Menlo Park

He gave her the light bulb, the glass gone pink over the years. I can drop it? she said. He nodded, and she held her hand from the window, the traffic moving stories below.

Oglala

If I were to die…. she said. She left it at that, measuring the table with her arm, ribs to fingertip. He considered that future: like tall grass never stopping waving.

Lease

The wall had 4 switches in some arrangement of off and on, a single light. Click! she said. From the dark, she laughed. Click! she said again, but there was just black, in some arrangement of silver.

Before His Old Dad Had a Chance to Shoot the Entire Pack

He made a choice, the red dog. He lifted it into the cab of the truck and drove home, nose in his lap. When he opened the screen door, it trotted inside, past the wife, kids, out the back door. It didn't bark, it hardly ate, it never slept. It lay curled in the sun, a ripening tomato.

Trip to Yalta, IN

The bus broke hiss, nose like an eraser. She climbed the stairs in those slacks in which she once painted a room. A square of white on her cuff gave him over to the parking lot, the last drive home.

Manifest

She crowded it, hawking its colors, lengths. It's awful. How bad it is is tragic. It was a tower of cups and strings, motherboard, throat of a large bird. He stood in the ozone of her disgust. He took her mouth, kissed it, held it.

On Not To See A Bird

The noodles boil to paste, blacken, catch fire. She comes home and throws the pot into the snow, a hissing startled crow. Upstairs, she finds him asleep, eyes clenched to the plumes of acrid smoke. She slides beside him, has dreams—acres of corn-stalk, winter rag—pinioned by the wing of his arm.

Where The Woods Is Darkest

The film maker forgets his camera. He goes to the river instead, ice sliding by in blue sheets. On one is a man cooking over a pale fire. Hey, says the man, sliding by. By the time this melts, I'll be in warmer parts. The film maker sells his camera. He makes out for the desert, writing poems like sun under static.

Cartogram

The green cut to tan--textures of a grocery bag--the rivers bluer, counties wider. They opened out, out there, thoughts losing the yellow gridwork of cities, marked with the spare periods of desert towns. You are here? she wrote, across the legend, waiting 5, 10, 100 miles for an answer.

Whippoorwill

She stood in the wind at the edge of the lot, pigweed blooming and rattling cups. She angled her arms in semaphore, to spell out hello or love or cannot see. He let the afternoon close his face, red breath, wet tongue.

Ecliptic

The fog cleared out and the brushing trees stopped, the night park black and green. There you were, in the white t-shirt, passing into the shadow of a maintenance shed, the smell of dirt from the door. On your neck was a chain, cheap silver, bought down by the hole in the seawall, the man in the African shirt. For a moment you'd gone, until you passed back out from the shadow of the shed. Yes, you smiled, but a thing had changed, the line of your jaw, the white and brittle. You'd swallowed something in the passage, dark and of the earth.

Pith

When he checked the door that last time, it was open, malice leaking free like dry heat. Yes? he called and rattled the ring of keys at his hip. No, came the answer, the voice not unlike his lover, his mother, a wounded horse.

Basho

She wrote him a haiku—flowers and horses. He printed it out and threw it in the air. It landed in a puddle, he said, Between two wooden buildings. He sounded disappointed, needing so much more.

Birddog Lake

They jumped. The water traveled their bodies, tightening muscle, equivocating viscera. As their feet hit mud, they held to the other—the slimmest moment of suffocation—before kicking for the sweetened air.

Supermarkets

A. By accident the butcher met the cabbages, two heads on the pale linoleum floor.

B. The checker stopped her tired hand, straightened shoulders, smiled to the girl and her approaching milk.

C. A mouse! said a boy. They watched as it pitched toward the broken coffee.

D. Though nearly 60, the man weighed the soup like a very good stone.

Moses

A baby lay asleep in its carrier, among weeds, the mother shaping letters and faces on the wall. He watched the sprayback drift, speckle the ailanthus red. She has the legs of a soldier, she said.

Radio Show

You're bleeding, she said. I know, he answered. It was that broken block of cement. The road closed sign made noise with the wind, a thrush in the pothole. Need this? she said. She held out her hand, a napkin, a small sketch of his ear.

Synecdoche

She went back through the trees, calling her dog, the dump of tables and chairs. On the far bank, the train. Here, it called. He sat among a ring of blue mushrooms, face to the sun.

If It Fits In The Hand

Why don't you give me that? he said. She threw it in the water, the hole in the duckweed a perfect punch of its shape. He carried that picture with him, the green weed, the reddened pond, from then on out.

A Wish

A pebble sank for 3 days through 3 miles of water. It passed between the skeleton of a whale, in which a school of orange fish lived. When it reached the bottom, it wouldn't move again, missing terribly the sailor's hand.

Headless

At twilight the city is most beautiful, the blue of the streets, the cabs, the girls. He thought of her once, home, naked on the couch, with someone and not, and then he stepped off the curb, the splash of people, brushing of arms.

Set

Ever have one of these? she says. She's holding a green candy, hard and exquisitely square. No, he says, falling over and over and over.

The Devil

She had a stone in her shoe, beneath the arch, and when she stepped it sent rushes of hot water to her head. By the time they got to the car, her face was white with nausea. For god's sake, why didn't you stop? he said. She thought of the three miles, the trees like towers of salt in her vision, the wrecked hinge of her lung. How could she answer, him most of all?

Absorbance

On the eraseboard she wrote blood, crossed it out, wrote tears, pushed her hand through it, wrote lachrymal ducks. She turned to her students. They were already bored by her, her dry hysterics, except for a tiny Nepalese girl. Ma'am, said the girl, rising from her seat, about to cry out or laugh, her labshirt breast stained Coomassie blue.

St. Avia's Epistle

Wet pills of dirt at the grass's white radicle, the half-worm breathing consonance, eat me, find me, want me.

Nothing

That's nothing, I can unhinge my lower spine. She sat on the couch, once, and then again, next to herself. The bays of the sea lions fell through the window, he hiding in the farthest room.

No Garden

They stood on opposite sides, the automatic closing of the iron gate at 5. You'll have to spend the night in there, she said. Bed down with the red and white tulips. He looked at his hands and arms, arms and hands, lost of color.

The Idealist

The lake drained to mud, the oars and barrels and cracked dinnerware drunken among the new weeds. If there's quicksand, she said, would you pull me out? He shook his head. I'd go down too. And then which of us would bear our future children? She laughed, already up to her knees.

Plot

There was a skull in the garden, something small--squirrel or rat--biting up at the day. He brought the shovel down and the bone fell neatly into shards. He felt sick to destroy such beautiful death, but free. A small man drank from a sack in the alley.

October

On the end of the pier was a fish, lungs piping the quiet air. They watched from five feet, he holding to her shoulder. A boat slowly crawled over the horizon.

Ascent

She stood weeping on the cement, behind her the million pounds of the city, the ten thousand legs and lungs, before her a dirt field, broken blocks, a blue thistle nosed by a beautiful dog.

Hardly, Not at All

For a couple months he saved the dollar that came from the bottom of her purse. It did not smell of pencils and coins, it had not known her naked.

As Light Becomes St. Paul

In 23 directions of gray, the girl puts her hand to the sharp building's edge, gathering together some long-standing anger. He watches her, the spirograph pigeons, waiting for the flush of blood to her throat that'll somehow be the signal for morning.

Easter Rabbit

Can you save me? Yes. Put your head down. I'm afraid it'll hurt. It will. No one wants it.

Matriculation

How many haircuts do you think have killed people? I don’t understand the question. Haircuts have killed people? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. How many people do you think have been killed by getting their hair cut? What a silly question. Nobody's been killed. Not one person. And if you say somebody has, anybody, you're wrong. Nope. Thirty-four. Thirty-four recorded in the hospital records. Who knows how many else? It's so stupid. People don't die from haircuts. Or from love, or heartbreak. Yep, thirty-four. Strength is in the hair. People waste away, old ladies, young children. Be careful, dear. The world is so odd.

Pendent Bird

He watched the hot dog vendor sing, the sun shining through his ears. Want one? the man said. For nothing? He left the edge of the fountain and took what was offered. It's good, he said, the pink of the light in his eyes, the hot dog still waiting.

Seventeen Years

The tornado was pulling up corn, wobbling at the far end of the field. Can it lift the car? she asked. He looked at the traffic jam, the day suddenly, brutally dark. Can it? he said. Or may it? The funnel shifted, filling with red dirt.

Trespass

He took a glass of ice water into the women's bathroom. She squatted next to the dirty bowl, sweat on her nose. Please, she said, this stranger, this sick girl.

7 Reports From The Road (old one, first seen at Pindeldyboz)

Making Good Time

We needed gas money in a bad way. We pulled off at a truck stop, and she went with her boyfriend into the mercury glow. Through the windshield, I watched as he stood behind her and lifted her purple kitty T-shirt for the truckers. He was right, she did have tits like teacups

Mission de la Luz

Dinner was elbow macaroni and ground beef in a thin brown sauce. As we ate, they gave us a sermon on the Santa Cruz, saint of the cross. Later, I climbed into my bunk and pulled the sheet over the paper pajamas we were made to wear. In minutes, I was the only one with open eyes in the sawing room of men.

Wednesday

The bus driver came from the office and told us the mountains were closed because of the snow. An Indian flung his coffee against the wall, his eyes all wet. I went outside to see Cheyenne. The wind tore a paper turkey from the door of a bar and threw it down the street.

Hitchhike California

Very late in the night, the hippies let us off by the side of the road. We climbed over the guardrail and stumbled through the dunes, bags over our shoulders. I kicked away some pieces of drift and collapsed in the sand. She found a place near the waves, watched the wide eyes of the seals watch her.

The Devil’s Boots

He came off the road when he saw our campfire. Hair gathered in knots, his eyes had seen and sowed a country of misery. He claimed to collect welfare in 10 different states, wives in 4. I nudged the burning end of a log with my toe and contemplated the providence of hell.

Flat in Alberta

Along both sides of the empty road, the tow-headed wheat flayed in the wind. A white slab of marble stuck in the earth listed the victims of cholera. With her fingertips, she traced Ezekial's name. If any, she reasoned, his was the spirit to summon a man with a jack.

Last 900 Miles

Crossing the Cuyahoga, a semi folded in half. In jeans and a cap, the driver somersaulted through the windshield, over the guardrail, and made for the valley below. As the travelers gathered in the cubes of broken glass, I looked over the empty air and the flowering tops of the trees. Nowhere to be found, he must have become starling and flown.

Diction

It was easy to hear the word that turned through the table. It could sound like death, or listen! or ridicule, but it caught at the throat and stuck. The other words, those at the spiked green corners of her eye or the bittersweet planes of his mouth, were pregnant with it, its sons and daughters. They'd labor on, these people, without fruit it seemed, though in fact the table was sweet in the blossoms of it.

Maude Gonne is a Bomb

She swam to the first sandbar and stood with the lake-waves at her knees. A boat with three boys idled by. He heard the word fish and skin and she laughed. She waved to him before turning out, arms angled for colder water.

Some Things Stand for Things

The wind clung to him, his arms trailing strings of it as it blew. Across the narrow meadow was a man, one eye blackened out, the other rolling. The man gestured to him to come, that there was an opening in the hill. I can't, he shouted. It's too far. The man shook himself and spat. He'd known the type, these boys who would smother in the sun before taking a hand.

St. Sebastian's

His foot had ached for months, a slow stab, heartbroken pain. There's nothing wrong with it, said the doctor. The remorse of a red handkerchief stuck from his lab coat pocket. Of course, that doesn't make it unreal. He thanked the doctor and went to the park, the low bubble of children, the pale, beatific mothers.

Loss

She burned the shirt in the backyard, the green smoke an ugly whiplash, the buttons popping.

I still don't get it, he said.

What? That I have one less shirt?

The fire was pale, shining on her arms.

Sin

There was a spot of mud at the end of her nose he took to be a blemish. She'd wear it, to the restaurant, home, to the end of the day. Why didn't you tell me? she'd ask. There was no way he'd say how beautiful she was.

Epistemology

He took her by the throat and squeezed. Motels, he said, they make me murder. She pushed him away and stepped onto the lawn. Lightning bugs lifted and fell, trucks on the highway busting the night. Shall we marry? she said, twirling her skirts. It was impossible to understand, the humid cloud of words.

The Love of the Lazabout's Wife

He watched the glaze of August from the steps, the dirty basketball boys and garbage trucks. Well? she said. What have you done? He could point to the dandelions he'd seen or the lakes he'd imagined, the hot cold water of want, but she would laugh and turn away. Didn't think so, she said. Still, there was more summer in her mouth than he would have known in a wild of work.

How I Ended Up in Therapy Recounting Repressed Memories of Childhood

"You!"

Lily

The snake tasted the air. Among the cold shale, high desert night, were spots of heat, a rat, a small bird. The snake smelled them, alone, not alone, the bandaged feet of birth.

Should They Offend

When she gave up speed and the sky turned back to blue, she realized most of all she needed things in her hands, stones she found in the street, a dog's tail, the legs of men. Forever she'd been tied to the eyes: Feed me or cut me off, said her hands, I am starved. Whatever she touched became clean.

Net

The boy hardly knew what it was, the house he was in, the crib with the green slats, the octopus playing Brahms, but he knew light, and the window opposite was full, through white gauze and the leaves of an ash tree. He was fixed with it—the backs of his eyes and thick nerve to his brain—he was new fish.

A Millionaire's Time

He conceived of trucking a pillar into his backyard, but he wasn't sure what he'd do up there. He thought he might build something, a motorcycle, from bolts and rubber and carbon steel, or he thought he might burn, hot red through the day, cooling orange as the night decayed. He would pray, of course, the hair in his heart still there, the horrifying itch that kept him wringing his hands as a child, but he desired a human payment too, the sex of motorcycle, the pain of skin, the worship of tv. Poor mendicant, he told himself, imagining grand torture, the lust of a crippled messiah.

The Willful Child

Her doctor told her it was the bite of a brown recluse, the dime-sized wound on her palm. She believed this, knowing that if there were a god, he'd come to her as a spider. Of course, she knew there wasn't, and as the wound deepened and went purple, her heart refused to give it blood. She lay gaping on the bathroom floor, her hand the look of dead roses, her body an excitement of shudders. Help me, she told her father through the telephone, I'm sorry for everything I've done.

65

He had a mild stroke while sitting at the table. He got up, dizzy, and wandered into the swim of dancers. They parted around him, or gently bumped his shoulder, his hip, until he reached the still middle. The band played something that wasn't music but hooves on hard grass. His wife was at the bar smoking with the men she knew and she saw him and he waved. The air was very much like hot silk as he breathed. His wife came towards him, perplexed and intense, and he knew he only had a couple seconds left. The smoke, the lights, the heat, they weren't what he wanted, but he'd never been right.

Parallax

She holds up a triangle she's made of polished wood. Like it? she says. He has to keep his hands from pulling apart its delicate joints, built in the far corner of her room, brought to bear in this crowd. No, he says, and they look at him, these people he has.

Thrift

Her face fresh from the barber was small and fragile, a bulb of milk ready to be broken. It's irresponsible, he said. You can't throw money after love. But the room was in her eyes and all the street outside.

Light of No Understanding

He asked of her, Take this. She held it, turned it over, set it on her table.

Bone

There was a bone on the bottom of the harbor. It had no sense of the eels sliding through the mud or the fish with the cancerous eyes, but it did have a memory of a leg standing in a field. It remembered the sounds of animals and slick, pink babies. It lay against a cinder block, the marks of a knife on one end, the creature it had been murdered years ago. The bone was angry, senseless in the water, and wanted light.

Santa Maria

After 3 days of heat, no sleep, the sound of salt waves in his head, he fell into bed. He dreamt of a heart attack like the bursting of wine in his chest, sugared burgundy dripping from the ducts of his eyes and flooding the mouth. He woke, hoping to see red stains on his pillow, but all there was was dark, the streetlights gone, his clock blank. Out in the road someone had written DieHope in green house paint, the tracks of one car smearing away to the south. He went to the tablet of paper on the counter. He wrote, Dreamt of heart, power out, mobs in the street. There was a feeling of invincibility in his hands, the muscles ripe. The dark edges of the countertop were worlds to be broken, like eggs or bread.

Low

Twelve times they'd been here, this particular desert. On the pan, a coyote trotted by with something furry in its jaws. Eleven times they'd seen something similar, the half-dead snake in the prickly pear, the gunshot owl, the lemon-yellow scorpions with claws waving. He stroked her hair, she said something too low for him to hear. What? he said. She shook her head, no, no. She spoke rarely, less so here, the sun turning toward the mountains and falling.

4 old stories (about working)

Cape Cod

He painted houses for a living, blue, white, yellow, whatever the customer wanted. He was able to afford to send both kids to college. In state.

Bliss

He drove a city bus for 10 years. One day he pulled to the curb in front of the art museum and got out. He called it, Oh Well.

Glass Ceilings

His boss wanted the 1300 page report, tomorrow. Here you go, he said. You're fucking kidding me, she answered.

Semi-retired

He created the world, people, some such thousand years ago. The upkeep was minimal. As long as they brought their own drama.

Sine

A white line, across the cement, under the park, through the door, faint and hardly there, to its red center.