[Here, finally, is the concluding section of 200. Maybe I can start writing something nice now this is over…]

Photo by Wolfgang Mennel on Unsplash

Epilogue Part 1

Hymn to Apathy

We march along a catwalk,

attired in outfits nobody would wear,

into the arms of men who touch us up

and sign our checks and whistle us away.

We are the Jihad brides of billionaires,

cold pretty thin and tall. Nobody really cares

for us. Why should we care at all?

Epilogue Part 2

Tweedle Dumb’s Mirror Soliloquy

Dumb steps up to the full-length body mirror;

scans himself back and front, sideways, from head to toe;

peers in and touches up a wisp of hair; is pleased

with what he sees. “Battle,” he utters

to his inner self, ‘begins again today.’

Dumb strides out under the make-up melting

spotlights to grimace to the unmasked crowds and launch

his last blast of obliteration in his bruising, bone-crunching last campaign.

“When I use words, they mean

just what I choose them to,’ Dumb puffs

‘The glory lies not in the paltry truth

to which purportedly they point

but in the use I put them to…’ Dee

hisses like a little demon in his ear.

‘I am the master of this twittering universe, Dumb huffs,

‘of slogans, memes, rumors and slurs,

diktats by proxy brought as gifts by friends’,

the president avers. “I am the Lord almighty,

handing down edicts etched in words of stone to

Moses and the Hebrews hopping around a cow of gold.’

*

‘This is only the end of my beginning’, fist

waving in air, ‘not the beginning of my end’.

The end. Roll credits. Stirring muzak. Thunder claps

in the clouds and lightning jaggedly dissects the sky,

as Dumb’s croaking inanities soar blasphemously to heaven

unamplified from flailing vocal cords.

The Dum, Dum, Dum beat of the drums

salutes him to the door.

The mirror’s cracked from side to side,

the echo chamber now a broken bell

tolling the death of death drive, wish-

think and self-reference; rebirth:

a real bird chirping in a tree through

clean blue air: the coming of the new.

Epilogue Part 3

Final Girl

The image of the distressed female most likely to linger in memory is the image of the one who did not die: the survivor, or Final Girl…. The Final Girl is also watchful to the point of paranoia; small signs of danger that her friends ignore, she registers… The Final Girl is boyish… Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls ad ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects…

• Clover, Carol J. (1992) Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film pp. 35-41

Yu springs up from the sofa and the soap opera

to promptly attend the tinkling doorbell. The guy

from the nerd2nerd online dating site drags himself awkwardly in.

Yu sits him down

before her antique chess board and picks up

the red queen. “Here is the deal, my dear,” the Russian

doll begins. “We play chess; I beat you; we fuck. I’m

not that bothered which order we do them in.”

Her face, smiling coquettishly, cocked to one side.

“You choose.”

*

The full moon rises once again

over the fake suburban chimney stacks as Da

coughs blood and dribble into the bathroom sink. Yu

lays him down in bed so he can see her and

the silver orb through rolling eyes until they gently disappear

downstairs and under the black horizon.

*

“Moon,” she exclaims. “Oh! How I long to feel your lifeless

dust, gray under my boldly going boots.

Oh, how I yearn to share your weightlessness; to hop

over your fruitless dunes. Oh How I dream to be

the first girl on the moon. Oh, How I thirst for that

desert men will risk their breath to plumb. Oh, How I

hanker after the desire of the unloved; oh, how I crave

the paradox of that infinite, sweet sea of deep

tranquility…”