Heroic Mouth Stench

The groaning sound of growing fungi wakes me in the morning and I put my feet into wet shoes and let the weakest light of the sun put itself on my skin. At the urging of my gut, I ingest a serving of some hot concoction, some slurry of grains, and I inventory the oblong utensils I keep in receptacles. I feel clouds of thought condense and dissipate endlessly. I imagine the tongue in my mouth to be an egg from which a thousand tadpoles hatch. I touch the members of my family and their cold acquaintances with my windshield-wiper hands. I am a silent wholeness and altogether proper in my involuntary form.

Finger Serrations

Blanket over my head, I get in the car, the car I own, the car that is paid off with money earned working in the kitchen at the casino, the casino in the hills, the casino by the golf course. The car was bought with this money but the blanket was stolen from a neighbor. I had been given the keys so I could keep an eye on things while she was away. I could let myself in if I saw flames or if it looked like a mirror was about to fall from the wall. I could enter the house and correct the problem, by taking action such as dousing the flames with water or securing the mirror to the wall.

Instead, I let myself into the house in the middle of the night when I could be fairly sure that other neighbors were not watching, and I tried to be bad. I tried to force myself to look in her underwear drawers and medicine cabinet, but invisible barriers stopped me from doing it. All I managed to do was go through a linen closet, where I found this blanket.

Since then, the guilt has been an acid in my lungs and I have stopped eating, and I have stopped going to my job at the casino, and I have been called by my manager several times but I never answered the telephone and the last time she called she said do not come in you are fired we have someone else do not come in keep your apron.

So I get into my car with the blanket over my head and I will return it now. I will drive the car head-on into the front of my neighbor's house and I will use drunkenness as my demon and in the ensuing ruckus I will throw the blanket into the house and she will find it after the emergency personnel have gone and while I am being harassed at the police station and the blanket will be a minor mystery dwarfed by the wind gusting through the hole in her house. I like this idea.

The Ink

I keep a brooch in a box in a kitchen cabinet, a piece of handmade jewelry purchased from an artisan in the town of cactii and sandstone. I keep it for her.

 

She lives atop a stream-kissed mountain, amidst sighing evergreens and sky-filled ponds where she is kin to the birds and beetles, to shy fauna and their humble raptures. There, she is a wordless voice and an aimless wanderer, litter. But one day her animal life will end and she will descend unheeded and it is this for which I have prepared myself.

 

The brooch will be a gift of mundane beauty, a piece of elegance to pin to her ragged garment and it will be her first taste of culture after living upon the mountain. She will be eased into material concerns by the brooch I have held for her, among colanders, slotted spoons, and my cast iron skillet.

 

She will see the home I have kept tidy. She will step onto the lawn I have richly nourished and carefully tamed. Despite my years of diligent preparation, I will lack the confidence to look into the pupils of her eyes. I will watch her feet, pale in the lucid grass.

Hatred Season

I knew a man who was a brother to another man. As brothers they were known for the dry soup they carried in their pockets. They were known for the anxieties of their parents.

This brother bore a birthmark on his neck in the shape of a hammer's iron head. His walk was sparrowlike and his thoughts swirled like paper beads under his breeze-filled hair. I touched his ear while he slept, once. It was warm, hairless.

I spent time with him in a humid dormitory where we shared deli meats and paperback books. On sunday mornings, he left me voice mails distorted by the volume of his screaming. Upon learning of the recklessness with which I tended to my laundry, he scolded me softly, explained the importance of garment care, and asked if I would allow him to take it upon himself. I answered no, and he asked if he might teach me. I answered no, but said I might allow him to be the steward of my clothing in exchange for me dispatching one of his own chores. This was how I came to transcribe his dictated letters to his family at home.

When I saw him last, he was wearing his suit, on the roof.

Our People Swallow This

This place is a city and it is made of streets for the use of our vehicles. The people here accept standards of conduct and the lives we live are enriched by the convenience of vehicles and our lives are whole. Men and women we trust have created unattractive white vehicles. We all them ambulances. I mention this because I see one now. Crammed in this ambulance, the heat of bodies bind people together and their pulses are quiet but true. The immobile occupants fill themselves with the voice of the siren which heralds their coming. The voice is the medium for the song of alarm.

Skull Fist

This is an aluminum can a quarter full of paperclips and ball bearings. When you are scared, shake it. I will come to you and I will vanquish the source of your fear. If it is a person, I will command that they apologize, depart and not return. If they resist or refuse, I will engage in an act of cruel physical force; for instance, I might clutch their face in both of my hands until pain and aversion to facial damage forces them to beg for mercy. Or I may use my legs and feet to deliver blows to their torso, back, and head. I cannot predict all methods I may use as their bodily movements, whether offensively or defensively undertaken, will require split-second decisions. In any case, you will watch me subdue the individual who has caused you such distress, and you will understand my power.

 

If you are scared by an animal, I will use similar tactics, though perhaps I will not act cruelly; it is not necessary when dealing with animals because they do not act with malice. They are stupid and more than likely act out of their own fear. I do not believe that an animal would have one such as I who on their behalf would come to their aid or defense. It is not the animal's way. However, if such a circumstance arose, I would take on that protector and vanquish it in the proper fashion.

 

There is a chance that the source of your fear is imaginary. For instance, you may be frightened by an inanimate object or philosophical concept. I will attempt to eliminate your fears with reasonable counsel delivered in a calm and soothing manner. If fear persists, I would more than likely refer you to an institution specializing in such issues. Really, it would be out of my league.

Today We Haven't Woven Anything

Last night, we bought magazines and removed expired foods from the pantries. We held crystal trinkets to our eyes and stared at hundreds of candles. Then there was a single candle and with its reservoir of liquid wax we gave ourselves new fingertips.

 

"Now we can touch everything we're not allowed to," you said, and I said that I would do it. This time, I would do it. There was the closet with the heirloom ear muffs and the coat with an unpronouncable name. There was the porcelain whale and the porcelain wolf's head and the porcelain owl and the porcelain chilld wearing a tee shirt, carrying a lunch box, smiling with imaginings of the thrill of driving an automobile on roads of dirt under a round sun in the sky. And there were things not made of porcelain, there was the box of dog's teeth and under it a vintage magazine of radio stars.

 

Finally we had touched every forbidden object in the house and still there was not enough touching but there was nothing to be done about it, so what was there to do butwhat we did? We saw the quiet, cold television and we sat on the floor with crossed legs, we turned it on, we allowed ourselves to be brought to a comfortable stupor, eventual hunger, and a final buttered slice of bread before sleeping.