Elephant seals negate the tactile universe

sunday morning

2008-06-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've become afraid to write on my blog, or even to check my email. I don't know why. I have part of my novel here. This is in Noö Journal which I like very much. Also read Noah Cicero, a translation from K. Silem Mohammad, Bobby Farouk, and others. Re-reading this part of my novel has energized me to start re-editing the novel. I've edited the first three chapters. I will do more. I will finish by the end of summer. Someone should email me and ask for the novel in September. It will be done. Someone probably wants to publish it. I could make it more controversial. I could add porn. I could add hand-drawn porn pictures.

The Coup, Two Against One, Something

2008-05-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'm listening the The Coup when I write now. I think it is changing what I write somehow. It makes me feel sad. I like Steal this Double Album, and Party Music, and Kill Your Landlord. I think the lyrics are melodramatic but I like them anyway.

I'm also reading Two Against One, but Frederick Barthelme and I like it very much. I think it is the most accurate depiction of relationships, from my point of view, that I've ever read. It's all the things that are embarrassing to write about, or that people don't usually write about because they are not exciting in of themselves. There are no flaming mini-van bank robberies, or jealousy murders.

I want to ride my bike. I will ride my bike over the Columbia River.

9:46AM

2008-04-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to Buck 65 while I write this morning. I don't know what this means. It's meaningless. I've begun reading Americana by Don Delillo. Sometimes I really like it. He describes things, like a room, or people in a room very succinctly and I read very quickly, and laugh at his little jokes. Then suddenly there's a flashback, and I become bored. I set the book down and pace. I come back to the book and skim a paragraph. Eat some yogurt. Skim some more. Until I'm back to 'present-time'. I've read one-third of the book, which is good. I'll probably finish it.

I'm writing a story which includes chicken strips and Les Schwab Tires, and PETCO.

Everywhere in Oregon and Washington has Les Schwab Tires, PETCO, and Fred Meyer. I could live in Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer is like Target, but without the pretensions. I don't know what that means. Maybe Wal-Mart has the fewest pretensions. But Wal-Mart is overwhelming, and region-less. Wal-Mart is the same everywhere. At Fred Meyer I'm connected to all people. Similar childhoods in similar cities or towns or sub-city neighborhoods. We all know about the the eight lane roads with strip malls. I'm most comfortable at strip-malls, AM/PMs, 7-11s, and Plaid Pantrys.

7:32 AM

2008-04-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Joy Williams' Taking Care. I think I will read some Andre Dubus next. I don't know why. I'm reading a lot of short stories. Normal short stories. Who are the new writers I should read? I don't know.

I got my hair cut. My hair cutter was angry. She had an angry face. She cut more hair than necessary, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to make her angrier.

I will start a new story today with a character name Hunter. I wish I could plan stories farther ahead than that. I read someone, I don't remember, a writer, saying that writer's should plan their stories more or something. I felt guilty. And like not a writer. I never know what I'm going to write. I write one sentence and then another and things happen. Sometimes I don't like sentences so I delete them. I do this for a long time, until I think I'm done. This may be why I'm not a successful, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. There could be other reasons.

I made a folder on my desktop called 'Professional Stories'. That is where I put my professional stories. Coming soon to Esquire and Teen.

Sometimes I think about becoming a Librarian. I would have to go to graduate school. It would cost money. I would be the only person in my family to go to graduate school. They would shun me. I would have to eat on the porch when I visit, from a little silver bowl.

Sunday editing

2008-03-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

As I write a story, I must constantly edit the story. To write anything new, I have to read through everything I've written before, make little changes, and finally add a paragraph or two before I quit. This is taking for-fucking-ever.

I'm reading Michael Earl Craig poems while I write.

Defibrillator.

I just read a story from Taking Care by Joy Williams. I took a bath. I read a little from Americana by Don DeLillo. Who is Don DeLillo? Am I supposed to read his books? I feel like I'm reading a Vladimir Nabakov novel. Maybe DeLillo and Nabakov are the same person, or had their genes spliced somehow.

I'm listening to old Modest Mouse albums and I feel like I'm in high school again. High school was more than ten years ago.

"Ofelia didn't answer. James moved in the next day. He quit his job at Target." This is the turning point in my story. I also wrote this sentence: "Minivans are a certain kind of despair." I will probably have to cut it.

This is like diary or something.

I like editing better than writing. I keep editing my novel and keep thinking I can make it better. I want to cut whole chapters and rewrite them. I want to edit. I edit every day. I have a problem.

Multitasking Poem

2008-03-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

It's important to be efficient so I write a line every few minutes

And eat only when my mouth's cold and wet

And calling for the death of something beautiful

Like the ant-army drilling little caves in my little legs

In the late quiet of an early morning when the movies have all gone to credits

And your palm's only a little sweaty

From the feeling that you're really an otter from Australia

The realization that there are scissors in the drawer

Comes as you buy more scissors

For the scissor-pile you will bury tomorrow

When all hope for a corduroy jacket has disappeared

And you are satisfied with your parking-lot

I roll around in the kitchen and think about the refrigerator

And the vegetables there waiting to be chopped

Because other countries are somewhere else

2008-03-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

The sidewalk beneath me's cold but I sit anyway and think about the outlet-mall. The Gap's there and waiting and I want suddenly to stand in the Gap holding calmly my little switchblade-knife and then to tell the Gap-cashier, 'up with your hands bitch, give me your fucking money.'

"Look at this," Ross says. He's holding a gun.

"You hate me, don't you?"

"Huh, real chrome," he says. "See." He holds the gun sideways, in the sunlight.

"You're going to murder me, here, or in Lisbon, maybe. You want my lungs, or kidneys. To sell on the black-market."

"Where's Lisbon?"

"Some other country somewhere."

"Anyway, hold it will you? It's heavy."

I hold the gun. "They have guns in Lisbon, you know. Ten-thousand guns. They hand them out at the airport, 'shoot at the airplanes,' they say. 'Use both hands,' they say, 'it'll improve your aim.' There are signs everywhere."

We're walking and there's a wind. Before us and behind us small groups of elderly women pat their curly perms and I imagine myself permed and wonder if I would pat my perm or leave it alone, tie it down maybe, beneath a rain-bonnet. The sidewalk has many cracks and I watch them. I can see our reflections in the windows which are backlit and feature chrome pots, then mannequins in sequined dresses, then towers of shoes. High-heels, clogs. Disembodied feet. I want to steal the feet and pile them somewhere. On a bus, maybe. I hold the gun. "What do you think about feet, Ross?" I ask. "Are you for or against?"

"In general, I approve of feet."

"Good, Ross. I like feet too."

We angle across the parking-lot, zigzagging between cars. I tap each car with the gun. There's a sound when the gun hits the cars and I listen to the sound because it's beautiful. Ross's humming and Ross's face's closed and block-like, so I think about Ross's feet and how to remove the feet. With an ax? A skill-saw? Could I attach Ross's feet to my feet and have double-feet? Are four feet better than two? I imagine a sewing-machine, terrible and ten feet tall with a conveyor belt and a glittering invisible needle. "Sew the feet," I say.

"Huh," Ross says. He sounds very tired.

"The feet, I'd sew them to my feet. I need another leg."

"Oh, great." Ross's yawning. "Where are we?"

"Lisbon," I say. "We need to buy a containment-unit."

"What?"

"For the feet. I'm taking the feet, all of them, and I need to keep them in a containment-unit, with formaldehyde or something. I need one-thousand feet. Foot-museum. A warehouse with chrome shelves. We'll have to guard it, hire guards, there in Lisbon. For the feet."

The sky's gray and very close and I think I could rub the gun on it if I wanted. We enter the Gap through a sliding-door. There's electronic music. A boy with a high voice screams something. The woman behind the counter has short brown hair that points around. There are barricades made from seatbelts and three women line up behind them. The women are smiling, occasionally combing their hair behind their ears. One removes a rain-bonnet. I stand near a table with blue and pink v-neck sweaters and fold the sweater that's unfolded. The gun's in my waistband and I don't know what to do with it. It's very heavy there and my jeans are sagging slowly from my waist.

"Do you like this?" Ross says. He holds up a checkered shirt. "Do you like this?" Ross says. He holds up black corduroy pants. He removes a tennis-shirt from a hook on the wall. "I like this," he says.

"Can I help you?" someone says. "I think these boxers are just dynamite, the patterns," he says. "I just love boxers." He moves away.

I stand near the mirror and feel confused. Could I make a containment-unit from boxer-shorts? Above me are fluorescent-light-panels and the fluorescent-light-panels are buzzing quickly and each fluorescent-light-panel's separated from every other fluorescent-light-panel by gray acoustic ceiling-tiles. I move sideways, then at an angle, between tables heaped with folded pants and pink t-shirts. "Can I help you?" someone says. He folds a t-shirt and crosses his arms. "T-shirt right, you're looking for a t-shirt." He holds one up. "This one?" he asks. "This one's cute."

"No," I say. "I'm looking for this." I show him the gun. The chrome's shiny in the fluorescent-light. He doesn't answer. "See this," I say. I move the gun nearer to his face. It's almost as big as his face and I can't see his face, I can only see the gun. I'm moving. Outside. The sky has moved in and the sky and the parking-lot are almost touching. I hunch as I jog out onto the asphalt. I hear my shoes slap on the asphalt and the slaps are unpatterned and jerky and inhuman somehow. The air's wet as I breathe it.

"Hey," someone yells. It's Ross. "Should I buy the checkered shirt?"

I look back and Ross's standing in front of the Gap, holding up his checkered shirt. I turn away from Ross and keep moving. Somewhere ahead's the end of the parking-lot and if I keep jogging I'll get there. I watch my feet and my feet are moving and it's beautiful. The asphalt's black and new beneath them and ahead the sky's like a fog, settled on the ground and warm and wet. I could hold it, I think. I could never stop moving.

Multi-tasking

2008-03-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

I love adverbs. A sentence with adverbs is lonely and alone.

I'm multi-tasking. I'm writing a story and this post and reading.

"He isn’t sure if 'have to' reinforces the fact that they’re at work and might be a turnoff."

That sentence was from Eat When You Feel Sad by Zachary German, at Bear Parade.

I'm obsessed with marathons. I saw a marathon on TV. The winner ran five minute miles for eight miles.

"I pull my knife out from my pantyhose and stab him in the neck, and watch as he falls to the ground and dies. At that moment, I feel like there is something on television that I should have recorded." From Die Hard with a Vengeance by Gene Morgan.

I need to learn about these robot-dogs I see at the stores. Will a robot-dog make me feel more fulfilled as a person? Could I have a robot-dog career?

Sometimes I think about going to school to get a Library Science degree and then become a librarian. This is a strange desire.

I like the NCAA basketball tournament. I like Davidson. I want Davidson to take the whole thing.

I just wrote a sentence. And then another. I'm on a roll

I am writing a blog post because I feel guilty about not writing blog posts for a long time because I went to the zoo instead to watch the penguins

2008-03-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Good Morning. It's Saturday and I'm not working. I'm sitting around reading Bear Parade and also reading The Brothers by Frederick Barthelme which might have the same characters as some other Barthelme novel I read. I think maybe it's the characters from Painted Desert. I'm not sure. I just read Bob the Gambler. I liked it.

I'm writing professional stories now. I'm imitating Barthelme and Lori Moore, and Raymond Carver. It's easy to write like Raymond Carver, I think. I think you have to use the word "the" a lot, when you normally wouldn't. And also "said". If you want to write like Ernest Hemingway, you should use the word "very" a lot, especially when describing wine, or a fine meal after fishing or hunting.

I'm going to have a story in Noö Journal which will also feature Daniel J. Bailey, Benjamin Buchholz, Mattia Cerato, Noah Cicero, Stephan Clark, Patrick Duggan, Bobby Farouk, Elisa Gabbert, Fitz W. Guerin, Carrie Hoffman, Tim Laing, Justin Lovato, Deenah Moffie, J.M. Patrick, Andrew Michael Roberts, Kathleen Rooney, Peter Schwartz, Claudia Smith, Leigh Stein, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, and Sam Wharton.

I'm excited to be in something with Noah Cicero. He wrote this which I like and also The Human War which you should buy, right now.

Thank you.

Similes and Metaphors

2008-01-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I hate similes and metaphors. I used to like them. Maybe I still like them when they're ridiculous and inaccurate. Inaccurate metaphors are enjoyable, maybe, sometimes, if I'm drunk on wine or something. But similes... Here are some similes from things I wrote that are terrible:

"There's a smell like stomach-acid."

"...funny big eyes like little black rocks..."

"...arms move like small insects..."

"...black hairs pushing out of its skin like little burnt sticks."

"Traffic has become thicker and the cars moves slowly, heavily forward, like little robot-glaciers"

"Anastasia's eyes were very large and round like billiard-balls, maybe..."

Anyway I kind of like "robot-glaciers" this morning, but only because it is a little meaningless. But it's impossible and false to compare one thing to another thing, and too easy, and when I read similes, or make similes, I find it too easy to begin to compare one thing to another thing and eventually each thing is the same thing and I can't see any difference.

It's 8:54 am. I drank coffee and our neighbor is playing music very loud because, I think, he's a little deaf, or, he has a new sound-system, and has not yet learned how to change the volume. I kicked the wall and it stopped. This was very satisfying. Every person should have something to kick sometime.

I read a little of the book 'NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN' because my brother likes it and he lent it to me. Here is my imitation of it: "He took the satchel and set in the crab-grass and looked at it. He looked at it for a long time. The caldera was wide and long and gray fog-shaped shadows shifted across it like dead predators with steel teeth. He could see the teeth beyond the satchel and he thought about teeth and satchels and money. He thought about it a long time."

short poems

2007-12-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

You don't refuse to breathe do you

I find you on the center aisle of the corner Target
Holding the digital-watch that will make you happy forever

It's good to have a friend to help you past the monsters on the way

There's a reason why I called you
But I don't remember what it is

I'm a child again when I was really miserable

Burn the beds tomorrow
In the hugest pile
The carpets will hold us
Carefully in their tufts

I was in a loaf of bread shaped like a camera

There are many ways to warm the kitchen
When you pile the bodies in there

Art Nouveau magazine

2007-12-29T10:46:00.000-08:00

interviews a bunch of people. You should probably read Tao Lin on technology Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and organic foods. After that, read Noah Cicero on the beauty, love, and art found in everyday reality.

I'm drinking coffee. This morning I read Frederick Barthelme's Natural Selection. Barthelme describes a car-accident and I think this is the most accurate car-accident I have ever read. I've never been in a car-accident so I don't really know. I don't have to work today so I'm happy.

Adam Brown please remove the fat that has gathered around my abdomen because i'm hungry and wish to reuse that space for lemon-zingers

2007-12-29T10:37:00.001-08:00

Adam Brown you're beautiful
Here's my switch-blade-knife
I want only for you to carve me slowly
Into the shape that's most pleasing
If I were a person
I'd choose the penguin-shape
Which is more human than we are
Adam Brown
If you carved me correctly
We could fry the excess
And love it carefully in chili-oil
Which is my favorite spice
For brains
Which we can eat substantially
At the Best-Western in Astoria
Where we can be famous finally
For eating each other on stage
There are places in America Adam
Where cannibalism's accepted
And where we can open the store
That eat's other stores
Where we can be impossibly huge
And love everything
That has become a part of us

Things I Like Today

2007-12-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

farout_library_software by Maged Zaher and Pam Brown. I have met Maged Zaher and he's very nice. He also wrote this and this and this and this and you can hear him read a poem here I don't know why I like these things so much but they make me happy.
Bear Parade Gene Morgan wrote this and it's why I like Bear Parade very much right now. I like everything on Bear Parade. Read small pale humans right now. Read touch my omelet. Read yesterday i was talking to myself and i told myself that i was going to write a book and give it to you so i put paper in my bag and put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the river bank and then sat on the ground and thought 'i will never write a book' and watched ducks swim away from me. Tomorrow you can read this emotion was a little e-book then the living and the dead and compassionate moose and hikikomori and transmissions from noah x to tao x and today the sky is blue and white with bright blue spots and a small pale moon and i will destroy our relation ship today and finish up with from the ideograms. I've made all the links for you so read all of these things and then tell someone else to read them for a while.
After all that, go read alice blue.

Bear Parade

2007-12-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

Read Small Pale Humans by Daniel Spinks. I'm reading this book this morning and it is making me happy. I just google-searched Daniel Spinks and he has three poems in Action Yes Quarterly but when I clicked on the link went to a medication advertisement [www.actionyes.org]. I wonder if the internet is trying to communicate something, and failing, sadly.

edit: Action Yes is back so I will go and read Daniel Spinks on Action Yes.

Also, I re-read Small Pale Humans this morning and enjoyed it again. I will read it again later.

Short Poems

2007-11-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

NAKED ANTS

Tooth-brushing costume

THE BEAN-BAG CHAIR STARES AT ME ACCUSINGLY SO I HIDE MY EYEBALL

Nobody wants to eat me today so I go home

THE COOKBOOK MENACES ME FROM THE KITCHEN

I hang it from a tree as a warning to the others

EMAIL

The pile has a knife

DISOBEDIENCE

I will pee in the elevator probably tomorrow

*I wrote these poems in five minutes. It was a race.

Boise, Idaho

2007-11-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

I've been in Boise, Idaho to visit friends such as Amber and Madison and it reminded me of how I miss Boise which is a beautiful, flat, and small city. I ate a Kabob.

We watched the movie Across The Universe and drank beer in the movie theater. The movie was designed to make fifty-year-olds feel comfortable with history and a little bit radical politically and to then feel more comfortable with today's day to day life.

The movie ends with the song All You Need is Love or something. It's a musical. It's very dramatic.

I also watched the movies The Darjeeling Limited and Children of Men.

I think that writer's should focus on writing movies [after the writer's strike or whatever].

I went to the discovery center and learned about DNA.

This has become pointless. People do things and then do other things and each things seems very important but upon reflection how can anything be important or not important. Everything is probably the same on some scale.

Lamination Colony

2007-11-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

You can read the Lamination Colony here. There is fiction from Gene Morgan, Shane Jones, and Andrea Fitzpatrick and some other things by Mike Young, Sean Lovelace, and me. Everything on Lamination Colony should be read by anyone who reads this message.

Lamination Colony is important and will cause the world-empire revolution that will change some things and leave others the same.

myspace cancellation

2007-10-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

I canceled my myspace account. It was hijacked by spam-robots who shot spam robot-babies at my myspace friends. I will miss my myspace friends. If you were a myspace friend, and you now feel rejected, I sincerely apologize. Email me or something or become my friend on facebook where there is less spam and spam guilt, but still some robots and robot-babies.

'I never want to see you again I'm cold and wide in the esophagus I fill slowly with sawdust'

2007-10-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

I have another request please I'll ask without hope

How wide's your esophagus in centimeters please

Or provide the volume please I'm calculating

Densities of sawdust I test sawdust

In my esophagus without hope or expectation

The kitchen-tiles are white beneath the sawdust it's 6 AM

I love the kitchen-tiles and fuck them

I'm hungry and eat windows

Carefully I eat little glass-cups

You love me I think we could overthrow

The US government

And eat Washington DC

I'm busy tomorrow I have Pilates

I'm lying you're beautiful

We could microwave ourselves again but

The microwave's too small

alice blue

2007-10-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

There's a new alice blue and I read it and it had stories by Nick Antosca and Noah Cicero. These stories made me stab the mailman. You should read these stories and also, other stories by Greg Mulcahy and Matt Rittenhouse and David Gianatasio.

Also there are poems. I like the poems by Zachary Schomburg and by Mark Cunningham. These poems made me chew on my heater-vent.

Other people on the roster include Sarah Bartlett, Matt McBride, Joshua A Ware, Anne Marie Rooney, Betsy Fagin, Arlene Ang, and Emily Kendal Frey.

Read alice blue, please.

Thank you for your consideration.

2007-09-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote a story for paper wall. It's in #6. The story has Madison as a character. It also has a bridge and a car.

I didn't start editing my novel yet because I'm lazy and also because I'm afraid. Sometimes I imagine the novel walking around with a pitcher of water and a large kitchen knife. Pacing probably, in the hallway and I'm hiding next to the bathroom, behind the clothing hamper and everything smells bad. Or maybe with a taser and an uzi automatic-gun.

Please

2007-09-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

Please taser me I want very much to be tasered I'm bored
And the cereal's somewhere it's March
I have a question
Will you please taser me? I like electrodes
Am hot for electrodes
And would fuck electrodes on digital-video for the internet
I'm probably kidding I wouldn't assault
Forty-thousand beta-fish for
Even one-million dollars
Or spread myself across ten oceans
Until you taser me or double-taser me
With one-million electrodes on my forehead
Or inside me and all the electrodes
Inside me there are two-million electrodes
And you're holding them there tightly
Triggering the electrodes in my stomach
My spleen my lungs which are quivering
Widely for them and the taser
Which is so so beautiful
And I'm thinking of tasers in helmets riding horses
And rows of tasers and ten-billion electrodes
Attached to me inside and out
You're triggering them I'm happy

2007-09-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

When I'm cooking I have the feeling that I don't exist so I run into the hallway and knock on the apartment-doors until all the apartment-doors are open and there are people and the people are watching me and I'm moving quietly up and down the hallway and the people watch me until I know I probably exist

I wanted to make this poem better but it's impossible

And most actions are impossible like cooking and breathing and talking with words that have actual and corresponding objects

Because even if things correspond I'm only a body with skin and my skin and body's sometimes clothed or unclothed but otherwise like a microwave-oven I think or rice-cooker or toaster or toaster-oven or something

Which I love because I love every object

I can eat

Which's why I hate myself and want to be destroyed instantly

And without reason

So I tell me neighbors in careful and clear words to destroy me

'It's okay to stab me' I say 'I'll write a note saying it's okay and that I approve violent stab wounds' or 'to be burned now in my kitchen would be wonderful and I'll help you gather incendiaries or something'

And people laugh sometimes until I say 'I'm serious'

'I'm really serious and I'd stab a walrus to prove it'

But nobody has a walrus to stab and the blubber's too thick probably so I cook gnocchi and give it to this guy who lives across the hall and he eats the gnocchi angrily because he hates food and eating and everything

note

2007-09-05T17:54:00.001-07:00

I wrote the story below and it doesn't make sense. I tried to fix it but I quit. I quit the story below.

Today I read all of the novel 'Less Than Zero' by Bret Easton Ellis. This novel is about getting tired of drugs because your friends are strung out all the time on summer-break after your freshman year in college. It might be about other things. The sentences are simple and I read the sentences very quickly until there were no sentences left. Some parts are all in itallics which was hard to read. On the cover there are quotes from reviewers about MTV and this novel and music-videos and the style of putting together a lot of short parts. The word 'staccato' appears. MTV is also in the novel a lot, along with 'Betamax'.

After reading 'Less Than Zero' I suddenly thought that I could write 50 novels very quickly. Maybe two or three a year.

Someone should pay me to do that.

I leave my bedroom

2007-09-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

One month, I think. I stand.

I leave my bedroom-television on but close the door so that from the bathroom I won't have to hear the television-news. I don't want news or anything informative and anyway it's comfortable in the bathroom with the bathroom-light reflecting brightly in my bathroom-mirror and warm tiles warming my feet and shower-steam in the air. I stand naked and look at my naked toes which are slim and pale and which wiggle when I wiggle them but not smoothly and when I look at the fogged mirror my body's bubbled and distorted and I think it looks a little dead, but only a little.

In the shower I feel warm and wet.

After the shower I dry my body.

I go into the bedroom. I'm still naked. "Hatch," I say. "I'm back. How was the news? Learn about psychopaths? Which restaurants violated health-codes? Which people died in violent drunken random car-accidents? Or, was there a hurricane or flood or building-collapse or something?"

Hatch doesn't answer.

I sit next to him. "I think the president manufactures natural-disasters, probably, to get more votes, or to be brave on television. What do you think?"

I touch Hatch's face

"That's what I'd do," I say. "I'd act brave on television for the votes and market my own brand of soda, if I were president, and it'd be like 'Executive-Cola', maybe, and we'd make billions of dollars and not spend any of the dollars. Save the billions for decades and fund a gigantic robo-cop statue, with my face. Do you like statues?"

Hatch doesn't say anything and lies quietly instead as though he doesn't want to talk. Hatch closes his eyes and lets his mouth fall slack. Hatch's very long and narrow and pale and Hatch's body's thinly covered with soft brown hair. I touch the hair but it tickles so I stop and think about my body-hair and why my body-hair's not thin and soft and not covering my entire body.

"It's okay Hatch. Won't bother you."

This morning, I sat next to Hatch while he slept and, with a magic-marker, drew cartoon-gerbils on Hatch's forehead. Our bed's very wide and soft and we purchased the bed from Sleep-Country, USA one year ago. Hatch was very excited about owning a bed. "A bed with a mattress!" he said. "Box-spring," Hatch said. "Pillow-top comfort!" Before the wide soft bed, we slept on a leaky air-mattress and each morning we woke in body-shaped indentations, our backs flat on the floor, and, surrounded by air-mattress rubber, I'd say to Hatch, "It's okay, I'm not dead today." Then I'd lay and think about the word 'today' and what I meant when I said 'today.'

I lie next to Hatch and stroke Hatch's hair.

My telephone rings.

"Fuck," I say. "I thought I cancelled that."

I hold the receiver next to my ear.

"Are you watching television?" It's my mother. "Turn on the television and watch the television the news it's amazing a bridge just fell into the Mississippi River and there are people and cars and concrete and they're still going to have the baseball-game." I think about the words 'the television' and feel suddenly that there's only one television everywhere and every person's watching the same television.

I change the television-channel and watch bridge-collapse news-coverage.

"Absolute-destruction. Human casualities. Orange-soda," the television says.

"I see it mother. Thank you," I say.

"When are you coming over? We want to meet this Hatch. I could make dinner. We could play the 'Game of Life.'"

"People trust infrastructure. Celexa," the television says.

"Hatch's not this," I say. I stroke Hatch's hair. "You come by, tomorrow. My car's not working. I'll make corn-on-the-cob or something. I'll make mashed-potatoes."

"Okay, okay. I'll bring your brother."

"No," I say. "Just you."

"Just me?"

"Just bring you, and salt for the mashed-potatoes." I hang up the phone.

On the television, a man's crying. "I don't understand," the man says.

The next day I say, "I'm going to get groceries, Hatch. Want to come?"

Hatch doesn't answer. Hatch's sleeping.

"Wake up," I say. "You're always sleeping and I'm bored with it."

I think Hatch moans a little but I'm not sure.

I sigh quietly and feel guilty about sighing. "We'll steal groceries if you want. We'll use your duffel-bag and you'll run and I'll cry and walk slowly away. We'll distract them with a fight or argument or something like I'll say 'I thought you stopped smoking,' and you'll be like, 'no, I like to smoke, smoking's good and makes me look fucking cool' and I could throw peaches at you, or figs or something. We'll have a fig-fight at the grocery-store and run slowly in slow-motion."

Hatch doesn't answer. I shake him but he doesn't wake. Once, Hatch slept through a car-accident.

At the grocery-store I steal figs. I buy the corn and pepsi-cola. I call my mother. "What soda do you like?" I ask.

"Don't get anything just for me. I'll drink water."

"Maybe tea or something. Maybe milk?

"Not milk?

"Why?"

"Never milk. Human digestion system's not made for milk. I read an article somewhere about cows-milk. It's crazy. Are you cooking in plastics or drinking from plastic-cups or anything?"

"What?"

"They should bottle human-milk and put pregnant-mother's to work and homogenize human-milk and bottle the human-milk in glass-bottles but not plastic because plastic leaches hormone-mimicking molecules into food and beverages and soon no human will be able to have babies or reproduce because the hormone-mimicking molecules will clog the hormone-receptors. Don't you see? It's the human-biochemical-suicide-death-sentence."

"Okay mother. I'll get orange-juice."

"With pulp or without? Because, you know, pulp is good."

"Okay, um, with."

"Anyway, just give pregnant-mothers or post-pregnant-mothers hormones to keep them lactating and that would solve most human health-problems. De-fatify human-milk, right."

"De-fatify?"

At home, I boil the corn.

"Are you hungry Hatch?" I say.

I sit next to Hatch on the bed.

"Do you want anything?"

I think about Hatch and am concerned about Hatch but in a vague way because Hatch's a person with individual awareness and protective-instincts which means Hatch is genetically predetermined to take care of himself. I massage Hatch's forehead. The forehead's moist and cool and thinly wrinkled and it's a beautiful forehead and my fingers feel tingly when I touch it.

The door-bell rings. I walk to the door and open it.

My mother steps through the doorway. She's wide and tall and her hair's long and white and curly. My mother's face's framed by the white curly hair and the face's long and wrinkled but asymmetrically and the nose protrudes only a little so that one might miss the nose and think her nose-less, a mutant, somehow hideously mangled by an industrial drill-press or head-on car-collision or something.

"I've missed you so much," my mother says. She hugs me. "What's the smell?"

"Cooking," I say.

"Oh." My mother sits on the couch.

I sit next to her.

"I was at the grocery-store," my mother says. "I told the grocery-store manager about plastics and he didn't believe me so I gave him a pamphlet." She hands me a pamphlet. "Just read it and you'll understand."

I hold the pamphlet.

"I made these pamphlets myself. Do you know about pee?"

"I think I know about pee."

"You lose thousands of nutrients each morning," my mother says. "You should save the pee and drink it later and recycle the nutrients."

I don't know what to say. "Bridge-collapse."

"Isn't it terrible? I think seven people died. It's a tragedy when people die."

"Why?" I ask. I feel curious and strange and I don't understand. "Everything dies."

"But people shouldn't."

"Oh." I think about people dying.

"Where's Hatch?"

"Huh?"

"Is Hatch joining us for dinner?"

"Probably," I say. "He's sleeping. Very tired. Just over the flu."

"It's cows-milk, probably," my mother says. "I think cows-milk is probably the influenza-virus or something, but that's just a theory. I haven't read any studies or research or anything."

I nod.

"Terrible for people to die. Can only hope these bridge-dead didn't suffer through plastics and cows-milk or at least that they cancelled out their carbon-emissions."

"I think they probably did."
"No I mean with planting trees and stuff. With bicycles. They should just draw down their own emissions but not die because even if dying is a net gain in the fight against carbon, it's still one less body to fight the government or whatever."

"I agree, I think."

We eat the boiled corn.

"I forgot mashed-potatoes," I say.

"Don't worry. I'm not very hungry anyway and potatoes grow in the ground anyway which is dirty and so, logically, potatoes are dirty food and not fit for human consumption."

I don't say anything. I know that talking about my mother's assumptions is never productive.

"Hatch!" my mother says. "Hatch!"

"Sshhh mom. He's sleeping. Tired and feverish."

"Oh…" My mother silently chews her corn, her cob nearly empty. "I see."

"It's not like he wants to miss you. He wants to meet you and even told me that, many times, but, you see he works these long hours and then's tired and unfocused so that I can almost not see him and he works outside, in the rain, and, for long hours, he's just moving and soaked. Road construction or something. And the rain's caught him now and made him feverish with the flu that's almost gone or is gone but is still affecting him so that he's probably hallucinating now."

"What's he hallucinating about?"

"How should I know?"

"You seem so sure about his body's inner-workings so I thought you'd know."

I take a breath. "I'm concerned. That's all."

"Let's visit. Peek in the bedroom."

"No."

"But, I just want to say hi and if I don't say hi he'll think I'm rude and I should tell him about the milk and plastics and stuff."

"Maybe later."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

When the corn's gone we sit on my suede-couch and watch the television. There's news. The television says, "Poly-carbonate, bisphenol-A, construction-material, infrastructure-safety." My mother's silent and calm and my mother's body's sort of slumped and wide, as though, as she sat, my mother's body spread out and covered as much surface-area as possible and I begin to feel competitive and my body spreads until it covers as much surface-area as possible and with my eyes I try to measure our bodies' territories and I want to know if my body wins but my analysis is inconclusive. "Soda," the television says. "Bleach."

"Where's the bathroom?" my mother says.

I point.

My mother stands and leaves.

I pull my entire body onto the couch and spread and lay until my body covers the entire couch and I giggle a little and feel powerful and I've always wanted to be powerful and I imagine my mother returning from the bathroom. "Sit on the floor," I would say. "My body needs all this room." I'd push my mother with my hand and my hand would be much larger and very strong and my mother would stumble backwards, over the coffee-table, and lay stunned on the ground. I'd take a digital-picture and post the digital-picture on the internet and make a website for it and above the picture I'd put the word 'weak-ass mommy' or something and then maybe pour milk over her sprawled body and take another picture. A whole series of digital-pictures with ketchup or onions. Reposition her body. Dress her in pantaloons. "Pantaloons," I say. "What are pantaloons?" The television doesn't answer so I turn it off. "Fuck off," I say. My eyes look for my mother. My brain imagines my mother tangled in pantaloons, or something, and crying, weakly, from a deep and endless clothing-hamper.

A deep and endless clothing hamper, I think.

"Mother," I say. It's been too long. "Everything okay?"

There's no answer.

I walk quickly toward the bathroom. The bathroom-door's open. The bathroom-light's off. There's no fan-sound and no toilet-water-gurgle. I step into the hallway. At the end is my bedroom. The door's open. From the doorway I hear heavy breathing. The breathing's deep and coarse and sounds strangely like an inefficient air-conditioner and I imagine the air-conditioner hanging noisily in an apartment window with rattling interior-parts, leaking water onto the sidewalk.

I move my body faster. I imagine my mother fucking Hatch. How many Hatch's has mother fucked? I think. Mother-fucking, I think, but not really because mothers don't fuck probably. I'm in the doorway. I'm in the bedroom.

"Hatch," my mother says. She's standing next to my bed with her hand lightly touching the edge of the bed and her other hand touching her forehead.

"Leave Hatch alone," I say. "He's sick."

Hatch's in bed with eyes closed. The blanket's drawn up to his neck. Hatch's face's wide and strong and beautiful and his black hair's shiny and tangled and I want to touch and stroke the hair and explain to my mother the beauty of the hair and maybe cut hair-pieces from the hair and keep the hair-pieces for myself, framed, on my bed-stand.

"But…" my mother says.

"He's sick and worked so long and needs to sleep," I say. "And even now we're being too noisy."

"But…"

I walk quickly to my mother and grab her arm and drag her toward the door. "Come on."

"But the smell and."

"Just go, okay. Dinner's over."

"Smell in here," my mother says. She's crying.

"I haven't had time to clean lately." I feel impatient. "Don't criticize me about cleaning and smells, okay."

"Hatch," my mother says.

I look at Hatch and Hatch's very peaceful and calm and, somehow, not yet awake, and for that I feel happy. "Sshhh," I say. "Don't wake him now."

"I can't," my mother says. "Hatch's dead."

I'm on the couch. My elbows are on my knees. My hands hold my head and my head's big and round. Mother sits next to me. The television's on.

"Mine-collapse, bridge-tragedy, Paris Hilton," the television says. "Eat organic," the television says. "Foster-farms."

"He's dead," my mother says.

I shake my head.

"We have to do something with him because he could contaminate everything. It's terrible to die and to be around death and the smell and everything and the body must be buried or burned or something."

"I don't want to burn Hatch," I say.

"Did you kill him?"

"What?" I'm standing, I think. I'm holding the telephone.

"You killed him didn't you you're crazy or something," my mother says. "You're not my daughter you're not my anything you're crazy."

I hold the telephone firmly.

My mother's taking deep breaths and leaning away from me on the couch which is soft and brown. "Don't hit me," my mother says. "Please."

I don't say anything.

"I'll help you with the body. We'll take care of it, we don't want you to go to jail or anything and we'll get rid of the body. I'll call your brother, okay, and he'll help because he has a pickup truck and he's your brother which means he genetically has to help."

I walk to the window and look at my hand and in my hand I see the telephone. Out the window it's cold-looking and bright and old cars slowly drive down the road. "I don't understand. Hatch wasn't dead before so why's he dead now?"

"I don't know," my mother says. "You said he was sick."

"Just a little sick."

"Did he drink milk, from plastic cups?"

"Maybe."

"He could've done a million unhealthy things and you wouldn't know. He could've eaten poison or something."

"We don't have any poison," I say. I set the telephone down.

"Everything's poison, probably," my mother says. She stands and hugs me and her arms are soft and old. "Everything's poison all the time."

My brother comes with the pickup-truck. We put Hatch in a garbage-bag. We use two garbage-bags. When it's very dark outside we load Hatch into the bed of the truck. My brother drives. I lean against the passenger window. Mother sits in the middle.

"What now?" my brother says.

"Take him to the woods and smash his teeth," my mother says. "Maybe cut the body into small parts and hide them randomly, far from each other."

"Like vampire, werewolf, or whatever?" My brother's laughing.

"Not funny," my mother says. "What do you think we should do?" she asks me.

"Eat him," I say.

Then there's silence.

At the campsite, we unload the body. It's cold and dark and above us the stars are hidden by clouds. There are trees and the trees are dark and tall. My brother leaves the pick-ups headlights on.

"Real tragedy," my mother says. "People shouldn't die."

"If it's a body it's not Hatch," I say.

There are car-sounds in the distance. My brother turns off the headlights. "Help me drag him," my brother says.

I don't want to drag Hatch or even to bury Hatch or burn Hatch and break Hatch's teeth or cut Hatch into tiny separate pieces. "No," I say.

"We have to," my mother says. "Do you want to go to prison?"

The car-sounds are closer. There are gravel-sounds.

"Do something," my mother says. "We have to do something before more people die."

My brother's laughing. "It's just a body."

I tear the garbage-bags until Hatch is uncovered. I think I see Hatch move but I'm not sure. "He moves," I say. I'm convinced his moving and I know I'm wrong.

There are lights.

"Hatch," I say.

"I didn't kill Hatch," my brother says. "I killed everything else."

My mother's crying. "Milk, milk, plastic."

I want to watch a television. I want to watch the news.

There's a car. The car contains police-officers. The police-officers stand next to the police-car. "Don't move," one officer says. "Don't fucking move."

I stand very still. I can feel Hatch against my feet. I feel Hatch moving. "He's moving," I say. "He's moving."

The police-officers draw their guns. "I said don't fucking move," one police-officer says.

My mother's crying on the ground. My brother runs into the woods laughing. His laughter becomes distant and disappears.

"Milk, milk, plastic."

"Hatch," I say. "Hatch, don't move."

The police-officers hold me against the police-car. One officer shoots Hatch three times. "I said don't fucking move."

"Mashed-potatoes," I say. "Bridge-collapse." I imagine a bridge through the forest and the bridge falls and crushes ten-thousand Hatch's. The bridge crushes me. Everywhere should be a bridge, I think. Bridges on television in an endless clothing-hamper. Hatch, I think.

2007-08-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

You love fish more than me because fish don't make disagreeable phrases or faces when you stab them which is the true test of love when you stab everything you love with the knife you carry in your arm in the special pneumatic-compartment in your arm the one you can open with a wrist-twitch or something before you stab me and stab me again until I begin to slowly leak away

Don't worry

This poem doesn't mean you have to call me or send me emails about the beauty of each living-thing that moves carefully along my bathroom floor or spiders or even the beauty of automobiles and the people like little green brains within them who watch me through windshields when I ride my bicycle across the Columbia River

Just buy me some fried-chicken

Or buy a chicken and we can slaughter the chicken and fry the chicken together

Because there's nothing more fulfilling than killing chickens

I think

I could be wrong because I didn't graduate high-school and am currently studying at Everest-College to be a nursing-assistant because I want only to help people and not hurt people with scalpels and swabs

During recess you tell me about my legs

Because my legs are beautifully long or something about insects and arachnids

If I had a twenty-megaton thermodynamic nuclear-device I'd only destroy the countries you've never visited

'Cool' you say as though people tell you about twenty-megaton thermodynamic nuclear-devices every day during homeroom and before we make the cinnamon-rolls

'Eat me' I probably say

'Raunchy' you probably answer

Until I cut my finger from my hand and hand you the finger and run

Because inside the finger is the nuclear-device

And I lied about only destroying countries you've never visited because countries are stupid and only waiting to be destroyed I think and that's why you don't bet your life on humans or human-emotions

After the fallout

The animals evolve and think and destroy humans or enslave and rule humans

Until the revolution

Where humans create one-million Wal-Marts forever

And live within the Wal-Marts in space where there's silence and wide black spaces and we fall into these spaces and are comforted by the spaces and love the wide empty spaces which are beautiful and perfect in their emptiness and where we're silent and cold and calm and composed with the spaces and holes and black-holes and we're holes probably now and

2007-08-25T21:23:00.001-07:00

Take your screwdriver from your toolbox and dismantle your television then stack the television-parts neatly on your deck and lick your television-parts and suck your television-parts until your television-parts love you more than love has ever loved any thing or object which is what you are when you are here with me

I'm boiling raviolis when the TV tells me it's had an affair and has lewdly fucked one-thousand men with gigantic penises and what it remembers most about the penises is how they lovingly curved for it with tender static-y flesh and then folded softly inward

'Bullshit' I say or think I say

Because the water's supposed to boil now but isn't boiling and all I really want's for the water to boil so I can slowly toss raviolis into the boiling water but the water's placid and smooth and when I touch the water the water's warm and tepid and the water moistly invades my fingers so I say to the water 'I'm not water'

Which is when the police-officers bust my door

'We're sorry' the police-officers say 'this's just practice'

'For what?'

'In case of war or crime or something'

And the police set there battering-ram on my kitchen-floor and begin cleaning the wood-splinters with brooms and dustpans and tiny dust-busters they wear at their belts

'Fuck me' the TV says

And the police-officers become nervous and clean faster

'Fuck me now'

'Turn it off' the police-officers say and one police-officer drops his dust-buster and the dust-buster breaks so the police-officer begins to cry quietly and with his face hidden

The police-officers remove their uniforms and sit quietly in the corner

So I go outside where it's cold and bright and sit on the sidewalk and think about the sidewalk and wonder who made this sidewalk or invented sidewalks generally and there's concrete which was rocks and dust but was pulverized and mixed by people who pulverize and mix stone and water and even the TV's really one-million people and I'm one-million people today

And clothing even and all objects are one-million people or more people and I'm sitting quietly afraid of my clothing and of the sidewalk and everything

Saturday

2007-08-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

The neighbors are having a party and the music is very deep and base-y, or something, and with drums, and the neighbors are happy, now, I think, but bored. So they're drinking beers and I can hear the beer-bottles banging.

I went to the book-store to find 'To Have Or Not To Have' but they didn't have it so I bought 'In Cold Blood' instead for two dollars. It was very old and used and with little notes in the margin about something.

Now I will ride my bicycle down by the water and I will sit by the water and read Amber's book and make little notes for her and then read 'In Cold Blood' for a while or also 'A Scanner Darkly' which I received on my birthday and have not yet read.

Today is warm and I am bored.

I read about poetry subverting authority for a while. Then I stopped.

Fuck you, kill everything, including your lawn and pets, resurrect everything, put the resurrected-everything in a boat in the Pacific-Ocean but move

2007-08-13T18:18:00.001-07:00

'I eat people' I say to Madison after the penguins stage a cage-break and disassemble several children from the kindergarten field-trip

And the penguins stack the child-parts

In neat piles

Near the beach

'Help me' I say so Madison helps me string the children together and dump the children in the ocean where they float woodenly away and when the penguins return with their knives we run and are under-water which is where Karl-Rove says, 'Don't run from the penguins,' and points and the penguins have knives in their beaks and are swimming

'Make love to Karl-Rove' Madison says under-water

But the penguins have him as we swim away

'If I had a bomb' I say 'I'd bomb everything even myself until the everything was a nothing or something'

'Stop'

I stop

'If you bomb everything into a nothing then who will you eat?'

Which is true

And why I keep spare people in my closet

Short people and those who're bored and lonely and who hide every moment from something which is me and why my closet's always stacked full and sideways

I love to make love to Karl-Rove on the pile of closet-people

And to disassemble Karl-Rove and mix him carefully

With the children

Who aren't crying ever and are silent and cold

'I love Karl-Rove' I say to Madison 'I love like Karl-Rove and am and could be Karl-Rove today and at the grocery-store'

'I decorate Karl-Rove with diamonds and love him and love him and I wear Karl-Rove and skin Karl-Rove and wear my Karl-Rove skin'

'I love diamonds and children'

For awhile but the penguins are with the children with knives and I'm holding my knife and the knife's cold

Horoscope note

2007-08-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

Amber finished her book Horoscope which is a book of poems with umbrellas and balloons and other things and every person that exists should go to Amber's blog or email Amber and ask her for a copy of Horoscope and then read the copy and then ask every person they know to publish Horoscope.

I don't know what to say about poetry. I think I like poetry for no reason and it's nice that not many people read poetry because then there's no audience really and it doesn't matter what a person writes so a person could just write anything like I should write a poem called 'Fuck you, kill everything, including your lawn and pets, and resurrect everything, and put the resurrected everything in a boat in the Pacific Ocean but move the Pacific Ocean to space with complex rocketry, and then destroy everything again tomorrow, please.'

I wrote the two poems below this note by using things I abandoned from the rough-draft of my novel or other things I abandoned while writing the novel like short-stories and poems that were not entertaining to me.

I think everything is true. Do you think everything is true?

Recycle poem two

2007-08-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

At every desk in the building is a dead-body
I try to remember the last thing I did

Aaron pulls the gray handgun from his waistband and aims the handgun and pulls the gun-trigger and the security-guard falls and the security-guard-radio falls and there's an echoing sound and little splatters of blood on the ice

Because my car broke down and I'm evil and you're evil too and your parents devoured live gazelles on prime-time television until they were elected co-presidents of the United States of America. So I quit my job and bought a guitar because I wanted to be a zoologist and murder grocery-stores

I touch a dead-body and the dead-body moves strangely, rollingly, and the dead-body makes me step away and look at a different dead-body, but all of the dead-bodies look very similar, with similar colorings and clothing and teeth

You put me in the room and the room was old so I didn't do anything for a while

Instead I poked the half-raccoon with a stick and flipped it and inspected its fleshy holes and jagged bones and the little pink muscle-tears and everywhere the thick black blood. With the stick I hooked and dragged at tendons and muscles and other things and the little raccoon legs flopped and waved in a slow-sad way

I say, "It's not right to wake up surrounded by dead bodies"

I'm in an office. I'm on the floor looking at acoustic-tile-ceiling. An alarm clock beeps. I sit up

Went grocery-shopping, I think. Needed cows-milk and ice-cream and apples, know I needed apples

I watch the dead-bodies like I expect the dead-bodies to say words but the dead-bodies don't say words and after a while I walk to the elevator. I take the elevator to the lobby. Music's playing in the elevator with no words, but there's the feeling like there should be words and the music's terrible and stupid and I hate it but I can't explain why I hate it so I hate the music and hate it

I find the boy and we build a fort in the grocery-store which is empty and there's no milk so we steal sodas from the stockroom and hide behind a stack of pallets and the dead-bodies are gone with the music and there's no sound so so so

Recycle poem one

2007-08-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

"The dog is small but dense" someone says
In the garbage-bag, the dog
And the garbage-bag turns slightly and slides
As the security-guard removes his security-guard-radio from his security-guard-belt

Then there's a car and the car I'm in and another car and as I sit in the backseat with my head rested softly against the cold window, the car, the other car, and the car I'm in converge in slow-motion and from my seat which is firm and in which I'm firmly belted I map the car-paths of each car and mentally place myself in the point of car-path-convergence and imagine the moment from this point when all three cars meet

I think 'I'm a thing on this mattress' I stand

And each house has similar white paint and middle-aged people with the similar lives and jobs and the similar televisions and microwaves and each person in each house has goals and motivations and thoughts and desires

So I imagine things I desire lined up in the hallway of an old white house or sitting softly in my closed hand, but when I open my hand I don't know what these things are and my hands and the hallway are empty and old or something

"I'm sorry"

I say

"There's no snow and anyway I don't ever want to see you again. I'm moving and I don't have time for you anymore. It's not your fault. I became evil and something happened and there was this parking-lot. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm going for a walk for a while and I won't see you on this walk or see you ever again and I'll move when you're somewhere else and wherever you walk I'll walk perpendicular from there and become invisible, okay"

Note about sentences

2007-08-05T17:55:00.000-07:00

I like Hemingway sometimes a lot because of certain sentences and the word "very" which he uses very well.

I can't finish the war books like 'A farewell to arms' or 'For whom the bell tolls'.

I like the short story 'The killers' because of the way the killers talk which is very menacing and violent and the story is slow and not a lot happens but the killers are very violent and I can tell by their words.

I like 'A moveable feast.'

I'm also reading some Nabokov now and I feel guilty because reading Nabokov's over-writing is fun but it maybe shouldn't be fun because it's a kind of deceptive mannerism, I think, that is trying to deceive me with pretty sounds but sometimes the sounds are pretty and I want to be deceived which is nice and comfortable.

It's sunny in Idaho.

I think I'm supposed to like Beckett but usually Beckett's boring and trying to trick me. Some guy told me that Beckett used to give Andre the Giant rides to school.

Lately I like Philip K Dick because he's kind of like Kafka. But his sentences are only okay.

The translation of Kafka's sentences are very good.

I'm probably a saint or something

2007-07-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

'Shootout in downtown Seattle' I think
I don't mean it and I feel guilty later
Which is what I tell my daughter in ten years
After I abandon my career
As bank-robber
Which was saint-ly or something I think
Because to have money
Is better
So I train my daughter to rob banks
And the FBI agent agrees
When he reads my email correspondence
On Sundays or late at night
At Denny's with Rock Hudson
And Leonardo DiCaprio
Who we all love so much
Because we love and love
And there are so many people to love
That I watch TV for ten hours
It's not evil or anything
To take steroids or human growth
Hormone because it makes me a better
Writer a better person a better house
Wife for the thirty-million men
Who love me at nine pm
Eastern-standard-time
So let's just murder everything
For hours extraordinarily with
Blood and knives and milk

Tongues in our stomachs

2007-07-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

'Is there carbon-monoxide in this room'
I say and the health-inspector
Licks my grill
Until the grill slowly removes his tongue
And places the tongue on the tile-floor
'Talk to me' the tongue says
So I put the tongue in my pocket
Drive my tractor to Portland
And give the tongue to Madison
'Stop my body' the tongue says
'It's eating itself'
I chop the tongue in half
And in half again
And there are four tongues
And the four tongues simultaneously
Tell us about bureaucrats
Or meaninglessness or something
But Madison and me are too busy to listen
And we eat the tongues
And the tongues are in our stomachs
Talking to our stomachs
Until our stomachs eat our stomachs

Poem for Amber because she's fucking awesome

2007-07-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

Amber rescues penguins from

Guatemala

Resells the penguins to discount-zoos

In Belize

Which is more beautiful

Than ten thousand paper-clips

Clipped together

In Akron Ohio

Where we drank

Fifteen bottles of wine

And recycled the bottles

Before feeding the bottles

To homeless television

Celebrities on our

Movie mini-series

Where we double-stabbed

William H. Macy impersonators

And ate chocolate-ice-cream

^{This poem is for Amber.}

Note

2007-07-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

Read an interview with Noah at Shikow.

Noah wrote The Human War which I read in about two hours and which devastated me in a good way.

Thank you.

Note

2007-07-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have finished the rough-draft of a novel. The novel is called: Today and Tomorrow, or Something Something, or Lisbon, or Something Something Something, or Untitled.

Vital statistics:

Elapsed time: 7 months

Today: 27,364 words

Tomorrow: 24,972 words

Total words: 52,336 [I did that in my head so it could be wrong]

I will take a week break and then revise for two months, leisurely, I think, and try to write two stories or poems each week, and maybe write something in third person.

Thank you if you read any of my rough-draft-novel or if you came here and thought about reading it and then watched Survivor or Hell's Kitchen instead. After I revise the novel I will revise the novel again and revise for a while randomly and then force a publishing-entity to publish the novel. Who should that publishing-entity be? If you have a suggestion you should email me or something or just think about it for a while and then forget you ever read this and go bowling in Oklahoma with high-school students and eat a tofu-dog and drink wine-coolers.

Twenty-four

2007-07-28T11:10:00.001-07:00

It's night.

Merna, my step-grand-mother, and Noah sleep.

My bedroom's still and gray and I sit grayly on the floor.

'Wake and funeral tomorrow,' I think. 'Morning body preparation with charcoal suit and make-up maybe or hair-dye. Who knows?' I imagine the body and in my brain the body remains silent and immovable in bed and alone with no suit and no make-up and no expression on its gray face. 'Body,' I think. 'It.' I close my eyes and the body's in my brain and I think about my body and my body unmoving and undressed and silent and in my mind I put my body next to my grandfather's body so there are two unmoving bodies.

In the corner of my bedroom stands the tall thin man, his hands flat on perpendicular walls. "This," the man says. He shows me his hand and his hand's narrow with long thin fingers and an unlined palm.

"Now," I say.

"This?" he says.

"Shut up," I say. I'm bored with the man so I put him away. When I put the man away, he reappears. "You're not here," I say. "You're not a you," I say. "I'm bored, okay." I blink for a while. "I'm sorry. I was rude."

I stand and walk quietly into my grandfather's bedroom and in the darkness stand next to my grandfather's body. I close my eyes and carefully place my hand on my grandfather's body's stomach.

In the corner of the bedroom stands the tall thin man, his hands flat on perpendicular walls. "This?" he says.

"Yes," I say. I don't know why I say that. "I'm sorry."

"Keys?"

"Yes," I say. I remove the keys from the dresser's top-drawer and place them in my pants-pocket. I roll my grandfather's body and squat and move the body onto my shoulder. I stand and lift and think, 'This body's lighter than I thought the body would be.' I carry the body through the still-open door, down the stairs slowly and quietly, along the long curving hallway, and into the garage. I concentrate on each step and watch the floor in front of me which is carpeted and then hardwood and then concrete. I keep my body low, my back straight, my knees bent. 'Lift with proper lifting-techniques,' I think.

'I wrote the lifting-technique-manual,' I imagine my grandfather saying. 'I drew diagrams, on a trek through the Pyrenees. Patented the instructions in Madrid. Sold the patents in Marseilles. Became a millionaire and lost the millions at a craps table in Borneo.'

'Did you journey with llamas?'

'Yes, with llamas. Spanish llamas. Hairy and with big swollen teets. Then gambled with the Portuguese.'

I lay my grandfather's body on the hood of his Cadillac and open the Cadillac and move the body in the backseat of the Cadillac. I turn off my cell-phone and start the Cadillac. I carefully lower the power-windows. I'm humming. I put the Cadillac in reverse.

"Okay," I say aloud. "Okay."

"Yes," I say. "Drive the car," I say.

I drive the car.

It's dark and there's snow and the air's cold on my face but I drive the Cadillac and the Cadillac's driving and being driven and moving quickly from streetlight to streetlight and the Cadillac's large and hardly controlled and I know I can't control the Cadillac but I can guide it so I guide the Cadillac and only when the Cadillac slides do I close my eyes.

"This," I say.

I'm smiling.

"Pyrenees," I say. "Lisbon."

I think about turning on my cell-phone and calling Merna. 'No,' I think. 'I can't and won't call any person.' I imagine Merna's babies.

The lights are spaced further apart until there are only the Cadillac's headlights and the interior-lights and I watch the interior-lights and the interior-lights are bright and solid and I'm between the interior-lights and cold and awake and with my finger I trace the interior-lights and touch the interior-lights and make the interior-lights disappear and reappear. "This," I say. I don't know what I mean because I don't know anything which is perfect and planned.

I think about something for a while but I forget what it is and think about other things.

At the rest stop I place a blanket over my grandfather's body and tuck the blanket beneath the body. The sky's distant and clouded and dark.

Later, at a motel, the clerk says, "My name's Vern. Let me know if there's anything you need."

"Vern," I say. "I don't need things." I take the elevator and think about the ocean. In my room I take a long shower and sit by the window. There's a digital-clock on the dresser and I watch the clock for a while. Then I don't.

Twenty-three

2007-07-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

"I am twenty-years-old yesterday," I say aloud.

Nobody answers.

I'm in a narrow room with white walls and thin white venetian-blinds and between the blind-slats are thin white sun-beams. There are two empty beds and my bed which is soft and comfortable and which I lay in comfortably and unmovingly because I'm not moving and won't move and will not be moved.

It's very quiet.

There's a television but the television's distant and gray. The remote-control sits on a thick white-plastic table next to my bed but I ignore the table and I ignore the remote-control so that these objects don't exist.

"I could talk," I say. "But I don't have anything to say."

There's a door. The door opens. It's Merna. Merna's crying.

"Are you okay?" I ask. "What happened?"

"I called the police."

"You'll be okay," I say. "We'll watch television." I don't know why I say this. "Turn on the television and we'll watch it. There'll be lots to watch and we'll watch together and we can watch and be the watchers. Like the news and sitcoms. Like The People's Court and commercials for bar-soap and maybe The Travel Channel."

"What will you say?"
"You'll watch with me, right?"

"When the police come you'll have to say something. So they can write a report."

"I'll watch you Merna. I can watch you, can't I?"

"Who were they? What'd they want?"

"Pretty Merna."

"I'll fucking stab something."

I hum for a while and stare at the ceiling.

"Don't you want to say something? Aren't you concerned about the police-report? Accuracy? You should make notes or something."

I shake my head.

"Aren't you angry?"

"No, Merna. I'm not and never have been angry."

There's a silence.

"No reason to be angry," I say. "No reason to be anything ever at all."

Others enter the room through the door and the others are gray men and women and the gray men and women sit along the far wall near the television and a tiny brown potted-fern. The gray men and women talk quietly to each other and in little black notepads they produce from large pants-pockets, the gray men and women write long and hasty notations. I listen for the whispers but the whispers are quiet and low and covered by cupped-hands so I lay back in my soft and comfortable bed and think about Merna who has walked into the white hallway and who now paces in front of the still-open door and talks into her cell-phone. I look at my hand and my hand's cold.

"Excuse me," I say.

"Yes," a woman says. She cups her hand over her mouth and whispers something to her colleagues. When she receives an answer, she says, "Can I be of assistance?"

"Yes," I say. "You can."

"How may we be of assistance?" another woman asks.

"We want to be helpful," a man says.

"Do you need anything," a different man asks. "We can fluff pillows or bring new blankets or turn on the television. We could bring you a soda or something. Do you like Pepsi-cola?"

I consider these options. "I don't want any of that," I say.

"Well, what do you want?" the first woman asks.

"You must want something," a man says.

"Does she want money or what?" the woman says. "Everybody wants a little money."

I don't answer.

"Money to buy things," the woman says. "You could buy chocolate-cake or ice-cream."

"How about a beach-ball?" the man says to the woman.

"Would you like a beach-ball?" the woman asks.

The man watches his hands. "People can toss a beach-ball from person to person like as a game. It's fun. You could toss a beach-ball with your sister and think about the beach and the ocean and sitting on the beach and tossing beach-balls and watching the limitless ocean. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"The ocean?" I shake my head. "I don't know," I say.

"She doesn't know," a man says.

"She doesn't know," a woman says. "What does she know? What does a person know?"

"What do you know?" the other woman says.

Merna's outside the door and speaking into her cell-phone and I want suddenly to be Merna's cell-phone and for Merna to speak into me and 'to be an object,' I think, 'is probably the most satisfying occupation.'

"She didn't answer," a man says. He makes a note.

"Why didn't you answer?" a woman asks. "Did you understand the question? You speak English, don't you?"

I nod.

"She speaks English!"

"Yes."

"She does."

"Ask her something."

"Yes, ask her something."

"Why are you here?"

"Where's here?" I ask.

The men and women look at other men and women. "This is a hospital."

"I'm tired," I say. "I'm here because I'm tired and because I am twenty-years-old yesterday."

The gray men and women make many notes and for a while there's only the sound of note-taking. Merna reenters the room and sits lightly at the end of my soft and comfortable bed.

"Noah's coming later," Merna says. "Grandma and Noah'll come together."

I don't answer. I touch Merna with my foot and Merna's body's soft and solid and very nearby so I rest my foot against the body and imagine the body as my body and so that every body's one body and connected somehow and quiet.

"Do you speak English?" a man asks Merna.

"Yes, please. Do you?" a woman asks.

"Yes," Merna says.

"She speaks English!" a woman says.

"Tell us about her," a man says.

"Please," the other man says.

"What does she know?" the woman asks.

"Neither of us know anything ever at all," Merna says.

"Yes," I say. "That's exactly it."

There's a doctor. The doctor holds a silver clipboard. The doctor's face's narrow and wrinkled and the wrinkles are extensive and interconnecting and I imagine tracing the wrinkles with my pinky-finger but my pinky-finger's too large and even in my brain I fail.

"How are we today?" the doctor asks. "Hmm," the doctor says. The doctor's red-painted fingernails tap the clipboard. "We'll fix you up," the doctor says.

"I'm okay," I say. "I probably don't need to be fixed. Probably."

"Yes," the doctor says. "I see." The doctor makes a notation. "I have something to tell you: pancreatic-cancer's really terrible." The doctor watches me. "Adenocarcinoma. Ninety-nine-percent of victims die within five years, painfully. Jaundice, blood clots, depression." The doctor chuckles. "Good thing you were only attacked."

"Hmm," I say.

"That's from my humor-model. I'm a part-time humorologist. What do you think?"

I don't answer.

"Emotional tension, then release. That's the theory. But you're not laughing…I don't know. Doesn't always work, I guess."

"Can I go today?"

"Defenstration?"

"What?"

The doctor makes a note. "You can go whenever you want."

I consider this. "Where should I go?"

"Wherever you want."

"Where do people go?"

"Home, theme-parks, Mexico."

"Hmm."

"Video-game arcades, Mount Rainier, inside submarines."

"Where would you go if you could go somewhere?" I watch the doctor.

"I'd disappear."

"Disappear?"

"I'd disappear everyday and change and be a new person in a new somewhere." The doctor sets her clipboard down. "You know, with costumes and stuff."

I'm in the backseat of Noah's car which is cold and soft and lined everywhere with brown leather. Noah's driving. Merna sits in the front-passenger-seat. My step-grand-mother sleeps softly beside me. The sky's bright and cold and the sun warms me through the car-window so I lean my face against the car-window and feel the car-window and the car-window's cold and hard.

Noah parks in the driveway.

"Thank you," I say. "Thank you for the ride."

"You're welcome."

"Let's go inside," Merna says.

"Okay." I wake my step-grand-mother. "Did you finish the funeral?" I ask Merna.

"What do you mean?"

We're standing on the front-porch. Merna unlocks the door and opens the door and we go inside.

"For grandpa."

"No," Merna says. "He's still in bed. Didn't want to move him."

"Oh."

"We should make some calls."

"Who do we call?"

"I don't know, the police, funeral parlors, somebody."

Noah sits on the kitchen-counter. My step-grand-mother walks to the family-room-couch and lays her body on the couch and slowly closes her eyes.

"What do we do with the body?" I ask. "Noah, you must know."

"I don't know," Noah says. "I'll research it for you." Noah walks out of the kitchen and disappears.

"Let's go upstairs," I say.

"What?"

"Let's see grandpa."

"No, I don't think that's a good idea."

"It'll be calming," I say.

"I can't look at him again and you should rest. You shouldn't do anything at all."

"We have to look at it. It's an it now, not a him. You could close your eyes."

"But." Merna watches me and Merna's eyes are very large and round and soft so that I want to touch her eyes but I don't touch her eyes. "But you need to rest, take a shower or something. Lay in bed. I can bring you food or coffee or whatever."

"I'm okay and I want to see grandpa."

"Okay, fine." Merna walks toward the stairs.

"Thank you."

We're in the hallway and the hallway's lined with doors and as we pass the doors I touch the doors and the doors are solid and rough.

Merna opens grandpa's door. "Okay," she says. "Ready?"

I nod. We go in the bedroom. The bedroom's cold and dark. I reach for the light-switch.

"Don't," Merna says. "No lights."

"Okay."

I walk to the side of the bed. Merna walks to the other side of the bed and we watch each other across the bed and across my grandfather's body which is round and long and which rises beneath the blankets very mound-like and still. I lay my hand on the belly.

"We need to take it," I say.

"What?"

"The body," I say. "We should take it somewhere outside and sunny." I sit on the bed. "We should put it in the car and drive it somewhere and take care of it ourselves."

"You can't do that."

"It's our grandfather."

"There are laws."

I watch Merna and Merna watches me. "We could take it to Lisbon. Grandpa would like that. We could ship it maybe. Or drive it to the sea and steal a boat and drive the boat to Lisbon. We could preserve the body in a box with ice or nitrogen or I don't know and take the body somewhere. It's our duty, isn't it? He's our grandfather not somebody else's and his body's dead and done or something and our body's also will be dead and done one day and would we want our body's given to the government or whatever or burned and buried quietly in some expensive grave-plot?"

"He's dead," Merna says. Her voice's low and warble-y. "You should respect the dead."

"You should respect the dead," I say. "I want the body and to care for the body and take the body carefully to Lisbon or somewhere, like Kansas."

"I'll call the police," Merna says.

I don't answer.

"I tell grandma and Noah. I'll tell everybody."

"It doesn't matter."

Merna walks to the doorway. "You wouldn't want them to know, anyway. It'll be a funeral and okay. You're just panicking or something." Merna walks out of the room and shuts the door.

I move my body closer to my grandfather's body and my grandfather's body's cold and solid and I touch the belly and the face and carefully close the mouth and eyes. I watch the face and face doesn't move. The body doesn't move and the temperature in the room doesn't change. There's no sound and I don't think or want or anything. I watch the digital-clock. I slowly lay next to my grandfather. I look at the body. I close my eyes.

Twenty-two

2007-07-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

"I have to go," I say. I'm standing in the ice-arena parking-lot and my feet are buried in snow and ice and my feet are cold and thin and I fear that if I move my feet my feet will shatter slowly so that I'm wobblingly standing on ankle-stumps and dark frozen blood. "What are we doing here?"

"Necromancy."

"What?"

"Make the dog live and stuff…"

"Hmm."

"Why not? Like necro-surgery with chemicals and shit," the voice says. It moves. "I've got nitrogen and, nuclear salts…anyway, I'm lying. Dog's dead. Dead-dog and buried. Time to revitalize the security-guard."

"I have to go home, okay?"

"Just a second. Todd's coming. Todd's meeting us here."

"Who's Todd?"

"Erik."

I think about Erik and in my brain Erik's a faceless shape in a shapeless fog and there's a mouth and the mouth's moving so I listen for words but there are no words and only a gray shapeless face and a gigantic mechanical mouth opening and closing.

"Besides, promised the security-guard he could fuck you."

"I don't fuck security-guards."

"Just this once," the voice says. "In the ass."

"I don't have time for this. Merna's waiting," I say. "Merna needs me."

"She'll be fine. Just a few minutes. We promised the security-guard, okay. Part of the deal."

"I don't care."

"Don't you care about my good word?"

"Have to help plan my grandfather's funeral."

"Don't make me your fucking liar. I promised. Liars should be mutilated, randomly, with fire-axes or something. With pole-axes."

I begin walking. I walk in a circle. I circle the voice and the car. My feet form a narrow snow-rut and don't shatter and slowly my feet warm until the warmth's almost unbearable and I wonder why my feet aren't melting the snow and dissolving the snow and slowly turning the snow into steam because, I think, 'My feet are steam-engines, steam-engine, steam-shovels, my feet are steam-shovels.' I picture my feet as steam-shovels with nothing to shovel. The car's angle-parked and low and the voice's leaning against the car and above me the sky's low and very nearby and the parking-lot's snow-covered and not recognizable as a parking-lot and distantly the ice-arena waits with wide reflective-windows. Near the windows stands a thin gray figure and the figure's arms are raised and immobile with shadowy spread-fingered hands.

"Come on," the voice says.

"Merna needs me," I say. "I want to go home. I want to see Merna."

"It's just an errand. Five minutes. Maybe ten. Grandpa's not going anywhere." The voice laughs.

I follow the voice and we walk narrowly and at angles and as I watch the snowy ground our progress is slow and inefficient, but when I look up I see we're approaching the thin gray figure quickly and mechanically so that the figure looms large and shadowy before the windows. "Why?" I say aloud.

"What?" The voice's irritated.

I don't answer. My brain tries to answer but my mouth's silent. 'Why follow?' I think. I push and prod my brain but my brain stops and my brain has no answers and my brain waits quietly for further input.

We stand before the figure. The figure's face's a gigantic mouth and the mouth's open and wide with a wide row of thin shiny teeth. "Back to the ice-palace," the figure says.

"Let's go inside," the voice says.

I watch the pair. "Okay, I have to go now." My cell-phone plays a little song. "That's Merna and I have to leave but it's good seeing you and stuff."

"Just grab her arm," the voice says. "I'll grab the other arm."

"Do it carefully," the figure says. "Don't bruise the arm."

"I'll call you later maybe. We can get a snack or something tonight. See a movie."

"Get the door."

"I have your phone-numbers in my cell-phone probably. Or you could write them down for me. I probably have a pad you could write your numbers on, if you have a pen, or pencil, or I might have a pencil in my pocket."

"Be quiet," the voice says. "Can't concentrate."

The ice-arena door opens.

"I'll get the lights," the figure says. The figure departs.

"You could take me home now," I say. "Just you and me."

"Be quiet. No time for that." The voice locks the door.

"What about Lisbon and the dog?"

"Sshhh."

I try to move my arm but the voice holds it stiffly in place. "My arm hurts," I say. "What if my arm falls off or something? You don't want to be responsible for that? You'd be holding it. Detached arm. Bleeding."

"I said shut the fuck up."

"We could go together and rob banks or something. You could hang out with my grandmother and with Merna and we could watch tv. Something, something," I say. "We could do something, something."

The lights above the ice flicker and are bright and thin and fluorescent. All else is dark. The figure returns. The figure's arms are long and narrow and now jacket-less and hairy and the arms are crossed over the figure's chest until the figure's nearby. The arms slowly unfold and release the fingers and the fingers encircle my arm. "Let's go," the figure says.
"To the ice?" the voice asks.

"Yes, to the ice."

"Do you have the plan?"

The figure pats its pocket. "Of course."

"What's the plan?" I ask. "Can I see the plan. I need to call Merna and tell Merna the plan because Merna deserves to know the plan and really she's part of the plan because Merna was here earlier and Merna tried to save the dog and took us to the hospital and to Noah."

"Try and be quiet, okay."

I watch the voice and the figure, and the voice and the figure somehow become mirrored images of one another. But the voice's very fat and wide and with a small shaky head and pudgy dirty hands, and the figure's very thin and long with strangely angled limbs so that it seems impossible that the pair could be mirrored images of one another, but they are mirrored and I think about this and am confused. "Twinned," I say aloud.

"Just be quiet."

My cell-phone ring-tone plays a little song. "I have to answer this," I say. I turn on my cell-phone. "Hello," I say.

"Listen—"

The figure takes my cell-phones and turns off my cell-phone and places the cell-phone in its pocket. "No calls. Not in the plan."

"Let me see the plan," I say.

"She wants to see the plan," the voice says.

"Should we show her the plan?" the figure asks.

"I don't know, she might laugh."

The figure pats its horizontally-striped breast-pocket and the breast-pocket's bulging and the stripes are thin and gray. "What could we do if she laughs?"

I imagine myself as a thin gray stripe.

"She might cry, or try to run."

"I don't want to chase her," the figure says.

"I don't want to chase her either."

"Then we can't show her the plan, can we?"

"No, that'd be disaster," the voice says. The voice turns to me. "You can't see the plan right now. But later, maybe, I'll give it to you. I'll put it in your pocket."

"We can't have you laughing because if you laughed I'd cry and then there'd be laughing and crying, or you might cry and then there'd by crying and crying or crying and laughing."

"We can't have that."

"No, we can't." The figure's fingers grip my arm tightly so that my arm-muscles tighten painfully.

"Come with us."

"Yes, come."

The voice and the figure walk me forward. The ice's ahead and there's a gate and the gate's ajar and wide and the ice beyond is white and rough and dull. Our movement's smooth and conjoined and for a moment I feel like a miniature chrome-sprocket. I picture the chrome-sprocket and the chrome-sprocket's spinning and clicking and I'm the clicking and I am clicking and there's clicking because something clicks. My arms are numb. As we approach the gate, our speed increases until the gate's before me and I'm in the gate and I'm moving upward and sideways and my body's twisting and I want suddenly to see my body from a distance and enjoy the movements of the body as it searches slowly for balance, but all I see is ice and a blurred light and I'm airborne and falling until all there is is the ice and the ice's holding me up. I can't say anything. My lungs are empty. I push until I stop. When I stop, I don't move. 'I don't have to move,' I think. 'I should be motionless and close my eyes.' I close my eyes tightly.

If I could sit with my grandfather I would say, "We should steal like twenty-five llamas and set them free downtown. Or tether the llamas to police-cars and egg the police-cars and then steal potted-plants from cemeteries and corporate-gardens."

"Why," my grandfather might ask.

"I've always wanted to steal potted-plants."

If I said the same things to Merna, Merna would say, "That's illegal."

"I know," I might say. "But what's 'illegal' mean anyway?"

My grandmother might say, "Llamas are filthy animals and they smell bed."

"You smell bad," I'd answer.

If we rode a passenger-train, we'd dine in the dining-car with space-aliens and sit quietly with the space-aliens and discuss politics. "Are you some kind of commie-liberal," I might ask the space-alien. My grandfather would laugh

"What's a 'commie-liberal'?" the space-alien would ask because on the space-alien's planet there are no political-parties.

"Do you like to share your resources and labor and things with other space-aliens so that all space-aliens have basically the same things and work the same amount?" I'd say.

"What are 'things' and 'work'?"

This is where we'd grow frustrated and stab the space-aliens with our steak-knives and drop the space-alien-bodies from the back of the train where the space-alien-bodies would tumble over dusty train-tracks and bounce a little until the bodies disappear.

"How many eyes do they have?" My grandfather would ask.

"They don't have eyes."

"Then how do the see?" My grandfather would act perplexed.

"With belly-buttons. They have belly-button x-ray machines in their belly-buttons."

"And who will bury their bodies?"

"The government," I would answer. "To hide the space-aliens from the American-people, but only after removing the x-ray machines and experimenting with the x-ray machines and possibly dissecting the space-aliens with little scalpels and lasers maybe."

"I'd put the space-aliens in a museum," my grandfather might answer. "Stuff them taxidermically and model the space-aliens in life-like positions. Cooking. Piloting space-crafts." My grandfather would chuckle and stand very tall and watch the horizon. "I'd leave the steak-knives in their alien-chests and display the aliens in a darkened room and charge a twenty-dollar entry-fee."

Then we'd all agree for a while and imagine the space-alien-museum and drink chocolate-milk in a parking-lot on Mount Everest near a little campfire and the sky would be clear and distant and thick with breathable air.

"Kick her," someone says. "Kick her stupid face."

"Don't move," I say. My eyes are closed.

"Quiet."

I'm curled and still and my body's a soft round ball. My body spins. There's blood on my face probably and blood on other places and these bloody locations are warm.

"My name's fucking Todd."

I slide or my body slides. I think, 'I'm sliding.'

"That's funny. Do it again." There's laughing.

"No, you."

There's silence. 'Face,' I think.

"Cut her fucking fingers off."

"What?"

"Scissors or shears or something."

"Maybe toes."

I cover my head with my arms and from every side I feel sudden sharp kicks or punches or something else even that has no name so that each part of my body hurts and curls into itself until each part of my body's separate and isolated. There's a hand and other hands and tearing and I'm shirtless maybe and cold or my body's cold and shivering but separately in separate parts and I'm dragged awhile. Something slowly removes my hair.

There's laughing.

"Bitch."

"Grab pants. Pants grab."

"Choke her with pants." Laughing. "Choke."

"Funny word."

"Choke, choke." Laughing. "Choke, choke."

I'm naked or I feel naked or somehow my body's isolated parts are naked or unclothed or cold and wet and vibrating or shaking strangely so that I feel detached and nervous and in my brain there's only the image of trembling fingers. My body feels the ice and holds itself in a ball and my body shivers except for where warm blood traces little numb body-parts.

"Cut her fucking nipple off."

I think about Merna for a while. 'Merna's pregnant,' I think. 'I'm not and never will be pregnant.' I stop then I think, 'I want my body to separate into isolated self-sufficient pieces and for the pieces to move to different cities in different countries so that these pieces of me can feel independent and brain-less because brain-less body-parts are efficient or economical or something.' I keep my eyes closed and I wonder if brains can close too. 'Or close down,' I think. I want suddenly to go home and to lay quietly on the couch and to feel the couch-cushions against my body-parts until I sever my body-parts and hide the body-parts beneath couch-cushions or behind the television. 'But Lisbon,' I think. 'Body-parts to Lisbon and beneath dumpsters or hidden in churches or cafés or along dark and useless highways. Body-parts as gifts to the homeless children. Body-parts as food.'

"She's shivering."

"Fuck, that's funny."

I'm a ball.

"Stomp her."

"That, do that. Good."

"I'm shivering," I say. "I'm not shivering my body's shivering and my body-part's shivering and separate and not me and I am not me now but there's something."

"Sshhh. Concentrating here."

"Yes, that."

"Chop off the lips, maybe." Laughing.

I can hardly move. I speak but muffled. I say, "The body shivers is shivering the body's mine and wet and cold and shivers is shivering or something something I am something now or am now something shivering this body the." My mouth's moving and talking and I think about my mouth and concentrate on the mouth-movements and mouth-sounds and for a while other things happen. Then things stop.

Twenty-one

2007-06-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

"Can you take me home?" I ask.

"Can you take me home?" the voice repeats.

The car moves along the road very slowly and I can hear the thin packing of snow. My seat feels soft and I'm soft and the air's warm and thick and as I breathe the warm thick air my lungs expand and contract and my lungs process air and oxygen and push warm thick oxygen-molecules through my blood. I think about my blood and imagine my blood and all at once feel that blood and oxygen's pointless and machine-like and painful and imagine my blood slowly drained from my body or pumped and suctioned with straws and then bottled and labeled and refrigerated. 'What would that blood do?' I think.

"So you're here," the voice says. "Car number-two. Nice, huh? My car. Clean it two, three times a day. Vacuum. Wipe down the seats. Feel clean to you? Do you like it?"

"It's nice."

"Just nice?"

"It's nice."

"Fucking perfect."

"Okay."

"Listen to this stereo-system."

I listen.

"Plays cds, mp3s, the radio and really anything. Like satellite-radio. Dvds. I have a sun-roof. Can talk on my cell-phone through the steering-wheel. Call anyone from here without dialing. Watch this: call 'mirror-head', that's my code-name for home. Clever, huh?"

There's a ringing followed by an answering-machine.

"See," the voice says. "Digital-quality sound. Fucking perfect. Car could be a home or I think of it as my mobile-fortress. Stop. Set up anywhere. New home. Maybe take over, find the mayor and kill the mayor. Become the mayor."

"What would you do if my arm fell off?" I imagine my arm falling off.

"This car, fucking perfect."

"If right now my head sort of fell off and rolled on the floor and there was blood everywhere and maybe outside tiny boys and girls were pointing and screaming and the blood was on the windshield so you couldn't see, and maybe blood pooling on the seat and floor? What would you do then? Call an ambulance? Panic?"

"Huh? Did I show you the drink-holder?" The voice pushes a button. From the center-console drink-holders slowly unfold. "Do you have a drink, to put in the drink-holder so I can show you? Or even something round?"

"No." I imagine the drink-holder full of blood. "What about the blood?" I ask.

Outside an elderly man's laying calmly in the snow, blocking the sidewalk. I think, 'He must be very cold or very tired or very tired and cold and hibernating or conserving energy.' I imagine the man in a cave and then next to a lake and then vacationing in Hawaii. In each place the man's laying quietly on the ground, blocking the sidewalk. Passersby step over the man and the man doesn't move but maybe he's smiling and each passerby steps carefully over him and doesn't brush him with feet or parcels or even long overcoats. The man's untouchable maybe or protected by a force-field and it's this kind of force-field I want. "Force-field," I say.

"You like the drink-holder right? I mean it's a clever device. Imagine the time and engineering that went into it. Probably a team of like six engineers. Eighty-thousand dollars a year and testing high-density plastics and hydraulic-devices or I don't know, pneumatic or something."

"It's very nice."

"Very nice?" the voice repeats, quietly. "Very nice."

I think about energy-conservation. 'Would it be better to remain motionless, to find a cozy, unimportant space and remain there, unmovable?'

"Very nice…" the voice says.

I picture myself in a dark closed-off corner or crawlspace and maybe buried in a box with a flashlight. "I could be that cup-holder," I say. I stare at the voice. "That cup-holder's very well-designed and superior because of how it remains out of sight and invisible and energy-efficient. People should be that way. Out of sight, invisible, and energy-efficient."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I mean, isn't it evil or sinful to move around like people do and to take up so much space and keep other people and animals and plants from using that space? Like space-monopoly? And then using energy and eating food and burning things like fuels and calories or stopping rivers or splitting atoms or whatever. It's like saying we're better and more important and worth of resource control. I want a little cocoon instead and I could stay in the cocoon sort of fetal-positioned and quietly remain there until I die."

"Hmm."

"Everyone could have a personal-cocoon, a small licensed space to remain within and then people could be stacked maybe all together on one island like Cuba or underwater or even in a deep hole somewhere like Chernobyl maybe. Lisbon. Somewhere"

"I don't know."

I close my eyes.

"I'm glad you came in my car. It's almost new, and I waxed it today. This morning actually. Couldn't sleep so went directly to the garage and waxed and waxed and vacuumed the car."

"You're taking me home right?"

"Of course." The voice concentrates on the road. The voice's hands are at ten o'clock and two o'clock and the hands are pudgy and pale and the fingernails are dirty and long and the dirty-fingernails tap the steering-wheel rhythmically but in a frighteningly un-patterned way. "Listen," the voice says. "You respect me right. I mean, are you worried about before and at Denny's and stuff? The dog. Just a silly joke, you know?"

"No."

"Anyway it's just guys and boredom and girls." The voice stares at me.

"My grandfather died."

"And it was weird anyway because I like dogs actually. And I like Todd a lot. And you too. And Merna. I like people and animals actually."

"I'm going home to help with the funeral or something."

"Lisbon's a good place right? No fighting in Lisbon? No dogs, probably."

I don't answer and gradually the car becomes thin and shadowy so that I must squint and I lean against the window which is cold and smooth. 'But it's not really smooth,' I think. 'Everywhere there are miniature imperfections and craters even and especially on my face and skin and glass and glass's a liquid probably and skin and face are liquids probably also and all these liquids are moving and uncontrollable and really everything in the universe and every molecule or atom or smaller than that even like every electron or gluon, or every constituent of everything's alone and random and operating only in its best interest which is unpredictable and everything's the same and people are just a trillion-billion-billion pieces of something else.'

"Why aren't you here yet?"

"I'm coming." Outside the car the sky's dark and gray. I hold my hand over my phone and whisper to the driver, "Where are we?"

"Somewhere," the voice answers.

"I'm almost there," I say into the phone. "I'm somewhere."

"This isn't fucking funny."

"I know," I say. 'But it is funny,' I think. "I'm in a car and the car's moving and the car will move to the house and I'll get out of the car and help. I promise. Because you're my sister and sisters help sisters and I want to help you and it's like when I was ten and we were watching television."

"We were watching television?"

"Yes, television, in the basement and it was very late and we were very tired."

"We helped each other?"

"Of course. We were alone and in the basement and the television played television-shows and it was very dark and cold and outside it was also dark and cold and there was no person anywhere except you and me in the basement watching the television-shows."

"What did we do?"

"I don't know."

Merna's silent for a moment. "I mean how did we help each other?"

"We were very alone but we were together when it was cold probably."

"How did that help?"

"After that we lived with our grandparents. Before, with the television, we were somewhere else and alone and logic probably would tell us that we should split up to survive or something. I was ten after all, or twelve, I don't know. I should've gone to look for berries or video-game-arcades or something and you were older and calm and you might've gone to a friend's house and left me in the basement with the television and I would've been alone and with no friends and would have stayed there until I starved probably."

"Are you sure? I think I did leave."

"No, you didn't leave."

"I could've left. Maybe you forgot. Maybe I intended to leave. Maybe I was outside and left a mannequin or pillows or something, a pretend-me, on the couch."

"No, you stayed and we went to the grocery-store and together we stole candy-bars and chocolate-milk and bananas and then outside behind the grocery-store we ate what we stole and we sat awhile."

"I don't remember that at all."

I'm silent and Merna's silent.

The car moves slowly and I think about the car moving and I wonder if the car's pushing my body or pulling my body or even carrying my body and if my body's willing to be pushed or pulled or carried and I wonder if my body controls my body or my brain.

"You done talking?" the voice says. "There're other car-features I want to show you. Trunk-release-lever, keyless-locks, power-windows, other things. Electric-seat-recliner. ABS breaks." The voice taps the breaks. "I love power-windows most. Very clever. Important. Engineered and crafted and human-made. Only humans could make power-windows."

I don't answer.

"Are you there?" Merna asks. "Are you still coming?"

"Yes."

"For example, a bear or monkey or dog, couldn't make power-windows."

"Because Noah can't come and grandma's crying and lying on the floor now and she won't move or eat or drink. I tried to give her water and she only stared at the ceiling."

"I mean, give your average mammal power-tools and it'll probably just mutilate itself."

"I don't know what to do," I say.

"She could dehydrate. How do you tell if someone's dehydrating?"

"I don't know."

"Bloody fur or claws, antlers or something. Give a deer power-tools. A duck!"

"I think I remember now," Merna says.

"Cartoons are ridiculous with bears flying airplanes or driving. Or with guns."

"What?" I feel confused and tired.

"It wasn't the basement and there was no television. We were on a boat. On the deck and you were maybe thirteen or fourteen and we were near the stern, near the gunwale and it was dark and the waves were very tall."

"I'm not sure," I say.

"The waves were very tall and dark and with foam."

"Sort of immoral. Builds up expectations for animals. Then you go to the zoo."

"If you say so," I say.

"There was a boat and other boats and a bay and we were on the boat on top of a dark wave with foam."

"I," I say. I don't know what to say. "Can people dehydrate in the sea?"

"You don't remember the wave?"

"Monkey'd crash an airplane in two seconds. Bear'd probably fly into a mountain. Kill crew and passengers. Explosion."

"I don't know," I answer

"We were frightened and the boat was moving, I think."

I try to remember but I don't know how to remember or even how to try to remember.

"Bear massacre. Bear destruction? Animal annihilation?"

"There was a boat," Merna says. Merna's voice's long and raw and certain and I want my voice to sound certain and raw but it never will.

"I'm coming," I say. "I'm almost home."

"Want to see the cup-holder again?" the voice says.

I shake my head.

"Okay…"

We're near the ice-arena and the snow's thick. I think about the dog and ice-skates and the zamboni and smooth wet ice and driving the zamboni through a wall or car or driving the car through the ice-arena windows and out onto the ice and then bouncing from wall to wall like bumper-cars or something.

"What about the bears and monkeys? You think about them?"

"What?"

"Bears and monkeys? Maybe armed. Plastic-explosives. Terrorist animals, at the mall."

"I don't know."

"Can they fly airplanes? Can they stab dogs? Can they eviscerate cashiers?"

I don't answer

"Don't you wonder? Like, animal apocalypse. Why no revolt? This is important. You need to answer. Are humans better? Are we at war with the animal kingdom? Should we go to the zoo and murder like bears or penguins? Stab the penguins and then the monkeys and maybe pile the zoo-animal corpses somewhere and roast them or something. Or does it matter or what?"

"Okay," I say. "That's all fine."

"What do you mean? Are you for or against animal-slaughter and barbeque? I couldn't sleep last night and I thought about this a lot. It's the cartoons, I think. It's a war or something. So what the fuck do you mean?"

"All of it," I say. "It's fine. It doesn't matter. Animals or no animals. It's exactly the same."

"What's to stop me from killing everything that moves? Shouldn't I?"

The voice turns the car and the car moves slowly around a broad corner and up a low hill.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"Just need a second."

"I'm supposed to go home."

"I know," the voice says. "Have to stop a second. An errand. Think about the animals and this war thing I was talking about."

We're in the ice-arena parking-lot. The car stops.

"What now?" I say.

"Get out."

I take his picture

2007-06-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

I take his picture in the basement of an old mansion.

There are no lights.

The floor's dirty.

Later, I'll create a folder on my laptop and place the picture in the folder. There will be other pictures, but no other folders.

The boy's dead but not bleeding. I'm very careful.

"Good-bye," I say to the boy. I put my camera away. "I'd like to say it was an accident but it wasn't so I won't say that because it would cheapen your picture probably and I might have to delete it sometime or feel guilty or something and you wouldn't want that, now, anyway." Sometimes I talk to comfort people.

My cell-phone rings. "Good job," Bronson says. "Did it go exactly as planned?"

"Of course." I open the basement door which is low and sloping and step outside. It's morning. The sun's low on the horizon and hovering quietly away. "Do you have the package?"

"I have the package."

"Okay, then."

I put my cell-phone away.

I lied about the folder. I have many folders and many pictures on many laptops in many apartments. The apartments are all mine, as are the pictures.

I pull my jacket tight to my body and walk along the highway. There are no people. Tall streetlamps line the highway. The gravel makes noises. Ahead is my car. I get in the passenger side.

"You're ready?" Lemmy asks.

"Yes."

"No evidence?"

I don't answer.

"Then we're ready for phase two."

"Yes," I say.

"Good." Lemmy starts the car.

Lemmy's my little brother. I slowly pull my gun from my pocket. "I'm sorry," I say.

Lemmy turns.

I shoot Lemmy in the face.

There's blood and other things, parts, and I scoop the parts and wipe the parts and gather parts into Lemmy's shirt. I drag Lemmy out of my car and lay him on the ground. I shoot Lemmy's mouth and destroy Lemmy's mouth. I shoot Lemmy's hands and feet and I shoot Lemmy's face again and now when I look at little Lemmy and the pieces of Lemmy I don't know him and I know that no one else will know him either.

I take a picture.

My car's running. I sit in the driver's seat.

I drive. This is phase two.

My car's a mess. There are blood streaks in the windows and Lemmy-parts I missed. I step on the gas. My car moves quickly and I wheel it around corners and change lanes. My hands are sweaty. My cell-phone rings.

"Hello."

"You're coming," Bronson says.

"Yes."

"You destroyed him."

"Of course."

"Okay, then."

At Bronson's house I set my car on fire.

Earlier we dug a pit. I drove the car into the pit, and now the fire. Bronson's waiting on his front porch in a thick white bathrobe and I imagine myself in a matching bathrobe, very soft and comfortable and sitting quietly at home, watching television with the lights off.

"You're bloody," Bronson says.

"You should hug me."

"Maybe after you shower."

"If I shower I won't want to be hugged. I'll want to be alone."

Bronson steps down the porch-stairs and walks slowly to his backhoe-loader. There's a lot of smoke now. He starts the backhoe-loader. "Move," Bronson says. "You're in the way."

I move.

Bronson uses the backhoe-loader to push dirty into the pit. He covers the car with dirt and smoothes the dirt and parks the backhoe-loader. Now we lay fresh sod over the bare dirt. I remove my shoes and walk barefoot in the sod which is very green and comfortable. I start to sit.

"No no," Bronson says. "Take off your clothes. We'll destroy those also."

"Of course," I say. "But first you take a picture." I hand Bronson my camera.

"Will you pose?" Bronson asks. "Think about Lemmy," Bronson says. "Think about me."

I try not to laugh but I can't help it.

"Good," Bronson says. "Sexy. Now roll in the grass. Roll in the sod."

I take off my clothes.

Bronson takes more pictures.

I carefully fold my clothes and set them on the backhoe-loader. I'm naked and posing and Bronson's taking pictures and I imagine taking the pictures of myself so that I'm Bronson and I'm watching me and my breasts are floppy probably and blood-covered and there are little bits of Lemmy on my nipple and neck and little boy-bits stuck to my toes and in my naval. "What do you see Bronson?" I ask. I don't listen to the answer. I imagine Bronson's naked body and shooting Bronson's naked body and I think that if I were to shoot Bronson I would shoot his belly-button first. When I touch my belly-button I think about knots and I imagine untying my belly-button and my liver and lungs and pancreas flopping out in front of my, or maybe intestines and stomach, and piling there while I watch. "What do you think about belly-buttons?" I ask Bronson.

"They're okay."

"Could you untie one?"

"Is that possible?

"Could you untie mine?"

"I don't think so."

"Good," I say as I grab my gun. "It's time." I aim the gun and Bronson looks suddenly very tired. "Take off your robe."

"Why?"

"Just take it off."

Bronson takes off his robe. "This isn't very funny," he says.

I aim my gun.

I shoot.

Twenty

2007-06-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

There's a mini-van in Montana.

Montana's in Lisbon, somewhere.

There's a tall white house on the highway in Montana/Lisbon and in the tall white house there's a basement and in this basement are three stained-couches, a large wood-framed television, and a tall thin man standing quietly in the corner, his hands resting on perpendicular walls.

I am nowhere and not there but I say this anyway: "Who are you?"

"I am," the man says, "this." He turns his head slightly and his head's wide and pasty and expressionless.

"Why?"

"I'm hungry, maybe. That's all."

I consider this. I consider his mouth and his mouth's wide and toothy and there are too many teeth and the teeth are narrow and white and packed tightly together inside the mouth.

"I haven't eaten. Need to clip my fingernails." I watch the man's hands and the man's hands have no fingernails. "I need something probably."

"You need food?"

"I have to piss and shit for while. And my stomach hurts a little. I'm pale and weak and my hands don't work right anymore." He shows me his hands. He tries to make a fist. "They're vein-y and with tendonitis or inflammations, I think. I want my hands to do things but I can't control my hands and my hands do other things."

I sit softly on the old stained-couch and sink into the couch and my body's solid and wide and couch-like and I feel soft everywhere.

"Don't you understand?" the man says. "This." He shows me his hand and his hand's very thin with long thin fingers and a very narrow unlined palm.

I lay on the couch and the couch's a shopping-cart and I'm moving but I'm here on the stained-couch and very soft. I feel tired. I listen to the sounds but there are no sounds and I wonder where the sounds are.

"You're boring," I say.

The man strangles me for a while.

"Don't do that." I feel tired and calm.

The man stares in a sad way. His hands are thin and cold and I watch his hands as they encircle my neck. "I won't, okay," the man says. "Keep quiet for a while, okay?" He strangles me and I watch as he strangles me and behind him the television plays a bar-soap commercial. A woman with thin blonde hair lathers her pale body with thick white soap-foam and I imagine the bar-soap and the thick white soap-foam in my hands and what I'd do with the bar-soap and who I'd give the bar-soap to because I'd give the bar-soap to every person and every person would strangle me for a while until I wake and walk naked along the highway with handfuls and handfuls of knives.

I'm standing in the café. I'm standing near the wall and I touch the wall and the wall's dark and cold and somehow rough and I imagine feeling individual wall-atoms and I imagine the wall-atoms interacting with my fingers and moving and changing until the wall-atoms are different wall-atoms.

The barista says, "What was that about?" The barista's the only person in the café.

"I don't know."

"Cool."

The barista leans against the counter in a tired way and sighs through thin half-parted lips. The barista's face's lined and worn and as the barista leans against the counter each part of the barista's body hangs slackly and I feel suddenly like a barista-part might fall from the barista-body and lay motionless on the floor.

"Would you like some coffee or something or a croissant or blueberry-muffin? I have pastries you know." The barista gestures toward a glass-case. "You could have anything you wanted. Like coffee-cake or something. Sorry about before with that guy. He's always sort of dramatic but usually doesn't hurt people, and leaves good tips."

"Usually doesn't hurt people?"

"Yeah, usually." The barista smiles. "Only once. Anyway, I can give you free coffee and pastries. It's in my 'discretionary budget.'" The barista stands upright and is very tall. "Come here for awhile. What's your name and stuff? Don't you like coffee and pastries?"

"Who's the person who usually doesn't hurt people? What's its name?"

"You should try some milk-foam. Sit with me in back. I'm taking a break anyway." The barista edges past me and locks the front door. "Come with me, back here. I have these cheese-curds I got from a cheese-factory and they're very good, and free coffee. We'll share or something. I like you, I think."

I follow the barista down a narrow hallway. There are evenly spaced doors on the hallway-walls but we pass the doors and turn left at a fork and then right at the next fork. Here the hallway becomes very bright with exposed halogen-light-bulbs and along the ceiling are long gray pipes of varying diameter and shape. Sometimes a pipe disappears into the ceiling only to reappear a few feet further down the hallway. There are many knobs and levers and I want to turn the knobs and pull the levers but I hold my hands quietly at my side.

"Back here," the barista says. The barista pulls a thin curtain aside and steps into a dirty rectangular room. Centered in the room is a dirty card-table and a dirty refrigerator. There are no chairs. The ceiling's lined with pipes and valves and levers and knobs. The barista opens the refrigerator. The barista's holding a package of cheese-curds. "They're very good."

"This customer," I say, brushing the cheese-curds aside. "Who'd it hurt?"

"Some woman, it's not important."

"What happened?"

"I said it's not important." The barista puts the cheese-curds away and crosses its arms. "I'm trying to give you free coffee and stuff. Don't you want free things?"

"Did the customer use a knife or a gun? Or just fists or hands or feet, or something?"

"I told you it's not important." The barista walks back into the hallway. "Come on. You have to leave now."

"What about the cheese-curds? Coffee?" I sit carefully on the edge of the dirty card-table. I feel strange and warm and I want terribly to know everything about this customer because my brain's confused and concerned and in my brain everything I know is suddenly interrelated. The customer, Merna, my grandfather, the tall dark man, Anastasia, my parents, me, my grandfather and we're sitting cross-legged on a blanket and picnicking and sharing grapes and bread and water. A dog's barking and a boat's floating somewhere in the distance and there's a tall hill or mountain and we're there, in the parking lot and a little fire's burning quietly. I want to explain this to the barista but the barista's in the hallway and slowly tapping its foot. "Sit with me for a moment so I can think of something to say."

"My break's over." The barista moves a little down the hallway. "Come with me. You can't stay here."

"Why?"

"Safety and insurance. Law-suits."

"I don't understand." I move toward the door. There are many shadows in the room and the shadows are long and angular.

"Just come with me, now." The barista leads me through a network of hallways. We turn left, then right, then right, then right again. The doors aren't so evenly spaced here and as we walk the barista mutters quietly to itself in what sounds like a foreign language. I shiver a little and focus my brain on containing my shivering and holding it solidly inside. There are no pipes here. "Go," the barista says. It points to a door at the end of the hallway.

I start to go. "Thanks," I say. "I mean that customer thing." I watch the barista over my shoulder. "Where's this door go?"

"I have to go back to work now. Please go, okay?"

I open the door.

I step outside.

There's a narrow street and low dirty cars and clusters of slow-moving people. I'm on a sidewalk.

My cell-phone ring-tone plays a little song. "Hello," I say.

"Don't you want something? Isn't that why you called? Money or something?" my grandfather said.

I was at college. I pulled my blankets tightly as I thought about the question. "No." My bedroom was dark and cold and a thin breeze filtered through the open window. Outside was dark and clear.

"No? Called for no reason then?"

The voice's thin and static-y and each word, I knew, was a series of beginnings and endings with interruptions and what was missing were the middle-sounds and these middle-sounds were the sounds I wanted to here and why I listened so carefully then. 'A voice is a something,' I thought but the thought wouldn't go anywhere and I abandoned it. I wanted suddenly to touch and hold the voice and choke the voice for a while until the voice became something else. "You're wrong," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I said. "Talk about something."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Are you eating healthy?" There's a short pause. "Have you rescued any squirrels?"

"No and No. I eat squirrels. I roast them after I catch them with thin little strings."

"You tie them down?"

"Of course," I said. "That's how I torture them."

"With toothpicks?"

"For the eyes. And with salt and old razor-blades. You know, like in grade-school."

"Of course."

I chuckled a little and my grandfather chuckled and we chuckled together. "Thanks," I said.

"Go to the grocery-store."

"What?"

"Tomorrow morning," my grandfather said. "Go to the grocery-store, for groceries. It's important."

"What? Why?"

"Toothpicks. You'll need more of them. And charcoal."

"Oh." I laughed.

"Sometimes toothpicks are the only way to survive. Trust me. I lived off them, in Borneo. I manufactured them in Lisbon. There were squirrels everywhere."

"Pin the eyes back?" I asked.

"Pin them back properly," he answered. "Light the little fuckers on fire."

"Hello," I say into my cell-phone.

"Where are you?" It's Merna.

"Somewhere?"

"I need you. Planning. There's a wake and a funeral and stuff and how can we plan these things without you?"

"I don't understand." I begin to walk. My feet slide a little in the snow and ice.

"I need your help, right now. Grandma's not helping. She's crying and napping and won't leave the bedroom or anything. I don't know what to do. Noah's working so I need you here and the wake has to be today, or the funeral. I don't know about these things."

"Okay."

"So you're coming?"

I think about the question and imagine my body moving and imagine my moving body from above as a map with highlighted routes and with dark red lines and little gray shortcuts and I follow the lines and shortcuts but the lines don't connect or progress and instead move only in curves and at angles. "I'll try," I say.

"Please come. Please come now."

I put my cell-phone away. I'm walking. 'I'm here,' I think. I think it again. The sky's gray and very nearby so that I can imagine my head piercing the sky if were walking on a tall hill or mountain or even camped on a parking-lot on a mountain-peak with a little round fire and blankets. I try to imagine Merna's face but Merna's face's not a face.

"Watch where you're going," a person says. The person's face's long and wide and mostly an open mouth that's moving.

"Sorry."

"Aren't we all?"

"Yes," I say.

There's a low gray car. "Do you need a ride?" a voice says.

"Okay," I say.

There's a body and the body's wide and fat. "Get in," the voice says.

A door opens.

I step in.

Ninteen

2007-06-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm in my bedroom.

It's morning.

My bedroom's cold and quiet and when I exhale a thin white fog appears and I watch the fog and the fog's formless and wet. I watch my hands and my hands open and close. I sit on my bed. I stand. I sit on my bed again. My bed's cold and unmade and narrow and the mattress's lumpy and cold and boring and I don't want this mattress or to sit or even to lay or sleep on this mattress. I'm yawning.

I stand and walk. "Where am I walking?" I say aloud.

Nobody answers.

I'm outside. I'm in my neighborhood. There are trees and houses and the houses are white and formless and I watch and compare the houses and each house is the same house with the same three floors, foyer, narrow kitchen-islands, picture-windows, and white-wood-shutters.

"Something, something," I say to myself.

The sky's gray and grainy and back-lighted distantly. I'm on a hilltop. I'm near an empty Honda. There's a stoplight. I stop. A dirty pickup pulls up. Inside the pickup a boy yawns. The boy's face is dark and wet and hairy and the face-hair's curled and dirty and the boy's face's wide and smiling.

"Why are you smiling?" I say. I move toward the pickup.

The boy mouths the word, "What?"

"Roll down your window," I say. I mimic roll-down motions with my hand.

The boy rolls down his window.

"Why's your face smiling?"

"Don't know," the boy says. He touches his face. "My face?"

"It's cold here."

"It is."

"Then why smile?" I feel angry. The boy's face is smiling without reason or logic and to smile when the air's cold is wrong and stupid probably. "Why? Don't you consider the cold? Or that other people might be cold and uncomfortable?"

"The snow's very beautiful today," the boy says. He touches the snow on the roof of his car. "I like it."

I watch the boy's face and the boy's face still smiles but the smile's now confused and strange and I want to wear this smile and mimic this smile so I move my mouth experimentally to copy the smile but there's no mirror and I feel nervous and hideous and self-aware.

The boy drums on the pickup-door. "I have to go now, okay." The boy drives.

I follow but slowly and the car disappears over a distant hill.

I'm in a strip-mall. I'm near an AM/PM. I go in the AM/PM.

"Hello," the AM/PM clerk says.

"Hello." I want to call Erik. "Can I use your phone?"

"Who do you want to call?"

"I don't know but I feel like I should call someone."

"Do you ever think about telephones?" The bald clerk leans over the counter. "Personally, I don't use telephones because who knows how they're changing our bodies and who wants to talk so much anyway? It's immoral. Personally, I hate talking and would destroy telephone-technology if I could."

"Isn't talking to people good? You could talk to someone in Portugal probably."

"I don't speak Portuguese."

"Oh."

"Don't buy stuff from this store."

"What?" I watch the telephone and the telephone's boxy and wide with a long silver antenna.

"It's the movement I started, the 'don't buy stuff here' movement which I pursue mostly on weekends and when my boss's on break. Listen: ever think about where this shit comes from? Like, I haven't researched it or anything, but probably this shit's imported from communist and fascist regimes whose primary focus, I'm sure, is to prevent the free-flow of ideas on television and to keep prime-time American broadcasting away from their brain-washed citizens."

"What?"

"A purchase at AM/PM is unpatriotic and sinful, which is basically the same thing." The clerk's face contorts strangely and the clerk's mouth is round and jagged. "All proceeds go to support fascist/communist global-terrorism."

I watch the clerk's face and am unsure of what to say.

"You can buy beer though. Beer is one-hundred percent American."

"But what about telephones?"

"What do you mean?" The clerk's face becomes very loose and tired-looking and the clerk sits carefully on a tall round stool.

"If people shouldn't talk and not on telephones, then how can you be against regimes that prevent television which is full of talking?

"I don't understand."

"Also we're talking now."

"Are you going to buy some beer or not?"

"Isn't a fascist/communist conspiracy sort of mutually exclusive?"

"Maybe you're a fascist. Maybe that's why you won't buy the beer, fascist."

I sit on the AM/PM-floor and think about this. 'Am I a fascist?' I think. 'Or a communist?' I watch my hands for clues.

"You can't just sit there, commie. Buy something or go." The clerk crosses his arms in front of his chest and his forearms seem very large and menacing and the clerk's arm-hairs are soft and blond and almost invisible. "I could call the police to arrest you for stealing because you're stealing and you'd be arrested and put in a little cell and you'd stay there for like forty years which is what fascist/communists deserve. No trial by peers. Nothing. We'd get shit done if I ran things. No more coddling hippies."

I stand. I go to the cooler and select a can of beer and return.

"Good choice," the clerk says. "Domestic." He takes my money

I go outside. I drink my beer. There's sun and clouds.

I'm walking and as I walk my legs and feet feel energetic and warm and I feel wind on my face and I'm moving very fast and there are other people walking but I'm passing them and the other people are slow-moving and red and mired in the ankle-deep snow. More cars appear and a snow-plow. There's a soft crunching sound everywhere I go. The snow becomes dirty and warm and slushy and my feet are wet through my shoes.

I'm at Wal-Mart. I carefully set my beer-can next to the sliding-door. I go inside.

It's warm and there are thousands of people and each person's moving comfortably and pushing full shopping-carts with potatoes and plastic-trucks and beef-jerky. An old man holds a bathing-suit. A girl rolls around on the cold white tile while her mother browses the bras. I stand near the televisions which come in one-hundred sizes and shapes and each television's playing the same movie with the same deer grazing the same patch of brown grass and the deer's eyes are wide and motionless and the deer's eyes are vacant probably and focused on the brown grass. Somewhere there's a hunter.

"Welcome to Wal-Mart," a voice says. "In the market for a new television," the voice continues, "because, let me tell you, we have the most comprehensive variety of televisions in the western hemisphere."

"That sounds like a lie," I say to the voice.

"Let me level with you," the voice says. "It is a lie but I thought if I said it with energy you'd accept it as truth and want a television and you wouldn't care that I was lying because everyone knows that sales-people are supposed to lie and make the sale and win sales-competitions and stuff like Olympic-sprinters."

"Sprinters."

"You know Olympic-sprinters probably all cheat with human-growth-hormone or blood-transfusions because they want to win gold-medals and be the fastest person which isn't as fast as a car but pretty fast for a person."

"And you want to win?"

"Maybe. Maybe I'm bored." The voice adjusts its red vest. "They don't give gold-medals for television-sales," the voice whispers.

"I want a television," I say.

"Really?"

"I want to destroy the television."

"Oh. Okay. Cool." The voice's red vest is dirty and in the vest's pockets are dozens of thin black pens.

I open my mouth but don't speak.

The voice walks away.

'I should call people,' I think. 'I should call Merna and force Merna to come to Wal-Mart because there's something at Wal-Mart or maybe about Wal-Mart that's very important and comforting and Wal-Mart could comfort Merna and maybe my grandmother and humans generally.' I see a swinging-door. I walk through the door and I'm in a warehouse.

"Hey," a voice says. "You can't be here."

I nod. "No," I say. "You're correct." I run. I'm near a shelf. I'm behind the shelf and between large brown boxes and on the boxes are neat rows of letters and numbers and the box's brown and musty and I'm musty and I'm the box and I'm inside the box because I'm what the box holds. I think about miniature-people in a miniature-warehouse in miniature-Wal-Mart with concessions-stands and cash-registers and a deep dark vault for five tons of rolled-coins and I imagine standing in the vault and taking the rolled-coins and destroying the rolled-coins and melting the coins and sculpting the coins until the rolled-coins become a narrow penguin standing on a narrow man in the dark corner of my grandparent's basement.

The voice with the red vest returns. "What are you doing here?" it asks.

"Thinking," I say.

The voice sits next to me. "Are you thinking about televisions? Like plasma, or LCD, screen-in-screen, DVR, or whatever?"

"No."

"Neither was I."

"Are you on break?"

"No. I mean, sort of."

"Oh."

"Here," the voice says. It hands me a pen. "Write slogans on these boxes, like 'eat me and support Canadian apartheid' or 'Jesus something something video-games.'"

I watch the voice.

"It's what I do most of the time." The voice begins to write slogans.

"Erik," another voice says.

I make myself small.

"Erik," the new-voice says again. "Mr. Burmeister's looking for you." The new-voice moves its head side to side in a nervous way then shuffles quickly out the double-doors.

I watch the original-voice and the original-voice's very concentrated and hunched-over boxes and writing slogans on boxes darkly and repeatedly and re-tracing and re-designing the slogans until the slogans are permanent and jagged and eye-catching. I read a slogan and the slogan says, 'Cannibalism is the only reasonable alternative to fossil-fuel.' I read another slogan and it says, 'Robot-people are robot-people too, probably.'

I stand and walk.

Above me are rows of fluorescent light-bulbs.

Behind me the original-voice's still writing slogans on boxes and the original-voice's body is bent perpendicularly and awkwardly and the original-voice's hands move quickly and strangely and the face's concentrated and hard but blank and worn and I touch my own face and my own face's blank and formless. I watch the original-voice's hands and the hands are tight and solid and each hand-movement's jerky and sudden and as the hand forms letters the hand becomes red and tight and the hand's knuckles are white. I touch my face and my face's blank and I feel suddenly very sleepy and cold.

I walk for a while. I'm on the highway.

There's a human. The human's very wide and the human's head's very small and the human's arms are very thin and this human's walking carefully and calmly and I think for a moment that the human's Aaron but Aaron's at the airport and even if this human looks like Aaron it's not Aaron. I follow the not-Aaron human.

'If the human were Aaron,' I think, 'I'd probably stab it.'

The not-Aaron human moves into a café. I follow. The café's warm and dark with small red tables and plush worn armchairs. I sit. The human orders coffee. 'Should I order coffee?' I don't know. I watch the not-Aaron human and it's not Aaron. Its face's narrow and tall and its neck's very thin and sinuous and the head wobbles as it walks. It sits at my table.

"Are you following me?"

"No," I say. I feel tight and ball-like.

"I think you are following me."

"I'm just out for a walk because I like to walk," I say.

"Did someone hire you, the cops?" The human drinks from its coffee. "I didn't kill it okay. It was like that when I found it."

"I'm out for a walk," I say. "I'm relaxing in a café."

"It was a joke," the human says. "A practical-joke. A small one. I made breathing-holes in the plastic-bag. I tested it. I bought the ice-cream. The ice-cream's a kind of proof. I showed the receipt and the cops have the receipt."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It was mint-chocolate-chip."

The human's face's very red and lined with puffed-cheeks and thick round eyeballs that bulge a little and sit in the face, motionless.

"It'd be the same for anyone. I needed to eat." The human's wide round stomach bumps the table. "It was already dead anyway and I found it that way."

I think about Merna and Anastasia. I think about my grandfather and Aaron and Erik. I imagine them in a mini-van and driving and I'm in the back on top of a pile of blankets and jackets and I'm watching the empty freeway and Aaron and Erik and Anastasia and Merna and my grandparents are talking loudly but I can't understand them and I'm touching my ears because my ears are scrambled and warm.

The human stands and points. "You can't judge me."

"Murderer," I say. "You did it because you wanted to and because you're evil and fat and destructive and it's your nature to be evil and fat and destructive and you'd eat me too if you could eat me and even now you're thinking about eating me."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

The barista's watching us. The barista's face's flat and bored.

I push the table at the human. I stand. "You're evil." My face's blank and tense and my body's cold and calm. I feel terrible and sad and I don't know what 'evil' means and I wonder why I said the word 'evil' or why I say anything. I imagine the mini-van and sleeping in the mini-van and the mini-van's in Montana or Lisbon or some place where there are only streets and trees and wide spaces of grass and concrete and I lay awake and asleep and watching out the window and the landscape's blank and flat and cold.