Rod Steiger
Not to be disrespectful, but I think there’s a pair of religious figures in On the Waterfront. Two simple brothers in the back of a taxi going to 437 River Street, where the goons wait to make one a new martyr. Uneasy in his fedora, Rod Steiger, desperate, voice cracking, torn between love and criminal duty, pushes his pistol into Marlon Brando’s ribs, just the way Cain did before gunning down Abel, as their sacrifices smolder on the distant docks, unwanted, like the stubs of God’s cigars.
The idea of fratricide seems so absurd that Brando turns the gun away with pity. Steiger’s face a moon of sweat, he collapses back into the seat, dizzied by his failed crime. But the betrayal lingers in the air and moves across the city streets until even Eden has the stink of Palookaville, and the denizens of the world sleep restlessly in their beds, a world full of bums and not a single contender.
Jason DeBoer has had work published in The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Rosebud, Stand, Other Voices, The Barcelona
Review, The Wisconsin Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Macguffin, Pindeldyboz, Eleven Bulls, 3AM, and CrossConnect.
Note: "Rod Steiger" first appeared in The Mississippi Review and Spork.
