| #1 A triangle of bees swims above me and I decide to confront my fears. I eat them one by one with little trouble at all. A humming begins in my belly. I'm late for work and as I pass through the turnstile little peonies erupt from my mouth. The flowers drop onto the ground, leaving a fragrant path to the bus stop. The vines of several morning glories twist their way from my nostrils and down onto my arms. I can barely breath. Slowly the humming stops in my belly. The bees have all disappeared, only petals sit inside of me now. My face turns a shadowy pink and my limbs become frailer and softer, my scent sweeter and heavier. A human flower cannot operate a tollbooth, and I am forced to leave my job. I, too, must join the beds of flora that come up in the spring and die again in the winter. #2 One night my friend and I begin our rituals in honor of the void. We haven't quite mastered our powers and by accident we raise towers and hillsides out of black and blank earth. Surveyors come the next day to make measurements of the new precipices for their maps. Religious persons kiss the new ground, certainly a gift from the One True God, the Majesty. Landscape painters huddle on the cliffs and crags and splay the new beauty onto their softly stretched sheets of white. My friend and I ride our bicycles through the crowds littering the street with blue firecrackers, the only magic we have left. #3 I decide to join a militia from my living room, still swathed in my bed things. Tired of my plastic pegged battleship game, I don a sky blue soft cap. Picking up my foamy firearm, I bluster through the door, ready to confront the enemy. Racing down the sidewalk, I pass the cracks in the pavement and the smart women and their even smarter babies. A wall of books approaches me, and I halt. I'm in the middle of a repository on the move. Their leader careens violently in his chariot cart, directing his army straight at me. He's a brilliant gold volume atop the stack, covered with medals and a maroon-tasseled bookmark. The literature prepares for attack, and I lie on my belly, having been warned of such sudden fictions. Retreating is the only option. I'm just a casual crossword puzzler and paperback reader. I skulk home as the other men go down with lines of foreign poetry, romanced by their shapely vowels. by mindy roth |
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