As Stephanie continues to blow peanuts through her nose,
the audience knows all too well what she is up to.
One of our children has a tree stump for a head.
It’s weird, but she also has little clumps of hair, so
that’s reassuring.
One sonic night in the back of our sonic house, two sonic
birds got to cawing, and before you could call the sonic night
watchman, there was a sonic burger restaurant collapsing
in a nearby strip mall: no coincidence.
Asterisk that in your diary.
Here is a pirate boy at the door. “Here, pirate boy. Here’s a
penny for your pocket. Go back to your frigate now.
Go back to your barge. It’s a glorious day.”
Four little myths tried to explain each other. Two got talking.
“If you’re so endemic, why split anthropological hairs?
I would think such excavations would come natural
to you!” said one. The other: “Yeah, and you’re a pimp.”
I began walking to the basket suitcase. Unfortunately
the basket suitcase was eighteen miles south. To complicate
this odyssey, I was heading east. Now calculate:
two young girls learn to jump rope in a pickle patch.
If I have neither silver nor Bundt cake in my pouch
packed for journeying, how long till coyotes
emerge from the thickets? Think!
Here is a second tale of the basket suitcase.
In it, I am a woman trying to speak of envy
in a Houston airport, in public, but I am naked.
Apparently my basket suitcase has been stolen.
I whip a cell phone out of my purse and call 911.
Jasmine and juniper, jonquil and june bugs,
japing jesters, jelly jars, and jukeboxes jingling,
jobless rates rising, jaundiced elderly voters,
jerks joking jollily, janes jumping johns.
Glug! goes the periwinkle. Glub! go the radishes.
Glug-glug! goes the fishy, and Glurp! go the tomatoes.
Glurk! goes the paring knife, all swaddled in wax paper.
Glug! goes my dad while he watches soap operas.
Lilly the glutton has attempted to befriend me.
Lilly has no belly button: that’s what’s unique about her.
I would like for once to for once to for once.
I would like for once to for once.
I would like to for once, you know!
For once in my life!
Abby at the dude ranch was looking like a snowflake.
Her sweater smelt of pine cones, she held a plastic rake.
The dude ranch full of snowflakes drifted high upon a fence.
Now can anybody tell me where my Abby wence?
Each of my feet has a nose and a mouth.
That’s what’s weird about each of my feet.
A simple man rose from his simple couch to drink a simple gin
in his simple domestic environment, amongst books
full of denotatory words, beneath simple shingles
plunked and spattered by elegant raindrops
on a thoroughly complex and chaotic Saturday evening.
Bozo has no heart. That’s why he shoots children with his machine gun.
I have come to hate Bozo. Not for what he does, specifically,
but for the sheer fact he has no heart.
Beethoven hates children. Beethoven eats them like cookies.
Beethoven is my name for the dragon that lives behind my house.
Do not express yourself mildly: do it wildly.
Neither eat chocolate cake or sleep among bed sheets.
For we are entering a period of sporadic vomiting
when bed sheets and slicks of dog shit in the grass
are indistinguishable. Winding bed sheet,
winding bed sheet, go back to your shelf!
Help me to forgive myself!
Druggist: “That’s a taper.” Pizza man: “That’s a Bundt cake.”
Disc jockey: “That’s a small moon.” Old man: “That’s no small moon.”
Disc jockey: “Then it’s a taper.” Old man: “It’s not a taper.”
Druggist: “Eat my shorts.” Pizza man: “Eat my pizza.”
Old man: “Eat my cloak.” Disk jockey: “That’s a space station.”
“Wow,” said Stephanie, nostrils flaring.
“I want to sleep with you now.”