Stops and Stutters

by Suzannah V Evans

There once was an island where conversation ran in stops and stutters. There once was an island where conversations ran in stops and [pause] stutters. There once was an island where conversation ran in stops and stutters for one particular reason. There once was an island. There once was an island that was dominated by a particular sound. There once was [pause]. There once was an island that was dominated by the [pause] [wait for it] sound of [it’s coming] a [pause] foghorn.

Conversations were had in the gaps between [pause] violent sound, sound that breaks upon the ear [pause] in waves, that creeps over and through and around the sound of waves, that also break below the deeper bellow of [pause] the foghorn. The villagers meet and mutter and hold their breath when [pause] the foghorn raises its voice; they hold their breath and clutch their shopping and with one hand [pause] perhaps hold down their hats in the wind. Their conversation stops and stilts and trembles in the wind, trembles beneath the cry of seagulls, trembles and then [pause] abruptly stops, or does it fade, does it fade as the villagers wait and [pause] feel the coming foghorn as the sound, or the anticipation of sound, rises in their bellies? Or are the villagers [pause] so well versed in the comings and boomings and departings and comings and bellowings of the foghorn that they talk around it, so that their speech and the shudder of foghorn sound weave together seamlessly in a dancing a weaving a braiding of voice [pause]? Do they begin conversations and, with the sudden relentless boom, relent themselves, and [pause] forget their words? Turn their ears away from their companions and to some inner rustling of blood and breath and bone?

There once was an island where seagulls battled for acoustic space with a foghorn. There once was an island [pause] where the villagers either battled for acoustic space with a foghorn or else danced around it or with it or under it or through it [pause]. There once was an island where seagulls were a lighter sound, a feather sound, beneath the heavy foghorn sound. Or were the seagulls a metronym, another way of keeping time, beneath and to the foghorn sound – or no, is that too mechanical? Were the seagulls in fact white ribbons in the sky with light voices [pause], as light as the lightest thread [pause] when weighed against the foghorn? Did the islanders listen to the seagulls? Were the seagulls a chant or a relief or a burden or an acoustic duty or an acoustic necessity or an acoustic delight? If the sound of seagulls were removed [pause], would there be a space like this: [ ]? If the foghorn was removed, would there be a space like this: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] or would that space be too hard to document, too deeply buried in the heart, ears, throat?

Do the islanders dream in [pause] the language of foghorns? Do the seagulls dream in the language of foghorns [pause]? The islanders meet and mutter and clutch their shopping and sometimes think of these things and sometimes don’t [pause] think of these things. They roll loose strands of hair behind their ears and roll vowels in their mouths and [pause] wait for the moments of speech to come, wait [pause] for the patternings of silence and the tattoo [pause] of seagull, sea, foghorn, yes, always the sea, beating, churning, twisting its silk and arching its back [pause], arching its back and turning on its side and presenting shoals of fish like sparkling buttons on its coat [pause] and the sea and the [pause] and the seagulls and the [pause] speech and the waves [pause] and the [ ] and the [ ] and the [pause] foghorn

It was a Tuesday and it was a Thursday and it was a Tuesday and it doesn’t matter whether it was a Tuesday or Thursday seeing as it was a day and a day that began with a ‘T’ and a day on which Sheila was twisting her hair up into a bun, twisting the grey strands together with long clever fingers and sticking a small piece of wood through the knot to hold it in place and does it matter really whether it was a Tuesday or not?

Sheila left the house to the sound of seagulls throwing their voices into the air, she left and as she left she shut the door and turned slightly and angled her hearing up into the sky because today she was listening closely to the seagulls and what their white cries might or might not tell her about which day it might or might not be. And she stepped out with little feet into her garden, her garden which had a little path, and green plants, and the little path went up to a gate, which she exited, and closed behind her.

[pause]

And all of this was happening in relative quiet as to Sheila the seagulls and the [pause] foghorn were so much a part of the acoustic landscape that her ears did not flicker or flinch at the sound of either of these things on what might be a Tuesday or what might be a Thursday. Instead Sheila stepped out with her little feet and walked past the gate and into the street. Slate grey the street, slate grey the sky [pause], and grey her shoes and grey her hair, but gold the hairs upon her arms. And Sheila walked into the centre of the village, all in relative quiet, her grey hair streaming behind her as she walked [pause] and the seagulls paid no attention.

And in the centre of many buildings and below the grey sky and next to and around and with and sometimes without the sound of the foghorn, Sheila bought a length of ribbon [pause]. And the conversation with the shopkeeper centred not on whether it might be a Tuesday or a Thursday, or details such as this, but whether the ribbon should be wrapped in brown paper [pause] or whether it should be put in an envelope [pause] or whether Sheila should hold it in her hand or twine it directly about her hair. And Sheila and the shopkeeper talked about these things, paper and ribbon and knots and unravellings, as the seagulls patterned the sky outside and as the foghorn leant its voice to

[pause]

to the sky too and in the end Sheila threw the ribbon up into the air and caught it with her wrist and the time it took the ribbon to fall from her wrist to the floor and then to lie there caught in a patch of dust and feathers was the time it took for the foghorn to [pause] give its own interpretation of her actions, and this interpretation was [pause] indecipherable [ ]

Sheila: Once I was walking close to the sea, close to the sea and under the sky, once I was walking with little feet, holding my cheeks to the mist and holding my thoughts in my head. Once I was walking away from my house and towards the cliffs and the mist kept me company and whirled about my head like a grey scarf.

Once my skin had fewer folds and my hair was less grey and my feet were just as little and I was walking close to the sea and away from my house. Once before that I was even younger and walking by the sea by myself by the cliffs with the mist, with the sound of seagulls, with the tumblings and churnings of sound and the sometimes almost moments of quiet. Once I was near the sea, by the sea, seeing the sea, and suddenly

sudden ly I heard it, I heard it, I heard a woman wailing for her demon lover, or was it the demon, rising vocally up from some dark place, through the fog, seeking and finding the fragile shells of my ears?

I dropped to the ground and covered my hair (all gold) with my hands (all soft) and looked out to the sea, which now I could see less, the world sea-less, obscured like the softest of sweaters, as if grey wool was wrapped about my eyes. I bent and smelled the earth so close, the earth mixed with salt and sea perfume, the earth in which lay past generations of my family before we had moved back / back / back to the land of grey movement. I touched the ground with both hands and both legs and both feet and here I stilled myself and opened myself like an animal to the scents of the day and the sense of the day and the feeling that salt was running through my veins.

[pause] I gathered my thoughts and gathered my limbs and made to stand and then the sound sounded itself again, low and loud and low and loud, rising up through the grey day, piercing the mist, finding its way into my inner ear, treading through my nerves and neurons, sounding sounding sound ing and I covered my ears and bent low to the ground once more.

[a baby wails]

[pause]

∼

Suzannah V. Evans is a poet, editor, and critic. She has written for the TLS, The London Magazine, PN Review, New Welsh Review, and elsewhere, and she is Reviews Editor for The Compass. A selection of her poems was recently longlisted for the 2018 Ivan Juritz Prize for creative responses to modernism.