*
I was thinking of heaven or at least of the upstairs outside. I was
thinking of taking a nap and just curling up on the ground and letting
a good stiff breeze blow me on upstairs. I was thinking of being
carried off by balloons.
*
I was carried off by a string of balloons.
*
I went on down the road. The sky was a picture of a lake. I put it in a
glass and drank it. It was the best water I’d ever had. This is,
I decided, the big deal about heaven. A choir of angels swooped in.
They had trumpets.
*
When I came to, I was sitting in a chair in the yard.
*
Where is this going she asked me. I folded her into an airplane and
sent her on her way. Then I missed her. Then I built a fire in my belly
and when it came out it came out as something else, and it galloped and
it brayed and it shook itself loose of me and of everything.
*
A fireman walked down the street. I watched him from the roof. He
stopped the fire using his hands. He said What are you doing. The fire
didn’t say anything. He asked the fire if the fire heard him. The
fire said I didn’t it said Wait and then he covered it in water
like a sheet and said go to sleep and it did and everything was ok.
*
Later the fireman cut his own throat open with an axe. He had been
crying. Out of his neck flew a bird and the bird flew up into the sky.
*
I was standing in the middle of a meadow in my yard. I dug a hole very
slowly. I filled the hole with birds. They sat there in the hole,
flying very still. I pulled planks of wood from the ground and I built
a ship around them. I built a fire in my belly and I put my belly in
the ship and I drew a new belly so no one would get lonely. I closed my
eyes each time I swung the hammer.
*
The weather is staying underground right now. How did you get it to do
that she said. Through trickery and also sheer luck I said. She was
holding a box. She was very quiet. Look into this box she said.
*
I could see a small balloon moving up and down at the foot of my bed. It said Out here folks do what they want.
*
Did you see my bird last night she asked. I didn’t know what to
say. It was looming she said. It loomed. It has a hunger we can never
know. She said she has never seen its wingspan, but imagines it to be
enormous. Did you she said See my bird last night? It looked cold.
*
I watched a bird land on a telephone pole and I thought maybe it would become electric but then it didn’t.
*
Our love is a road. Our love is a river. She said how are they
different. I didn’t say anything to that. There wasn’t
anything to say to that.
*
She said All the grapes are soft and I really don't like it when the
grapes are soft. My belt is too tight. My nipples are sore. The
branches and power lines were waving at us. With my free hand I waved
back. She said Stop that. We were sitting on the steamboat. How did we
get here she said.
*
The mailman came to the steamboat and heaved a box over. My books have
arrived she said. Happiness spread over her face and ate it. It then
ate the package and all the books and everything the books contained
and it ate the birds and the fire in my belly that I placed inside the
ship and from all of this we will move. I am going to put on this
jacket and you will wear your new dress.
*
In the wild silence after the dawn we waited and watched. She climbed
over me. She took in my tie with her hands and adjusted things. Your
eyes are cold she said. I said how can you tell. She told me that she
was the only person in my eyes. That I’d said that. Wasn’t
that just a figure of speech I said? She gave me a look and strangled
me with my tie a little.
*
My head could have been severed it could have floated off like a
balloon with my tie as a string and you’d be holding onto it and
carried far away and you could never get away from me because if you
did you’d die because you would fall to your death. I would, she
said, be carried away on the backs of birds.
*
She squeezed my tie shut and popped my head off and then I floated away but she didn’t.
*
One day this house will be a beach and this steamboat will be our home
and the ceilings will swarm and the clouds will be hungry.
*
She was waxing the floorboards when I got back. There was laundry on a
line from the steamboat to the back door. I bled all over her. She
stitched me back up. I had to lean on her for a while. I have to lean
on you for a while I said. She said that would be just fine.
*
She built a window for me. She set it on fire. It looked just like water. One of these days I think.
*
The sky is a lake and it will swallow you and all of your days.
*
Using our umbrellas we warded off disaster.
*
We were talking about heaven. We were talking about climbing upstairs
while outside. Then we were talking about planting ourselves in the
ground.
*
In my bedroom is a door and that door goes straight to the ground and
in that ground there is a hole and in that hole there are birds flying
perfectly still in a sky that never moves, because it is underground.
Out my window is another window. It is part of someone’s house.
Out their window is an alleyway, where a man is performing magic
tricks.
*
I saw him pull a ghost out of his hat. It looked just like his
assistant. His hat turned into his assistant and his assistant crumpled
up. They took a nap. She said I imagine being a magician’s
assistant is very tiring. Or she said He murdered her, and we should
run him out of town, as that sort of person is undesirable. Then the
magician was standing over us, and he was weeping. We looked at our
feet. He kept on crying. He opened an umbrella.