Him on the warmlight park bench he scritched his head—and out from the scalp alteration tiny birds flew out, blue and red tinybirds flowing out in spirals and in every-directionals out of his head, certain large birds also popping out and going to the fishtree branch, and he sat through this eruption. It stopped after awhile.
Still Eating Oranges
Simple single beat, what a sound, what a look. The floor was moving pulsing with the people and outside she had flower in her hair, cigarette aged style. A watercress sandwich was exchanged with a passing strangerbeggar. A man was motioned away. Flower hair girl left in a taxi cab alone back to her apart.
Still Eating Oranges
Our writer’s story Unknowable appears today in the ninth issue of Gone Lawn, an independent journal of experimental fiction. A preview:
I was listening, and I was there, and everyone was there, and then there was a dissolution. The interesting part was over. I walked away down down the sidewalk, through the snow cold, and a hand was at my shoulder. I could feel it but never see it. It hung on. Sometimes it would leave but never forever. Some kind of dog walked at my side, infinite in both directions, most directions. A line of that dog never ending—an eternal recurrence. But unlike the hand, it never left. Sometimes I would look at it, and if it looked back, there was a paralyzing redness. We would go around—all three of us, or some number—to a few places in that neighborhood. To the bar, the alley, apartments, apartments, greasy spoon. Why did no one else see them? But I stopped wondering.
One time I talked to a woman, but she left. She didn’t stay like the dog. Like the hand. We talked outside of the greasy spoon. It was snowing, and she was coming into the outside when she noticed me. She said, “Oh, hi there.” And I stopped. People don’t talk to me. And I said, “Hi. Hi there.” And she said, “Are you hungry?” And I thought about how I looked, and about how I wasn’t hungry like I used to be, and I looked over at the dog, wondering. And the hand moved on my shoulder. And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “I’ll buy. Come on in here.” She was just a nice woman who felt sorry for me, ragged, Holocaust-looking. The radio inside the building was playing a song by someone who was called the voice of his general nation. The dog was in there too, filling everything. The hand was in there too, holding on. The woman was in there too, sitting down.
Still Eating Oranges
Empty room empty cage, basementfingers come under the door. The window is open curtain shifting sun setting, she climbs out of it with two belongings. Titanic pigeons in the sky and one on the ground: she gets on and flies away. Down back below fingers close the curtain.
Still Eating Oranges
Little stringthreads loose on her sleeve, a turquoise quiet. In hand she held the rock from the melting water, earlier before, and also mother’s skirt side. Invalid Walter had been visited. They visited the stained glass girl who had birth secrets in her knowledge. At the river water they had thrown nothing, instead taking a disruptive stone away.
Still Eating Oranges
