5 MWE From the rest of the grind

The seat was too high. Lucky for me, though, the seat was on mud--so all I had to do was wait for it to sink. Her smell might have been what I expected. I had looked for rubber tubing but couldn't find it. The strawberries that we had fermented a little so we turned them into jam. The trailer we were in was silver and shaped like a pill. We went to colonial Williamsburg. This was when the sun was up. This was when the night was something I had to learn to see in. We had a cooler that had illegal things inside it. I spoke with everyone at the dinner table for three hours. Then, finally, exhausted, I asked them if I could leave. I put myself to bed, but I still heard them through my walls. I couldn't help but to pretend to still converse with them. I had the opposite of what must have been an imagined malady. I really was sick. I had to sick on the side of the interstate. I wondered who cut the grass. My grandfather in a large leather chair. He has a bed in his office, and I am under it. I am hiding. I hear them call him Dick. I would like to know if what I have seen will ever get me a profit. I would like to know what I have learned. That I am not ready to work outdoors should not be a revelation to you. The machine split logs hydraulically.

Both of his parents were from Arkansas. His father woke him at three in the morning to practice the piano. He should have done it earlier. His idea was that we would clean windows in rich neighborhoods. We would ask a dollar for each one. His idea was that we would breed German shepherds. His idea was that we would hide a camera in plants to catch who had been stealing from us. Her response came to me much too quickly. I wondered what, for once, made her respond to me in what I thought was the normal time. I dug a trench around myself. I was unsure as to what I should eat. I had never seen what was on the plate in front of me. Her chest was a plate. I was too small to operate the vehicle. I was not strong enough to operate the vehicle. I very much regret having rented out the lower pasture to the snowmobile concern. She is known in the area for taking people to court. She is one to step in the green excrement of geese. She brought me to the lake and expected me to get in. The water was cold. The bottom, slimy. I was much too young to know how to operate anything set on the more adult settings. The deck overlooked the woods. We rode in the back of a 1950s Mercedes convertible. My favorite was when they threw rocks at us in it. I wondered how long it would take to become proficient in the manner of speaking I wanted to learn. These words would stink.

She wore an old softball tshirt and a dress. She tucked the shirt into her dress and she was number fifteen--a powerful number in the kabbala but not in the batter's box. She was afraid of whatever came from another human being. Each human was being rude. Each human was being stubborn. Each one was on the road but wasn't buying anything. There were stalls, and each one had a different vegetable to buy. He put his hand roughly on my neck and asked me what to think. There was another hand in my armpit. One on the back of my neck. One on my arm. When my bed was invaded by him, I looked out the window and saw what must have been an alarm on the side of a bank. Both the sidewalk and the street had snow on it. No marks in the snow. It was sidereal. It was of the stars. The park was so vast, and I was stuck in it for so long, I eventually had to learn how to read the stars. I spent much time in the park. A man played with his dog in the park. I watched a man play with his dog in the park. He would bounce a blue ball, and the dog would catch it. This happened repeatedly, but then something unusual happened. The dog lunged for the ball and then fell to the ground. The man leaned over his dog. He put one had on the dog's chest to pin the creature to the ground. With his other hand, he reached into the dog's mouth. I saw him leave the dog and run to our house. He knocked on our door, and Mother answered. He asked her if he could borrow a kitchen knife.

5 MWE decrease your trampling before you befriend me

The extensiveness. How wrong it was for us, how wicked-hearted. He did not open a box quickly. He would often take three days. He had a sheet rock knife he used to cut through cardboard. He condoned defeat when it rarely suited him on the beach, which wasn't made of all silica but had a lot of plastic in it. A large portion of the world's sand is not plastic. Not a loophole, a hoophole. That is, it is something for you to go through--but it's also a hoop. Another hoop to go through. The hoop was magnetized on its inside. Did you close the flue? Before you left, did you close the flue? You didn't. Perverted. Off to the side. Bespectacled with something made in the dump. She was too lax with me, but that's what I had looked for in a person. I had looked for that and found her. We packed the car and left at night. We listened to something on a tape about lions. They were friendly at first, but, later, the took apart that entire family. They had set up a zagreeba around the campsite. Amazing how that little fence, that little zagreeba of twigs, is often enough to keep out elephants. A creature ran through our camp.

She retroflexed me while I was asleep. Against my wishes. I went to a party where everyone ate too many strawberries. I knew how to imagine what was in their stomachs, and what I saw convinced me that I had not been kind enough to the men that I had met at that tiny busstop. Who would have known that one of them would become a turtle egg poacher. Another learned to order things at a restaurant in a charming way. I did not feel strong enough to lift bags of marbles. These were big bags, and if I were to drop them, I was certain I would never get called back to sing for Jerimp. Jerimp was not intelligent. He was not responsible when it came to anything except getting me on time to my haircut. I had a standing appointment for every other week. When I sat in a seat, I was shocked by how much cardamom I smelled. Where did this come from? I was to ask the mother of the five children how she got them. She said that, five times, she had been looking for something else. Would you open a louvre? What about jalousies? The ends of them must have been aluminum, for they bent so easily.

We played naughts and crosses for our worthwhile lives. Her speech was not measured, but her income was. She gave me a bit of money every month--just so long as I didn't mention what I knew about her hair products. I knew what she put in them before they sold them. Not all of her income was steady. Some of it had to be found in grain silos. Some if it could have made a doorknob a little too slick. Be in space. Wrap your hand in plastic. Look for space. Don't be pathogenic around your children. Take a song and change most of it. Stand up and sing it in the place painted white. If you were to turn, then you would see a large organ painted white. The rule is that you have to wear red gloves to play that organ. The rule is that you have to wear red gloves to touch her. Before she touches you, she will want to blacken her hands with soot. She will want to walk in a gulch and belch. I did not like how she sold all that I had made privately. All that--I had intended to throw it in a river. I had wanted to lift something--but I couldn't place it. Sounded like he had just awoken. Terrible, ugly, shocking. I was too necessary to the operation to be called a remnant.

5 MWE cramped in a tablecloth you should have laundered

I was not skillful when it came to handling the casks we had stored under the house. They were ungainly. I stuffed myself between two trees, and what resulted couldn't have been any more earthy. I was told not to speak with her anymore. This was because she had turned her eyelids inside out. I'm sorry, but I was unable to meet her at the library today because, really, I lost my way on the most obvious street. There were sculptures in the park. I found writing. Tankage. Tonnage. I was living in the residence illegally. I was an illegal sublease. A spider's venom rots flesh. I simply put the legs of my bed in juice glasses. This, to prevent spiders from crawling in my bed. Was the torpex we found an explosive? We found a fire, and we couldn't put it out only with fog. She was allergic to chocolate. She was allergic to ozone, so we made her a special bread. I will not report anything in a satirical manner. When my history lapsed, I felt so much more comfortable around those in my workshop who couldn't read my handwriting.

Little wild plants. Snowpeas. We were lucky we had vacant lots on either side of our property. She entered the building painted violent yellow. She thought that, if she were to buy five tickets, she would have a much better chance to win the lottery. Her winning tickets. Yellow wild plants. Purple wild plants. Wild Columbines on my great grandfather's grave. My grandmother showed me where my great grandfather was buried. She could not walk well on her own, so I gave her my arm for balance. I gave her half my body as a cane. She led me through the cemetery. She led me right over the graves of other people. I tried to pull her over more to the paths, but she continued to lead me right over graves. This is not what I had intended. She was on her porch. She would ridicule just about anyone who walked past. She always made fun of appearances. She could be cruel when it came to any irregularity of the face. I had a hand spread. I lagged behind her because I did not want to hear too well what she had to say. She asked me something in a tone sycophantic. I halted but didn't hesitate. I knew I'd have to go to the dentist soon. I had to prevent liquid from spurting out of my face. She had a dagger. She had a handcart.

She wore shoes that were easy to slip on, and she stood on a hose. He had tomatoes he had grown in his hands. We set our tent on a hill and dug a trench around it. We had string up. We had tinsel. Though she couldn't remember when she had last shouted across a gulch, she did know how to tie all the knots found under K in the encyclopedia. Her home could not be seen from the road because she had put up so many blankets. What she often put up didn't stay up for long. Especially string. It was now that she became frustrated with everyone on the street. She could have released a bag of bees on them then, but she didn't. She found a marble room and sat on a bench. She saw that old bits of metal moved toward her. They wanted a pet. She went back to her hose and her man with the tomatoes. They were all unintelligent. They all knew how to spell, but they couldn't tell you which was was east. And don't even ask about southeast. The spoke French. She was embarrassed when she found her pygmy goat out of its cage. She would like to get a small sheep for it. She would make the goat's clothes out of wool, and she would feed the sheep milk from the goat. She would pet them both on her porch and wonder how long she should leave her dried beans overnight. A hideous occasion she knew was coming.

5 MWE a father scudded over the waves

Our home was static. Nothing in it moved--not even us. I wore black dancer's tights. I wrapped plastic tubing around my arms and tried to fit objects in my mouth. First, I lit the humunculus. Then, I made something of an embryo with ferns and rusty bolts. It smelled of metal in my hands. I gave out trinkets because I had made them. My job was to set whatever had been wronged right. I started by reupholstering the chairs. I had learned to do leather work. I did not hide behind the donkey because, today, I had caught my allotment of fish. The other day, I had had to hide because I had not caught enough fish. And what I had caught was much too small to feed an entire schoolhouse of children and mice. I told my darling that I would have to leave because my stomach ailment had worsened such that I forever craved porcelain. I felt cold, so I made a sweater for myself. I did not know how to buy wool so I made my sweater out of plant tendrils. I sought her help but did not find it. Instead, what I found was her veil--one that I had given her--in an empty room that had a For Rent sign in its window. Do not be brattish. You'll get your turn at the machine.

An eelworm. A nematode. The boys on the wrestling team got ringworm on their faces because of the rancid mats on which they gamboled and writhed and dreamt of rope fights. I had brass on my bed. I had nickel on my dress. She wore a dress that, on its hem, had lead trinkets. She wore a hat that had metal charms dangling off its brim. She bought a large container filled with dates and ate most of them before going to whatever was most fashionable that season. I was not ready for anything painful. And yet what I got was painful in the extreme. An outpouring of garbage on my hands. I could not raise my hands above my head because they had so much garbage on them. I found a fan--someone very supportive of what it was I was feigning. I had an outflow of flux. I had a bandage on my arm because I had just given plasma for forty dollars. Now I had enough money for a bike. I wanted a bike because I wanted to put test animals in my tires and ride around. This was a splurge for me. I had never owned such rapid transportation. Once, though, I had sat in the back of a car that had leather seats. They creaked and were a little cracked. I saw that the driver was aglow, so I asked him what made him so pleased. He told me he had caught a tagged fish, and that that catch had made him 500$.

He didn't have faith. He had faithery--it was all fake. A pretense. And what did he have faith in? He believed, full-hearted, that if a dog were to bite him, it would immediately let go. Same with a snake or an eel. A komodo dragon. I was certainly not handsome. Adonic. I was homely. I had scars on my chin. I had hair in the wrong places. The smell that came out of my mouth would not be attractive if I were to go tango dancing. So I hid. I got under a structure and hoped I would not be found. I found a sweaty man in a field at night. I tried to wake him, but he wouldn't. I asked if he was okay. As always, we shared what we had dreamt. She was in it this time. We looked for symbols. The only symbols that counted were ones that had not been made by a building renovated for the surge perceived. Chilly. Wintry. Gelid. Ways to describe a night with me. Here comes the decline. The decline angled down into the ocean and into an ancient trench. The submarine, on a line, trailed a styrofoam cup. The pressure of so many fathoms about it shrank it. Take it to third grade.

5 MWE Stir the bog

Very little was disappointing. I would degrade myself--but in a way I could tolerate. The road smelled pink. My prescience had left me. My mother has never been called stocky. Though I strained through the morning's exercises, come afternoon, I had a glaze on my face that betrayed my keeping a ten year old secret. I had set chokers on trees. A dangerous job--but I needed the money to put a downpayment on a swimming pool. I wanted to swim with my animals and smell chlorine. The house was on the side of a hillside. It took us days to clean the property. We took days. I had crookback and defacement. I was mutilated, unmackly. I was wrong to look at, but I did such an excellent job. Have me fold a napkin, and, without doubt, I will hide some little present in the creases. He did not understand the meaning of waves. He was not ready to launder his clothes. He had just broken with her, after all, and he wanted to wear what he had worn through it. A canker could have been pleasant. He had yellowish liquid to put on and numb his canker. He had no way of describing the way it tasted. Bricks that are slick.

My body disembodied. Not because of violence--because of discouragement. I sit on a chair that, I myself, had refinished and re-upholstered. Little brass nails. A hammer. Stretching. I had caned a chair. I had done some needlepoint of a parrot. I went to her parents' house because she had invited me to a party. The idea was to press people against the walls and slide down. Writhe on the ground. She showed me the dresses she had been working on in her basement. Then a drive. Some dancing. She asked if she could kiss me, but I wondered what kind of permission would have slid across a room so quick. The drive took us to a building that had once been above ground. On stilts. I became sick from the breakfast she had made me. We had agreed upon an exchange. She would make breakfast, and I would burn our clothes. We had committed a robbery in them. I showed her a river and some rocks on which I had slipped. I showed her a horse that had thrown me and a beautiful woman with an amazingly raised mole on her chin. Her brother did not like me. He did not like that I asked him how he had developed such a strong grip. Once, on the bark of a dog, I saw her brother. He had an odd shadow on his head, and, only later, he told me that he had painted it on. He wanted to be a bit more obscure than I am. Well, look no further than this bucket.

She had a depression on her head. A dent. My grandfather did not know that I was in his room with him. He had a blanket about him. He was tying rope about his waist. He combed his hair and wrote something on a notecard. He had a pen. In private, he often called me The Waif. He said my eyes had nothing but dopey trombones in them. We went to watch kickboxing and were told about a man in shorts. I could hardly concentrate because a woman had a child that I thought I recognized. I had never seen her before, but I was certain that I had seen her child. I could not tell what sex the thing was, but I knew that sex had produced it. The child was wicked and godless. It did not watch kickboxing. Instead, it looked at me. The mother, I knew, was in a relationship with one of the men fighting. Looking at her face, I couldn't tell which man she wanted to win. I had heard about new knots being tied. I knew how to look in the encyclopedia and find the knots in K. I knew how to tie all those. And I had borrowed books from the library, so I knew how to tie knots. But many new ones have been invented. Certain people are innovators and the rest take their shoes off and cool their ankles in a water fountain.

10 MWE

The toy we played on was a metal shoe. We could retreat to courts when we were finished. A woman watched us from a building. The building had been constructed 2,000 years ago--but just yesterday, renovations had been finished. The dog that he had was named Mr. Chubbs. The dog liked to have a cardboard box on its head. Yes, we had a hedge. We could look through it. The neighbor's daughter told me that her father whipped her mother across the face with a chain. She did not lose her teeth, really. What happened was that her teeth were knocked out by great violence. The children were allowed to draw on their walls. The horrible machine was constructed mostly by children. The machine is horrible. Children had made it because their hands are so small--and horrible machines have lots of crevices that are hard to get to. And why are they hard to get to? They are small and not greasy enough. A family stopped near Niagara Falls. They ate a meal and used a restroom. They saw the preserved remains of a mummy. Somehow, this mummy had been left at a restaurant in Niagara Falls. Thirty years later, it will be discovered and placed in a Smithsonian. We had a straight way to go for at least three hours. I had a difficult time going to sleep because my mouth tasted too much of mint. When the reception finished, I found the first tree that I saw. I reached down and touched a root because I wanted to sense what something alone meant. Did it mean to do harm to me? He drank a glass. He placed a letter. He asked a question that had both and easy and a difficult answer. He felt fine going down stairs, but, when he went up them, he felt horrible pains in his head and chest. This all occurred when something inconstant was happening. I did not unhorse myself. What I had to do was undog because I wasn't feeling well. I would touch a pelt and not know it to be such. I would touch skin, and it always felt oily. I did not harm anyone, but I did manage to get mangy. I would like to ask what was it that pulverized your arm. My father told his friends that he would be able to break my arm by squeezing it. He said all he had to do was grab my forearm and squeeze. Certainly, he would break one of the bones in there. He would not sit on benches, and yet he had no trouble sitting on a chair and spitting between his legs. That watery spit. That antique chair. Grass he had seeded and mown. He was a little too eager when it came to watering anything--even me.

We took too long to paint a gate. We didn't know how to do it. We started by sanding it. We took off some rust. Then, with brushes, we painted it. But it took us so long. We shouldn't have sanded or used brushes. We should have just sprayed it. The water was behind the house. It went out into a river. We got into boats, and people on the shore threw rocks at us. This was all before fireworks. Someone was shot with a pistol because he stole limes. I had limes in my pockets, but I had not stolen them. The signage was all handpainted. I walked until dogs followed me. I found houses that were ruins. They crumbled into each other and made a larger structure. This structure did not look made, but it was habitable. When I first went into it, I was impressed by its blue light. Its green light was not as interesting. I had a water pistol, which I used to squirt lightbulbs and sockets. My head was something that people in the neighborhood looked for. My head was full of portent, they believed. They saw things around it. They saw things squinch out of my nose or ears and eyes. These things would predict the future. They either looked for my head or didn't. I had heard of a performance. This performance was not being put on in a hall or a theatre or a space. Instead, it was in someone's home. We, the audience, were to watch by leaning against the walls. Part of the show took place in a half bathroom. We couldn't all watch in there, of course, so we had to send one representative. At intermission, that person had to tell us what had happened in the bathroom. And what had happened? A Roman Style suicide. The child drew a warm bath, got in, and got himself open deep at the insides of his elbows. What was funny, though, was that red did not come out of him. Instead, what came out was bubbles. Soon, the whole bath was filled with bubbles. A real bubble bath. And these things soothed him, convinced him to get out of the bath and seek attention. His problem was that attention was never anything that he sought. Instead, what he looked for was rockets. Rare birds. Anything of value in the gutter. Very often, he thought he saw dollars on the pavement. When he looked a second time, however, these pay dirts always ended up as leaves or bits of newsprint. He saw that a man named Essex appeared in print. This man went into the room of his lover on the pretext that, in her room, he had left his handkerchief. Then, in the room, he killed her.

The nutriment was not sufficient. Instead of using manikins, the department store used skeletons. I was the one who thought adding flesh might be a good idea. The store had been owned for 3,000 years--long before any of us ever wanted to grow plants on the roof. We grew things that were carnivorous, of course. We grew thorned things--or things that had leaves that could slice open a shin. Just a tiny gobbet of food was what I wanted. I had wrapped myself in the sheet I had slept under sick for eight days. I was sick for a while--and all under that sheet. But there I was, the sheet wrapped around me, looking for any small gobbet. I had finally gotten a job at a deadhouse. My job was not in it, though. Instead, I was to manicure all the plant- and rock-life outside. I suggested that we put skeletons in tanks of water. Then we'd run bubbles through them and they would dance. Their jaws would open and close as if speaking. We could make a tape to play with them. We could make them sound as if they were singing. There was a moroseness in the way she turned on the lights in our apartment. She would reach up, but not all of her would lift. She had just bought that red sweater. She had an embarrassing tattoo of a fish. We are just not the correct biology, she told me. She worked with the upper case D deaf. She had invented new signs. We had to watch the movie on my computer. My favorite scene was when they were all in the hospital. It was there that I saw the little boy was the one who had stolen the drugs out of the armoire. Her favorite scene was when a certain man kissed. Then we kissed and her comment was, What is this? A slow dance. I excused myself and built a staircase to a ledge. I bluffed, and she bought it. I had the impassivity of an animal that never knew it was domestic. Here is my apology: a vase of fluid. Here is what I invented: a vase of fluid. I told him that his candles sent off strange scents. He said the reason for that was that they had his skin in them. The daystar. The commencement. I saw the moon in the day that day. The tree had lots of ferns growing at its base. On the undersides of the ferns were lots of grainy red dots.

5 MWE Prone Apron

This bothered. It was a bother. I exercised near a road when it was hot in the morning. Never had I drank for a child. Here was a child asking me to drink a glass of something she had colored. This was not a false offering. I asked her what her mother was like. Did her mother have a calculator with plastic buttons? Or with metal? Did her mother have buttons on her blouse? We got into an argument. The road had little on it that I wanted to keep. So what. I didn't maraud, and I didn't penetrate. I had a letter of introduction. I had it for a time before I lost it. I stole a lime, but a man saw. He took me, twisted my arm. A woman leapt upon him, and he took out a pistol. It was now that another man beached a boat. He had animals on the back of it--animals I had no way of naming, but I held my hand out anyway. I remember having watched a monkey eat a strawberry. I remembered being tough with the children who wanted to eat early. There was very little that was useless in the pantry. This was what I was seeing.

The balcony was above an ocean. The balcony was above brush. She was down there--below the balcony. My aunt had to wrap me up before she took me outside. She left me in the driveway. I did not want anything that had to do with shoving a stick into an animal. I saw very clearly then that I was not intelligent enough to impress my grandfather. When he put me on his shoulders, I made it so that my hand served as a mask that obscured his face. In this manner, we robbed a bank. They were able to identify me, the child, but they were not able to place my grandfather. The haircut he wore he got in France. He had to gall to kill the small pet bird in the lobby. He did not have the appropriate boots. He had teeth in sections. He had a nose replaced. He had parts of himself implanted. Later, he had these implants removed and replaced with whatever was more current or of the season. He sat in a trailer. He sat in an old fire engine. He had won the fire engine at an auction. His idea was that he would be able to drive it in parades. This would be good advertising. I hated it that--every time I threw an amulet up--it got caught in a fir tree. I remember being so worried about escaped horses and spider bites. Very early in the morning. Not enough bread to be made.

He made shackles for cats. Not ready to be a burden to anyone, he ate all that he had grown in his garden. The time was too salty for anyone to remember what happened next. Get ready to take a long time walking to the asylum. Her bedroom was a charnel house. He closet full of poppies. What was it that got her to remember her father's wish? He had wished to be the boss of some men. He never had a complaint. He was compliant for a time that verged on record. We played boardgames to be quiet. We went to most of the zoos in the area but saw a small percentage of animals. When something got caught in a tree, we often decided that it was then we should go to the Jersey Shore. This was when breasts. We did not have the legs to make such jam. We were never ready to eat, though we had clean silverware. My job was to boil our meals. But was it illegal? It was. We stayed in a dorm room that had posters of things we could have never expected. Get ready to be struck was what I had been told by yet another man. This one wore a hat that smelled of salt sweat. I would like the cod. The Blue Fish. My turn to rip the jacket.

5 MWE

He lived next to pumpkins, strawberries, and fir trees. He lived where the ground could have been the back of a large animal. Just a short walk would take him to countless abandoned buildings. Abandoned by whom? Who abandoned? He had a stone wall that pranksters often pushed down. They backed their truck into his stone wall for a laugh. Then, he'd have to spend a few days building it again. He didn't want to cheapen any of the things that he hated. He did not want to get a crew together for any adventure. He hoped that any of the growing things near him would be blighted. Blighted by what? By whom? By kids in a truck? He took a stool with him out to a field of mud. He set the stool in the mud. He sat on the stool and slowly sank. Instead of sitting on the stool, he was sitting in mud. He did not dislike animals--especially larger animals. He did not mind that two boys often launched model rockets in one of his fields. He did not mind that they flew line-controlled airplanes. He liked to see them spinning round and round and dipping their airplanes.

No chance she would stop being agog. She was a substitute for a sister. She lived in a shack we had off our house. The shack had a kitchen and shower in it. If we wanted to, it would be easy for us to put the kitchen in a box. And the shower was orange from some growth she never bothered to clean. She went to school, but, on the weekends, she watched me to make sure I didn't drown. It would have been easy for me to drown in a pool, a tub, or even a sink. I had the part of myself I most hated on display. Or it was in a display--but not encased. The three of us children became adults in ten years. We were strict with each other but not with our parents. We did not like to mix concrete. If we had to, we ate our meals outside. Sometimes, one of us would steal away to the basement. And why? To sit very close to the humidifier. I liked to sit next to sweaters as they dried on the wooden rack. What might have been my indifference was actually a pain I had in my thigh. I was not ready to eat grapes. I enjoyed the entire bowl of nectarines. She was agog because she managed to grow her underthings. This was when we were not frightened. When we could smell metal on our hands one day, plant life on another.

I denied having had a foretaste. A lie. There was a fence that prevented an attack for one day. An animal pushed through a barbed wire fence because of a large wave. A wave with a fifteen foot face. A wave with dirt from the prairie in it. A wave with playing cards of flint in it. To have such a wave go over you. The tornado took tiles off the roofs. Shrapnel. What I would like to see is more bodily churning. I would like to hear the insides of people squinching. This is what it was: riotous. There were children in the park. The park had kites tethered to its ground. None of the children were attended by their parents. Their parents were on an airplane. Their parents were test pilots for a new design of airplane. The children found dogs tied to tree branches. So they released the dogs--dozens of dogs. The dogs were thin and thankful to be released. The children, with the thousands of dollars their parents had left them, bought food and toys for the dogs. They went to whatever stores were nearby. The dogs did not want to eat, however. The dogs sought out gutters in the street, and found openings in the curb that would take them underground.

5 MEWL

She did not let the height of her stack of silk diminish. She had a face that had once been broken. Imagine the front of her skull a mask--and that mask smashed and broken. The front of her skull had been broken--but it was broken under the skin. The instrument that had been used did not break the skin, but it did smash the front of her skull. Her face. She had a child who loved to take his clay and make noses for skulls. That skulls did not have noses did not bother him. He simply enjoyed to make noses for skulls, and she was always so impressed at how human a skull began to look once it had a nose. Humans are called Homo sapiens, of course, but there are some people who believe that humans, instead, should be called Homo loquens. Humans are really not all that wise. But they can speak, so perhaps loquens is a better fit. She had to have a fake face put in. She was lucky because they were able to make her a fake face to replace all that had bee smashed. All they had to do was take an old mask that she had and break it in a chalet. The chalet had a low price when they first bought it. It was right on the lake, so they knew it would be a good thing to invest in. Birds were what died near them.

Someone had tied a dog to the cross at the top of the church. It was the prank that was so often played. I lived on Church Street, and I woke to a dog. Someone had tied a dog to the cross that's on the top of the church. I went to cut down the dog. It was a black lab maybe. Someone had tied it to the cross. It was tied with its belly to the cross. Someone had once tied a pig to the cross. Someone had tied little goat. All sorts of animals tied to the cross. I wondered if the person who did this also shot out the signs on stores. Would this person shoot out lights? I told the child that this is the factory where they make people. This is where they make most of the people in the world. I told the child that, before the people are released, they all have to eat a special meal. If they don't eat that meal, then they become murderers. That's why there are so many murderers in this town. Not enough of them eat the meal that they are supposed to eat after they are made. What is in the meal? What of it? He was told to eat a piece of quartz. He was told to swallow marbles and throw them up. He was told to hide the marbles. He was told to plant something in marbles and make it grow. What I never understood was how a machine could have so much waste in it. I stand next to any machine, and I wonder when it will tell me which way to the round board.

Her bust, in my eye, was unflagging. I saw what was about to happen in a dream. Because I have synaesthesia, I realize that it is not unusual that I am ambidextrous and that I have precognitive dreams. I experience deja vu often, and I have very little sense of direction and have never done well in math. My brother has epilepsy. He was given a choice--that is, whether or not he wanted to have the hemispheres of his brain cut into. That would relieve all that is in the fishtank. We found an empty fishtank--still unbroken--at the dump. So, what we did was grease it with Vaseline and have people strip down and fold themselves into it. Like geeks. We liked to see what a thigh looked like greased and pressed against glass. A breast, maybe. This was when dirt was on the roof. Our father, with a bunch of other men, dug a twenty-foot deep hole. Our father swindled the other men in that he got to keep the best dirt, while they were fooled into hauling the inferior dirt. Our father put all that dirt on the roof of our house. He told us to go inside while, with a high-powered hose, he shot water onto the roof. We watched as it all flopped down.

5 MWE

He was a hardydardy, he was. He was under a tent. The tent. Outside, the eight peaks of the big tent looked like teats. The circus put its belly to the night sky. In it, was him--a hardydardy ready to do something we had not seen. We were not intelligent. We wanted to rent an apartment. I found a suitable apartment--that is, one exceedingly cheap. I called the man who had placed the ad. He said he was in a forest--two states away--and that, if I wanted to see the apartment, I could show it to myself. He told me to go into the backyard of the house neighboring the apartment. He told me to slip under a fence. He told me to find a back screened-in porch and to let myself in. He said I could find a key above the porch door. He told me to let myself in. What I saw was filthy and spacious. I could not tell what smelled of natural gas and what of cat urine. One toilet seat had a seatbelt bolted into it. The ceiling tiles looked ready to fall--some of them were held in place by nailed-up boards. I found the heads of figurines all over the place--on top of the thermostat and on bookshelves. I wondered which animals came by at night. I wondered what it would take me to sit down and eat a meal.

The dance was boring. The tree, we learned, was sick. Someone had painted the windows on the outside. At night, someone had played that prank on us--they painted all our windows from the outside. What do do then? I mixed cement that afternoon and paved over the grass we had. I paved over our lawn. The place where we recycled was a vast structure--maybe something like a complex spaceship that had landed. And the creatures who worked there! They were all very strange and so helpful that they got in the way. I went through a tunnel because I wanted to feel as though I were in a throat. And what a throat. It led me to an ocean. This part of the ocean had no beach. There was a gate I had to climb over since I had no key. I had not been invited, but I made friends quickly, and, soon, the hosts were apologizing that they had not invited me. The stand was closed for the winter. Not profitable. We played a game but did not expect any of us to get injured so severely. The courts had a forest near them. A river near them. A man would fetch balls for us so long as we left him beer cans. We were not ready to lose eyeballs. We were not ready to get into car accidents and donate the interns of our bodies.

As I bought milk, someone on the other side of the refrigeration unit in the supermarket stocked the milk. I walked down a road. I saw buildings that had not been lived in in a long time--and what is it to live in a building? So. I bought milk that I knew would be ready for me. I shook it to my ear and immediately knew some plastic treat was inside. A milk company started to put plastic treats in its milk. Whoever stocked the milk had something wrong with this hands. The tips of his fingers looked too white, too pale. When we walked the eighty acres with the ranger, we found marijuana. He pulled it up, and we helped him. We told him that a renter must have done this. Or someone who knew we were just Summer People--people who came to swim and to walk. The Naturists were naked people we rented the farm to in the summer. All the Naturists walked around with towels. They did not wear the towels, but they did use the towels to spread on chairs before they sat down. How polite. When I was a child, they gave me a sheet rock knife. I bought milk but not one that had just been touched. A piece of plastic inside it. What I would most like to know is a child stuck somewhere. The feeling of tryiing to get a metal bracelet off your wrist. What I would like to know is how often can you ride a horse without wondering what that horse feels like.

10 MWE

Paralysis, death, home, what people live with, the violence that is in us, flight from all concerns, a piece of whistling in the long-toothed dark

When I was younger, I had tried to bite off someone's finger, and I had done great damage. My teeth are not what anyone would call small, though they are not overly large either. I bit as hard as I could. I did great damage to that finger. It nearly came off. It nearly came off my sister. I bit her finger when I was young. She was even younger. That I did this surprised my mother. My mother had once been beautiful, but now she was not. I once had to share a room in an attic with one of my mother's cousins. He assured me that my mother had once been beautiful and that he, too--a close relation of hers even--had wanted to be with her. He assured me this as I waited for him to fall asleep. He told me of his own beautiful wife and children. As he told me this, I waited for him to go to sleep because I wanted to do something awful to him. Or to his car. Or to his children, who were far away. In some other state. When he spoke with me, it had been a long time since I had bitten my sister's finger. I had nearly taken her finger off with what was in my mouth. What was in my mouth at the time? Teeth. But not all of them. I had some of them missing. My teeth are most likely not as strong now as they were. For years, I have clenched and ground my teeth. I did not know that I was doing damage to myself. I never woke with bits of my teeth in my mouth, so I must have always swallowed them before I woke up. I would have dreams about dogs. They were all biting my arms. What they did did not hurt me, but, now, I have a feeling that it got me to clench my teeth in my sleep. These dogs--many of them--biting my arms. It was later that I took to poisoning whatever dogs I noticed penned on my walk home. I would buy a sausage and put dark chocolate in it. I would put Tylenol in it. I would put small silver watch batteries in and feed these to whatever dogs I saw on my walk home. The dogs always ate the whole sausage, and I never stayed around long enough to be spotted. I considered putting fish hooks in a sausage. Nearly bit off my sister's finger. Wanted to do something horrible to my mother's cousin in his sleep. Killed dogs. Imagined myself being speared.

This cousin saw my aunts rub my grandmother's green ashes on themselves. We had been sitting in the kitchen, joking about what we would do with her. We had said that we'd get over one hundred small film canisters. We'd have the grandchildren all decorate the canisters with puffy paints and glitter. Next, we'd put a spoonful of her dark green ashes in all the canisters. We'd have all the funeral guests take them. We'd encourage them to travel and, wherever they went, leave a little bit of her. We liked the idea of this, but we also joked about it. We were trying to show that we could joke about all this. But then my aunts came into the kitchen rubbing my grandmother's green ashes on the faces and necks. They came up behind me and rubbed them on me. My mother rolled off her chair and onto the floor. I had never seen her on the floor. I had always wondered if she had had anything to do with counterfeiting. I knew she didn't go in for the big bills, but I wondered if she counterfeited quarters and dimes. I saw a machine in her bedroom that could have done such a thing. She was killed by method. I was far away when she was killed. She was killed by one of her cousins--one who had once thought her beautiful but who had since gone on to travel too much and rent cars too good for his borrowing. He knew too much about ferns and what his children were doing. He knew a little too much about his children's minds. He knew how they performed in too many ways. He mostly kept track of how they performed abstract things. He knew nothing about music or history. He knew nothing of even what most newspaper readers would know. He had the gall to ask the neighbor if he could smoke on his property. We never saw him. We didn't see him later. He took on a big project--the paving of some ground that was very hilly. He should not have taken on such a thing, but he wanted to impress us. My mother on the floor. My aunts covered with the ashes of my grandmother. My uncle spent two days cleaning a trailer he'd sell for fifty dollars. I spent most of one day hiding ice cream. I bought gallons of the cheapest stuff I could find. I found a scoop in the wash. I walked around the house with a gallon of ice cream and would leave scoops in the luggage of my family. I opened my grandmother's files and left in scoops. I went into her closet and left what I wanted. I left flavors. I realized I had tasted rotten milk many times in my life but that I had never tasted rotten ice cream. I had never tasted it gone bad. I looked for any bit of sky. I looked for anything to clean. I made a woodpile once, undid it, and made it again.

Her name was Mordo, and at least she knew that caffeine is a diuretic. She wanted to be a wet nurse. First, she put an ad up in the supermarket--by where everyone selects a cart. Then, because she got no answer, she put an ad in the newspaper for a wet nurse. She wanted to be one. Though she had never ridden a motorcycle in the snow, Mordo knew that to make a good meal, every now and then, you should add some sort of nut. She rode her motorcycle in the snow, and she did not care if a member of the police would pull her over. Mordo had never flattered herself in front of anyone, but she could have. She flattered herself in her room so that she would know what it's like to be private. She knew how to get to the roof of her house. She knew how to get under the basement. She knew there was a room under her basement. Mordo drank coffee. Mordo had a scepter she held in her room. None of her dresses were clean at times, but that was fine at those times because she would wear her father's slacks. All she had to do was take a pair of his slacks and put them on. She would wear them with suspenders she had won at the fair. Mordo didn't cook with butter. She had to make a path that led from the back of the property to the fount. It was a fount that had been installed before any one of the not too serious holidays. He uncle was a sponger. Her mother was the only one who knew which tree branch to pull. Mordo did not want to go into the river because, earlier that day, she had seen a horse in it. She had walked on the side of the road for an hour before a motorcycle passed by. She began to try to find out if other house had rooms below their basements. And which houses had a room above the attic? She wanted to be a seabird. She wanted to be on the shore. She wanted to see sand between pieces of wood. On the last trip she had taken, she had had to be the navigator and the one who kept track of the money. Her grandmother had done all the driving and all the speaking in other languages. Mordo's sister's only job was to sit in the back and hold the playing cards. She was the unhappiest of all them. She had egg on her lip. She did not see the animals Mordo sighted. She did not get to sleep in the room that had the desk with the secret compartments.

They called her foulmouthed. They were not of this world but of Mars. Her mouth was foul because she had eaten a lot of mint. The mint smelled foul in her mouth. She was a mother--but not one who spent much time with her children. One of her children swam competitively. He also held his breath competitively, and, each time he outlasted an opponent, he lowered his test scores. Her other child stripped in the open. Her mouth once had things in it. They happened to surprise her--what since they came from Mars. They were not of this world, so they had patience few--especially this mother or her son or her daughter--had ever seen. She had a square piece of wood in her mouth. A block that kept foul out. They were a little gross themselves. They licked things up. They happened to lick certain things up. Her son won some sort of competition in a salt water pool, and, afterwards, he did yell a lot. Her daughter stripped in public. What was it that made them a family? It was their arms and legs--especially when they held or clenched them. She was foulmouthed--not at all ready to show her children what an animal would come naturally to.

It was when he was sick that they started to hamper him however they could. He was happier than many animals he had fed. He fed cats and lizards, and he was happier than most of them. He had a turtle, and he knew it would be a legacy pet--a pet that would live long after he died. He'd have to find a future person for it, his legacy pet. He knew of fish in the Marianas Trench that lived for over 100 years. Parrots lived long lives. Some scorpions lived for over fifteen years. He was so sick that, even if he were to buy a mouse, it would be a legacy pet. If he were to buy a feeder mouse, even that would be a legacy pet. And he knew that feeder mice lived far shorter lives than other mice. He once had a mouse that had long fur--what's more, its fur was the color of champagne. When he had been healthier, he would regularly mow his lawn. His mower had been electric, and he had had no choice but to plug it in in his kitchen. In the same socket the accepted the plug from his toaster. In his house, he had painted ivy over his main door. He did not have all the ivy, though, because it was his mother who had done it. She had started the project and had finished three quarters of it--but then she died. So he can look at one last leaf and one last green curly cue and know that was the last thing that squirmed in her mind.

The chafe between her son's legs was great. He ran around for most of a day and got a chafe. He son spent much of the day in the ocean. He caught waves with a luncheon tray. But he chafed between his legs. She was not a person who planted anything. She never planted anything. When her son slept, she put dirt in his hair. He had ears that stank. He chafed. The ocean was not ready to have people in it. It was cloudy and had sewage in it. Lots of bubbles, and it stank. The surgeonfish has orange razors on its tail. The Portuguese Man O' Was will sting. Her children all drew horses on her walls. So she took kitchen matches to their drawings and blackened her walls a little. She was told that if she made a large fire on her dining room table the flames would reach up and draw designs on her ceiling. The designs would be full of portent. But she didn't do it. Her one son filled a bag full of water and stepped into it. Her daughter drew on herself--on her face. Very little revealed itself to this family. Whenever they went to the ocean, they had to rent a van.

5 MWE 06.05.08

Very little. He was not excitable or edgy. He did not have bandy legs or ones with knobs on their sides. He was not an example. He was not impassioned or infected with anything. He sank too far into a couch. Someone spoke to him, someone with a face slicked with acne. He was not ready to participate in commerce. Half of the town had been built up--the rest was in the process of being built. Take a right and three lefts and you will miss the church. We got there early--when the trumpeter was still practicing. There were five women in dresses and five men under some pews. This was not when anything happened rapidly. In the sun was her lunch. Her lunch had been made for her and left in the sun. She was not animated, though she could grasp whatever it was she wanted. I shared a room with my mother's cousin. As I tried to go to sleep, he assured me that my mother had been beautiful. Earlier that night, I had driven down a hill to see a dark horse with a white head. I found later that I had walked on the wrong side of the road. And yet I am the one who still has fiery flux.

My family, this farrago. There are the three ruined maple trees, but we do not get rid of them though they are sick. I was told that a man had a piece of metal pipe. He sharpened one end of it. He captured someone--put this person down with chloroform. He stripped this person of his clothes and laid this man on a floor. Then, what he would do is take the sharpened end of his pipe and sink it into the unconscious man's naked chest. He sunk the sharpened end of it, and it went down into this man. It was an instrument with its edges sinking into some dough. He sunk the end in--it had a plug of skin in it--and then he raised the pipe to his lips. He pushed air through it and shot the skin plug across the room and against a wall. This was all there was to do when the maple trees got sick. Allow the neighbors to hunt turkeys. Allow tourists to ride snowmobiles. Allow someone else to rent the south end of the property to experiment with growing grapes. Found animals I didn't expect in the tree. Found things tied to sticks.

A constant fascinator. The three storms in the area will overlap. In the library, there were three busts, but I cannot remember who of. There was a desk reserved for someone. They had the book sale on the roof--a gimmick. The one road met two--merging became tricky. What it was was not legal. I would like to go for a walk before I think about what I have done. No, my character is unready. My character is unlovely. I do not remember whether or not any of my classmates passed anything. Some of them could have been buried. Others were probably familiar with eel eating and lying to whoever was the newest one to ask a question. They found him in the reservoir. They found a wire about his wrist. They found wire in his mouth. His ears were so close to his head--they looked as if someone pressed them there, but no one did. She has not the energy to argue today. I can usually expect an amount of yellow to come out of her mouth. Then green. But not today. Her father embarrassed her by drawing. He was never around except when he drew things. He was what they called an "operator." With it, with her compassion, she went through some weeds. The point was to go through the weeds first and then the ferns. No one could have guessed that the camera was on. My head was not full of much but frenetics.

5MWE 06.01.08 Freshly Foal

To be the first to eat ash after an eruption is a great honor because it is something where the grit--for once--goes where it should. I was conceived in the air--my parents sky dove tandem and had patches cut out at the crotch. I did not take the first time they jumped, they think. It took a few tries. My friends and I streak naked across the rifle range. We wear masks when we do it because we're all for fun and daring but not for litigation. We are fast when we streak. We've been wounded, sure, but we've not died. Not a one of us has died. We've all made it, and that's not silly. The people at the rifle range are nervous when they shoot. There were some fourth graders at the rifle range once. One of them, those Fourths, had brought a dad, a guardian, with them. What they wanted was to film each other shooting guns so that they could use the footage in a music video that they wanted to make. So they went and did the shooting and filming. They had a dad with them. They got the footage they wanted, but one of their shots hit one of us. This one of us had been, of course, streaking. With a mask on. This shot, though, was more than a wound. I was conceived in the air--when gravity was different to that in a bed.

I am a funambulist. I have fun when I walk because I walk only on rope. I only walk on rope. Only I walk on rope. I walk on rope only, and, when I do, I have fun. I have a house, but I rarely walk on its floors or through its halls. Instead, I have stretched rope all over the place. My grandmother came to my house. She is in her eighties, but she still drives. She drove an hour north from her home to see me. Her home is full of what she has collected. Ten years ago, I could make it though her hallways only by walking through aisles of her collections. Only make it through. Only I. Now, ten years later, she no longer has aisles. She has tunnels. She had built the aisles so high they leaned on each other. She is stooped, so she doesn't have to lean. Me, though, I have to get on my knees just about. She had me over because she wanted me to have some suits of my grandfather's. He's not dead. He's in another house for people who cannot speak and who sit on chairs that can move--by wheels and levers--easily. He sits next to a fishtank sometimes. Other times he's next to a cage full of little birds or a tv. The tv plays mostly things about animals, though sometimes they put in a tape that has a fireworks display on it. I was to pick one of my grandfather's suits. I am a funambulist, and my grandmother comes over to my house.

She had driven her car for an hour with animals in it. She came for me because she wanted me to drive her three hours west to a wedding. We went and got to the church three hours early. Instead of exploring the town we were in, we sat in the church parking lot for three hours. Got sunburns. She said she had not had a sunburn in twenty years. I told her I saw someone get one yesterday. The wedding had a lot of musical instruments in it, and each one, each instrument, was played incorrectly at one point. All the maids of honor had painted nails and all the best men had on coats. I knew no one at the place and let them look at me. After, we went to a reception and ate from three tables that had three different themes of food. A hotel room afterward--one with an elevator and a breakfast. One with an alarm some trickster had preset. She took me to a graveyard, and we easily found her parents, grandparents, and brothers. We stepped over others to get to them. I was holding her hand, I tried to lead her around people, but she stepped on them and over them. She didn't care because she was looking for names. We stepped on little pink flowers. Finally, we saw all we wanted and drove again through a gate. A gape. Agape. She was not ready for swimming since only yesterday she had seen three people.