The Moon Through The Hard Water

America Doesn’t Like Me

- Zsuzsa Selyem

In May 1974, in New York’s René Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway, Joseph Beuys (1921– 1986) carried out his performance “I Like America and America Likes Me.” Arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, he was taken by an ambulance, on a stretcher, so that his feet would not touch the land of Americans who had treated the continent’s Native populace so abominably, and had himself driven to the gallery, where he locked himself up, for eight hours a day, with a coyote. Wrapped in a felt blanket and brandishing a staff, he defended himself from the small animal; he also had a triangle on him, which he sounded every now and again, and on each of the three days he took into the cage a pile of the day’s Wall Street Journals. At the end of the three days, he took a flight back; nobody knows what happened to the coyote.

Days before the humans captured me, there was some vibe in the air. Not the kind of dense vibe that gets under your skin, like when we howl our longing for eternal life into the night, but a vibe nevertheless. I was cocking my ears, ready for anything, sniffing around at random, and I obviously neglected the pack. Mother gave me scrutinizing what’s-a-miss-with-you looks but didn’t growl, what with the six squinting little pests that kept her on her toes full-time.

Of course I’m fond of the little scamps, especially after their eyes open and they drop off methodically gutting our mother. I let them tug at my fur, roll them over with my nose, bring them voles, something we usually arrange with badger: he sniffs out the ware and digs it up, I catch them, I’m the first to eat and he’s next, and if they’re lucky, the pests too get something to eat. I’m kidding, they always get something, in the worst case it’s badger who doesn’t get his delivery. After all, the food tastes simply better if the kiddos have put away their share first.