[9:26 PM - WKTL - The Bob Bolin Show]
Oh my God, ladies and gentleman, this is a complete surprise--and an honor--ladies and gentleman, we have James Tate here in the studio, just showing up right now. The James Tate. Welcome to the show, sir, I just want to say--wait, what is that? Where did you get that? I didn't think--I never--that can't be real, it was only a legend, they said...
No. Wait, no! Please, don't level it at anyone, no! What are you--
Oh my God! Ladies and gentleman, there was just this horrible flash of light and Marcy is gone! Completely gone! Nothing left, just--no, Mr. Tate! Please! Stop!
[End transcript]
Melting
A story began to formulate in my distracted imagination, though I kept up the pretense of walking leisurely beside her in silent calm. In this story, our long winter coats talked in hushed voices, and the moon watched us with a dilated pupil. We had mislaid our mouths at a Surrealist exhibition at the Louvre.
"And then," I said aloud, "the blocks of the sidewalk unearthed themselves and formed a rough staircase, and we began to climb toward constellations that described lost fish in prehistoric oceans."
"You're nuts," she laughed.
But at night's end she still kissed me like sun on a leopard.
"And then," I said aloud, "the blocks of the sidewalk unearthed themselves and formed a rough staircase, and we began to climb toward constellations that described lost fish in prehistoric oceans."
"You're nuts," she laughed.
But at night's end she still kissed me like sun on a leopard.
Answered Prayers
Your average assassin aims for silence. Your average assassin... doesn't use a rocket launcher.
On stage, under the moon, my quarry lifted his arms repeatedly in a beseeching gesture.
"Let's make some noise!" he shouted into the microphone. The crowd's response was lackluster. "I said let's make some noise!" he repeated.
I pulled the trigger. Sometimes, not being your average assassin yields some really cosmic-level hilarity.
On stage, under the moon, my quarry lifted his arms repeatedly in a beseeching gesture.
"Let's make some noise!" he shouted into the microphone. The crowd's response was lackluster. "I said let's make some noise!" he repeated.
I pulled the trigger. Sometimes, not being your average assassin yields some really cosmic-level hilarity.
There Is No Emo, There Is Barely Goth
In the post-noon midwinter sun my vampire black cloak reappears. A humble but screaming-to-god grunge anthem that sounds like it was recorded in someone's summer garage rumbles with pixelated audio edges and drives, drives well. All the greats ended with feedback. It's over too quick and I collapse like a puddle of oil into the glistening snow, steaming there, freed to become a silent creature of the cold, clear wind. The earth sighs. The cars with wet wheels are soughing down the avenue. I am old and young both for a moment, remembering when depression tasted like nourishment.
Private Dicks
A frog on a high wire--not just a frog, but one of the Koo-veya, amphibians of a humanoid build that had traveled along a parallel evolutionary path. They often found work in circuses, but I was used to encountering them in the freakshows, not at center ring, and certainly not thirty feet in the air. His (or possibly her, since the ringmaster had not specified) skin glistened prominently in the spotlight. Did the Koo-veya sweat? The question had not occurred to me until that moment. If so it was indistinguishable from the natural secretions that kept their soft, olive-colored flesh supple outside of the water.
The performer now edging its way out into space wore a pair of canvas trousers, tied at the waist by a length of hemp rope strung with colored beads. The ringmaster had announced their name--Ool'uhvulgo--but since it derived from the Koo-veya tongue I still had no clue as to their actual sex.
Beside me, a Panther folded his arms across his chest (cloaked magnificently in seersucker) and purred, each inhalation and exhalation marked by a change in the pitch of the purr. Unlike the Koo-veya I knew the Panther well, and this one in particular. His name was Von, and he was my associate. A single golden earring in each ear signified that he was a married male.
For the record, I was a run-of-the-mill, quite single, American male of the ape-descended persuasion. Why all this preoccupation with gender and species, you ask? And the answer is simply this: somewhere in the great rolling miles of Iowan countryside there was a missing Koo-veya, female, aged twenty-nine, who stood a fifty-fifty chance of either being guilty of murder or the inheritor of several billion dollars.
And Von & Winston were on the case.
The performer now edging its way out into space wore a pair of canvas trousers, tied at the waist by a length of hemp rope strung with colored beads. The ringmaster had announced their name--Ool'uhvulgo--but since it derived from the Koo-veya tongue I still had no clue as to their actual sex.
Beside me, a Panther folded his arms across his chest (cloaked magnificently in seersucker) and purred, each inhalation and exhalation marked by a change in the pitch of the purr. Unlike the Koo-veya I knew the Panther well, and this one in particular. His name was Von, and he was my associate. A single golden earring in each ear signified that he was a married male.
For the record, I was a run-of-the-mill, quite single, American male of the ape-descended persuasion. Why all this preoccupation with gender and species, you ask? And the answer is simply this: somewhere in the great rolling miles of Iowan countryside there was a missing Koo-veya, female, aged twenty-nine, who stood a fifty-fifty chance of either being guilty of murder or the inheritor of several billion dollars.
And Von & Winston were on the case.
Auld Lang Syne
Another egg of eternity, tumbling on fire through the vastness of the void, collides with the ascending plane of a next heaven. There is one tremendous, infrastructure-rattling grumble like the thunder of a galaxy rousing its bones from the mire of primordia, and the phoenix of the future begins to unroll new infinite wings. In the world where things can be contained in boxes, or skulls, or hearts, a tiny pair of brown eyes opens on fresh, untrodden snow in the dawn. The minute hand continues to dance forward as if nothing ever happened other than this.
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