Homeopathic Probiotics

Three people sit in the back seat of a late model sedan with their own special hats on their heads and their own favorite screenplay excerpts memorized. The car's antenna is adorned with the discarded tail of something mammalian, which none of the protagonists in this narrative have been trained to identify. Nobody blames them. I mean, what relevance does it have? They're total wilderness newbs and not all that into critters.

Trust me, the three individuals in this sedan have been vetted. None clutch to illicit secrets. None are eaten by guilt over past offences. None are obsessed with genitalia to an untoward degree. They're just fine, salt of the Earth type folks. We can like them and not be all suspicious.

There was an additional passenger, but I had that one removed. It looked at the sedan and remarked, "the design pattern has serious consequences not only for consumers and the environment, but also for the automotive industry as a whole," and I just told it to get out and walk away, and heeded not its woeful protests.

So, we'll have to find one more. I'll put up a few flyers and run an ad on Craigslist. Then we'll have a new one, one ready for being uplifted with the colours of glory we'll apply to its neck with the pigments we've collected during our travels.

Wall of Wind

I affix the name of a color to a single guttural syllable. It becomes something strong with scent of juniper and pinyon, built by the subliminal industry of ants.

My body stands as a stupid and humble thing, unsure whether I exist before verbal communication or after the death of language.

Hot Pink Bleach

It got humid in the closed room where the carpet glows, too humid for Apple's popular iPod media player. Grody Bob was out picking up hot pizza from our favorite local pie joint, so I had nothin' for no one to do, least of all myself. The paper was spinning all the same old sob stories and quaint anecdotes, all crammed between bleating adverts. I loosened my leather belt and slicked back my hair. I imagined the musical stylings of a jazz musician I know.

That was when I realized that my fingers were bleeding.

The editor-in-chief writes, "Hold onto your hot cola. Keep what you own inside your own radiant soul. Smile grimly upon thine seed and impart unto them thusly the Sublime Importance of holding onto one's own hot cola."

I dunno works for me

Don't Give the Confused Lord Anything

What are we selling? Why are these cables around our necks? Who put that black box on the desk? Where is that friend I knew?

I can see the screen, and a bottle of juice as well. It's all on my desktop. I use straws because I hate lifting the bottle to my lips. This way, I can just lean towards the bottle and grasp the straw's tip in my lips and suck the juice into my mouth. Sometimes I don't quite grasp the straw. I bump into it with my lips and it spins around. I call it "the straw problem" and it never fails to elicit a chuckle from Dawna Kaylee Stritt, a woman who sits at the next desk over.

I learned about preservatives from Dawna Kaylee Stritt and was horrified so that's why I drink the juice I drink. I'm not trying to impress her; she's married to her second husband, her face is unattractive, and her political views are frankly revolting. There is no reason to impress a woman like that.

How long will this pain last?

Exterminated Well

I keep things pretty well secret from most people, like I don't say if I'm going to wear a tie, or I don't say like "such and such is my favorite color." That's not in my character. Full disclosure is for chumps! But I do tell folks that I'm a sucker for that kind of music that basically sounds like an angry person at a carnival. That's cool music.

Leather on Fire

Swollen with the food you ate by the wall, you called me on the cell phone. You described your mouth's inside to me and the saliva was a runny ink. You wanted it thick as glue to shoot like bullets that harden in midair. You said you could spit at me and crack my skull. My neck jerks, my eyes bleed, my head opens and thousands of Agnostid trilobites pour out into the sunlight and immediately die.

Path to Citizenship

I go away for a sweet numbness and listen to the rising and falling cheers of some gathering somewhere below me. This topography comes blowing out of me and manifests itself on this city. All of it is somewhat less than my sickness of cynicism feels capable of allowing. Cynical, cynical, cynical tight little mass like frozen black blood, digested hair, bone flavored paper wad and clay. Ears floating on oily water. Just ears.