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.