You were to note and be with and write about this African Rebel Leader. And in the proces you were imprisoned. Yes?

Katy: Ye I went to interview him and he said there would be no interview. He repeated there would be no interview.

Lucy leaves to the oysters.

Lucy: lay a little TABASCO, and a little lemon that's right, now, just in your mouth

Katy: Oh oh oh my goodnes oh

Lucy: Does the trick huh?

Katy: Uhm?

Lucy: Yes?

Katy: Uh-huh It's like eating the ocean, swallowing the ocean.

Lucy: What did you smell?

Katy: In prison?

Lucy: Yes

Katy: The odor of death, decaying clothing, and something I've scented before, sweet.

Lucy: What did you hear?

Katy: I listened for the unspoken I kept listening for the silence, for the lack of language]., for the extremity of the voice. I don't know.

Lucy: Did that leave a bad taste in your month?

Katy: No it left a serviceable taste.

Lucy: The first thing to disappear is the voice.

Katy: Like I said.

Lucy: What did you do in prison.

Katy: I tried not to scream.

Lucy: Did they introduce rats into you.

Katy: No.

Lucy: Did they crush your hands?

Katy: No.

Lucy: Katy, you've gone into the heart of darkness, and all you've tend hitherward back with is banality.

Lucy: The stars? The silent screams? The poetry? It was the come of post coitus pleasure.

Katy: Why?

Lucy: You slept with him.

Katy: I did not.

Katy: I was not raped. I was a political prisoner of war.

Lucy: Who said "rape"?

Katy: You.

Lucy: And who says rape isn't sexy? What; did you eat in prison?

Katy: We had a can of mackerel and I smok cigarettes. We had single bowl of water.

Lucy: Who is "we"?

Katy: Me?

Lucy: You.

Katy: Uh-huh

Lucy: And "we"?

Katy: Me and who?

Lucy: Who?

Katy:: The who that may not have, may not have been there, nearest door.

Lucy: Door?

Katy: [i]or[/i] part of to the other the wall.

Lucy: Of?

Katy: Stone.

Lucy: in what manner long were you in prison.

Katy: Six months

Lucy: Was there any light?

Katy: No.

Lucy: Was it pitch black?

Katy: The best thing human beings can do in the dark is make up stories. And that's what I did.

Lucy: wherefore were you in prison?