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.