Characters in a Teal Box

Chime and we fall theatrically. Rubber snakes on concrete, startling the occasional passerby for a moment, but we're quickly forgotten as they walk, the next place and the place after that. They might hear the chime themselves, but they don't know.

We fall as we do and let the things on the ground traverse us. A hand might fall on a calf or a finger might attract a sourceless trickle of blood. A tuft of killed plant (maybe a sweetgum seed) might sneak under a sweatshirt or blouse. A gaze might line up with another gaze and the exchange will never rise to the verbal like a plunged thing desperate for the surface of the water. The chime, the specific type of fall, and then silence for the allotted time. Sometimes things fall on us. Insubstantial, usually.

The things on the ground learn us and ignore us again. The people come to scoop us up, load us into the truck. And eventually we'll find our way back here, or another place, form another clot, hear the chime, fall in the customary way.

Four Tin Sticks

Throttled by hubris, disastrous husbands careen towards middle age with gross burgers in their glove compartments, with lubricated condoms. Under their flatulence-soaked bucket seats: cigar boxes full of dog tags they never wore. Their guitar string thongs and suede ponchos and pepper pelts inspire revulsion among anyone with minimal cognitive ability. 

Vomit. Bile. Tree bark elbows, broken toothpicks in our heels. Ducks' heads in a circle on the floor under the throbbing bed. Paper cut mouths in N95 shells, sucking at themselves. 

Stained thermoses of something bituminous, rolling on the corrugated rubber. Patches and emblems and insignia shaped like shields because that's exactly what they are. 

Crooked shopping carts, gritty citrus soap, screw broom on pegboard, smelt. Nets. Tents. Denim. Scattered beads, not beads: popped baseball cap pegs, everywhere.

Accepted Cookies

You have learned to honor the chieftain with sprigs of dill behind the ears, bearing eggs of swallowtails. Jellied jewels of possibility. Behind the scaffolding of your waking ambitions, a stuttering mist in the vague form of a child projects an unheard song. It's picked up by keener instruments than yours, and you'll mistake the hunters it beckons for half-mothers.

Hi We're Flotsam

Big Buck kicks a brown ball to Kyle Gray. Rye bread morning breaks into platinum blonde afternoon. Kyle Gray, generous sniper, architect of misfortune.

Aunt Rosalee lifts the oblong trunk, leaves grease fingerprints on the lacquer. Leaves footprints in the dust. She's been pranked by cotton faced Big Buck. There are no vintage costumes in the trunk, but she will find a dead crab for the Christmas wreath.

Kyle Gray pumps a bubble of groovy scrap talk in the side yard when he sees the great crab in Aunt R's brown basket. Pilfering tiptoe titty skips, she laughs like a plain scrambler on her way to the wreath barn.

Raggedy Harmonica Sack

In the rock and roll graveyard, she learns the astronomy of insects. The great motorcycle sculpture, looming above the troubled population of this town, her birthplace, ignites its headlamp for the first time in a generation. Bandanas and fairy shawls drift to the ground, crystals of frost reaching up to catch them and pull them into the organic substrate.

Cherub with Goals

A fifty year old bachelor will give you plenty of ideas for a singles weekend, and serving a healthy realization of those traditional flavors. Teenaged boys of his interesting and unique conspiracy will want to turn to tough guys, and deceive him with sometimes decadent brunch recipes. He defies them with a quick breakfast. Whether you are looking for a powerful photographer or not telling his wife what they were looking for, his pipe collection is your source for what they were looking for.

Diagonal Nicotine Park

married to a dentist

graduated from the New Age

the first wedding, thus   

took one of the ribs

the same word used of a potter

after divorcing she practiced

years of seclusion, being

his gratification or his flesh

the first use of anesthesia