POV

“I Heard a Fly Buzz“- (New POV)

I heard a man breath- but no more

The stillness in the room

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the exit sign and I

The drop drop drop of leaking eyes

The deep mournful breathing

All silenced

At the last breath of the one on the bed

The peace on the mans face

As if everything was at ease

While the bystanders

Only grew into more sorrow

The lights from above hummed

The breathing from around the room

Slowly got louder

As the breathing from the one on the bed got lower

“Varsity”- by Kingsley.

The locker room walls were gold and the stalls and benches were painted red, like the splatter on the floor. We were fourteen years old and I had just finished beating up one naked boy. No one tried to stop me — they instigated it. We were a class of football and basketball players. The boy I beat was not one of us. He was short and egg-shaped, pale and doughy. Still, he told me he could ball; he told me he was going to make the varsity squad. So that’s what we all called him: Varsity. Every day after that, first thing in the AM in PE, we called his name: Varsity, show us your jumper; Varsity, go on and dunk one; Varsity, catch this with your face; Varsity, you lying sack of shit. He never once spoke back, never once told us to go fuck ourselves. I used to hide his clothes while he was in the shower. We watched and laughed as he tore through his stall looking, one hand clutching the towel around his waist, for the uniform that was buried at the bottom of the trash can. And when he finally gave up and stopped looking, when all he wanted was for us to please show some mercy, he stared — not at us, but around us. He didn’t look angry; he looked hurt, a neglected pet who only wanted any bit of love that might be left over. This only made us laugh louder, louder at his naked underdeveloped fish-belly white body, shaking from cold and fear; at his eyes as they turned red and wet at the corners. He wanted to ask us why we (especially me) needed to do these things to him. (Was it a need, a kind of compulsion, a drive, wild dogs cutting the weakest from the pack and leaving it for dead?) But he didn’t. He held back the words and held back the tears and took the ridicule because that’s what he thought we would do. But teasing and name calling and hiding of clothes ceased to satisfy one day, and a group told me, I had slight anger issues, that Varsity had been talking shit about my mama. Talking about the things he would do to her if he had the chance. (A fourteen year-old boy’s imagination about sex never matches the reality of the action.) They watched as my temper rose fast, and their excitement grew as his face reddened. Then they all waited on edge until Varsity, who always showered last, stepped out and caught my fist to the side of his head. they oohed and aahed and slapped hands, proud of our achievement. Through our laughs they said Don’t do it, Varsity as he dropped his towel and raised his fists — an invitation to a whooping that left him bloody, backed into a corner of the shower, fists still high. We should have been impressed that he didn’t back down, that he took his beating like a man. Instead, we kicked his clothes into the shower and left. The next day we went to PE laughing and joking and our teacher told us not to bother and led us to an empty classroom and told us to sit. The Dean of Boys walked in and shut the door and then we got quiet. He looked us over and told us that the boy we called “Varsity” would not be coming back to class; he would not be coming back to school. He asked us if we were proud of ourselves, proud of what we had done. Did it make us feel like men to torment a Special Education student? That’s when I looked around. First for Varsity — we had failed to notice his absence. Then we looked at each other, asking with our eyes, Did you know? And we shook our heads and screwed up our faces and spoke under our breath, it’s not our fault, how were we supposed to know?,as if that really mattered. We were looking for absolution from our actions. Now I know: we hoped ignorance could give it to us. The Dean went on about how Varsity didn’t tell on us, didn’t rat us out; he wasn’t a snitch. He went home that day, black eye blooming, and went to his room, to his homework. When his parents saw him, they wanted answers. He didn’t want to give them, said it was nothing, no big deal. I can imagine they pried and cajoled and, finally, hollered at him until he broke down. That’s when he told them what had happened, told them all of it. Maybe they put their arms around him, let him bury his head in their chests and cry. Maybe they whispered to each other, Jesus, what are we going to do? I noticed the blood had risen to the Dean’s face, and he grit his teeth so hard we thought they’d split. And he looked us over as we tried to dodge his eyes and he said to us, “Don’t you know better? Aren’t you ashamed?” And what if we saw that boy today? Would he still tell us he could ball; want to fit in so badly that he would laugh at the old wounds? Would we try to avoid his eyes, look at our shoes, as we remembered all the things we did? Or would we tell him — what was his real name? — that we were sorry? And, maybe more importantly, that we should have believed him.

Artist Statement

I chose to write about “I Heard a Fly Buzz” because I thought the fl would be an easy change of POV but I realized it was harder than I anticipated. The fly witnessed the man pass away while not knowing the tragedy he saw, All he saw and heard was a man’s breath leave his body while in the original poem the man only heard the fly buzz. It was hard to change some of the POV because it was only for the man who could see it so I had to edit in some new context to the poem. Through these works I have noticed that the POV can have a huge effect on the story and how the story can be perceived. Like the bully in “Varsity” did he really know better? Is he that bad of a guy? He was teased and dragged into it by a group of kids but he still knew it was wrong. But you do not get the whole story without different points of views. Th “Varsity” was an interesting story to do a POV on with the bully because from his view yes he was bullying the kid but some other kids dragged him into it and told him false information about the kid. He was in the wrong but you feel some sympathy for him.