Quinoa Barn

Without the Filter of Loathing,
these moments might be
painful enough to remember.
Poignancy is spread too evenly
across the laminated planks
of the middle chanks

when it comes to you and me.
Can you still feel the time
we discovered together
that birds are blind in the dark?
If this place was real,
we'd be part of the scenery.

Standing in a puddle at the
bottom of a quinoa barn,
watching an artifice prove it
can only hold its own weight,
nude farming suddenly rings
trite and fake meat, ungodly.

"For Donna"
Hoolie

High Chank Turnoff

Ancient mulatto news anchor and his wife, a K; What kind of messed-up children would they lay? Therz mixed-up situations everywhere; We've got them coming at us by air. We've got to hit them in their nests, where Peg and her assassins rest. I see The Chanks one day with clear skies and no grid, no worship or fear. Devils hide above; wisdom rides alone. We will set bait and track them down. Wayne [Disassociated]

Island of Stability

She rubbed the back of my neck while I slapped the bongos. I think it was the best jam I ever had. I found surfaces I had not yet discovered. I played them like an instrument.

The Filter was down, and anything could have happened, but that night she got back her hands: a lady of power and majesty, a real scum bag, perspiring harsh pollen. We were making music.

The Wall of Stress had disintegrated, and our love could flower. This is the way we forged an Island of Stability: her heavy ass and my diamond-like passion, in an open world's vortice.

Phyllis

Idling Caprices

Now that the swimming pool had been drained for good, Mike took up with new ways and associates. One amante at the Preservation Society, another down at Shiv Council. A scientist, an accountant, a bum. Let bloom a goatee and a black, open-shirted look. Got into trouble with rents and men all the way to Cliffe Suites. Until he showed up here one morning.

"I'm looking for Julio."

"Do you mean Hoolie?"

"Told me he lived out back in the shed."

"We don't live here at all. We..."

"Julio." He was looking over my shoulder at I guessed Hoolie.

"Mike." Hoolie says behind me. I step out of the way and they say,

"Just because there's no water, don't mean you can't dive."

"We squirmed like eels in another atmosphere."

"Even while lawn salad bobbed on top."

"But now it's a neck breaker."

"NO. We've got lungs now. Ears."

"We've got the Filter down and K's rampaging."

"Yeah. I let 'em out. One of my pranks. Come dark-rule the chanks with me."

"NO. Come with us. We're deities."

"NO. My life is free."

"NO. You are a slave to shiv and idling caprices..."

As the sun set, the two worked out their issues. Silhouettes in pink on the listing log cabin porch. I, a woman, could not intervene. I wasn't even sure if Mike had the right guy. Hoolie isn't Mexican.

Chama-tilly

Canned Corned Beef and Cream Corn Casserole

Chama and Ilyn hid out in the dark cabin. After a while they started asking each other what time it was and then after a while longer they stopped answering. Chama explained later, "We felt that what happened had certainly been important, but we were nevertheless left dumbfounded. Then we began to chafe at the practice of assigning significance to events that were painful and therefore disturbing but really no more than blips of chance on a wheel. The filter wasn't working and a few of the flakes had already been carried away. We could hear commotion, heavy things dropping on pavement. The safest thesis statement? 'You just never know.' But also the most unsatisfactory. Then we decided we just had to break down and create meaning, like the opposite of breadcrumbs, tossing out floating disks on which to step across the Crack. Meaning was in our heads. That was what we were born and trained for: this was our moment to shine a light, as if, and leave nothing in our wake because there was nothing to leave. Everyone in fact paid us for that. Ilyn hurried and thought up some songs. I scarified and painted my chin. We found a canned corned beef and cream corn casserole in the freezer."

Mountains Signal Disturbance

This is how much I am willing to channel everyone's jagged waves: they will chew me as on a spit until I can regurgitate love for each one of you, my enemies.

Alternately, I stand and piss a long and dirty fable, as I am unable to abandon all the crammed-in tackle I've been pulled into an angle with: there are those who need me.

Unhooked, some fish with ripped lips just truck upside down. Ery tam a gal stand up an shake her fleas, pups come crying with concussions and they bobbing requirements.

Giant Cranking Engines

Wind makes the hills shimmer with light be-
cause 150-ft turbines crank their shells and
spill friction into every living room and den.

Their howl is an avian or canine call, a harm-
ony of inter-special gaiety. The low one drones
to all: "Hear my prolific growl. Take my free

issue." Others ring shrilly, morbidly inviting.
Jangling crickets tamber nature's consent, ig-
norant. All-night criminal traffic now wafting

in from the 10. Bitches stretch in the sand, ne-
ver yet having met up with a scorpion. Lit ho-
opties creep by to the petrol stand, buffeted.

Hystadelic Rejoinder

Sylvia: I don't want to put away dishes with you while you're in your underwear.

Tom (turning toward her in grey boxer-briefs with a sauce pan in one hand and a rat's tail shivknife sharpener in the other): I want to open up some opportunities for you. To talk about what you saw. I know I was all wrapped up in my time experiment, and nothing registered. Not time. Not even horror.

Sylvia: Time lies, you know. It's a liar. Put on some baggy pants and we'll talk.

While waiting, Sylvia stands absentmindedly pressing what seems like her taint against the back of a faux-Rococo dining room chair. It boasts a darkly varnished hardwood patina, and it's downright cocky about its Shorn Crushed Red borganna brusquely shielding all the parts on which one might normally leave prints. Bare-flesh contact with wood, tile, lead causes Sylvia to auto-hypnotize and occasionally seizure. Even through knits, that kind of pressure triggers a not unpleasant hystadelic rejoinder.

Since that first week when Tom began trying to explain his "announcement" about his "Pax on Us" goddess coming to save the middle chanks, it had been over. Now crime was their bond. Tom's agreement with Collie was so strong, the power of his surrender so profound, that they could only dance with the beckoning animal that kept them stepping on. Tom singlemindedly distribute shivplate, stone compasses, Hopinaskipina for his corporment sponsors until his ears bled for lack of Filter of Loathing. Everything was dephallocentri-size now.

Tom: I'm back.

Sylvia (opening her eyes): Oh.

Tom: Are you calm? Why don't you sit on that for a moment.

Sylvia (lowering slowly, bracing herself on the borgana armpads): It was a bird.... It was obscene. You never believed me; no one did, and I lost my job. Now our whole county can't leave, and our essential compositions have shifted dramatically from gaseous to chemical.

[FLASHBACK: Going over the conversation in his mind, Tom recalls a strobe light of important snippets, a bucket of chicken, Patron shots. He squints, and spits. All he can see is her lips talking. What he hears makes him want to make her stop.]

"...one wing, but like a cape. You could say pleathery. White veins...

"...I thought I saw it again last week, but high up. It looked like a letter K. Going backwards. Flying with its legs spread eagle.

"Are you listening, Tom?"

intraceptive missionaryism

NO SHOW OF BLOOD CITING.
We noticed as we swung by to check for blood on your door
that there was none. and now, in the light of our torches,
you seem quite agitated, maybe insane. we are afraid for y-
our soul. we are afraid of what our God might do to you if
we decide it is appropriate. He may cause us to harm you
badly, and your family, and your future generations. we are
here to perform an intravention to protect you from any
further danger. Do you have a knife, or have you lost it?
Where are your lambs-- or have you failed to fulfill even
that most basic of norms? You are harming everyone by your
non-conformism. You are attacking our way of life, and we
are tired of being victimized by your mocking, obscene exi-
-stence which is only meant to cleverly highlight the futi-
lity of our Reproductive Circle.
...
UNAPPROVED DISCONNECTION FROM COUNTY FILTER, GRID, OR DISPENSER.
FAILURE TO COLLECT PROSCRIPTIONS.
We noticed as we scanned your home that you have taken the
dangerous step of disconnecting from your county's Filter
of Loathing. This will mean that the intended effects of
the drugs we have proscribed for you which were meant to
counteract the sickening effects of the pulses will spiral
out of control with nothing for them to heal. In addition,
the local Pharmsupply has informed us that you have not e-
ven picked up your proscriptions for several months. We h-
ope that you have not engaged in this type of antisocial
behavior as the result of financial difficulty. We care a-
bout the wellbeing of all members of our community, so we
are generous to remind you that discontinuance of a manda-
ted service or medication does not constitute release from
responsiblity for payment.
...
[Text of two ancient tickets found in Peg's glovebox, clipped to the back of an expired W.A.S.T.E.]