This piece started accidently on Twitter as a tweet in response to a line Colson Whitehead had tweeted, about notes for a short story he was taking, although, he said, he didn’t write short stories. He thought he’d call it “The Full Iceberg.” My tweet grew into a riff, and then into its own story about Colson, shipwrecked on an iceberg, with a small penguin named Edwina. Not all the lines were tweeted, and some were subsequently re-shaped, but they all retain the “tweet format.“
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@colsonwhitehead sits cross-legged on the iceberg and stares back at the penguins staring at him. “Shipwrecked with non-talking birds,” he mutters.
A section of the ship still rests on the iceberg. Penguins waddle around and through it as if they are at a museum.
@colsonwhitehead pieces a quilt from comic books left in the ship’s bunkroom and stitches it with red thread. “Art,” he tells the penguins.
The penguins are impressed. Or at least they shift from one foot to the other and gurgle quietly as they eye @colsonwhitehead’s art-quilt.
I’ll call this art-quilt “The Full Iceberg,” @colsonwhitehead says. “Is it edible?” asks the smallest penguin. She has blue feet.
@colsonwhitehead looks closer at the smallest penguin. She has blue shoes on, not blue feet. http://bit.ly/50AsV
“Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, as though we were drowning inside our hearts, as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul,” he says.
“Pablo Neruda,” the tiny penguin says. She blinks at @colsonwhitehead. “My name’s Edwina. And this story’s about me, not you and your wrecked ship.” “Fine by me,” he says.
Penguins dive off the iceberg. Plop-plop-plop. @colsonwhitehead hums as he watches a sapphire light deepen on the horizon. Edwina sidles near.
The ghost-ships on this iceberg crowd them. A cold wood flank touches warm one. Edwina clambers into @colsonwhitehead’s lap. Shivering.
“We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship, although it meant the end of travel,” Edwina whispers. “Elizabeth Bishop,” @colsonwhitehead says. “And I’d rather have the ship.”
“You need a flag,” she says. “First flag, then ship.” “Oh no,” @colsonwhitehead says. “I’m not using the art-quilt. I’ve already named it.”
“Well, un-name it.” “No,” @colsonwhitehead says. “I don’t un-name things, only name them.” “Oh pooh,” she says. “Think sideways for once.”
With one wing Edwina sketches a shape in the frigid air. A white flag appears. Wavering. “Ghost-flag,” she says.
@colsonwhitehead looks at it. He sighs. “Nope. No more ghosts.” He hoists the red-thread-comic-book-art-quilt in the air. “Art-flag,” he says.
Edwina clicks her black beak in pleasure. Small fissures open on the iceberg. They zig-zag like ghost-snakes. The sound of branches snapping, breaking, unseen.
A sigh of night. Fissures widen. An all-black ship rises from lapping water and hangs, glistening, mid-air. @colsonwhitehead feels his chest squeeze. The sheer beauty.
“It worked,” Edwina says. “You can fold and put away the art-quilt-cum-flag now. Only one small problem.” “What?” says @colsonwhitehead.
“Um. The ship has only two directions. Up. Or down.” @colsonwhitehead glares at the small penguin. “THINK SIDEWAYS,” he says.
Edwina does. She thinks so hard that her blue shoes pop off and reveal blue feet. The black ship suddenly shifts in the air and balances on its prow.
There is sea-water raining on them. The cracks in the iceberg become maws. “You know,” says Edwina, “I don’t think we WANT to know the full iceberg. It might not be good for us.”
“Good point,” says @colsonwhitehead. “You’re coming with, right?” Without waiting for an answer he wraps her in the art-quilt and ties the ends around his chest.
Up @colsonwhitehead goes, fingering and toeing his way up the sideways-ship as if it were a tree. A muffled screech comes from the art-quilt.
“I don’t like heights,” wails Edwina. “There’s always something,” says @colsonwhitehead. “Now hold on.”
One fatal crack, like thunder, like a redwood trunk severed. The sky goes abruptly dark, a curtain pulled on the stage of the past.
Then the muttering of a TV. The smell of coffee. Edwina looks around, dazed, at the interior of a Brooklyn apartment flooded with sun.
@colsonwhitehead is sprawled on the floor on top of his art-quilt. Edwina studies him. “You look rather penguin-like around the eyes, you know,” she says.
@colsonwhitehead sits up. “And you,” he says, “look obnoxious around your beak.”
“Your art-quilt fell apart,” Edwina says. “It looks like a bunch of crappy comic books.” “No deconstruction before breakfast,” @colsonwhitehead says. “Now let’s eat.”
And so they do. One tall, one small, both smelling of brine and fish, scooping Cheerios into their mouths. Waiting.
They hear a voice. “Some are asleep, on the bottom of the world, sucking the world in, and blowing it out, in wave-lengths. Radiant ghosts.”
“Michael Dickman,” Edwina says.
