an underworld composed

the powdered bone man brayed his beasts into eventually
became Goofy and Mickey and Donald, clotted eidola
flittering about their cages in newspapers, books and films,
empowered with the wrath of a sanitized underworld
set loose with the power-lines of media,
an underworld composed of all the hydras, manticores, gorgons
lamias, basilisks and dragons, and it is from this perspective
that the shadow of every duck is shaped like Donald
and that Donald has the power to leave the duck
as hagfish are said to leave their lairs at dusk
to all night long bore into the souls of children.

(Clayton Eschelman, The Tomb of Donald Duck, from The Name Encanyoned River: Selected Poems 1960-1985, 1986.)



And likewise I myself again, just the day before yesterday, after the knife blade snapped back and almost severed my index finger, revealing all the layers of flesh down to the bone, while I held the hand under the stream of water, waiting for blood, methodically brushed my teeth with the other hand.

(Peter Handke, My Year in No-Man's Bay, 1994, tr Krishna Winston)