1.

biscuits shaped like battleships. cattle poked and prodded in a back room. underground. around the outhouse. ropes tossed and left hanging over tree branches waiting for lithe little necks to swim and find their way into them. sharpened tools left by the firepits. i’m a colonial soldier and i don’t know which side the indians are on. the snake slowly winding its way up the spiral staircase. the lavender smell coming out of the broomcloset. she told me she’d be away three weeks. i decided this would be the best time to strike. crickets crept back to me. we held a small convention in the courtyard. rocks tossed and landed on their sides. the bones telling us to cover them back up with flesh. flecks of paint and fools gold lay spoiling at our feet. wicked webbed things with too many toes and glowing toenail polish. they said it couldn’t be done. and all at once she came back in a whirlwind and when she did i realized i didn’t want her. and all my jewelry broke and fell off. and the doctor said my liver just about quit on me. from drinking too many spools of thread through straws shaped like elongated eyeballs. rockets away from mars. giving up the colonies there. we could have made it there maybe. when it was simpler and there were more weeds and wildflowers. and i’ve never thought too much about you or any of this. and when does the day come when we relinquish these rings which we held onto and throw them back in the stream where we found them. may they wait until some other fools come along to find them.

2.

it’s a dangerous messed up gesture which we should have practiced together in the mirror before we went out in public with it. where everyone was watching at the border crossing. and the guards all had their stun guns pointed loosely in our direction. waiting for the slightest slip up. into confusion. into whatever happened next. where i later found myself holding onto my wallet, looking at a picture of you and wondering where they had taken you. rocks i picked up and put in a little pile around me. a brief stalled attempt to build a wall between me and what happened. silt and the riverbed. a doorway into eternity. where the wind goes whistling past the planes. and maggots curl up and die and turn into little white hummingbirds. and swarm around the sun which turns out to be a big yellow egg frying in the sky, shooting down shellac and nectar in varying torrents. miscalculated figments of imagination. racketeering which was supposed to work out another way. i almost left myself crying there holding onto a shred of evidence. and then all at once three people slipped around me. and i realized i had fallen into their net. there was no way out but to grow wings and flap up. which i did. which i should have done. loosely adjusting my belt and the things left hanging their. scalps and hatchets of the unfortunate indian braves who had crossed my path.