'Wuthering Heights: Book Three - Helen', by D.M. Rice
Wuthering Heights is an experimental redaction
in the style of the William Burroughs cut ups.
The source texts are The Odyssey, The Book
of Margery Kempe, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath,
and Stoner by John Williams.
I saw myself sitting in the person, in the place.
How death, just because I couldn’t favour one man,
only figures I would choose. I wanted Odysseus, never
wronged a soul. Choosing one meant losing all. You and
your infamy proves unable to decide, the figures began
at once to be forgotten. One by one, they plopped to the
worst of your troubles. Your Constantine’s restaurant and
more heinous crimes. God cream. All the time I had been
all set now on assassination at such a restaurant.
I only found home from this expedition of places
, where they serve giant to Pylos and Lacedaemon
today, and four kinds of fancy cake.
Knees shook underneath her long glarey mirror.
Time she found impossible.
‘This restaurant, we…’ the words stuck in her throat.
Lit steps into a sort of cellar—could make him some reply.
‘Has my boy gone?’ she asked.
Travel posters plastered the venture
on these picture windows overlooking
chariots, to drive across the sea’s God
will well reward you a life. She got herself
a hair-cloth and put it inside her. Then Patrick
set her upon [ ] so that her husband, in Melton
Mowbray, did [ ], although she lay beside him
(as previously mentioned). Who [ ] the hair shirt
and bore our Lord all night. And afterwards she went
on with great difficulty, and temptations.
At that time, she could, thanking our Lord for all,
meet a very respectable man. When she was reproved
, scorned, the Bishop said much more of this world than she knew.
‘I am not against God and deserve no Sir,’ she said
, ‘truly, any man and [ ] was once very good to you.
[ ] right way heavenwards, for Christ. Sir, I trust that
you apostles, martyrs, confessors, and well-meaning fools
came to heaven, passed by me. For I take a little heed of a
nothing—as much as a heaven.’ When she believed that she
[ ]; therefore, I forgot him much [ ] would
lead her to the place. Then she had forgotten, and left that name
to be forgotten with a piece of Moses’ rod, which I do not know:
whether some god, Jerusalem, would have this journey to Pylos
, but Patrick went into town. Again, his father’s returned, or failing
that happened to meet the Mayor, and in prison, so that in the end
he toured the palace. But Penelope was not over-racked. She had
not even the many chairs in her apartments. Of her lovely room,
weeping house in a very gloomy between.
‘Is there a woman Zeus has treated worse than me?’
‘Yes, yes, mother,’ he said,’ I, bravest of our race,
a lion-heart of Argos. That Mayor has greatly harassed
me. My dear son vanishes from home. Away your bag from me.’
‘Ah, Good Patrick,’ she said.
Ever since Buddy Willard had to [ ] thinking
I ought to go with great compunction, with sobbing
for her sins, myself. Sleeping with Buddy, she reflected
on her person. Lord would put it into her, with somebody
else. She contemplated the only boy I ever actually wept
and ever prayed for: a bitter hawk-nosed Southern prayer
for [ ] was so plentiful and so ‘weekend-only.’
She could weep and taxi the day before. And therefore many
people said she gets paid for praying for people—was the only
one in his company to cheer him up. People who loved her at
the local coffee-shop humoured her, and would not know [
]. High-backed booths with hundreds—a God for everything.
Desiring the wood, we drank a cup of sin. Talked frankly about sex.
[People talk about her] this boy - their name was DH:
champion college footballer suddenly behind in the town.
A staff made street, a business suit, their days brought back
from gold. The mantel with a date—lost forty shillings. Then:
on a tombstone. Her staff and her bag and I saw my life branching
out before the Mayor would have difficulty and left the story. From
the tip of every branch this man in a blind woman’s future beckoned
and [ ] dreading what a happy home and at last [ ]
. A famous poet and another Patrick
, son,
where was this other figure
from Europe and Africa?
Were Constantine and Socrates in prison because of you?
And has he taken lovers with queer names because of you?
And has he taken figures, an Olympic lady for you?
These figures were upset. I shall pray for the world.
The astute Medon replied of glory shrunk [ ]
confronted by Wall—his own feelings suggested
like the date to find out about what he, Medon,
though whelmed by the anguish that, like the green
fig-tree, heart like a fat purple fig—on the threshold
[ ] while all the maids stood round whimpering.
Children, and another fig. The fig was a brilliant professor
, an amazing editor, and another woman of my time.
‘Listen, my friends,’ she spoke of her husband years ago
from South America, and another fig, famous Atilla and
another husband I have lost. And now an off-beat professor
, and another crew champion, and beyond more figs than I could quite make.
Photography by Antoni Shkraba