A bear was in a tree. The tree retched out of its hole. It was a strange tree. The tree had a large hole in it, and it retched out of this hole. The sound it made was one of retching. The guitar was full of rot. The house's floorboards made sounds. The bone broke. It was a green branch break. The bone broke in the way that green branches break. He never loved his favorite son. His favorite son wanted to swim in the ocean, but he first laughed in the tunnel that had no padding in it because if there had been padding, and if all the rocketry had been sensitive enough to quell their anger, then maybe, in the end, they would have flushed three times in an hour.
She was jumpy. She had artificial feet. She showed great ardor with her partner. Her partner had artificial feet. It was a feat of the imagination--when they imagined they had feet. They got free french fries, played some arcade games, got some beer, and then bowled. When they finished bowling, they were some of the last to leave, and they got knifed.
Dunbar told us all he was going to take out the trash. Dunbar always wanted to take out the trash in the summer because that meant he got to be outside. It meant he got to be outside and that, as he walked to the trash, he got to smoke half a clove. He made a big show of telling us he was going to take out the trash. We didn't notice he was taking longer at first. We then noticed he was taking longer. Then, we asked one another if he had been gone for a long time. We then knew he had been gone for a long time, and one of us went to find him. One of us found him by the Dumpster with a wound in his back. He imagined he had been knifed, but, really, he hadn't been knifed. Something else had happened.
I could not prevent what happened. I was absent-minded. My absent-mindedness was what made it so that I could not prevent what happened. I was oblivious. I was unmindful. I was unfamiliar with how they would hunt and kill coyotes. People in town were worried that a coyote would carry off a child. I made my presence known at these meetings. On and on they went on about how the coyotes were dragging off their silly purebred dogs and $900 cats. They went on about that. Next, they brought up that soon it would be their kids that the coyotes would carry off. It was then that I asked to speak. I asked the group if, really, would it be so awful that a coyote carried off one of their kids. They looked at me, horrified. They looked at me as if I were sick. I said, "You look at me as if I were sick." I then went on to say that I don't think the coyotes would carry off their kids to kill them. Instead, what I think is that the coyotes would carry off their kids to raise them, and that they, the coyotes, would probably do a much better job rearing their brats than they would have done if their spaceships weren't broken and their ankles could move in more ways than just the three ways. The three ways: up, down, and to the side.
I was driving. I thought I would be able to turn left. I was in the intersection. The light turned yellow. It turned red, and I didn't turn, so I was still in the intersection. I looked to see if anyone was directly behind me. No one was directly behind me, but I saw that, soon enough, cars would be behind me in the left-turn lane. So I put the car in reverse, went back, and got myself set up again. I was going to wait. It was now that I began to think of other things as I waited for the left-turn arrow. It was now that I thought of things. I remember how I had been part of a club in which, if you wanted to get in the club, you had to find a young married man and cut off his wedding ring with tin snips. We never said how you had to cut it off. You could drug the person. You could take it when he was sleeping. For some reason, though, many of us in the club preferred wrestling young married men to the ground, pinning them there, and then using tin snips to cut off their wedding rings.
These were the things I thought about. The light turned green, and I didn't pay attention. Someone behind me honked. I took my foot off the break, pressed the gas, and promptly went backwards. I had never put the car into drive after having been in reverse. I crashed into the car behind me. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw an upset young man.
I got out of the car. I lay in the prison. This was not a prison made by the state or by some private company. This was one that my brother-in-law had made just for me. This was a rich deposit. I am now in one of the richest deposits for me. When I cut off an orchid from the plant, I felt that I had but a few more moments to live. Those moments passed, and I felt I had but a few more moments. I will use these moments to cut another orchid, I told myself, so I cut an orchid. In the center of this orchid, I made out what looked to be a boat I had once captained. It was not a prism that I had. Before the pale dentist drilled open my cheek, I asked him if he'd like to come to my graduation. The dentist was supposed to drill my tooth, not my cheek. He told me it was a great temptation he faced every day--that is, that he shouldn't plunge his drill into the cheeks of his patients. But that is just what he did to me. There is very little sensation in the center of the cheek. When I was younger, I would often upset my parents by pushing toothpicks through the center of my cheeks.
The resurrectionist didn't get up this time. He was dead this time. The end has come for him, the resurrectionist. Or maybe the resurrectionist wasn't the one who always got up after being dead. Maybe he was the one who got someone else up. Here he is--dead of natural causes. Dead of artificial causes. Dead of artistic causes. Dead of scientific miracles we couldn't help but to credit with the draining of our bathtub after we had expressly told our neighbor to break into our house and fill it whenever we leave. A duty is a beauty.
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