I’m standing amidst the ruins of the Plaza de la Sirena with my parrot, Dr. José Venegas, who I suspect of being tapped into some collective archetypal memory bank with a bizillion other parrots— the way thimble jellyfish are with other thimble jellyfish. He knows colors and can count to ten, nine, eight . ….
No nation of alienates, we. We do our dopamine dance in the kitchen, in phone booth and office, aided by pharmacology, hindsight, and when all fails, Zen. We no longer stop twice at stop signs, frantically patting our hips for our wallets. We frog-march from gray to shrill purple, breathing in shellfish, bee balm, fresh…
In moments between preoccupations, in those pauses punctuated by the sound of malm being ground up by bricklayers, or by the scolding magpies, or by Paula praying quietly with her garnet beads— the click and suspirations—he swabs his brow and thinks about what sets apart one interval from another: how a specific point must be…
And up and down the ragged coast gulls draft on the high blue airs, coast the underside of the nimbus drifting past reach, big as a bus on a high and skinny road. Wave goodbye. It is leaving now. Waive any right to see it again. The bright stars, the prickly stars, gain on the…
I lost a tooth in a bloody fight. Was it with Murphy or his half-brother Cutler? Afterwards we searched for it among gum wrappers rolled in tight little balls— had someone waited nervously for a lover? I found two matching buttons and Murphy a Victory dime he claimed was beyond price. I hoped he’d make…
1st Johanna just wants to fuck baseball players. Baseball. She harbors no lust for the thunder boys of basketball. “Freaks of nature, glandular giants, scary,” she explains. “It’d be awful, like having sex with a kayak.” Football players don’t arouse her either. “God, no! Sadistic ogres. They should be out tolling cathedral bells or guarding…
Today: This man is serious. He has put a map of the Mall in my hands and is now insisting that after meeting with the media at the Washington Monument, the parade/demonstration must be routed to the White House for a final statement. “You’re crazy,” I shout above the other voices, a strategy I learned…
I would teach you how to play this instrument which is a little like a violin and something like a flute but diaphanous as watercolor without the pigment but you don’t pay attention . . . When I tell you to count you stare out the window: what could be there if not an immense…
The radio voice speaks in French and so does the other radio voice. Kill the radio and the wind gets hot. In Wolf Point, the Sioux waitress with blue eyes and a figure like a bar of soap lets you change your order, but Delores won’t like it, she says. “Oh, I need about a…
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