The airports had been swamped so

  the special priest was late.  For months a little group of people willing to learn had been preparing for this.  To learn more about how religions entreat with the supernatural.

  "Would you say The Dragon in their book is really metaphoric of a nation?" The woman held a spiral notebook up in front of herself so she could see her questions.  It looked like a paltry shield.  "Who's she?" A serious Seminary student wondered out loud at a gaggle of people not looking as familiar as they had in the meetings.

  "Please." An aide for the priest tried to create a space around the man.  The priest greeted another woman in the European way of "kissing" both cheeks.  A man in an Irish sweater asked which suitcase he should be looking for on the baggage claim.

  A taller-than-most man explained, "This is not really a political thing.  Not for us." The "us" was as vague as the us at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  "There's been serious trouble at the Seminary, and

  "There has?" 

  "And this man is here to see about that." 

  "He is?" 

  "We'll be having tea at this hotel's restaurant," the tall man started passing out slips of paper with the hotel's information.  Several of the slips were not taken and flitted onto the ground amidst endless feet on the move.

  At the hotel there wasn't much to do.  An Organist was explaining how notes of sound splayed out across lines on paper could make music.  A very staunch member of the Choir stood nearby telling those within earshot, "The children always know."  Nobody asked, "Know what?"  But, a lady teacher did stumble out a little conversation about how grown ups approach these topics with children.  A Church library man who everyone knew to be very feeling made miming clown expressions about the possibility of talking.  

  "We had to settle on being deemed dirty snow." An Army Dad told the mime.  "This was before First Communion for some of them." The mime cupped his ear: willing to hear, and pulled at the air like it was a rope.

While it was important

  to understand the ideologies of the world the matters of "property" were and are critical.  In America the right to defend property was the saving grace.  Europe didn't have the same "gun rights" and was caught in a flurry of decimation to the property issues.

  For a while it was move your feet, lose your seat, mano y mano wit and arm wrestling.  Violence reported could still lead to an arrest.  And because most "petty crime" was connected to "organized crime" people lived in a constant state of being threatened and fear.  That took a toll on neighborly relations.

  "THIS.  IS.  WAR."  Said a woman who'd been hacked in half.  It wasn't until a couple years later that she would say anything besides.  By then she was quick walking on her arms and had had time to shorten her furniture.  Even almost chuckled at having two file cabinets instead of a tall four drawer.  We were still young and hadn't met too many people with such strong determination.  Some of her humor had a lingering bitterness so our Parish priest had the nuns dig deep to find the right Saint to take on for Confirmation.  For Catholics, taking a Confirmation Name is adding more tool to toolbox.  The Saints are for extra prayers and are example of how other humans have gotten through human condition. 

  She'd survived the night "it" happened by climbing a tree.  In our American area at the time violence was as normal for some people as breathing air.  And the ways of violence were fueled by drugs and sex and poverty and a citizenry falling by the wayside.  It was D.C. making the decisions, not us.  It was the most violent winning the battles, not us.  It was a long way from this is war to let's at least stop hurting each other.

  It seemed like many who were in agreement about this.  It went along with the guiding principle that God gave Jesus the job of righteous judgment, not us.  But then as we moved from being a close-knit group to encountering the world at large it became clear that there were many not in agreement about this.  Differing religions and cultures were just as "faithful".

  The woman's head split apart from the woman's body by virtue of an unbending board.  "Exceptional times," a man remarked and then exited the roller derby.  A sleek car's door was opened for him.  And his dark socks and tassled dress shoes could be seen paused on the concrete before being swooshed away from "the perfect crime".  No accountability necessary.

  "He'll get his.  He's the Devil's Man now." A more modern nun in gym clothes remarked in a thick Scottish accent.  It would take months to locate the board with a sword embedded in one side.  It was still stained with the woman's blood.

The sudden diversity at local

  made for interesting conversation especially in regards to What is this all about.

  It took people who'd been studying to help explain why buying a hamburger at a McDonald's was okay on a Wednesday, but not so good on a Sunday.  People shared what textbooks and crossword puzzles they had with them during longer and longer waits to get back to cities boobytrapped and bloodied by "slaughters".

  "Ideologies as

  "Say, theories of society

  "And government

  "That form the basis of

  "Political

  "Yes, political

  "Programs?

  "It was pogroms," an interviewer of survivor commented in all the talking.

  What we'd witnessed, a bunch of us, was described as "a democratic orgy", "nothing", "happens every season", and "an indescribable hell".  A cross-section of road, train, and airspace had been fencing us all in.  People were robbed, beaten, raped, children taken, and terrorized.  Outside "le pen" seemed like an ordinary day.

"Your problem is

   that this isn't a Communism." One man had asked another man, "Can you tell me what the problem is?"  There'd been narrow margin between groups walked-back from warring against each other and pockets of enclave.  Limited resource flow had caused hostage taking and some peering into what had become death and destruction situation in our American town.

  "Why can't I get anyone?" A woman asked a public service walkie talkie.  "The chore aid is on hold."  Trash was starting to mount up on front lawns without compound-fencing.  A "witch doctor" had performed another "surgery".  And without definitive on the vote counting and a president with health issues, citizens were commenting in lieu of making investments, stuff like this feels like a bazaar, and, here's a quarter call someone who cares.  The quarter saved more than a few lives when someone could get past flesh-eating dogs guarding drugs and sex for sale and contact the authorities. 

  "Captain Wallace, why are those people sitting on shelving?" A person in a Star Trek costume asked a rabbit.  The answer was complicated and unfolded through "channels" over a few days.  It essentially had to do with "troops" and "homeland".

He didn't have his legs yet.

  So we kept stashing him.  A lot of our generation's people were still high school and college age.  And were on the poor side.  Certainly most of us hadn't seen field hospital surgery.  Nor health care that wasn't okay.  Advocates and friends and neighbors were the ones saying, that's NOT okay.

Back then

   we had some serious issues.  For one thing the Korean War had left some armed forces in various states of suspension.  That translated to chain of commands being potentially compromised.  And regular citizens holding piles of potential evidence in crime that had been underreported.

   For people of my parents' generation there was a formidable loss to overcome in losing the "greatest generation".  Whether or not people were actively acknowledging that didn't matter as much as the effects of loss.  Other civilizations and cultures had had similar experience.

  The LIbrarian's Index Card just read, yours crumbled

     "Well, love, it wasn't a good racer," an egg tapped on it's ricepaper ink lei line

An elephant ardvark, the weakling

  lifted head just enough to unpress cheek on cheesecutter wire.

 

'Mr. McGaha,"

   "You were like Sweetpitati?" 

  This as the starry space night air crumpled the transpirter's nose into jungle-covered library books.  Rubbing my neck because I'm getting a wee bit tidy.

  The bright whites, socks and cuffs, had been deposited into our best laundry baskwets.  A strip of theatre curtainage stapled to our new band leaders side pants.  The neked were buttoned into their showah cuttin' dressbarn ware.

  A shot out transformer had sparked a galax of fuel path on the ground and while it wasn't exactly telling the whole story de todo, the surviving wounds

                   inkling

Tings of dis and dats.  A downed like a Space Needle to a chalked aerial.  Spires and art decos never shall be "quite the saME".  Watch the wires inside my yammie colored dog.  Why?!? Goes.

     The lightbrightblack papers spiralplitchart a llama's foot and debris.       Gal  AX     ing 

Sucking oxygen, heliym tank giggles, a diveboard into a dunk tank.

              .  

The tile word game

  was passed over the handcuffed man's seatback tray.  "It's not exactly cheating to use dictionaries." Some of us gimme'd whoever could reach one of the beach bags.

  Had been warned about Stumps.  Wrists still only thin drumskins of layers.  And not smoking so much.  And picking up somebody else's trail of bread crumbs.  Mama rolled her eyes at the amount of reading we need to get to.  "Let me finish understand this first," she sketched a psalmist's hand.  Before the co-piloting person could finish warning, LOOK OUT FOR THE BARRIER a front tire clipped it.  Some of the barriers on the overpass road had come from New's in Albuquerque as heavier and heavier planes needed to stop circling like ducks in a barrel and attempt an approach.

  We'd been gulping choke.  Tunnels so thick with black smoke people rolled deadweights close to shinies--paints decrying smothering cement colors and tokens placed like golf game putting place holders.  Spit and drool covered the tubings used to un-Daniel's Farm us.  Whips offa big trucks had been mounted on sides of tunnels and passageways to tap floating fuselage in a wrathful flood of stillness.

  Pitching.  Would be warming up the battah, battah, battah but that's a boy job ever since that stadium wall was laid down and we had an impromptu skating party.  The weather had been that cold.

  "A perfect ten," the emotion checker Okayed our mood.  Couldn't tell if the wink was for those cheerleaders or the prouding loved ones, but we can really gather our composure when we've lost the dead weight of excess clothing and other formalities.

  Finally the Montreal suitcase floated like a spiraling feather on a chain pen, holy helps and special graces windspeed.  We were off again, a contemporary regular's work day.

  In opposition "to the wording" "at this time" of wees in the know about 

  "Here it is.  It's called Of Cabbages and Kings

     Love the children

  And the poEtry reminded us tweedy types of delicious aromas, fooood the robots' arms led the blankets to the can opening stations.  "Eat quick," Dad gave a thumb's up on work having enough ink left.  A rollerskater stole my hot meal and an old fashioned nunhat like a kite reprimanded.

  Shovel slowly so their template for the Architectural drawings doesn't burn up like these covered in snake oil.

  As those Towers burst black pope smoke through the air, we knew who'd done this to US.

On the Sunnyside

  We'd known the truths about life early so we had some pillow fights to remember our homes and sing some songs to remember you by.

  They'd staged it, the numbskulls, so that the Estradas' CHIP was going round and round on the ramp.  Nobody on the outside knew that so nobody would have to lug those TV cameras up there.  They'd also been putting car and truck batteries powering AM/FM RADIOS in the Le Brea Tarpits welcome "cash & carry" to flyover and drop metallic'd plates and bars (weights and measures; ways and means budgetary purse strings).  It wasn't chaos, but the "black" that Rock Hudson was trying to make way through wasn't human-made.  A solar calendar fluke was blocking daylight at the equator parallels as other militaries tried to remove their property from the ownership status of "English Law" hence trips to tents on other Continents.

Some peoples'

   cultures had been very different from coming together as Americans, that was often reminded.  Before 1984 our own Country was, hard to explain the parallels of stage presentation of us and anxiety.  

  "How could it have been CLASSIFIED?" A family of guys who looked alike had kicked us out of the woods.  We single filed behind a yellow ribbonless oak tree and claimed the tree as "not the woods".  "It was stamped so Fadder." 

  Taking the long way round to the Seminary the Soviet-raised reported on their friends and family.  Our group leaders had Doctorates and such plus training and field experience to recognize such behavior for what it was.  And after stolen everything had facilitated notorious world criminals having tea parties with our children we could be rest assured that the Allies were on it.

What kept us going....

  A ship stewart interested in what makes creatives tick once asked us how we could possibly have that much energy.  We didn't of course.  We had habits like licking the last drops of tea and coffee out of our cups.  Pretending nourished.  Opening one door to check for possible monsters under the bed, he saw a man with woman's legs re-enacting the punches that had been thrown that started that one.  The upside down midget handstanding on the man's oversized on backwards rubber boots was still spinning in his brain from a knife throwing episode only managed ondolay, ondolay.  Called Little Man helped him feel better.  He was bossy when he wanted to be.  But the taller fisherman in front examining a swordfish scar could pull a shoulder wooden fisherman's string and honor don't put me down 'til this place stops spinning.

  The steward crouched beside the midget's better ear and notated on a clipboard like Patches' smells another nurse wrote like a brewery; only speaks ondolay.  Feels safely attached to a Big Fish's Friend; and in denial about getting sober. 

  So when a longtime land nurse in one of those capes needed to ask me a serious question in the 1990's, personally, I was surprised when she asked, "Do I look like a Dentist?" 

  "Not sure exactly m'am." 

  "Why do you ask of us?" A field commander needed to know.

  She pulled cigarettes from her pack.  Her tallness can be intimadating so she has a personal quirk of crouching then kicking her pant legs out in front of poor vision without knocking over children and/or torsos with stumps. 

  We need to determine why wounded and injured keep being found with mouthfuls of teeth.

It was all in good fun.

  A man used a woman's canvas log bag, carried like a sac o' flour, and never let go of the Colonials' muskets.  While us shirts did housechores to churn the butter.  Another day of learning our history was about to end eras within decades.  We were leaving travel out of it, us slaves in our underwear to the real artistes who'd called for some nudist models.  The various buses on the regional schedule seemed to be running on time. 

  An exceptionally modest man in a certain body type categgory won the necklace toss for our last real sweater--a long coat foxy color. 

  Coming on dusk in those kind of cul de sacs meant a chorus of people activity including crickets and buzz sawz and people learning English by chanting songs.  Woodsmoke smells, clogs and slippers for returning workers.  "Borrowed" tools from the surrounding spaces between major roads were begrudingly left outside the stock fencing.  Well, one of the pieces left. 

  One little boy put on the crossing guard uniform.  He'd been sportscross-training in the running disciplines since Long Hair Lisa found out the categories of prisons where the different teachers were being sent to teach.  The director types had had long resumes so it was taking long time periods to do safe transports "upstate".  A father who was a prison guard but who'd been coughing up black plastic bag ashes warming himself near a cockemamey place to put a woocough, cough, hacking air mucous fight, incinerator had also been prohibited from working.

  Another identified a skeleton mummy by picking his chicken (a mom with a colored bandana head bandage), I gots foods for scruffies, he lowered his head in shame.

I was. ..

  I was investigating the actual tree mulch with a cracker jack box magnifying glass when I got upgraded to a real one.

  "The top gorilla please," a long haired Lisa spoke into the table phone we'd brought on trains from Long Island and plugged into a junction box in Michigan.

  Our operator was in a field communique that looked like a big rubber boot.

  They'd broken through to Big Bear Newspapers.  So people were pressing the suspected press people for infomation like Obits. 

 We had to get the last few drops of oil from Dad's chainsaw oiler out of it's tin to roll ink at Potomac while getting airs into airplane tires at the football game that never happened.

Stick Up/Stuck Up

   The apartment building was on the alley side of boulevard and perpendicular to the train rails.  Taller people would stand on the street corner and piggyback people into open windows. 

  We were earning the maybe enough cab fare home by sewing outfits, "designing" neck ties, and doing chores for "shut ins".  We got to go to the pharmacy, and the butcher for others and smell fried food smells except when trains went by and the air would get stirred and unstank.

  One brother in his Ranger hat kept smelling the gum wrappers to un-smell being buried alive.  Another had drag marks on his arms and legs.  But we were all together again, mostly. 

  "We are." 

  "We're going to get through this." 

  One wife with bird claw hands fluffed the crushed flat wheel of roses, "little silkies" on the wool coat's lapel. 

 "This time," someone read the lips of someone under a lightpole.

  "We have to try," the egyptian boy put forehead to each of ours.  We squeezed each others' hands to start "the pulse".

  The clash of the titanesque wAs gearing up.

  In metropoli worldwide we'd readied.

  Grappling hooks swung us from land to Sea, and back again to 

     yonders and 

          fallow

  Paled rainbow colors hung in Our skies on Planet Earth separating us from Outer Space.

  "I guess some newspaper articles in some blenders

  "Got confused?

....... 

..........

---------------------°¶_________________

     The zombies were twirling levers's worths of quarters to power locomotives and races involving horses.  We Getty groups had to beg, begger, and in some cases beggar coins for newspapers, coffee, and socks.

  It was 1978 and shortage was plentiful.  We were just a series of states divided and re-divided amongst nations United and gambled away.  By our flags, the dawn's early light was flotsam'd and foggish.

  Whatever had come ashore to collect the "shell" that had left that size divet, well, had been followed by a cast on Broadway and a Press.  Forty hours later we were ready to move out, the trains on that point.  Montauk, he thought it was.

  "Then it's not our county," a Parish person explained.  "Does anyone have a map?" Was the question that went around in the dark while we were waiting and waiting to go.  Our mom had given us all a piece of Wrigley's.  Other kids had found "ABC" (already been chewed) gum and other castoffs on bathroom breaks in the little underpass nearby.  But that caused an au pair to panic when she couldn't wake some children.

  We would've lost track of the days but we used a New York Times crossword puzzle that people taking a turn staying awake wrote the hours down on.  A man in a baseball jacket thought he might take a look see how far other tracks might be from ours.  A lady in slacks helped designate a smoking car.  And when all the whiskey sour breaths had stumbled from a local pool hall to a dining car a shadowy figure looking like a leap frog put fingers in his mouth and whistled.  The sound was even and strong and the loud just above dog whistle.  At first.  Others on down the line also whistled the tune through the bramble alongside the tracks.  

  Before purple-ing skies a smallish car delivered newspapers to a stand not far from that apartment building's corner street lamp.  A tall man already reading one wiggled his re-folded and put it under an arm of his leather jacket and put his copy in front of the new stack.  A wandering wino bumped into him and dusted off the man's arm in his blazer.  Then he pantomimed hiccups and bubbles and woozy head.  Someone else put a lightswitch box slug in the quarter slot. 

  Finally a clancyman in a top hat and old timey circus cape came on the tracks with the loud boy all tied up in little Bo Peep clothes and white rope over his jeans and sneakers.  He was laying stiff across the clancyman's owl perch but it looked like he was strapped to his shoulders with a big "X". 

     "He's the one," a younger girl whisper told an older girlfriend.  Last seen? 

  We'd been in the back of a different train car so when and where we saw our lost boys before we got split up was important enough to get a sip of OJ.

  This one's called Last Seen....

     It really was a warm summer's evening and we'd had a mystery on an express.  "Pass me the paragraphs," they asked while the coneheads watched.  "Ain't gotta licka

Sense /. / Cents

Pica?

          A light rap on a lav door.  "No, that's the loo mate." 

  She'd reluctantly been to Vietnam again though her family now residing in 

The big Mitt  /.  /. Michigan

     The fishnetted stuffed animal fluff leg had deflated our toys but fashioned a special lamp base.

On some of those return trips

   we had to settle on repairing damages and removing our clutter and getting our garbage out of the canals and passageways to work.  It was and wasn't shocking to find halloween costumes in particular floating through ports where some of the world's criminals had previously commandered boats and planes because of rough weather.  Some of the costumes even had bodies in them.

What we did was

   use broom handles to pass the stolen evidence markers over the train tracks.

  One kid woke up and groggily asked, "Are we surrwendering?" 

  So another woke up too.  "What are those?" 

  "Unicorns!!" The small window shade was pulled down.

  Some of the sheets and cones weren't appropriate outfits.

"To demand love

     Is to lose love.  A selfish heart creates its own vacuum.

                   --Fulton Sheen, June 17

There are

   times in our lives that are like that liminal space....you take a cold stick of butter out of the fridge, but it's not clarify'd yet.  

  September 11th had just happened.  

  "I hadn't thought about that in years," a man said of circuses.  

  "I don't like that theme," a woman declared.  

  Some hung in there through mostly quiet working to brainstorm something.  "It shouldn't be just anything," an advisor cautioned.

  In the City people were waves of wearing black.  Subways streamed with us.  Exchanging tidbits of seriousness.  Pearls on a string of wisdom with feelings of imminent.  With images, sounds, smells still fresh hoping for the change to resettle us into complacency was slippery like wanting to sew but only having a piece of silk.  

The symphony salute

  was realism.  Daily Dose OF TRUTH.

  "I honestly can't tell you." 

  "They can." 

  "Can what, exactly?" 

  Confirm. 

  All the viles and ode du toilets had been smashed with a sword larger than any on record.

  We'd had to establish sleeping patterns and routines to keep up qith being sick to death of chasing fucking SPACE PEOPLE all over the wretched UNIVERSE.

  "You could say," Sherry unfocused on the rosary beads and collected her emotions into composure. 

  "What could they say?" A false madonna knelt without kneeling.  "Mother Elizabeth needs to know." She whirled on ballerina feet to kiss the leading man.

  But this time a real Commander ordered  something like

  "Don't unscroll them until I, we, arrive." 

  "We really don't know.  Father, this man is

             a throat was slit 

Sideways

Not good 

Must've been a different flight

  A child let himself fall out of a trench coated "suit" and he joined other tree frogs.

  "This isn't gambling yet." The grated floor fell away.

  "It splices the skin off their faces

  feces, the little

  "Vie diar we wook as dennis the menaces?"

  "Here stick this up it's ass."  Our Mother fumbled through the purse to find a stuffie.  It just happened to be pinky.

  In order too....

  The Jetson mobile had let us know: red sky at night, drift

  Pinky Patrol

  Turned up more evidence that would be made irrelevant unless

  "Maybe

  not real commies?

  Sinbads?

  "Someone focus this fu

  His own mother kicked the other team's player in the shins.  Sister Rose Immaculatta Krud blew the whistle.

  Total deafness in that ear now.

  FUUUUUUUUDGE the boy said instead

  Someone more like a generator was still training us all out of a crater that caused a flood near Boston's Harbor Light.

  "Pick up the pontoon toys." 

  "I will, but I'm confused.  What sort of mimi golf card is this chores list writ

  "This is becoming a pain in my arse." 

  People being plucked out of the wild turkey pits.  But it hadn't explained the BPT HELIes.

  "That was us again," the mirror image of someone told the wrong someone of The Fuck Up.

 

  

   Standing on a precipice amongst lava flows

  Toxic pollution?

  Fare.

NANA!!¡!naaaana

   Nice, it should report that it was endeavoring to say nice.

  The salt baths had gone up some peoples' butts, trunks and all

  Suckerpunched a historian explained of doing A. Roosevelt.

B. 2, "No, it IS Lincoln's body." 

  "How many vitamins

  That one's mouth opened like a drawer and fists full of votes being "funneled" were deposited.  More pulverized capshules came out 

  "The eyeballs?" 

  "Not exactly," we panted then cranked the train away from the wounded.

  "The organgrindershhzzz 

  "It's called an anus, not a garden hose?"

"It was supposed to be

   "Because since that war of the worlds mediamoviethingie all we could do alone or on our own was throw some papershacks ovah dem tings."

  The men and women of the United States if the World in Emirates clothing slaved to carry all this 

  Fuckin'A "paperwork" 

  up and down these GODDAMNED 

  The woman didnt have a chance to finish the word there stairs.

  So we dropped our shit in the hallowed halls of ye olde

     Supreme Court

     "Thwy

     "They

  They all had to stop writing it and get some skin in "but it's not a game".

  We'd had to leave footprint holograms of where our loved ones had been standing on implosion.

  But in a cyborg v Knight battle between megalopsoses, meteopolis's there'd been more significant carnage.

  "We'll call it METROPOLIS

  ONE SAID.

  "Let me get this straight.  They sluiced an entire civilization?" 

        nodding 

  Ordered "Stop twisting the skulls around on their cortex platforms like that." 

  Buuuut I wanted that one TO LIVE.

  "Oh Charlotte, what does that even mean anymore

           These days. ..

   The furniture had to be moved around.  But there was enough space for folding screens and rolls of exercise mats.

  "Trust me," eye roll "They've been studying at Seminary."

  "Kamp aside," she took the duffle bag.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Instead of the elevator shaft route, the post people slid down the suitcase mover spinning wheels from old skates.

  "Proposed IMPACT SITES

  ATTENTION:

  Care/of

  "It's in a more modern TEXTBOOK!" 

  DOORS SWINGing      sssssh

  shush honey chile

                                      shut .

  He'f saif shutteth the corky wood shutters.

"It's probably Ostrich, but

 it may have been rubber stamped," the man submitted to five o'clock tea time just want a nap headrest "to think" abour it.  The mysterious animal tracks that had been spied coming to and fro from and too the ancient tembre 

  Not a temple temple 

  Forever ever 

  "Quit calling me a princess," the baseball player in a prairie hat bent his tallness to get the colored pencils rubberbanded together with a pony tail holder to plop out of the magic hat's bottom top.

"Doontah opyen

  the wid." Men being dressed as cruise ship magicians were being warned about the pianos.

"What's that special effect?" A

   woman with binoculars asked as different colors came out of the sewer grate around a woman with skirt being blown up all around her like an "icon".  Taxis and box trucks and cars and "limos" blew past in an angry rush.

  "The trick is to have a cool personality," a man was explaining how he'd changed jobs from cosmetic surgery to production consultant.  

  "Don't you dare!" A mother whapped at the air near her daughter with her "clutch" purse.  The daughter looked at the purse still being carried from the night before.  "Awwww, you had a good time last night."  The mother swayed in her sneakers a little bit remembering dancing for the first time in a month of Sundays.  The wait to use the piddle room had people remarking on the unusual home decor, rock and iron, "and this!" A little kid slipped into the conversation about what he'd have in his castle.  Another little kid slipped her hand into my mother's as a hypnotist put a silk scarf over her eyes so you won't be scared of the Ray Gun.  "The what?" 

  "Yeah Cher, the martians are coming," a rough voiced Opera singer crooned. 

  "Then I want to see that," our mom put her free hand under the special scarf just as people who'd also been befriended by little kids were being blindfolded.  Large hands reached towards the back of her head to help he whispered.  But the fishing line pulled the scarf ziptight as the little kids handcuffed hands they'd held to iron and rock weights.  A man's foot slid into bended knee position (a yoga thing) as he slipped in spilled coffee.  People started to tilt as the slimey floor past the good flooring revealed itself to be thick plank. 

  "The travelying houdinyi disk?" A very fancy woman put the long-stemmed champagne mimosa brunch drink back on the butler tray.  "We want to see it too," a kid in a Wizard of Oz costume said.

 

  'Twas brillig....

  First steps back to the page

  Same rule always applies

Pen to paper

 

The bodies had been prepped as

  they had negotiated.

  "In the middle of our big beautiful country somewhere, I hope

  The characters acting Mongolians passed by the dining car.  A train wreck had sprayed shrapnel throughout the forest.

  "How 'bout Little Legs?" 

  Brainstorming ind

  "Native. American" 

  Pass me the scripts

         I gotta poop

Deep sleep.

   The clipper ship had popped out of a glacier hole off the Carolina coast like a champagne cork.

  The water spout finally disssipaaapated enough to declare safe air.

  Splinters plunking from clouds and spearing the ground like fenceposts give you a sence of 

 "I just can't get my head around the size and scope of this thing," said a man looking at the cells of the printed version of the map through a loop.

"You cude ah say

   "What?!? We whacked haer with a piano?"

  It wasn't their "fault" it was determined as the tanks rolled between parades and their daughter's legs were pulverized into rubber tube socks of body ooze.

     Holdings, the elevator man called out the divisions of the company on the way to Corporate meetings.

  Their barrack came out of the wind up toy recording device

    "Sing the Bar-ah

  A pebble pinged a bell.  Everyone, almost, ducked.  The machine gun fire blared.

"So you're saying there's no

   communique-tions 

  between them and us?" The question came out of a badly beaten and bloodied man's face that appeared to be on a lamp table.  The little diary with gold leaf edges had drops of blood on the few names under Calligraphy script that said, 

  Please sign in, with a line through it and underwards said REGISTER.  Someone had drawn a football and in it, written TO WIN.

     "WE FOUND IT FIRST!" Some kids had climbed through layers of place.  Under a fenced-in "compound" area, through a circus tent, around trailers, and into a ramp descending through layers of soil to a bunker in the bedrock. 

  "I'm not an IT." The head said into a crackling microphone.  "I'm STILL A M, MA, mmmmm, mammmmm, mah mah mahn.  MAN!" 

  But the warning came as yet another body fell into the heap ordered to walk the plank.  When those bodies cleared the sagging ramp board between sandy mounds, a strangely booted foot weighted an end of it to erect it and swing it away from an out.

  Pilots and stewards were waist deep in slime.  "Are they frozen?" A child asked a catatonic elderly man and woman.  "Dey are so Wyeth," said a white papersuited person framing the postcard photograph with hands made into "L"s.  A goon picked up the child by the clothing on his back and slung him like a sack of potatos onto the edge of the next hill to be climbed.

  "There's no anything where it was, Sir." He showed the latest survivors what looked like a moonscape on a grainy little TV.

  "What hit us?" A split-lipped Father from the MASH show asked us in person.  "Or did we hit them?" 

  Our mother wiped the bead of drool hanging from our stupefied father's lip and put the tissue back in her purse like it was normal.  An ordinary gesture amidst a sea of glimmering molten ground shaking sea of liquid metal.

  "Where did you come from?" The macaroni man asked a man with only part of an arm.  The MASH person pointed way up high to tree roots above the manhole cover he was standing on.

  "So it could be like the year that never was," a droning voice recorded whatever he can remember.  "I will authenticate," a computer voice said what was being typed out on stock market "ticker tape" paper.  The Cone Heads futzed with the creamy seams of stiched skin on each others' heads.  "Put him in there," they moved a severed arm's fingers to pull the "dog tag" bathtub cork chain away from the rusting bathtub drain hole.

  "To get AIR," Mellie held the gramophone conch to "the next level", contorted rebar and cinder block corner near the Lear showed at least seven layers of ground gone.

"Whoa," the kid said.

   A teacher grabbed the photcopies of the stolen photographs asking if it was smut. 

  A normally calm and cool priest was red and sweaty and trembling. 

  Several parents were locating their children in the church and parking lot and school.

  What the hell is going on here? 

  Boxes and boxes and boxes of files and folders and newspaper clippings.  A hoard. 

  The teacher got a papercut as she grabbed the photocopies and a "reader" who couldn't stand the sight of blood passed out and knocked over the already organized stacks of "catalog".  A woman stepped backwards as he passed out and got stuck in the miniblinds. 

  "It's TOTAL CHAOS!!!" A kid whose parent worked on a different team concerning this mess relished.  "Total incompetence," a suited grown up agreed.  Another boy tackled what seemed to be mocking MISSING PEOPLE.  They smashed into stuffy academics who'd been boring students too old to be in grammar school anyway.  "What is this Watergate?" 

  "Cool.  I'm all in."

"Something I found in my travels,"

  she'd say as she gifted finds. 

  In 2025 there's good music and records (for a "record player").  Albums like Sonny James, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, and "March Along With Mary Pippuns.". 

  Movies, home decor, jewelry, books, clothing for every age person, greeting cards (some almost as funny as the ones at Teague's in Maggie's Valley).  

  At Rachel's they also sell designer purses, perfumes, "and lots of toys for the kids to pick from," says Teresa.

  Generally open seven days a week. 

"They think we're strange."

   The man shut the taxi cab passenger door with his cup of coffee.

  "Of course they do

  "We're wearing each other's body parts

          Skins 

   The quarter landed in the man's hand.

The debate for writers at our school

   was focused on reality and imagination.  Other kids were doing Science Fair and the Mind Olympics.  It was then that people started to carefully probe and delve into friends and enemies.  It was also then that people got more into quasi-mechanics and aliens.  And the term age appropriate came up alot. 

  "Ma, how long did it take me to walk across the world?" 

  "Don't call me that."  With multiple children our Mom felt compelled to be diplomatic about most of what she said.  Her first answer to almost any can I, can I was usually no.  "She'll come around," one of us would try and maintain thr optimism (hope) for the one having a crisis of authority.  If she didn't there were options before "defiance".

  "I'm watching my show," a boy slurped the cereal.  "Let's teach," head jerk at, "to ask why".

  Sometimes the whys became an opera.

"Listen TO ME"

  Our mother said when she got down in there.  Poor Uncle Tito, a little person was wailing. 

  "YOU MUST!!!!!" My mother had grabbed the man's tie and pulled his face towards her as a commuter train made wind speed carry voices away. 

  "Find a RADIO" 

  ONE OF THE MAN'S LEGS WAS STILL TWITCHING

A stay order had meant stay.

  But the roar and rumble of Americans joining as political parties, with judge and jury safe, and people with roles and duties working in spite of injury, began to rapidly crumble "infrastructure". 

  People kept on with the kamp and cool hand and the casual quips. 

  "I guess we know how many people it takes to turn an up yours into a subway." 

  "Is that like the tube?" 

  We all stood looking down at the top of the train from the platform.

  The "activists" were caught.  Spit all over us.  "Fuck the high speeders." More spit.  A woman in a full black body robe was tackled.  First by private school kids.  Then by other commuters.  At train stations across the City similar take downs were occuring.

  "Don't be vigilantes," a lean, strong clancyman warned a gaggle getting off another train.  "We needed a real surveyor out there," a tall hansome man explained.  The conductor started to back that train up. 

  Cops started arresting everyone in the vicinity.  "Gather 'round," a Suit ordered.  "I want witnesses and observers." 

  The President rubber masks were pulled off.

Ask

  Lolita." The blossoming boyman had taken a hat in the nuts.  And as he regained his composure in a full spectrum of color face he grabbed the item to be inventoried and gruffly pushed the kid's shoulder. 

  Moments earlier we'd had a viewing of a world class circus, no ordinary circus, with some Opera that even included seeing a real gymnast on a swivel bird perch swinging contraption.  She held perfectly still even as they attached wheels and bumped up a box truck ramp.  As she was getting arrested the hat had become a futbol.  We were getting good at the Everything Game, pre real sports games. 

  Taller sons patted short, weathered jockey Dads on the back as numbers were unvelcro'd from their backs. 

  "Why the leymahn?" 

  The answer was codedly answered in every language including braille. 

  "Always love you the BEST true response." 

  "To new products we're 

  "Readying for marketing 

  The man didn't want to turn around in his Speedo.  He peeked over his shoulder.  "Dunno." He winced.  Too tight.  Turned partway around, "Looks like a Kraut Cap," he breathed in deeper than deep as someone pulled the cake box string attached to the waist of the slacks he'd put on. 

  A black chest in front of him was opened and a viewing slot in the back of the doored part slid open.  "Blech, blich, cough, blocch, BLOCK, suck, hold, cough, cough," a monicled eyeball the color of a lion's fur looked through the rectangle.  The slot shut.  "Tooooo FAT," a tiny stunt woman's voice said as she zipped herself into a tuba suitcase.

 

By '87 we were already

  planning Carolina.  Production schedules were taking on weight and muscle. 

  "We'll storm them when we get there," a lankifying refused steroids yet-to-feel-hansome boyman said of 

  Some kind of convention

  And Mom's gonna get to see the Pope 

  "I already did," Sherry called out passing through the family room collecting socks for the laundry. 

  There was a funny clicking sound on the landline.  "Aright, well, I love you guys." 

  "We love you too." Whooo.  Whooo.  Whooo, the youngest brothers pitched in some positive energy.

  Some of the men joked about it as the hot dogs were wrapped in tin foil and the BBQ turned into a softball game.  Sherry untwisted an elastic on the airman's goggles that she'd found in her travels for some of the kids' WW1 Red Baron hats. 

  Can mine be a scientist's?  A short curly-haired girl asked.  "Okay honey." 

  "And how about that elevator?" A taller than average man lit a cigar and puffed out his question. 

  "Look at the time!" A parent showed a bare wrist.  "Homework Hour!" Another remembered. 

As the front of the plane

   started to lurchtip nosedive people could hear creaks and groans and 

     Damnit 

  Gigantic fans came on to simulate open air cabin pressure 

     Oooooo

     Not too bad S

  Suddenly the "sounds" blared. 

     I don't like that. 

  The front end of the plane started bucking. 

     Oh.  Oh.  Oh.  Jeeeeez.

  It almost backflipped. 

  That's when the eggs rolled and flew and dropped and mostly cracked. 

  I say mostly because people had "tucked" some to demonstrate special protection capabilities.  The cracked eggs on the heavy metal ridged platform stopped a moustached man in his tracks just before it was lights out.

     

Some of the fathers put on outfits.

   So many "popular" choices and options were "tied" in preference. 

  That turned out to be "a good thing" but not before a potentially hot thing (hot good? Travolta asked of a sauce for an "ad" audition) would test our grits and nettles.  

  Everyone in The City in the States had gotten so busy trying to be great, we almost zoomed off "into the future" without tying up loose ends.  

  And, computering was outpacing human ability to even observe let alone co-participate in the action.  

  Some people were in a necessary time of reflection as per coached by advisors and clergy. 

  I asked him again as he shut the cockpit's accordion door behind him and went back to the midsection of the plane.

  The answer was still no.  I could not marry that boy, he stood up and pointed, and not that one and not that one either.  He pointed at an uncle.  "Oh Daddy.  You are the cruelest man on earth." 

  "At least I'M STILL ON EARTH," HE plunked back down into his seat and crossed his arms so hard and fast he punched my mother in the face by accident.  

  The engines started.  The stewards and stewardesses situated and we started to roll. I was staring at the back of my awful father's fat head, stubborn old man, my boyfriend whispered.

  The front of the plane went.  We did not.

Some of the mothers

midday exchanged nerf footballs.  News makes some of them drink.  Our father sat on the edge of the bed pulling his neck tie off and putting sneakers on at the same time.  Their bedroom door was closed quietly behind her.  "Where do you think you're going?"  He rattled off helping-the-kids-chores and a neighbor's honeyDO list.  She proposed a vacation.  He and all the grownups in our circle were regimented, timely, respectful of others's workloads, and polite about it all whatever it was. 

  It took days to get the whole truth out between married people and families.

"Oh no; that's too much fun."

  We lost track of time.  It was after a Miracle Christmas, and our toys were a mix of a few special new and all the stuff we'd collected to be a "working family".  Sherry had started to get dressed.  "FAHNcee," the princesses agreed about mama's homemade-but-you-couldn't-tell skirt.  The Morning Show suddenly got broken into. 

  It seemed like the first word people were able to first process was hostage

  Did they just say hostages?  The chaffeur who'd been hearing stories about "the hood" all night just came into the house when he saw that we had a television.  My mother had turned to get her purse at the same time.  They bumped heads.  A police detective walking back to the yard that still needed to be "swept" spit his coffee out when Sherry wasn't still sitting where she was supposed to be. 

  Because we'd hung out around our mom when she was almost ready for work she had staticky hair and her bathrobe over her work clothes.

  the pink foamy kind

     

The barn house collapsed.

  But we were like people in Babel.  This was way before quasi-sciences had proof, and thetecould be casual collaboration in fluid situation.  It was years before terminology like "PTSD" too.  But friends and colleagues worked through the seeming "continental divide" between creativity and fact-making.  Dropping chemical weapons on us and blitzing "crowds" with confusion-making ordinary-looking objects only made matters worse for a while. 

  People kept working on books and movies to help explain things after things had happened.  But because there's continuation in concepts like ethnicity and warring, an actual exploding gas-filling-an-area basketball was a turning point in how we had to understand ourselves as a "nation" in a world of nation and territory and all that people and place--cultural--stuff.

  We had chains of command in every not alone.  And "emotional care" teams of counselors and analysts.  We dialed it down intergenerationally.

A lot of people were brought in

   so that we could start to feel safe again.  Families were being reunited and in some cases introduced to each other.  A lot of photographs had to examined since we had language barriers that made communications sometimes awkwatd, sometimes comical, never really "easy".  People circulated lists of words in general use and some were greatly enhanced by all the learning people had done.  Some young people who'd gone to school felt behind the people working in "fields".  Group conversations took on, almost an elimination process per peoples' comfort levels and "audience".

  After they'd dug up hoarded munitions and found dead bodies and archeological stuff that hadn't originated in our neighborhood, people definitively got less friendly,. And many moved away.  This led to arguments among service people and "the news" too.

  Sometimes reporters who'd been covering their "beats" for a lifetime were "in the middle" of it.  Some shifted their literary work.  Some struggled with not writing anymore.  But lots of people got even more fierce about what are you saying.  

  "It's not political." 

  "Well, it's not religious." 

  "Is it a military thing?" 

  "Historical?" 

  "Maybe it's uncategorical." 

  "Yeah.  Maybe that."  A policeman's hair had turned white at something that had happened.  Parents, teachers, and neighbors went through a group process of sorting information and categorizing the nature of the crime.

"Achitechtureally,

  it's just a fucking parking lot mahn." 

  They'd gave chase but didn't veer off.  Wedged the fucking ship in between apartment buildings.  Then 

  My black sister slammed a talking text machine shut and was about to throw it over the pond but clutched it like a throat in front if her and shook it and put it in mama's long coat pocket. 

  It was a sub

  Rammed it wedged 

  Now we're stuck in this Godforsaken place ahg 

  Still

  There's always tomorrow.

  That's what they swore to Anashtazhia.

  The thing rang.  One hand twisted the coat pocket into a knob and held it out from her thigh.  An arrow shot through it.  She shed the coat.  Cammo fatigues.  American flag patch on arm.  Follow those thighs, a voice unseen ordered.  Another everybody's Dad grabbed the woman squarely by the shoulders.  "I need you to focus," he said looking into her face.  She nodded gently.  The man stepped out if the way of the collected helpers.

Two Directors of Special Crimes units

  Giving lectures. 

  "How do you feel?" 

  One asked about the impending weather.  One turned at a right angle and said, "I just got scalped motherfucker.  How would you want me to feel?"

Newspaper room after newspaper room

   shut their doors behind "the kooks". 

  Because inside picas and metres and maps and screens and degrees of ink had to be synchronized with radio and TV images. 

  It took many moons to show secretaries the who, what, where, and why of as many American situations as there were Americans.  

  After that I had to retire from that service, a hansome man in a cottony casual shirt with no buttons was explaining to young men and women when he saw his.  He put the teeth bridge into the gap of his lower teeth.  A finger with sandy hair near his knuckles tapped his jaw, all steel.  A military cadet coming across the brick sidewalk barely glanced over at him.  The cadet tapped on his watch.

  The secretary sat with one nylon'd leg over the boot on the ground other leg on a concrete bench.  The man in the cottony shirt had waited to hear the hourly chimes when people were allowed to move around the cabin freely so to speak.  Then he crossed the quad while reaching under his shirt.  He was tackled in a heartbeat.  The secretary went away.

"Maybe it's'n"

   Marbles shot out of the man's mouth "THE MOJAVE". 

  "HE'S AWAKE." 

  A girl with a messy pony tail stood up and put a finger in front of her lips and shooshed "everyone?" 

  She sat back down straightened her slacks and put her head on his shoulder.  "What is it Daddy?" She stood up and pulled a long skirt up over her slacks.  Pumped at the ponytail with a dancer's hand that should've matched a double hip thrust.  A gorgeous man pulled her from behind into the airplane's aisle.  Another woman pulled her slacks down as the the man rubbed her tummy and hugged her close to him from behind her.  Wanna keep dancing baby girl?  She turned on a dime and smackef him in the face.  Don't you dare.  Don't you ever.  Don't you  He grabbed her and started dry fucking her.  But she turned her head towards a wink from the man with the marbles in his mouth and yawned.  She twisted out of the fuck by corkscrewing herself out of the slippery skirt. 

A whistle in car speakers shrilled.

   Where the Gonzo muppetpuppet had been stowed, the trash can box door opened.  A pink mohawked punk pulled me inside.  Smells of leather and bubble gum.  Smells like a boy the hooded ones had decided in a broom closet eons ago. 

  "Swap?" 

  A change of backpacks.

   The man who the secretary Waaasz in dah hole?" 

The man who the secretary was sent to not interview talked funny.

  The secretary had to put an explanation as to why on the form.  The golden braids on navy blue sleeves pushed mandible back into place.  "I gueff ooooo thay," he took the leatherbound datebook from her and a boy in front of him turned his back so it could be a desk.  He wrote: bridge missing.

  Steady handed to her slight tremor.  

  He handed back the leatherbound but put the gold pen in his executive's breast pocket.  Then he took it out again, held it like a pendulum in front of the boy's eyes.  Awwfayszt heck eyeszt

  "I'll need that to record the story." 

  "Ooooft," he stopped giving the pen back and put it back in front of the frozen still Peter Pan.  Took a big popsickle stick out of an outer handkerchief pocket and tried to say, open your mouth, but his head tremored and his knees buckled and he collapsed.  The secretary dropped both leatherbound books and fell on hands and knees looking down at a man with a melting face.

  "That's not acting." The skinny-legged husband told the cold personality General sitting in the director's chair.

  "It's not LATE," she kind of curtsied or more like moved her ass out of "the customary greeting" as she handed a sachel of film reel to a boiling hot personality.  She peeked at the editing room behind that bitch saw a half drank OJ and asked, "May I finish that?" 

  "You're not welcome to stay." 

  The secretary reached for the OJ.  Forearm smacked. 

  A gaggle of gagged people were being led away.  Stern, straight-backed, crispy clothed people were being led in.  The last one in the line entering the cubicle round handcuffed the smacker.  Shoved the woman's face up against a bullet proof garage parking booth window.  The secretary waited until both cuffs were on then took the OJ, went in front of the smushed face and dropped the kids lunch orange juice into the open backpack.  Bombs away, she mouthed.

  Up flights and flights of stairs the golden emblem on the sneakers never stopping.

  A rap on a door.  The sneakers tiptoed away.

  The door started to open.  The silver belt tip on a black alligator boot stuck out.  Straightened itself perpendicular to the hallway then swiveled in a horseshoe shape.  The door was pushed open further by a hairy arm with one medical bracelet on it.  Sherry sat back from kneeling with the boot on a stick that had a screwed on swiveler.

The two small people in layers of costumes

   walked down the set street.  Frankensteins of time period and style.  One stopped and like an elderly person put a hand on the forearm of the other.  I smell her muda perfooooom.  The one with a hand put on backflipped, put a foot on the downed child's chest, and pointed the thickly painted white rifle in his face.

  In a real close basement women trying to find heels that fit from a cache of stolen goods heard the tiger roar of the I'm in charge of the, this.

  "What was that?" A dressed to the nines very tan woman with an Egyptian wig on sideways asked out loud.  She was looking at her barefeet and 

  Two moms climbed up on a gigantic spool to look through the basement window.

  Puuuuuuuul 

  "Does anybody else feel that?"

  A boyman threw the Navy ship rope down.  Stood off, heaved in air, couldn't stop laughing.  Men rushed over.  He bent over stitches in stomach they put a hand each on his back and talked in each ear. 

  The main in the dress shirt diaper loin cloth yellordered PUUUUUUUUUL

  "Waaasz in dah hole?" 

  The army person didn't look up from the sandy and grimey papers on the clipboard. 

  The woman in a Russian cakebox fur covered hat and parasol was lifted by two very large hunks of manmeat by them hooking arms under her armpits.  She flew like Mary Poppins through the air and landed like a lover mountain climbing a bed of silk sheets.  Or like a tree frog against a windowpane before a hurricane. 

  Two sets of hairy arms clad in various gold bracelets picked up the umbrella and the little lady.  She brushed the Victorian skirts off of sand and dried oil grit.

  She crossed her arms and tapped a lady's Victorian boot.  "Waaasz in dah hole?" She asked again.  Her lips puckered.  Her hand reached into a waistcoat pocket and she pulled out a compact with lipstick tubes pressed against.  A boyman sitting in a lawnchair under a table umbrella spit, out past his mile long legs.  He crossed his arms over pounds of gold chains.  Pulled feet in tube socks toward himself to slightly bend his knees.  Then he sat up, switched chairs, put a ballcap on a little off center, and sounded like a singing gangster when he made pistols of his hands.  "Waaasz he do?" 

  Just then a troupe of international soldiers rounded the octagon field around the air traffic control tower.  Marching in unison.  One arm stiffly swinging.  Rifle spears steady pinpoints from above.

  People hopped to

  The storyman got under the patio table frame without its glass.  A similar looking boy man sat in the first chair.  He stood up abruptly.  "It waaasz

  "The hole? 

  "Oh that." He waved away all of it with a wave of the hand. "It was the Donald's." 

  The woman put the compact into her other waistcoat pocket and dropped a lipstick.  The tall boyman leaned down, hitting his eyebrow on the table, picked up the tube of lip rouge and put it on a ring pillow before acting like the pillow was a waiter tray.  Bending at waist, rising tall, gyrating hand in air to introduce the object back to the woman, "wallah mademoiselle." She plucked the tube from the tooth fairy pillow.  

  "And who are you?" A real cultural attache inquired.

  Act nonchalant. 

  Nit valiant? 

  No. 

  They entered the espresso bar. 

  A teenage girl with hands on knees like a sportsplayer and butt facing a robed "prince".  The man's pants were down around his ankles.  She was clothed.  He did not seem to think he was.  He talked to the butt as if talking to Marilyn Monroe's face.

  The people sent to collect the teen because of swift-moving diplomatic changes were dressed as a family of tourists.  

  A milky haze hung in the air. 

  An octopus of an ashtray was still smoking on one of the tables. 

  "Reminds me of a ghost town out west back home," a "mom" in a long jacket with purse strapped neatly across her front ("like a cari-bini"/"was her idea to even play the cop parents") and sneakers ("most up-to-date version or pair or whatevah") said.  It was her "job" ("not for a gold bar mind you") to give the next "clue".  Man thinks he's still in New Mexico, the grown ups had said of the kidnapped delegates piling up on the tarmac behind the control tower and so inside the shimmering molten heat shield that mostly just looked like a mirror.

  It had been abandoned.  The limo.  

  The teenager's hair was cut with a straight razor and a military official in tourist clothing one giant hand mandated the chaffeur cap onto her head. 

  On one of the planes that had been grounded too long, raising suspicion a neighbor's dad went down the aisle with a pillow case.  Waluables?  The man somehow blocked tears from coming out of his eyes while he thought of a line.  We missed trick or treating.  This year.  A skinny guy in golf shoes and handcuffs dug into a pants pocket.  Dug out a rubbed bending melted, cooled, melted cooled bite-sized chocolate bar and threw it at the man with the pillow case.  It bounced off his nose.

As soon as they got back,

   people always had questions.  Some of the men were just miffed but some were jealous types.  

  "Write them down on this," one slid a quarter-sized legal pad at the gang of us.  "I truly must sleep." 

  A middle daughter rested on the sofa until she heard snores.  Her kneesock blanched white lily feet would be tap dancing and jig pattern memorizing while she rested.  I'd giggle and she'd be surprised I was seeing her and she'd fold herself in half by bending her knees and tucking her whole self into her nightgown.  "Is she asleep?" 

  "I tink so." 

  "I'll take a turn guarding so you can sleep in a real bed." 

  She patted the seat beside her on the sofa.  "Sit and tarry a bit." 

  "Stop and smell the roses?" 

  "Cha." 

  The wall clock ticking would lull us almost asleep and then gong us awake. 

  Almost as soon as she went on the eleventh gong to sleep in one of the bedrooms, I snuck in and listened to the breathing and snoring.  I hate to do it but; I shook her boney shoulder.  Her hand snapped awake first and she slapgrabbed my forearm.  "How dare you."  The daughter was behind me with arms under my armpits and dragging me backwards.  I kicked and kicked my heels on the cold slate floor to try and brake my removal.  The woman pulled the sides of a cardigan across her bosom and put on glasses from the nightstand. 

  "Drop that womanchild right this minute." 

  She did.  And I pulled my pajamas under my trenchcoat down from being all bunched up.  Then got on my knees and said the Hail Mary out loud, start to finish.  She waved off the "overly energetic daughter" with a please excuse us, we didn't know you'd be visiting at this hour.  A playing card in between the sides of the keyhole slid over a view. 

  I marched on knees and sunk my head into her lap.  There, there she patted my hair. 

  "Let's make tea." 

  In the morning my mother crossed her name off a list.  She put her head in the sling of her palm and sighed.  Her breathe blowing out made the lost and found church lady's hat with the feathers dance.  When she went to the bathroom I peeked into the folder under the list of writer's names.  An article about Moslems tipping over a car.  I scrambled back to getting to sit in the rocking chair. 

  "Maybe you might could ask any of them.  The question." 

  "I doubt it." 

  She unwrapped shredded wheat and broke it up just a little so it wouldn't get soggy. 

  "Why do you doubt it?" 

  "Because I can't 

  "Can't what?" 

  "Remember something." She unscrewed a jam jar and spooned brown sugar over the cereal. 

  "What?" 

  "Not like amnesia, don't worry I'm not turning into your father." 

  Silence. 

  "Well, not totally." 

  "What did it have to do with?  What you've forgotten." 

  "The machetes and the windmill people." 

  She put milk on her "masterpiece".  

  "They said a word like interregum or something." 

  "I didn't hear them say that word." 

  "You," she pointed the spoon at me, "don't hear everything in the universe missy." 

  "No, I don't, but I catch a lot of words and impressions." 

  "Like a fishing net." 

  My half a cup of coffee was almost empty.  "I have a writing thing at the library today.  I'll just walk up." 

  She smiled goofy.  "Then I get to play in the workshop." 

  "All day." 

  "Until I have to make dinner." 

"Truefully, somepin bad gonna happen."

  One morning there was a knock on the front double-dutch door.  Mom opened the top so the little kids following like me and my shadow wouldn't be seen.  There seemed to be no one there.  The teeny tiny feathery leathery black lady had turned to go.  Mama carefully stuck her head out to view the porch.  She's the one 'splains what the Scissorbird whistles, I whispered in mama's ear.  The woman turned almost all the way around just as she was finishing putting in her false teeth.  "We're here." 

  The woman fished in a Dr. Suess canvas bag.  "What's this about?" Our mom blushed deep dark red.  The woman pulled out a pile of little sheets of paper rubber-banded together.  She was also putting on her reading glasses as she said, "Prolly a washing machine 

  "Don't have one." 

  "Maybe a toaster 

  "Mine.  New.  Have receipt." 

  The woman licked her thumb and looked at the names on top of the invoices/rental slips.  "Are you Mrs. Lane?" 

  "Just an aunt actually. Taking care of that poor woman's children." 

  "Does she work?" 

  Mom kicked the bottom of the door and bent down saying, "Oh! Child.  Whatever possessed you to run right into the door like that?"  She picked up a toddler with a burping rag being held over its forehead.  "Gotta go," she hugged the child to her and carefully closed the top of the door.

At a certain height

  most of the boys in the vicinity of "home" looked gingerly through Daddy's closet for their manning up moments.  Our mother made all the girls be busy. 

  And we girlrace got good at appearing to ignore them.

  Our cousin Pierre picked the cranberry blazer.  And Dad who was dressed as a basketball player/referee/bathrobe & slippers/tube sock'd kind of guy had his hands on his hips and was trying to see over Pierre's shoulder at what his fancy had landed on. 

  Dad sat on the edge of the bed and Pierre in our Pop Pop's chair.  A woman in silk running shorts and a sweatshirt "bedazzled" with all color words that read: GO TEAMs. and various cloth tape measures draped down the front of her spoke lowly to Sherry as she pulled the door closed quietly. 

  "Let's let the men talk.  Where's your sewing machine?" 

  "I'll show you Melinda.  And how about a cup of coffee?" The woman got closer and hunched a little bit and put her hand on Sherry's arm.  Two steps down Sherry stopped short and drew in a little breath.  "Oooops. I told a little fib." She adjusted the washclothe in her underwear through her "peasant skirt from India" and the woman asked, "Anything serious?" 

  Sherry sat on the step, so did Melinda.  Sherry crossed one leg over the other.  So did the other woman.  Sherry reached a hand up to the railing.  Mellie, as we came to call her, put her hand up on the side of Sherry's head.  They sat like that.  Letting a rush of memories fill in between question and answers.  Two almost teens came barreling in from outside, opened the fridge and gulped down all liquids on the top shelf.  Then came bounding up the stairs. 

  Won't ask.

  Don't want to know.

  Into Dad's room. 

  Down the steps slowly.  Carpet being cleaned, slippery in socks, stocking'd feet, the ladies went into the dining room.  Mama flicked on the light.  The sight of the chandelier alight brought an ooooooo, and eyes falling onto lace table cloth atop a plastic felt-backed table protector.  The woman stood between two chairs.  She wasn't much taller than either.  "May I sit?"  

  "Please." Mom pulled a chair out about six inches.  The woman looked into her eyes and asked, "Do I seem that tiny?" Sherry's rings hit the table to make a sound, it reached the chair back in a thumb to pinky knuckle distance.  She laughed.  "What's WRONG????" The middle sister was dressed as a nurse; came in quickly and demanded to know.  "She laughed."  Mellie thumbed at Sherry.  "Not possible," said the black wool caped nurse in the paper white hat. 

  The middle sister went back into the kitchen and poured two cups of coffee.  Mom laughed again.  The paper hat would've fallen off if it wasn't bobby-pinned on she poked her head around the corner so fast.  "Who's fibbing in thar?" 

  "Speaking of fibs Melinda," mama caught the woman's eye and held her gaze.  "It's not my sewing machine." 

  "It's not?"

  "No.  When Ed and I got back to Town." She pulled the chair out farther and they both sat on halfa seat.  "Yes?" 

  "Well, we had to rent our former possessions." 

  "So, it's a rental?"  Mellie crossed her arms and leaned her elbows on the table.  From under the table each cloth measure was pulled and rolled so it would fit in a tuna can.

  Certain of the girlrace who'd had a taste of life outside the convent took to using rags and cloths for their monthly friend visiting.  This so boxes of pads could be used by the service workers.  A boy at school wigged out one day when he found a bag of bloody rags.  Although "the kind" was not store bought the girlrace would snag an extra when piddling somewhere that had pads in the restroom.  This had to be explained to the younger girls as they were getting accused of stockpiling and stealing.  But to questions about bodies and hormones, a dreadful silence seemed part of a cover up. 

Into a pallisade of light

  and shadow.

  The tallest of us stopped.  Hands down release 

  guns in the dirt 

  Heads lifting like hot air balloons finding stream.

  shafts of sunlight bulleting silty masque of air

  The taller hooded, silky velvet dull glimmering now, fell forward on knees from stopping on a dime.  Others, figures emerged from large and small tunnels.  Squared rocks scraped atop piles of dirt and rubble.  Grimey hands thrust out of shotgun framed holes, feeling

  Way up, a slope like a pirate's plank, scrambling, fish out of water wiggling back up the hill of platform, a caped person sliding backwards falling heavily, thud.  The human chain clinging to each other suddenly broken into an Aframe.

  Rumbling gathered like a tornado.  Some of the squirming people in the human chain dangled as one side of the Aframe beneath them collapsed. 

  Seven minutes later dust was still settling, but wooded slats in between us all and the creamy sky were dropping pellets.  Pebbles and poop.

  People looked at wrists without watches. 

  A dog whistle was blown.  The hooded broom closet people got to feet.  A stone sailed low and straight into the taller one's face.  It bounced willy nilly near a kid's old lady shoes.  Chin jutted.  Ear cocked. 

  Response slow someone somewhere said.

  Lip smacking from under the sack hood. 

  Wants water, was vaants vaatewr.

Thru the tunnels of rubble

"What does your brother

  call this place?"  

  "The Port of All Times." 

  Little bands of men in partial uniforms were walking up and down the avenue.  Some kids had their nations flags.  Mothers asking, Have you seen?  Have you seen? 

  The lady with the almost white blonde hair had been told stay right there.  It was like watching a movie on the outside of her sunglasses.  What had been quiet had come alive.  People were suddenly busy but not doing much of anything.  

  "Why do you think the people who got shot 

  "Got shot?  I don't know." 

  "No, listen, 

  "I am listening 

  "Why do you think they had street clothes under their kitchen uniforms?" 

  "Did they?" 

  "Yes." 

  "Are you sure?" 

  I was and then suddenly I wasn't.  It was a feeling in the air like looking at a mailbox you've seen your whole life in an earthquake.  Like everything was shaking and people had to suddenly do whatever we had to do to not get shook apart.  

  The woman looked at her wristwatch again and again.  "Come on for fuck's sake." 

  "What are we waiting for?" 

  "Good question.  Let's find coffee." She rubbed her temple, looked at her feet in another woman's boots, and slide one leg a little left about a foot.  She waved at a curtain parted like, Hi, right where you left me.  

  It took us twenty minutes to get past four shop windows.  Finally we turned a corner, jaywalked through an intersection, and she slowed in front of a door that didn't seem like a shop or a house. 

  Inside the furniture was all mismatched.  People barely glanced up from what seemed like a paper sea of newspapers. 

  "What are they doing?" I asked her. 

  One man with a moustache and thick, thick glasses made a hmmmmm, yep, yep sound before a lot of what he said.  A nasally hmmmmm, yep, yep "We are-ah comparING stories." 

  He looked at us finally and then got to his feet.  "What's it like out there Susan?" He came closer.  His hand pressing the rims of his glasses closer to his eyes.  Real close.  Hmmmmmm, yep, yep "And THISS one is AhmeriCAN?" 

  "I didn't kidnap her or anything.  Where is coffee?" 

  The man clipped his photo loop back onto one of the many strings around his neck and hooked his arm around hers.  And they went towards the kitchen.

  "Is the sausage on fire?" She asked as we made way into the thick greasy smoky area. 

  Hmmmmm "It may be but my whole world could burn down now, and I wouldn't mind." 

  She patted his arm then dove to the little stove/oven and grabbed newspapers to grab hold of the skillet handle.  She moved it off the flame.  Repositioned the wad of newspaper and took the skillet to the sink beside the appliance and put some water on the smoking heap of meat.  The thin bead of water turned the thick smoke to steam and she looked at it closely.  "I think we can save it." 

  From a pocket she pulled a box of matches, relit a gas burner, and used a can opener to open stewed tomatoes.  From the can she poured some of the juice into the skillet. 

  "Eggs?" 

  The man pointed to a windowsill.  A little basket with cloth covering five eggs. As the smoke cleared it became obvious that there were a lot of small appliances and clocks and radios with plugs dangling from every surface.  But only one outlet.  And what had looked like clothing piled on a chair pushed into a table was breathing.  Snoring in fact.

  Susan glanced back over her shoulder as she stirred the egg with a fork into the mix in the skillet.  Then she directed her voice towards a broom closet.  "I guess it'll settle down NOW that the Americans are here."

  Hmmmmmm, yep, yep. The man shuffled his heel-less slipper feet to the broom closet.  A muffled woman's voice asked, "Tey are?" 

  The man's hand barely touched the little door knob but it moved almost imperceptively.  From inside it turned a little bit more like a question, forward then back. 

  The heap of clothing lifted then snortcoughed then fell back to rest.  Susan put the quiet finger up to her lips.

  A grainy whistle blew.  Susan's back strengthened tall and straight.  The front door opened and shut.  The broom closet opened a crack and a dainty finger pointed at me and then beckoned.  I silently pointed at myself.  The hand made the okay sign.  I started to tiptoe toward the broom closet.

  Loud European noise-making outside the window.  Men, young, playing up having been out all night.  One entered the kitchen, took off a neat thin brimmed hat and perched it on a pile of newspapers.  Made way to Susan.  Stopped and ran his hand through the air around his skinny grayblack jeans and alligator boots like a magician conducting the space between real and illusion.  She didn't look at him.  He mimed slumped shoulders then, and crying.  Then drew his hand way up in the air and made a flying bird wing of it before smacking her ass.  That made her jump but it was slow and little, nonplussed.

  In the broom closet it was dark.  Before my eyes could adjust someone lit a match.  A round, round woman in a black veil and shawl was lightly and evenly breathing and snoring.  Over her. Swords hung on pegs.  Two skinny sets of legs made railroad tracks between the narrow walls.  Sitting opposite each other with black flour sacks over their heads and hands tied with rope behind their backs. 

"It's loping around Sarge."

  He'd placed the backpack radio on the sidewalk, knelt like a knight being knighted, and put up the antennae.  A sailor all in white.  One man had picked up the little folding cafe table and another had removed the spitoon.  "Siddown."  One General ordered.  Another put his bracleted wrists out of his dark green suit coat, showed both palms and backs of hands, then reached towards to sleepy man's shoulders.  The bullish man put up hands to fend his face but the Army man clutched his hands in his own.  It looked like they were praying together, then the man was pressed down into the chair.  He put his face in his now handcuffed hands and sobbed.

  The sailor on knee unpocketed a manual, a folded string of flags, and spoke coordinates into the machine.  We heard it before we could see it.  Guzzling and gunning sounds.  Whoosh.  It went by silently.  No more people could be seen.

The skeletal skinny man held his arm

  out stiff palm facing forward and bulldozed open saloon doors spraypainted gold.  The stainless steel kitchen had fabrics and body fluids on every surface.  The stiffarmed man had one piece of medical tape where his nose should've been and his teeth were just a bloody mangle in his mouth.  The palm forward broke a man's neck instantly.  The man didn't look dead.  Just stood there as the blood gushed out of his fat dirty pore nose.  Then his eyes rolled back to white and he fell backwards.  His head guts splattered on the small tiles.  Without looking the skinny man pulled a revolver from his suit jacket and shot six people dead.  One slumped but didn't sink.  The living skinny man collected guns as he made way back to the slumper.  The only one not temple shot.  "You gotta problem with what just happened here?" The man's eyes were starting to fill with blood dripping from where the bullet had cut across his forehead.  The skinny living man picked up the meat cleaver and cut off one of the slumper's hands.  He shook off the suit jacket with the pony on a stick arm and zipped up his black leather jacket.  "That's for the gold bars," he said real loud to a deadquiet and cleared of crowd village corner part of the avenue.  The woman drove up on a motorcycle.  Got off.  Removed a helmet that looked like part of the bike, tossed it to the man who donned it and got on first.

  "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT BY CUT," a thinning fat man with binoculars on a strap and a cigar scrunched between his teeth came out of a building across the street from where the motorcycle had stopped.  "I'm ah hard of hearwing now too."  One man said to the other, Let me look, Jesus, that WAS fast.  The skinny man closed his eyes.  Still have those eyelashes.  "Could be this." The woman opened the helmet face lid and looked.  She nodded dramatically.  Fished a Brownie camera from the motorcycle and took a picture.  The bullet was depressed into skin that had froze and thawed, froze and thawed.  The thinning fat man flicked at it with his middle finger.  "Ooowie" the skinny man smacked at the hand.  Act like lovers, the man warned and moved off. 

  "Like they're not going to see a golf cart, with it this quiet." The man put his whole hand in his mouth and whistled.  A scrappy dog came out from behind a canvas that looked like an alley.

  Left, left, straight, knock, straight right, right. 

  "Did you awaken the prince?" 

  Never answer.  They don't speak to children. 

  The Sister in all black garb curtsied her head as she stood.  "They'll need a fresh set of sheets."  Footsteps running past the courtyard arch, long-legged boys playing tag, had the priest handing the cup and saucer to the Sister.  Her nerves were vibrating through her hands and the thin china rattled as she forced them together and onto the desk near the phone. 

  The auburn-haired woman took a deep breath in, held it, then blew the labor pain out slowly.  As the priest hurriedly walked towards the courtyard she slightly lifted the long nightgown and her barefeet left sweat marks on the rubbed to polished hallway floor.  "Good morning Sister Barbara." 

  The Sister slumped down into the rolling chair and tucked herself so that the points of her habit were exactly one and a quarter inch from the edge of the desk.  She slightly raised her long black skirt and unsnapped a leather band holding a pistol to her thick cottony stockings.  "Good morning Miss."  The barefeet got close as the woman pulled the shedyule to an angle where she could read it.  Out down from one long arm in sleeve and into her palm came the camel-licked glass of hard salt. The items were exchanged.

  When Sister Barbara waddled away the woman sat in the chair.  "What's the face for?" 

  "At least Rosemary clears a space for me in the file cabinet." 

  "Different kind of secretary." The birds chirping.  Horns on cars and bicycle bells.

  The barefoot nudged my leg.  I whispered into the wristwatch now.

  "Whose this?" 

  "A detective." 

  "What's on his head?" 

  "It's a graduation cap," the man said of the parachute/kite/jockey outfits pie hat.  A whistle blew.  A unicyclist came wheeling by and braked in front of the man's dress shoe.  Two people did a windmill cartwheel stunt across the hallway.  

  Not a scuff mark, the auburn-haired woman left the detective in charge.

The woman peeked through the slats

   of the mini-blinds.  "That's him," was all she said.  Then as the detectives removed the man"s blazer from his head which made him start to bolt in the ankle shackles and he wailed, "Oh. No.  I know where I am," she folded her hands in front of her and said, "Let's listen." 

  What seemed like a long list of fuck yous and fuck hims later.  A Four-Star General placed a manila folder on the table shoving him against a wall.  "So he don't tip ovah," a uniformed police man explained of his quick thinking. 

  "What about your wife Mr. X?" 

  "He hasn't seen me since the poison dart in my ass debacle," she explained. 

  The man had launched into a scroll's worth of curses against the woman. It was like he couldn't stop.  Finally, the woman came out of the room with several children seemingly going to the elevator.  She paused and told the room, "I may or may not be any or all of those things.  But I know damn well I am not a dirty democrat." A woman officer directed the bunch to the stairwell rather than have them wait for the elevator. 

  "WHERE ARE THEY?" The man's question echoed in the stairwell.