7 MWE: She bore braids because they had lead in them

The small coyote was pious. The town had a coyote problem. The coyotes would eat the small dogs and cats in the area. The people in the town reasoned that it wouldn't be long before a coyote killed a child. The coyotes did not kill alpacas. If alpacas saw a coyote, then, as a group, the alpacas would confront the coyote. The town held meetings to discuss what they should do about the coyotes. In the end, despite opposition, they voted to bring in a coyote hunter. The opposition said that if they were to put pressure on the coyotes by hunting them, then the female coyotes would give birth to larger litters.

Yes, larger litters were tied to kite strings. One cousin taught his much younger deaf cousin how to build a model rocket. They launched the rocket at the end of the day. Now is the line fatter or thinner? Is it longer or shorter? Till when will you hold your breath? Don't you know that you shouldn't allow your children to drink seawater? But my child drinks just a cup. He has a mania. He is a separatist. The child can't help but to go to the shore, get a cup of seawater, and drink it. We have to make sure that he drinks many glasses of water after that. Don't you worry he'll ingest the new disease? The new disease was perched on top of a plastic tube, which was developed by some alligators that didn't know the difference between market share value and the last donut. The injury was a charley horse. It was a mouse. The punch was a rabbit punch? How does the cow eat corn?

Would you like to run over the chauffeur? Is that grotesque? He was 6' 7" and worked as a chauffeur to famous people--often famous athletes.

In each hole, he put a kernel of corn, a lima bean, and a dead fish. This was to make succotash. That's all you need to eat: succotash. You can live off that and that alone. Each one. That was what he put in each hole. Though he planted no squash, his garden was full of squash. At first, he thought maybe his neighbor had done this. His neighbor had sneaked into his garden and planted squash. Then, though, he remembered that he had composted some squash, so maybe some seeds had survived the composting. To punish his son, he made his son lie under some squash plants. He told his son that his son couldn't move until a squash plant sent a tendril around him.

He was tall--6'7" and drove a car. He was a chauffeur. He wore a black suit, a black tie, and a black hat with a visor. You knew when he got off work, because he loosened his tie, undid his belt, and pushed his hat onto the back of his head. He had driven for famous athletes--for basketball players and football players. For boxers. He was tall. His son was tall. His son was just 17 and was already 6'7" like his dad. His son played basketball and water polo. He was a goalie on the water polo team. He played in the Olympics. He told his son that he'd give him $100 dollars when he beat him at basketball. His greatest weapon was his big ass. He used it to create space. He created space with his big ass--the ass he sat on when he drove athletes around.

In his kitchen, he confronted his death. In his attic, he confronted his fame, his success. On his staircase, he stepped on a Lego and nearly died. He nearly dired. It was that dire. It was an island. The island came out of the sea. Birds lived on it. There were tubers to eat--and fish. They made hats out of fronds. They made clothes out of hibiscus fibers. Many of them wanted to die. There was a chamber under a reef that they would swim into. All you had to do was swim in and get someone to pile rocks. They would walk on the bottom of the ocean by holding cannon balls. See how far they could go. Have you ever seen someone turn blue because he's holding his breath underwater?

After a long day, he could smell his feet. He could smell his upper lip. He could smell his groin. He wondered what his body would look like if he were to season it in water, chillies, hope, rockets, smearing salad bowls with garlic because he doesn't want anyone to know that, when he was younger, he couldn't make change with cardboard quarters, dimes, pennies. They were playing tiddly winks. They were playing UNO and waiting to find out if their mother was going to die. They played backgammon. They played backgammon by a public golf course. Their father was a terrible golfer. He told them that, to play, all they needed was a putter, a 9 iron, and some kind of driver. They needed gloves. They bought used hockey sticks and gloves. They put the marbles in their mouths. They put the agates in their mouths.

The children beg their father for agate and amethyst crystals. They are in a store full of crystals. There are large geodes and piles of jade. The store owner, a man with no leftovers on his mind and an incredible blemish on his chin, lies on the floor. The children beg their father for crystals. They want to have bags of crystals. They have been collecting crystals. They have cat eyes and lapis lazuli. The have the crystals that are supposed to represent Jesus' blood. The owner says that, if you can pin him down and burst his blemish, you can have anything in the store for free. He says that he had wrestled in highschool and college. He had been very good at wrestling. He shows them that he has the cauliflower ears to prove it. He has memories of diuretics and carbo loads and running on the track wearing trash bags because he wanted to lose some more weight. He said he smells strange. He said he smelled like spoiled blood. He said he once bled on some concrete. As the days passed, and as the sun shone on the blood, he would go and smell it, so he knew what spoiled blood smelled like, and though he never killed a bear or ate succotash, he knew how to press a knife to his forehead and put in a deep cut. The cut required stitches, but you can't always listen to the requirements of cuts, especially when they come by your own hand. Especially when you've put it in because you've said to someone else, "If you don't stop, I will put a cut in my head."

MY LATE SON

Paul Theroux has written many essays, short stories, and novels. I have read The Mosquito Coast twice. I know he has written books about Hawaii.

He published a story in the July issue of Harper's. He titled the story "Incident in the Oriente." This is the story's first sentence:

"We were sitting, heads bowed in prayer, waiting for the local Indians, Secoyas, to come barefoot into the mess container with platters of food."

"We" is the subject of the sentence.

"were sitting" is the main verb. It is in the past progressive form. He could have written "we sat," but he chose, instead, to write "we were sitting."

"heads bowed in prayer" is an absolute phrase since it starts with a noun and is followed with a participle--a past participle. "bowed" is modified by a prepositional phrase, "in prayer," which functions as an adverb.

"waiting for the local Indians" is a participial phrase. "waiting" is the participle, and "for the local Indians" is a prepositional phrase that functions as an adverb since it modifies the participle.

"Secoyas" is an appositive that renames "the local Indians."

"to come barefoot" is an infinitive phrase. I'm not sure what do with it. Infinitive phrases act as nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. I have a sense that this one works as an adverb since it's definitely not a noun, and I don't see how it's an adjective. But, if it works as a noun, then what does it modify? It doesn't modify "waiting" because the "We" are the ones who are waiting, and the "to come barefoot" has to do with the Secoyas. Maybe it does work as an adjective and should modify "Secoyas." I don't know. This is my late son.

"into the mess container" is a prepositional phrase that modifies "to come."

"with platters" is another prep phrase that modifies "to come."

"of food" is a prep phrase that modifies "platters."

But how does that infinitive phrase work? If I were to write, "I am waiting for my friend to laugh at me," then what do I do with "to laugh"? Maybe it's some kind of complement since you're not really waiting for your friend, but you're waiting for your friend to laugh.

This is Theroux's second sentence:

"When Max Moses said grace, as he was doing tonight, his terrifying vitality shone in his bulging eyes."

"When Max Moses said grace" is a dependent clause that works as an adverb. "When" is the subordinating conjunction. "Max Moses" is the subject of the clause. "said" is the main verb, and "grace" is the direct object of the verb.

"as he was doing tonight" is another dependent clause. "as" in the conjunction, "he" is the subject of the dependent clause, "was doing" is the main verb (which is in the past progressive," and "tonight" is an adverb. Theroux uses "as" where many people would incorrectly use "like."

So Theroux opens with two dependent clauses. He makes us wait for his main clause. This is especially interesting since, with his first sentence, he gave us the subject and main verb right away, and then made us wait for his sentence to end by using so many modifiers--things like an absolute, a participial phrase, and all those prepositions.

"his terrifying vitality" is the subject of the independent clause. "his" is a determiner. "terrifying" is an adjective. "vitality" is a noun.

"shone" is the main verb of the indep clause. It is an intransitive verb since it doesn't require a direct object. When "to shine" is transitive--when it requires a direct object (as in "He shined a light")--then it goes "shine, shined, shined." I shine shoes. I shined shoes. I had shined shoes.

When "to shine" is intransitive, though, as it is in the above sentence, the verb goes "shine, shone, shone." I shine with joy. I shone with joy. I had shone with joy.

When I first say Theroux's use of "shone," I thought he had screwed up. Then, however, I looked up "shine" in Garner's Modern American Usage (GMAU) and learned all about it.

"Yet rumbling on in his old smoker's vibrato, he did not raise his voice" is the third sentence in this story.

"Yet" must be some kind of adverb.

"rumbling on" is a participle.

"in his old smoker's vibrato" is a prepositional phrase that acts as an adverb since it modifies "rumbling on."

"he" is the subject of the indep clause.

"did raise" is the main verb. "did" carries the tense, which is past tense.

"not" is an adverb.

"his voice" is the direct object of the main verb.

In just three sentences, Theroux has much variation. When I write sentences, I use simple clauses. I have a one-cylinder style, so I am stuck with verbs and the word "and." Theroux, though, with great economy, uses all sorts of things--prep phrases, absolutes, dependent clauses, infinitives.

7 MWE: The drifter caught a butterfly and paid a passerby $20 to rip off its wings

He drank some cola. He mixed his cola with grapefruit juice and drank. He was not supposed to drink grapefruit juice because of the medication he was on. His father's hobby was collecting rocks to make a rock wall. His mother had a comforter she spent most of the day under. The cola dribbled out of the corner of his father's mouth. His father is in a care facility. His father has a tattoo on his forearm. This was not a tattoo his father wanted. Four of his partners held him down and forced him to get the tattoo. The tattoo is of a window. It is of a squash blossom. It is of a humming bird and a bee. The tattoo has a hummingbird at its center. Someone played the organ at the funeral. They did not have much money, so they had to do the funeral on the cheap. They could not afford a coffin, so they wrapped their father in his favorite sleepingbag. They filled his mouth with worms--red wigglers--to speed along the decomposition process. They filled his mouth with worms. They also put the seed of a chestnut tree in his mouth. They covered him with dirt. They covered him with a dirt nap. A dirt coverlet. He asked that his family grow vegetables on his grave. A row of carrots, a row of beets, a row of chard. Grow some tomatoes and marigolds and dill. Grow some purple cabbage. The cabbage is especially big this year. They took a large cabbage off their father's grave. They also took some new potatoes and white beans. First, they browned the potatoes with oil. Then, they put in the onions. Then, the white beans. Finally, they put in some chopped cabbage, and that was their dinner off their father's grave. Thanks, Dad.

The children went to the music room with their recorders. The recorders were plastic. They were kept in plastic sleeves. They came with a plastic wand with which they were supposed to clean their recorders. They learned to play Hot Cross Buns. The children got bells and learned to play songs with bells. The children sat on carpet. They were told that if they didn't behave they would have to tend the bees without the beekeeping outfits. A mania. An inspiration. An infliction that leads one to kill bees, even though one has never kissed a donkey. A rare disease spread by kissing. A bauble that is covered with chocolate. The children had chocolate all over their fingers. The children wore hoods they had made out of pillow cases. The activity for the children was to make hoods out of pillowcases. First, they put the pillowcases on their heads, and they'd have a partner mark off--with a marker--where their eyes, nose, and mouth are. Then the children use scissors to make eye holes. They can also make nose or mouthholes, but they do not have to make such holes if they don't want to. Then, with pens, puffy paints, pieces of felt, they decorate their hoods. Finally, they are asked to go into town and rob local businesses with knives and zipguns they made in shop class. In shop class, first they learned to make knives out of obsidian. They learned how to break obsidian chunks into shards. Then, once they had knife-looking shards, they learned how to make even smaller chips to make serrated blades. With pieces of wood and string of gut, they learned to make handles for their knives. They learned to make zipguns out of firecrackers and pieces of pipe. They had their masks, their knives, and their zipguns. They went into town to do a bit of fundraising for the carnival. They wanted to put on a fantastic carnival, but they didn't have the funds, so they had to go into town to take the funds. The liquor store was closed because it was 8:00AM.

The children started by learning how to make shadow puppets. They performed short scenes dealing with death and loneliness for their parents. The children learned how to make hand puppets. They performed scenes of sorrow and loss for their parents. They learned sock puppets and tennis-ball puppets. They performed scenes of killing and destruction. They worked their way to marionettes and foam-construction puppets. They filmed a TV show about pop culture and got picked up by one of the major networks that broadcast from the bottom of the Marianas Trench. You would think a billionaire would be the one to build a dwelling in the Marianas Trench, but it wasn't a billionaire who did that. It was a rat breeder. A woman who bread thoroughbred rats. These were rats people would pay $5 for. These were rats that knew language and grammar. These were rats that were obsessed with usage. Unlike college grads, they knew the difference between its and it's, your and you're, there and their. These were rats that charged rates if you went to visit them. One child had a rat. Somehow it came out that the rat was a prophet, so other children would beg the one child to have some face time, some real one on one, with the rat prophet. The child who owned the rat prophet. The child who owned the rat prophet was pigeontoed. This child had a shaved head, but she kept her bangs extremely long. Her bangs, when she flipped them over her face, could reach down to her toes. In fact, that's how she knew when it was time to trim her bangs--when they touched her toes too much. She had a shaved head. She had long bangs. She wore leather sandals with heavy rubber soles, and her feet stank. Her feet did not stink. They stank. She sits in her livingroom, sitting over the body of her mother. Her rat prophet is in the other room and is soaking in a bath and reading a book about edible plants.

MY LATE SON

This is David Rieff's second sentence in his essay "After 9/11":

"Designed by the architect Michael Arad and the landscape architect Peter Walker and called "Reflecting Absence," the memorial will be about eight acres in size and consist of two sunken reflecting pools, each surrounded by an enormous waterfall, the largest manmade ones in North America, according to the memorial's official website."

"Designed by the architect Michael Arad and the landscape architect Peter Walker and called 'Reflecting Absence'" is a participial phrase with a compound verbal that modifies the subject of the main clause, "the memorial."
--"Designed" is a participle. It's half of the compound verbal.
--"by the architect Michael Arad and the landscape architect Peter Walker " is a prepositional phrase with a compound object of the preposition. This prepositional phrase functions as an adverb because it modifies "Designed."
--"and" is a conjunction that joins the two verbals in the participial phrase.
--"called 'Reflecting Absence'" is the other verbal, which has a direct object, "'Reflecting Absence."

"the memorial" is the subject of the sentence.

"will be" is half of the compound main verb. "will" is a modal that carries the present tense.

"about" might look like a preposition, but here I think it's an adverb. It's like the word "approximately" here.

"eight acres" is the subject complement, the predicate noun, to the main verb, "will be."

"in size" is a prepositional phrase that works as an adjective since it modifies "eight acres."

"and" is a conjunction that joins the compound main verbs.

"consist" is the other half of the main verb.

"of two sunken reflecting pools" is a prepositional phrase. Or maybe it's some kind of complement since nothing can just "consist." Some has to "consist of" something. Not sure here. "sunken" and "reflecting" are both participles that act as adjectives. "sunken" is a past participle and "reflecting" is a present one.

"each surrounded by an enormous waterfall" is an appositive phrase that modifies "pools." "each" is modified by the participle "surrounded," and "surrounded" is modified by the prepositional phrase "by an enormous waterfall." I am using the passive voice for good reason because, in this sentence analysis, what's more important are the things being affected--David Rieff's language--instead of the writer, the agent, David Rieff.

"the largest manmade ones in North America" is another appositive that modifies "waterfall." The thing, though, is that "waterfall" is singular and "ones" is plural, so it looks like there's an agreement problem. I am no expert, however, on any of this.

"according to the memorial's official website" is something. I want to say it's a participial phrase because of the "according," but I don't think that's right because "according" is one of those things that look like participles but aren't really attached to any specific noun. Instead, this is something that might be called an adjunct. It serves the purpose of orienting the reader toward something, but it's not really attached to a specific noun. It modifies an idea or something vague instead of something specific. This is the weakest phrase in the sentence, so it's not a good idea to end on it. And "website" is a boring word, so it's not good to end with such a word.

THE FIRST TIME HE SAW MR. KILGALLON HE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM

1.
One of these dogs, the best one, had disappeared.

His father, a beekeeper, swore by the curative powers of bee stings.

2.
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five.

Under the rock pile with his feet sticking out was a dead superintendent, a man with cracked heels and gnarled yellow toenails.

3.
Halfway there he heard the sound he dreaded, the hollow, rasping cough of a horse.

He was so upset he tasted his bile, an unusually delicious, flavorful bile.

4.
Poppa, a good quiet man, spent the last hours before our parting moving aimlessly about the yard, keeping to himself and avoiding me.

The hairless horse, one of the oddest things Markham had ever seen, loped over to the fence, making small, plaintive noises in its throat for sunscreen.

5.
Standing in the truck bed, holding onto the bars of the sides, rode the others, twelve-year-old Ruthie and ten-year-old Winfred, grime-faced and wild, their eyes tired but excited, their fingers and the edges of their mouths black and sticky from licorice whips, whined out of their father in town.

Whistling for birds, clucking for horses, Marshon stood on an upside-down bucket, his pants at his ankles and his toes covered with mud.

So we beat on, like boats against the current, borne back carelessly into the past

A small dog is killed. Its legs are cut off and arranged in a vase.

His father killed the small dog. His father was a short man. His father was in his 30s but had white hair. His father had dark skin and many many dark freckles on his face. The way his freckles looked, it looked like someone had a mouth full of dark liquid and sputtered it all over his father's face. His father had white hair. His father killed the small dog he had brought home. He had found the dog on the side of a road at night. He was just ten at the time, but he and his friends had a car they would drive on dark roads. He and his friends had a car that they had painted matte black. The entire thing was black. They knocked out the headlights and spraypainted the cavities that the broken headlights left black. The entire car was matte black. At night, the boy and his friends would drive this car. They had a set of nightvision goggles. They used those to drive the car at night on dark roads. They could drive by other cars, and those other cars--rather, the people inside them--would have no idea that they drove by. It was one night, when they were driving this black car, that they found the small dog on the side of the road. When they found the dog, it became day for three minutes. It then went back to night. The dog had a compartment inside it that was full of wires and electronics. When they submerged some of the wires in sodapop, the wires sang and spoke to them. The wires sang of tropical islands--where it was easy to get your own tubers and fish. All you need to eat is tubers and fish. Find yourself the right berries. The right mushrooms. Have some wild pig every now and again. The tropical islands no longer existed. The wires stopped singing. The boys had their car taken away and had to spend some time in a dungeon. The one boy brought the dog home. His father told him he could not have the dog in the house. The dog could live on the roof, sure, but it could not live in the house and leave its dog smell all over everything--especially the couch. How about I put towels on the couch then, the boy said. It was that thing that he said--that thing about the couch and the towels--that enraged his father. His father took a pair of tin snips and cut off the dog's ears and tail. He plunged the tin snips into the dog's belly and scissored open the dog's belly. Inside this dog, they found a baby. The baby was the father's son. He recognized it right away. Now, you are a big brother, the father told the boy. The dog lay open and slowly started coming back together again. Its ears found its head and healed. Its tail found its ass and healed. Its legs all came back. The road at night. When it is dark. When a father's hair turns white, and you can't help but to look at all his freckles. The boy has dared friends of his to sneak into his father's room and connect his freckles with a marker. He tells these friends of his that if they connect all the freckles, then they will see a curse word spread across the father's face. The father wakes up. He turns on his shower and uses cold water because he wants to save on heat. He gets himself wet and then turns off the shower because he wants to save on water. He soaps himself up with soap he had made. His body tingles from the chilies he had put in the soap. He does not need hot water when he has chillies in his soap. He soaps himself up. He gets soap in his ears. He uses the soap on his hair. He runs his hands over his face. He knows he cannot open his eyes because then he would get soap laced with chillies in his eyes. He fumbles at the spigot and gets the water back on. He rinses himself off, and that is how he takes a shower. He makes sure that his son does the same thing, but his son wants to use hot water. His son does not want to turn the water off. His son does not want to use his soap because he doesn't like the way its oils smell. His son does not like the chillies, so he kills his son's dog. He takes it apart with tin snips. After some days, he takes the stiff legs of the dog and arranges them in a vase.

She saw some mound rising on the horizon.

She has a small nose and all her other facial features--her eyes and her lips and her mole--seem to want to be as close as they can be to that nose of hers. The result is that it looks like she's not using her face as much as she could. She is in a relationship with a man who already has children. He did not have these children with her. He had them with another woman, but that woman is dead. He had built a greenhouse out of salvaged windows. It was a great idea. The greenhouse worked great. They grew great vegetables, but what wasn't great was that she climbed on top of that greenhouse only to fall through it and cut major arteries on the interior of her elbow and thigh. She was dead. He was alive. His children were alive. The other woman with the small nose was alive. She was so alive that she climbed a mountain. At the top of this mountain, she found a wooden box, and in this wooden box was a handmade book, and in this book she saw that other people had written messages. These were banal messages--ones that said hello to people who climbed the mountain or ones that tried to say something about the mountain or the trees or a particular sunset. She took this journal with her. She ripped out all the banal things and replaced them with other banal things. She was in a relationship with a man who had two children. The woman the man had had the children with is dead. She first gave birth to a girl. This girl proved to be at least twice as strong as any other child her age. When she was five, she requested her own benchpress set. Her father told her she shouldn't start to lift just yet because it would stunt her growth. So she made her own bench set. She made the bench itself out of rough-hewn wood. She even nailed nails through it so that when she'd lie on the bench, the nails would pinch at her back. And she was five, mind you. She made her own weights out of old paint cans she'd fill with concrete. She'd workout and not ask her dad to spot her. Instead, she'd ask other men to spot her. Her mother often talked to these men. Her father would come home, see her mother talking to some man, and ask, "Who's this man?" Only the man would be a large man. The greenhouse. Oh, go tend to your squash and tomatoes. His daughter was naturally twice as strong as any child her age, but once she started lifting, it couldn't even be measured how strong she was. Her muscles did not bulge. She wasn't a bodybuilder, mind you. She was a weight lifter, not a bodybuilder. Her muscles did not bulge. Instead, they became incredibly dense. She trained the nerves in her body to withstand incredible weight. Any normal body would scream to get all the weight off it, but she slowly trained her body to accept large quantities of weight. And then her body didn't just accept the weight. It came to expect the weight. And she was just five, mind you. She was a five-year-old who had built her own masochistic weight bench and weights. She was a child who would recruit men to spot her. She was five. Then her mother got pregnant with another child. The girl was nervous about this child. She started to hate her mother. When the mother gave birth, the child went after the baby. Many people in the hospital had to hold this child back. She wouldn't stop coming after the baby, her brother. No one knew what to do because she was just a child. She was now six. They figured she would get tired. That she would accept her brother. But she never accepted her brother. She would come after him hard, screaming that she'd rip him to pieces. She came so hard. People had to hold her back. They had to take her someplace else far away. They had to lock her up, but she would break out and run back to where she thought her brother was. To kill him. She vowed she would never stop, and she never did. Her mother died by falling through that greenhouse. Her father had a new relationship with a woman with a small nose. She continued to lift weights. She continued to do this. She would bend nails for fun. She would bend screws because they bit into her fingers. She would blend up entire chickens with twelve ounces of warm water and drink that in squad cars. The police did not mind if she drank her shakes in their cars. The police didn't mind because they thought they'd have to call on her someday.

MY LATE SON

"On September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the official memorial will be dedicated at Ground Zero (the opening of the adjacent museum had been delayed and is now scheduled for 2012).

This is the first sentence of an essay written by David Rieff in the August '11 issue of Harper's. David Rieff might be the son of Susan Sontag, though it's hard to check this fact without the internet or Susan Sontag's journal collection Reborn. Reborn is fascinating, but many readers are annoyed by all of the interjections by her son. It is touching that her son interjects to explain things or justify his decisions, but some readers aren't touched at all and find such intrusions annoying. Other readers don't understand why he didn't include more of her journal entries in Reborn. At one point in Reborn, after a fascinating list of words and names that Susan Sontag had made, Susan Sontag's son interrupts to let his readers know that Sontag habitually made fascinating lists in her journals. He says this, but then there is never another list in Reborn. Where are the other lists? And where are the sequels to Reborn? On the jacket of the book, it says that Reborn is the first of a series, and yet there are no other collections of Susan Sontag's journal entries. Her son might be David Rieff, and David Rieff is the author of the essay in the August '11 Harper's. His first sentence is above. That first sentence floats like a balloon. Or should it be "as a balloon"?

"On September 11, 2011" is a prepositional phrase that acts as an adverb. It answers the question "When?".

"the tenth anniversary of the attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center" is an appositive phrase that tells us more about the preceding prepositional phrase about September 11, 2011. David Rieff is making us wait for the main clause and main subject of his sentence.
---"the tenth anniversary" is the simplest part of the appositive phrase. Maybe it's what's called a "head" of the phrase.
---"of the attacks" is a prepositional phrase that acts as an adjective because it modifies "the tenth anniversary."
---"that destroyed the twin towers" is maybe a relative clause. It is a clause that acts as an adjective because it modifies "the attacks." "that" is the subject of the clause, and "destroyed" is the verb. "the twin towers" is the direct object.
--"of the World Trade Center" is another prepositional phrase that acts as an adjective because it modifies "the twin towers."

"the official memorial" is the subject of the sentence's main clause.

"will be dedicated" is the verb of the main clause. This main verb has a modal in it, "will." This verb is also in the passive formation. Who will dedicate the memorial?

"at Ground Zero" is a prepositional phrase that acts as an adverb.

"(the opening of the adjacent museum had been delayed and is now scheduled for 2012)" is something that's hard to identify. What's in the parenthesis is a complete sentence, so the "the" in "the opening" maybe could have been capitalized, and the period could have been put in the close parenthesis. But maybe, instead of being treated like its own sentence, the stuff in the parentheses wants to be treated like stuff that comes after a dash.

"the opening" is the subject of that parenthetical clause.

"of the adjacent museum" is a prepositional phrase that serves as an adjective.

"had been delayed" is half of the main coordinate verb. It's in the passive formation. Who delayed they opening?

"and" is a conjunction that joins the coordinate main verb.

"is scheduled" is the other half of the coordinate main verb. Like its other half, it's passive. Who scheduled?

"now" is an adverb that modifies "is scheduled."

"for 2012" is a prepositional phrase that acts as an adverb. It also modifies "is scheduled."

WHAT IT IS

A boy went camping with his friend, his friend's mother, and his friend's mother's boyfriend because his father was in jail for just one more day and his mother was enjoying her medication for her broken limbs a bit too much. That morning, the boy didn't have to wake up at 6AM for school as he usually did. Instead, he woke up when he woke up to a house that, at first, scared him since he thought it was empty. But it wasn't empty. His friend's mother was in the kitchen smoking a brown cigarette, and she was the one who told him that there would be no school today, his father was in jail, his mother was in the hospital, and, yes, there would be no school today because they were going camping.

They went camping at the beach, near a Navy base, and early the next morning, the boy saw a helicopter drop many men laden with black sacks into the ocean. The young boyfriend, the night before, made them all laugh. The night before, his genitals had shown out of his short swimtrunks. When he saw everyone was looking at his genitals, he picked some of his scrotum out, stretched it between fingers, and yelled, "Bat wings!" The boy could never imagine his father doing such a thing, and he certainly couldn't see his mother thinking it was funny.

In the morning, after the helicopter, the young boyfriend made the two boys breakfast: Ramen noodles with soy sauce and five eggs broken into it. When the boys got into the ocean after breakfast, and once the water started lifting them up and down in circles, up and down in circles, they both vomited. Small gray fish nibbled at the Ramen bits they erupted. When they had eaten the Ramen noodles, they had enjoyed slurping them because they were so long and curly. But, in the water, with the fish nibbling them, the noodles were no longer long. They were just bits--less than a centimeter--and gray.

The boys swim in the water all day. They push off the sandy bottom of the ocean to catch waves with their bodies. One of the boys has skin that becomes dark with the day. The other has skin that gets terrible red. They swim in the water for so long that they both chafe between their legs. They get what the young boyfriend calls "Ball rash," and the young boyfriend laughs at the way the two boys have to waddle around and cup themselves.

One of the boys--the one with the sunburn and the dad in jail for just one day--wonders if the men with the black sacks are still underwater. He never saw the helicopter come back to pick them up, so he worries he'll feel someone grab his ankle, pull him underwater, put him in a black sack, and carry him to some other place. And then someone does grab his ankle. It's the young boyfriend.

5 MWE: The despot gave us his synopsis

She was soaking. She soaked. She dropped her book in the bath. She took a bath and dropped her book in the bath when she was taking a bath. She left her book out in the sun because she got it wet in the bath. The book dried. Its pages crackled afterward. Its pages were a bit wavy afterward. She was in the bath. She soaked. She was soaking. A nemesis is not just an enemy. It is someone that you can't defeat. She was scared of her nemesis. When they were children, they planted beans together. They sat and shelled peas for hours together. Sugar snap peas. Sugarsnap peas. Sugar snappeas. He took a swig. He swigged from the bottle. It's always a bottle that's being swigged. He swigged from a cup? Is that even possible? Can one poison another if that other person ate oats and oil earlier in the day? She had to lay her hand flat when she fed the horses carrot bits. Her grandparents showed her slides of the two of them riding ostriches. Her grandmother had recently dyed her hair. Her grandfather had recently died.

The water bug had pinchers on its backside. The rain barrel was full. It had rained last night. The thunder had shaken the house. The house was made of cardboard and zinc. The house could withstand water, waves, lava, dust, and waterbugs. The waterbugs were in the rain barrel. The barrel got tipped over. When the thunder shook the house, it gave off a strange smell outside. To describe the smell would take away its mystery. The night had been warm and orange. The rain barrel came from across the street. Even though the water bug floated in the water in the rain barrel, it, the water bug, could not remember ever hearing thunder or the house shaking. All it could remember was being put in a jar by a girl. The girl had tried to celebrate her great grandfather's birthday but failed because she could not sing or light candles or dance or wear small purple roses in her hair. Her mother spent most of the morning plucking Japanese beetles off the roses with chopsticks. Once she removed a beetle, she would place it on a brick and then use another brick to squash it. She did this over and again until she created quite the paste.

The tourists would leave the ocean kayaks too close to the shore. The ocean would take the kayaks, pull them out to the breakers, and then send them down the beach. If this happened, then someone from the hotel would have to go to retrieve them. Or the tourists would paddle far out past the breakers and become too tired to paddle back in. If this happened, then someone from the shore would release a creature to swim out and eat the tourists. The tourists might fall out of the kayaks and hit their heads on the reef. They might step out of the kayak, step on the reef, and have a morey eel bite their foot. They might put a foot down on the reef and stand on a poisonous sea urchin. You can eat the inside of an urchin--the sea kind. Not the kind that's a child and in Charles Dickens. He shaved his legs. He waxed his lip. He shaved the hair off his toes. He trimmed his toenails and fed them to birds. He invented a material that would allow him to breathe underwater. He waved underwater to all of us. We were eating at a restaurant that, for one of its walls, had a gigantic aquarium. A large tank. Sometimes, divers would appear in this tank and perform tricks. Or divers would have to fight each other toward some kind of death. Or animals were released on them.

THE FIRST TIME HE SAW MR. KILGALLON HE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM

1.
Yesterday it was the Boston Marathon, with crowds gathered, police ready, the runners covered with suntan oils, many limbering up, even wheelchair participants checking their equipment like careful auto mechanics with their tools of all sorts.

It was their tailored hell, with piglets squalling, nuns aflame, horses rolling in bushes of thorns, children blowing over the mouths of green bottles, demolition derby cars painted with scripture.

2.
Hesitant but not uncertain, and drawing from libraries all of her knowledge, she walked into the room for her comprehensive examination, with a feeling that was certainly not calm, because there would always be the unknown.

Nauseated and intermittently retching, and attempting to remember the names of all his mother's friends, he fell down the stairs that led up to his apartment and into a garden bed.

3.
Once or twice the siren, obscured by the sudden explosion, echoed but with a dreadful parody of itself sounded with a noise like a banshee.

Five thousand times the hummingbirds, driven insane by the smell of molasses, pecked the eyes out of rabbits and cats.

WHAT IT IS

The carpet had wax in it from the other night. The other night, they had lit many candles in a sad attempt at being romantic. Some of the candles guttered--a garish pink one, a wine-purple one--and dripped wax onto the carpet. Last year, too, they had dripped wax onto the carpet by accident, but they were lucky because they had had a rabbit, and somehow the rabbit ate all the wax off the carpet perfectly. It was astonishing how the rabbit ate the wax and left the carpet looking perfectly clean. There was not even a stain when the rabbit finished because the rabbit must have actually trimmed the carpet when it ate the wax. Since the rabbit did what it did, they didn't have to worry about the landlord taking some money out of their deposit to clean their carpets after a night of trying to be romantic in the way that most people are romantic.

But this was a different year--they had no rabbit--and there was wax on the floor again. She was screaming at him. Veins stood out of her neck. A vein stood out of the middle of her forehead. When she screamed, she cried and produced incredible amounts of snot. In between screams, and in between sobs, she would gather snot from under her lip and off her chin. She would cup the snot in her palm in order to wipe it on him. She wiped it on him. An entire wad. Her name was Sycamore, and that was his name, too. Sycamore. I was glad all at the top and I sang.

She was screaming, sobbing, crying, wiping snot, and there was a baby left mostly unattended on the couch. Just an hour earlier, the baby was not unattended at all because Sycamore and Sycamore were talking to him and playing with his feet. They made him laugh many times. That was an hour earlier, before Sycamore became angry with Sycamore. Sycamore screamed, and the baby sat on the couch and picked at its toes. The baby did not belong to either Sycamore. It belonged to another woman who was off working and needed help. That morning, she had told them not to let the baby pick its toes. It had a problem with picking its toes. The baby also had a dark bruise above one eyebrow. The bruise was raised. It was what one might call a "mouse." The baby looked embarrassed to be there, but it certainly couldn't really be embarrassed.

Sycamore said he wanted to leave and tried to leave, but Sycamore threw herself at the only door the apartment had and wouldn't let him leave. He tried to open the door with Sycamore angled against it. He got the door open a crack--outside, it smelled like semen because of a vile tree--but then the door slammed closed again, and he felt terrible about even trying to force open the door with Sycamore there and the baby there. He thought about how, just yesterday, they laughed because of the semen tree. He had tried to find out what kind it was and found it was something with "pear" in its name, though he never saw any pears on it. Sycamore spat on him. She wiped her nose on him. The baby nearly fell off the couch but caught itself. The baby would grow up to be a terrific person.

5MWE: Her ticklish skin made her spry

Boring. If you are bored, you are boring. My grandmother told me that, which bored me. I would wait for her to leave on her errands before I went to snoop through her bathroom and bedroom. I looked for wooden boxes. I looked for smells. That's what I looked for. Never a dull moment is what I heard when I eavesdropped. Never a dull moment. It was a dull moment. She tried to convince her husband to eat the beets she had boiled. He did not want to eat them. He would not eat them, so she took the beet water--it was still a deep redpurple--and poured it over his head. The windowsill tasted of licorice ever since she had laid many ropes of licorice in its spidery hideaways, which never failed to drown all comers simply by convincing them that, yes, the bombs had been dropped even though it was a balmy Sunday. More dresses could have been supplied to the ugly prom-goers, but they never hatched in the nursery. The ribald damnation was on time for every match, whereas the dowager slept on the roof of the house like Snoopy. As Snoopy did in the failed event.

He always slept on his stomach. He couldn't sleep on his back. It must have been the way his mother lay him down when he was a baby. She must have always lay him down on his stomach, so he got used to sleeping on his stomach, and now that he's much older, he can't help but to continue to do what he did when he was a baby. His wife, however, wants him to sleep on his back. She wants him to sleep on his back because she sleeps on her back, and she wants him to do what she does. If he does what she does--she reasons--then they will do more things together. As it is now, they do not do enough together, she thinks. She thinks that, and she says it. She wants him to sleep on his back. He tries to sleep on his back but doesn't have much luck. She wants him to sleep on his back. Most nights, he starts out sleeping on his back, but then, sometime in the night, he rolls onto his stomach. His wife wakes him up late at night. She is angry that he's on his stomach. But I tried to sleep on my back, he tells her. I must have fallen asleep on my back, he tells her, but I cannot help that I move to my stomach in the night. One night. There comes a night in which she wakes up late and finds her husband sleeping on his stomach. She rolls him onto his back, and he doesn't wake up, though he seems to stir. He begins to surface out of his sleep. He is on his back. She takes two long needles and plunges them through his eyelids and into his eyes. She still holds onto the ends of these needles. She takes these ends and jerks them around so that she rips apart his eyes. He wakes up but cannot open his eyes. There is much shock in him.

The hackles on a dog. The organism is alive. We thought it was dead. The fraud wears yellow pants. When the toady promised to pull me out of the river, I didn't believe him. Her heart quaked. He grew his beard so long he could tie it around his neck. He said it was a natural defense. He grew his beard so long he could tie it around his neck. It was so long. It was thick. If someone were to try to cut his throat, it wouldn't work because of his beard. If someone were to try to hang him by his neck, it wouldn't work because his beard would serve as a buffer--a pillow--against the noose, the anondyne necklace. My grandmother must have used ether as an anesthetic. She must have killed my father's python. Built a fine lover in the very old cathedral next to the new vagabond mercurial fantasy in the doggerel forewarned fisticuffs dangerous this time of year if you don't lull it to breach the breach we shared the fact that we breached together. To get her. To get him. Togethim. We were finally togethim.

WHAT IT IS

A concrete floor that's always damp. The small room under The Big Blue Building. He tries to bring a mattress into the small room by himself. He had found the mattress on the bank of a stream. The mattress is a heavy queen because it has water in it still, and it buckles unexpectedly as he tries to cram it into his small room that smells of the damp. He has no one to help him. He knows no one in the town. There are young people living in The Big Blue Building, but he is too shy to speak with them, and, anyway, the man who told him he could live in The Big Blue Building said that he couldn't let anyone know he was living there because he was living there free. He wasn't sure if the man who told him he could live in the Building even owned the Building. The young people work at a nearby mountain and are from some other country. At the mountain, they operate machines that grab people by the heads and lift them up to the top of the mountain. Or they work in stores, selling rocks and hallucinogenic weeds. Or the the most talented of them work as trainers who teach people how to run and roll down the mountain fast without getting too injured. He drags the mattress into the small room and is pleased to have a bed where once he had a nest of comforters and attic insulation. He lies on the bed and looks at the various things that are in his room. There is an industrial ice machine that no one uses and that he doesn't know how to turn off. Every day, he has to empty buckets of ice out. There is a pile of old cash registers full of money. There is a cage full of bottles of liquor and a refrigerator that smells horrible when he opens it. There is a toilet with no privacy. There is a sink covered with plaster and dripping with tar. The young people must be home from the mountain because he can hear them tromping around above him. They are probably making pasta. He works at the grocery store in town and has often sold them jars of whatever tomato sauce is on sale and cartons and cartons of pasta. It seems they eat only pasta. He isn't sure if they know that he lives in the small concrete room that's below them. They certainly have never recognized him at the grocery store. They've never said hello. They've never crawled under The Big Blue Building to knock on his door and ask if he'd like to come up and have some of their pasta. He wonders what would happen if he ate the toilet piece by piece. He wonders what would have happened, if, as a baby, he had fallen into a bucket of roofing tar or paint. They eat pasta, and he eats tunafish and mustard on crackers. Sometimes, at the grocery store, he works at the registers. He often makes incorrect change, so, whenever he works the register, he makes sure to have a pocketful of quarters and dollars in case he gets the sense that he messed up making change. If he gets such a sense, he sneaks into his drawer a few dollars or quarters just to be safe. His boss, Oregula, used to give him back his change if he went over, but now she doesn't do that anymore. In fact, she's been having him on the registers more and more, and he thinks the reason is that she wants his money, his overage.

THE FIRST TIME HE SAW MR. KILGALLON HE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM

1.
Great was his care of them.

Horrendous was her laugh in the basement.

2.
The big thing, exciting yet frightening, was to talk to her, say what he hoped to do.

The difficult part, impossible but fascinating, was to gulp down the oatmeal, taste its secrets.

3.
He had never been hungrier, and he filled his mouth with wine, faintly tarry-tasting from the leather bag, and swallowed.

They were disoriented, and they couldn't see the spinning disks, quietly humming on dowels, so despaired.

4.
Soon afterwards they retired, Mama in her big oak bed on one side of the room, Emilio and Rosy in their boxes full of straw and sheepskins on the other side of the room.

We left the cinderblock bunker, Dafa to his submarine, Paga and Marsho to their poison swings.

5.
On stormy nights, when the tide was out, the bay of Fougere, fifty feet below the house, resembled and immense black pit, from which arose mutterings and sighs as if the sands down there had been alive and complaining.

At closing time, when the mushy heads can no longer eat their powders, the people in the little village, two miles away from the Powdery, flashed their inside lights off and on.

5 MWE: Let the deposition begin. Your brooding landlord shaves his strip.

finished
nostrils
garden
found
fig
rib
alone

He flattened himself before the explosion. She flattened herself. Bleeding ears. Their ears were bleeding. The blood ran down their necks and onto their shoulders. The blood ran down their backs. Sweat going down your back. A drop of sweat dripping down your back. Cold and clammy hands belonged to the nurse. He was happy to be in a field that needed him. He could find a job in any city. He made a greenhouse out of recycled windows. He had melons and squash. He saws bees in squash blossoms. For lunch, he put a wad of white cheese in a squash blossom and fried it. When he learned of his father's death, he changed his pants twice. When he learned of his fathers deaths, he called the mortician and reserved five coffins. He had five fathers. A father for every decade of his life. He lived near a river. He lived near a forest. He lived near a graveyard. He lived near one of the saddest zoos on the country--one that had lost its accreditation. Most of its animals had been seized from drug dealers. It had become a fad amongst drug dealers to keep animals: komodo dragons, tigers, lions, pythons, civet cats.

She was in a basin with a sick pony. She had a pipe, which she filled with peanut butter and lit. He tripped when he went for a run and fell on his front four teeth. He dove underwater, and a surfboard hit his face, breaking his front four teeth. He tripped going down the stairs and broke his front four teeth. This was not his dream. During the summer, he slept outside on the trampoline. He would break open a 10$ roll of quarters on his trampoline. He would jump until those quarters flew up to him. It was ten degrees below zero, but he still sat on his porch. He wore his warmest clothes and had a blanket over his legs. He had a canister of coffee. He put out fake birds. He made fake black birds and set them outside. Look at that black bird. A mendicant on the mend. Small waves in his fingers told him to stop driving, to pull the car over and allow his head to subside into whatever firesale they had going on the corner. The corner was haunted.

He was a poor architect and a poor builder. He had designed and built a building for his family's animals. They kept two pigs and about twenty goats, so he built a building for all of them out of salvaged bricks, cinderblock, whatever sheets of metal he could find. And then there came a windy week, and then this building fell on all the animals. He finished his ponderous work. His nostrils were ripped open by an enemy. His garden was not productive. He found a clog and failed to unclog it. For the first time in his life, he ate a fig. It did not taste like a dried fig. Its inside looked like the pink inside of the id. He researched if, in fact, one could have one's rib removed. He wanted to get out as much of himself as he could because he was addicted to holding things that had once been inside himself. A piece of his hip had been removed--a ball of bone--and he loved to hold this piece. One of his ribs had been removed, and he loved to hold it. It was an epic with a chimp as its protagonist.

THE FIRST TIME HE SAW MR. KILGALLON HE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM

1.
It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher.

2.
There was blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.

3.
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws.

4.
For a moment she remained trembling and reeling and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated, then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse

1.
The wind died as quickly as it had come, and the clearing was quiet again. The heron, motionless and waiting, stood in the shallows. Turning its head from side to side, a little water snake swam up the pool.

2.
Behind us was the town of Castle Rock, surrounding its green and shady common, spread out on the long hill that was known as Castle View. You could see the stacks of the wooled mew spewing smoke into a sky the color of gunmetal and spewing waste into the water further down Castle River. The Jolly Furniture Barn was on our left, and straight ahead of it, bright and heliographing in the sun, were the railroad tracks.

3.
Agatha watched for the star, standing at the front window and holding back the curtain. Because the sky stayed light for so long that the stars would more or less melt into view, in the summertime she had to be alert. Sometimes Thomas waited, too. No matter how often she warned him not to, he said his wishes aloud. As if the sky were one big Sears, he wished for definite objects--toys and candy and such. On the other hand, Agatha wished silently, and not even in words. In a strong wash of feeling, she wished.

[Though grammatically correct, nearly all the changes I've made worsen the writing. And why? Because, most often, I have taken modification (in the form of adjective phrases or adverb clauses) that appears toward the end of a sentence and moved it up. Something else to remember is that fluid writing comes not so much from phrase/clause variation but from sentence length. Most sentences (say 75%) will start with the subject.]

4.
At the admission gate, we paid our dollars, and like famished beggars at a feast, threw ourselves into the carnival. Over our heads like trapped stars, the strings of lightbulbs gleamed. Along with their parents, a lot of kids our age were there, and some older people and highschool kids, too. The rides grunted, clattered, and rattled around us. We bought our tickets and got on the Ferris wheel, and I made the mistake of sitting with Davy Ray. He grinned and started rocking us back and forth and yelling that the bolts were about to come loose when we got to the very top and the wheel paused to allow riders on the bottommost gondola.

[It's nearly always preferable to start with the main clause and the subject. By starting with an inverted element--or by starting with an adjective phrase--you give your readers a moment of uncertainty. They are forced to contend with the modification before they get the modified thing. Sentences that don't start with the main clause and subject create tension. Such tension can be useful, but should probably be present one out of four sentences. In the above PP, when the writer does start with a dependent clause, then that clause does special work to set up a strong moment. Now that I've flipped the order, the sentence looks dead because the exciting part comes first and the set up comes later. So make sure dependent clauses--when they come first--set up something that's worth the set up. And, probably, if the dependent clause comes after the independent clause, then there should be a payoff at the end.

WHAT IT IS

She is in the shower. The shower is all one piece of plastic. There is no soap on the soap ledge, but there is plenty of old gray soap sludge. She is in the shower. There is no soap. The water is on and goes from being lukewarm to scalding hot. When it becomes hot, she has to press herself against the side of the shower. There is no soap. The shower is plastic. The shower's door is frosted glass. Or maybe the glass isn't frosted--it's just so covered with soap scum. She is in the shower--but still wears her jeans, her vest. She still has her fake mustache on her face. Amazing how spirit gum can stick when you don't want it to and how it fails when you need it to work. It fails when you most need your disguise. The shower is in the kitchen. The kitchen sink is between the toilet and the shower--the shower that she is in. Across from the shower is a stove, and someone is at the stove frying something that smells like tofu. It must be tofu. There is no soap. She has on her mustache and her vest. Everything on her is wet. Everything inside her is wet, too, though she thinks it's all dry. She thinks her guts are dry and her hair is wet. It is all wet. Someone is frying tofu, and a piece of tofu flies over the shower door and slaps her in the face. It's still hot, and then it's at her feet. She closes her eyes and sees images from her awful day: a parrot, a piece of rusted metal, large gray underwear, broken green glass, a pint of blood still in its bag. Another piece of tofu flops over the shower door and lands at her feet. She still wears her boots. She takes off her boots. She takes off her jeans, her vest, her mustache. She asks the person frying tofu to leave, and he leaves. She thinks she is alone, but then, as the minutes pass, she smells thick gas in the air. Gas from the stove. She cracks the shower door open and sees the stove door open. The person who had been frying the tofu has his head in the stove. Naked, her vest and jeans and boots and mustache in a wet pile in the shower, she jumps over to him. He might have been her boyfriend. He was one of her boyfriends. He was her brother, visiting her from Chicago. She is naked and wet. His head is in the stove. The smell of gas is thick. She pulls him out, only to see his is wearing a breathing apparatus. He takes it off, laughs at her, turns off the stove. He takes a beer from the refrigerator and drinks it.

THE FIRST TIME HE SAW MR. KILGALLON HE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM

1.
He ran from the place, leaving the quirt, leaving his suitcase, leaving the oak box of money.
Leaving his suitcase, he ran from the place, leaving the quirt, leaving the oak box of money.
He, leaving the quirt, ran from the place, leaving his suitcase, leaving the oak box of money.

2.
A mortgage financier, a forecloser, the father was respectable and tight and a stern, upright collection-plate passer.
The father was respectable and tight--a mortgage financier, a forecloser--and a stern, upright collection-plate passer.
The father, a mortgage financier and a forecloser--was respectable, tight, and a stern upright collection-plate passer.

3.
After Buck Fanshaw's inquest without a public meeting and an expression of sentiment, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood was held on the Pacific coast, for nothing can be done.
For nothing can be done without a public meeting and an expression of sentiment, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood was held after Buck Fanshaw's inquest on the Pacific coast.
On the Pacific coast, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood was held after Buck Fanshaw's inquest for nothing can be done without a public meeting and an expression of sentiment.

4.
With them, carrying a gnarled walking stick, was Elmo Goodhue Pipgrass, the littlest, oldest man I had ever seen.
The littlest oldest man I had ever seen was Elmo Goodhue Pipgrass, carrying a walking stick with them.
With them, carrying a gnarled walking stick, was the littlest, oldest man I had ever seen, Elmo Goodhue Pipgrass.

5.
Wearing a long flannel nightgown around his chest, a nightcap, and a leather jacket over long woolen underwear, he bounded out of bed.
He bounded out of bed, wearing a long flannel nightgown around his chest, a nightcap, and a leather jacket.

6.
Once upon a sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn in the garden quietly cropping the roses.
Once upon a sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn quietly cropping the roses in the garden.

7.
Out of a box on the bed, she removed the gleaming pair of patent-leather dancing pumps, grabbed my right foot, and shoved it into one of them, using her finger as a shoehorn.
She removed the gleaming pair of patent leather dancing pumps, grabbed my right foot, and, using her finger as a shoehorn, shoved it into one of them.

1.
The rear of the car lifted up into the air for a moment, and then it thumped down with a muddy splash.

2.
Then it moved around the side of the car.

3.
At the back, the animal snorted a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder.

4.
The big raised tail blocked their view out of all the side windows.

5.
It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away.

Then it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked their view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted up into the air for a moment, and then it thumped down with a muddy splash.

5MWE

We had a parrot. The parrot had a bell. The parrot removed the clapper--Is clapper the right word?--from the bell. The parrot would wear the clapperless bell on its head. I had an awful friend. I had a lawful friend. My friend and I took his cat. First, we tied a rope to a bucket. We put his cat in the bucket and then we swung the bucket over our heads. Around and around, and the cat couldn't get out because of the circle force. The force of the circle. It's pi that makes it go round. Just take some string, dye it black, and there you have your mustache. When I was 8, I went to kindergarten with a mustache. I was not allowed to go to kindergarten when I was five or six. I wasn't allowed to go when I was seven. I had to wait until I was eight. The school was near a graveyard, and I would often recruit other children to sneak with me into it and take stones. We would drag the stones back to the school. We would hit the heads and hands off angels. At the bar, we had to keep a carton of beef broth because there was a man who came in who liked to drink beef broth with vodka. The floor is sticky. The sticky end of the mattress floated into oblivion because it was lighter than the softest oats. I had taken to eating lots of chicken. I would blend up two pounds of chicken with 12 ounces of warm water and gag through it. Spend most of my morning drinking that mix in the broken squad car. Give me some whiskey--at least in my dreams.

Number of sentences. Longest sentence. Shortest sentence. Average sentence length. Percentage of sentences that start with an intro clause. Percentage that end with a clause. Percentage that start with a phrase. Percentage that end with a phrase. Percentage with a phrase in the middle. Let me tell you this. Let me pester you with a poke. Here comes a poke. Here comes me scratching at your shoulder. I was glad all at the top, and I sang. At the top of a sycamore. Sycamore was sick. Sycamore would pick at my face, even when I told her not to pick at my face. I had old scars on my forehead and in my jowls. I had old scars at the back of my jaws and under my ears. Old scars. I remember thinking that if I imagined the smooth marble foreheads of statues, then maybe my face would clear up. Applying things that make it tight can ruin a sunset, especially if you're sitting on a deck whose fumes are making you high in the last time of your only obsolescence. Schism. Smite. Strike. Pass me the mallet so that I can squint into some light and ask if the sound is okay. How is the sound over there? Picking at my face. Wanting to put swabs in my ear when they are not for cleaning ears. Marigolds to keep away the bugs. Beets for boiling. The foundry was next to the museum, and as a result, it was hard to keep it clean. What is it. It is an infested truck that is stuck on the end of a marble hostess.

My father forced me to wear a cup daily. I would come downstairs, and he'd be waiting for me. He had a wooden mallet, which he would use to tap at my groin. He wanted to make sure I was wearing my cup every day. An everyday cup. I wore it every day, so it was an everyday cup. The difference between an adverb and an adjective is not something that I can always inhabit, though, when I was much older I was a soldier in the ocean, pitting myself against the seashore. When I was much older, I had my hands pounded flat until they were flippers. I was lustful when I was much older. I listed. I careened. I careered. I foundered because I did not see the reef. The reef was dead and had many eels in it. My sister was sitting at the end of a dock. There were old tires tied to the end of the dock, and my sister put her foot into one of them. An eel was in that tire. It bit her foot and would not let go. My father had to chop the eel's body from its head. It is hard to see where its head ends. Since my mother had a husband, and since her husband had a mother, and since that mother of his--that mother of my mother's husband--could not be approached under any circumstance, I often found myself finding hopeful mothers in the grocery store, the grocery store where I stocked the frozen food without gloves, where I stocked the peanut butter next to the Fluff, where I often took my breaks only to listen to someone else talk about guns and the price of holding his sister underwater until she departed this planet for another. She has said it's much nicer at the other.

5 MWE: The dour criticism of the chancellor

She encountered much joy. She had no way to gauge it all, except by sitting in a tattered chair and cramming her fingers into all its holes and damages. Horsehair in the chair. Straw. Outside, her mother was hanging upside down from a treebranch. Her mother had her legs around a branch, and those legs of hers allowed her to hang upside down. Her dress fell over her head. A gardener came by and trimmed her dress with the shears he had sharpened in Tangiers. The family trait was jowls. They all had jowls with old acne scars on them. They all sat on tattered chairs and couldn't help but to cram their fingers into them. They hung--not hanged--from hickory trees. Elms. Chestnuts. They sat on their roofs and sang. They sat on their floors and cried. They, as a family, showed very little emotion. But it was guaranteed--by whom?--that if you were to get them on the roof they would laugh. And if you were to get them on the floor, they would cry. It was not uncommon for people from the town to wrestle them to the ground at funeral time. The funeral bell. It would give two loud dings and then the third one would be off rhythm and muted. The family sent a bus through the town to pick people up for the funeral. The family did this, even though they themselves did not board the bus. It was the first funeral to have not a single family member present at it.

The innkeeper was frail. The innkeeper became an inkeeper when he lost his inn. His lost his inn, but, on that day, he swallowed all his keys, so he became an inkeeper with just one n. The authorities did not visit him. Instead, they flew kites over his new house. He bought a small house and lived in it--only to have the authorities fly kites over his house. He still had all the keys from his old inn inside of him. He was sure of it. Do not ask how anyone could be so sure because that is a sure way to end up with a bowl of grass, no milk, and no spoon with which to eat the grass. It's one thing for a dog to eat grass every time you take it out. What most people say is that it is an indication that the dog is sick. If you take your dog out--and if your dog can't help but to eat grass--then that's a sure sign it is sick. But what if it's your child that won't stop eating grass every time you take it out? What if it's your child? And this same child, when you take it to the seashore, it can't help but to drink some of the ocean. This child might slurp at the little purlers. This child might have its own cup with which it drinks. That it drinks with. This child might have a hole in the side of its head--the result of an early trephine. What if this child were to become a famous cartoonist? This child sits on a concrete patio, a patio that's otherwise used to dry out coffee beans. The bean roasters complain that they often find bits on concrete amongst their coffee beans.

It was terrible because she had a cape made of eyelids. She had once heard of people making capes out of bird feathers. There might be a bird in a forest. This bird has just a smidgen of yellow on its chin, and a king decides that, yes, it's this yellow that must make up his long cape. He wants the cape so long that all these birds must be killed to make it. "How long should the cape be, King? Five feet? Nine?" "No," he says. "The cape will be as long as it must take to kill all the little birds with yellow on their chins." And so she had a cape made of eyelids, but she didn't have to kill everyone on the planet to have it made. In fact, she didn't have to kill--or have killed--a single person because she used the eyelids of dead people. These eyelids had to be treated with certain chemicals to keep them from drying out. In their dried-up state they become raisins. Not raisons. They have no reason, these people who have silly capes made at such great expense. A cape of eyelids. And the eyelids still have their lashes. Twenty lashes for those who don't wear capes. Give me a reason to share with you the essence of the unfairness. Its essence is that you have no frenzied moments in your family's historical interpretation of the rational focused turpentined creatures. Let me give you my motto: Never squat where the squatters lay their pavement.