The Distance: Randall Cunningham and the Infinite Run

December 27, 1992. The final week of the regular season. The Eagles hosted division rivals the New York Giants and were looking for a win to increase their playoff seeding. They were down 16-10 and needed to score a touchdown on the game's final play to win. The Eagles were pinned down on their own 24 yard yard line. The Giants expected some trickery, a Statue of Liberty play, a series of laterals, in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to score. No one could have possibly imagined how long this play would take. That, extraordinarily, it still transpires to this day.

Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham snapped the ball with fifteen seconds on the clock. The Giants knew that Cunningham was the most dangerous player on the field, by far. They sent their defensive backfield back into prevent coverage against the pass, but everyone kept their eyes on Cunningham.

After deciding against a Hail Mary throw, Cunningham broke the line of scrimmage, attempting a run, which everyone had expected. What they didn't expect is that, once Cunningham was approached, that instead of pitching the ball to another teammate, he would keep the ball himself, running backwards, coming close to being caught, but never being tackled. This pattern would continue into the night. The game clock had expired, but until Cunningham was tackled, the game wouldn't end.

He has remained on the field for nearly 19 years. Fans, initially enthralled by the masterful evasion Cunningham displayed, stayed in their seats for days, some for weeks. Now the stadium seats are a shanty-town, with filthy, drunk, bearded fans waiting for the outcome, so that the 1992 season could conclude. Cunningham has dug himself a foxhole with one of his cleats, and subsisted from food and bottles of Gatorade thrown from the stands. He has advanced as far as the Giant's 16 yard line and retreated as far back as the Eagles' own two. Every time a Giants defender has come within a couple yards of him, Cunningham has darted away, sprinting down the sideline, or, on a few occasions, leaped over the defender. The Giants have massed six players near their own goal line, where they have stayed, in a demilitarized zone of sorts, making a touchdown nearly impossible. The Eagles have roamed the field, making the occasional block. Six players, three from both sides, have been injured on the seemingly inifnite play. Eagles running back Herschel Walker appeared to have broken his leg in 1996. Unable to leave the field, he succumbed to what was probably an infection and died. His body then decomposed on the field. The field itself has been dug up by hand by the players and is covered with earthen turrets, mud huts and garbage. Flies, crows and rats are everywhere.

Cunningham sleeps standing up, with his eyes open. No Giants player has touched him. His uniform is soiled and fetid and, like all other players on the field, he sports a massive beard. No one can fathom why he would prolong the outcome of a regular season game, when his team has already qualified for the playoffs. Eagles coach Rich Kotite repeatedly tried to signal to Cunningham to kneel down and end the game, but Cunningham has never looked over. Reached near the sideline, Giants linebacker Gary Reasons has told reporters that he wishes the game would end, so that he could hug his children, or have sex with a woman. The Giants, he said, have resorted to male pair-bonding. Players from both sides have been seen holding hands and kissing. Public outcry was intense when this initially developed, but since, fans have accepted the logic of it all.

America, without football, is in the grips of a national tragedy. Many fans turned to other sports to watch, but found them boring. Without the presence of the mass spectacle and its attendant commercialism and onslaught of sexist beer commercials, a peaceful, egalitarian society has formed, where there is no poverty or material need. Many believe that this may have extinguished enthusiasm for the playoffs or the next season, should they ever occur.

Married

Her lips were chapped. Because this was the desert. She was off in a little ditch, by the asphalt road, trying to get a ride while the heat roiled off and blurred everything she saw. Thunderheads were massing at a butte in the distance. They cast thick purple shadows that swallowed the hills and let loose curtains of rain. It just dumped and she could see the cloud slowly making its way to her. She could see for miles across the pastures that seemingly held nothing. By the time the cloud got there, she wanted to be gone. Nonetheless, cars were blowing past her.

At her feet, all over, were red and black grasshoppers, the size of a finger. Their collective hum was awesome, like a thick pulse of electricity filling the world. They were screwing and doing flips, making a dry pop when they snapped off the ground. They'd often land on their heads. Cars would smear them when they blew through, but it was their season out here. Fucking and flipping.

“They sure is seems to be having a good time,” the guy said and laughed. Even his laugh was fucked up. A gargle-y old alcoholic laugh.

To her right was a guy that called himself Tripper Jay. He didn't even have a backpack. He wore a kerchief around his neck and a greasy tie-died shirt with khaki shorts and sandals. It was impossible to determine his age. He talked about some war, one she'd never heard of. He'd been rode hard, for sure and had wrinkles and cuts all over his hands and face. The cuts, he said, were from his old crew. Who had stolen his gear, burned his sleeping bag.

He balled his knotty fists and said “They took my fuckin' dog, too.”

Tripper Jay wouldn't say why they had turned on him. It could have been for grievous things, or really trivial things. Rules were unevenly applied. Traveler drunks can be cruel and stupid and sanctimonious.

She had gotten picked up off the ramp in Raton, had seen him stumbling around at the ramp in the morning and not trying too hard to hitch. A ranch-hand had taken her up to where he was turning and she was very much in a remote place. She had begun walking up the highway and drank all her water, which had been warm. She had met Jay up the road. He'd been picked up later and taken a little further than her. They had played leapfrog like that twice more. Two men who thought she looked presentable enough had picked her up, but refused Jay. Some vestiges of girl were left in her, she guessed and they had minded their manners, but they didn't want some roadkill, this scraggly, wilted, crazy hippie, so she had dishonestly apologized to him, stepping up into their trucks and thought, twice, that this was the time in the universe where they'd part.

But she kept running into him. He had kept getting rides after her and getting dropped off ahead of her. He kept leaving off his stories when she left him and picking them up when they met again. They were long, boring, about the war, about traveling, good acid he had done, women.

They were standing in the midst of the mating grasshoppers, coming off the road like popcorn, and her water ran out. Jay gave her some from a gross-tasting canteen, said it was springwater, but it tasted like shit. She smirked at the thought that she might be dead, in Hell, that they would be repeating this cycle for eternity and Tripper Jay was her own personal tormenter.

“It's like it's a... It's like it's a...,” he stuttered. “A orgy.”

She imagining unclasping her knife and killing him. Could feel it in her pocket against her leg. What she didn't know is that a van was coming for both of them. That they'd make it to a town and part there. That the ride would be two hours. And that the water they shared was swarming with giardia. She saw the thunderhead moving like a drifting battleship towards them, shuddered to imagine them huddling for warmth together in a monsoon. No one was to touch her, as a rule. And it was one people sometimes made the mistake of trying to break. But in his way, he was already inside of her, his infestation, swimming. The van would get them before the rain. She didn't know that for a week, in her aching guts, that they'd be married.

Galatea

I bought one, a sponge girlfriend. You get them at the Dollar Scholar. They're these little pressed-sponge pellets in the shape of a tiny girlfriend and you toss one into a full bathtub and then the next day, you have a full-sized girlfriend made out of a soggy sponge.

The one I got was named Alexandra. I helped her out of the bath and she was one solid piece of soaked sponge, bright blue and she had a dress sculpted onto her body. She had a good shape and she had a wet voice, if that makes any sense.

Okay, I know it doesn't, but you should have heard her talk.

She knew a lot about books, but in that strictly academic way. I think the word I want is “sclerotic,” which is applicable, because, after all, she's a sponge. I mean a sponge is nothing if not flexible, but it was like her opinions were implanted into her. Which they must have been, shriveled up in her head, just waiting for moisture to blow them up.

Sponge girlfriends drip. I should tell you. That's a drawback. If I held her, I would get drenched in water that smelled like chemicals. It made the colors in my clothes run. So, while the whole idea was to just have someone to hold onto and talk to and do it for cheap, there were these unforeseen circumstances. Also, she was a good cook, but when she was frying anything, she was dripping water into the pan and oil started shooting everywhere. She had to stick to boiling things. We ate a lot of spaghetti.

We didn't agree on much. When the war started, she was so angry and I said it was hellish, sure, war, but it would be for the best. She said some liberal shit like it was just to benefit the rich and powerful. I told her that she was a sponge from a Chinese factory and just three days old, so what the fuck did she know about anything? She wouldn't speak to me for days after that. One day I just broke down and apologized. I'll tell you I cried. I told her I didn't soak her in my tub to mistreat her, but to love her. I held her. She was clammy and a bit mildewed, but I squeezed her so hard that water gushed from her waist.

You're wondering about sex. Okay. I'll say we tried. But her dress didn't come off. I mean, she wasn't anatomically specific. And I wasn't going to get a pocketknife and just cut a hole in her. Good God. It wasn't all about that. We had to do it in the shower. Let me say we made something work and she apologized profusely and that kind of broke my heart.

She was hanging out here for a few weeks. I didn't know what to do with her. I didn't think I was going to have to find her a job or an apartment. I mean, she wasn't even real. I was uncomfortable with the idea of taking her out and I certainly didn't want to introduce my friends to her. I mean, I was okay with it, I told her I loved her, but people would just get the wrong idea. It became obvious that she was out of place here. She kept getting my magazines wet. I kept throwing towels down and she kept giving me these annoyed looks, from her puffy pupil-less blue eyes. I put her in the tub, to sleep. I started to get black mold everywhere and I got this bad cough.

She dried out. I let her. I'd go to work and come back and she was sitting by the radiator, steam rising off of her, just looking at the wall, this smell like boiling cabbage and turpentine coming off her. She wouldn't speak to me. After a couple days, she started flaking and once I asked her if she shouldn't get wet, but frankly, I was relieved. I wasn't ready, not even for a sponge.

I came home one day and she was lying on the floor, a bit smaller and completely still. I nudged her and she was so light. Her skin made this scraping sound when I touched it and dust motes rose off her and caught the sunlight coming through the window. I bunched her up and put her in a garbage bag. It was so weird. I took her down to the dumpster and put her in.

Sometimes I miss her. She knew all the words to every Patsy Cline song and did a mean Wanda Jackson. The first night, we drank a bunch of wine and she had me put those LP's on and she danced everywhere. I think she was happy to be full of water. She was a little seed that had popped. While she was twirling, her feet had squished in time and she flicked water everywhere, making these little blue specks all over the walls. That was the first thing that had upset me, but I have yet to wash them off.

What Did You Wear to the Punk Show?

A poncho made of a bunch of plastic bags of old dog shit.

A fake-fur trimmed parka I found in a vacant lot, a burnt wig and spandex crusted with old ranch dressing.

Infinitesimally small buttons that I have no idea what-all they promote or rail against. "Apartheid?" Yeah! I love them! This one's just a fist. For fisting?

Boots with old dildos for laces.

My own hair, which I have beaten to a chipped and flaking consistently and painted a defiant rainbow of black, ash-color, soot-color and old-gum-disease-color.

A rugby shirt made out of rejection letters from shitty zines that have become squalid with mosh-pit sweat and the offal of numerous spider-bites.

Idiosyncratic glasses like Lisa Loeb used to wear, but the lenses are rotted ham coldcuts.

The encouragement of my overindulgent mother, inside, like this little light of mine, which I'm gonna let it shine. And some old, destroyed camouflaged chucks that Ben Weasel wiped his semen on.

A beard that looks like a small dog someone crushed and glued to my mouth and neck. Smell it when we kiss!

A bunch of surface-piercings tied together so I can go all primal and suspend my self from the ceiling and I swallowed a bunch of Dubble Bubble and dime bags and axioms carved into leather scraps and y'all can hit me with yer Louisville Sluggers until I pop open and gush that shit all over and then it's happy fifth birthday Adam, from the punx.

My own urine, on my ripped pants and like a black vest soaked with a thousand thrown beers and they're all obscure, bargain-basement lagers with industrial names like Cuyahoga, Erie Canal Water, or Steel Beam.

My own smell, which is rife with nutmeg because all I eat are vegan blondies. But don't worry, 'cause it's also gross b.o.

Alcoholism, but I'm carrying a book, so it's less that I'm an alcoholic and more that I'm smart.

An ammo belt made from used syringes, a corset made of saw blades and blood-flecked Kerropi socks.

A bunch of frayed caveman bike fashion because I love bikes and my bike and my bike is a fixie and fuck that bridge and I can't decide if I'm a hobo or fanciful and all the fucking songs I like will be about bicycles. All of them.

Some serious raver shit because I thought it was a rave.

I dressed like Lady Gaga because I am awful.

Tears streaking the dirt on my face because life is pretty hard right now.

Nothing, because it was a naked show.

Mutton at the Movies!

Mutton is at the movies. He snuck in to sleep. The first shift of ushers are long-term employees, oblivious to man such as Mutton sleeping in the back row, but the second shift is manned by high school kids, proud of their first job and their tiny scrap of authority. You can't just sit through two movies, if you only bought a ticket for one. You only bought a ticket for one movie, Mutton. You can't sleep here.

When Mutton was a teenager, and if he had worked in a movie theater, he would have gladly let someone who appeared to be homeless sleep in the back. Nam vet or old alcoholic, someone harmless. They didn't harm shit. Now, if the guy had started whacking it or yelling, he would have been asked to leave, but Mutton never would have made back-handed comments at the guy, even if he did think the man smelled like pee. Mutton had always picked up hitchers, smoked a doobie with them. He was always kind to animals.

Mutton, are you going to sleep? Hey!

When Mutton wakes up, there are three guys standing over at him saying “Hey! Junkie! You suck dick for coke?”

Mutton! These kids are fucking with you. They're asking you if the sixties were cool and what Woodstock was like! Did you do acid? Are you a crackhead? There are three of them. High school boys. In this haze, their faces are lit up like old statues in the ashen movie-light. You're pushed back into the corner, away from everyone. No one's even watching this movie. You weren't bothering anyone. Were you snoring?

Once, you went to this party. College party. Maybe ten years ago. You had come in behind some kids, after you had been in town a week or so. You thought this was Barry's house. He invited you over to play chess and drink a beer. You sit at the kitchen table. Mutton, you don't actually speak to anyone and ask if Barry's here. Why not? Are you shy?

The stereo is playing a song, repeats “This is how we do it.” Some girls in the corner start laughing. Their big bracelets swing on their wrists as they whisper through their beautiful mouths behind their hands, looking at you. They're talking like a wave, a joke is being shared and rising. You're wearing your big sunglasses and a jean jacket, like a popular professional wrestler of that time, Brett “The Hitman” Hart. A guy drinking beer out of a stone jar is asking you if you have the password. You look up, through your pink plastic lenses. You don't say anything. He waves his hand at you, come on, urging you to speak. You don't belong. He is very big and wearing a rugby shirt. His hair is tied back in a ponytail.

“Get the fuck out!” he screams and kicks your chair out from under you and you crash back on the kitchen floor and roll into the dog food dish, sending kibbles all over the floor. The room echoes with laughter. Everyone is bellowing--they've never seen anything so funny. You get to your feet and someone grabs the guy. He has his fist raised and ready to plunge into you like a piston, until you are gone. You don't look back as you get to the door. They all have money. They will all be shielded from making the kind of decisions you have made. They have been chosen. They are all saved.

So here, in the theater, you know enough to not respond to what they say. You and these kids are two different species. They will go to college and stay with their tribe of mean, pampered assholes who nonetheless rule this life. You can't be hurt, can't even really understand what they're saying and you don't know why you should be ashamed. But you can't stay. You know if you tried to fight, they'd relish beating your ass and then they'd call the cops and get you charged with assault.

So you push past them, step over a row of seats awkwardly, and go out the emergency exit and it's snowing outside, behind the theater, where you belong.

A Sampler

This classic parable was a crocheted reminder of God's presence, hanging in my grandmother's front room. I'll share it with you all today:

Jesus, I was on the beach and I saw a set of footprints, my own, because I was walking on sand and everything. And when my life was going fine, there were just my footprints. And then, when I had trials, as well as tribulations, I noticed a set of three footprints, which I don't understand, because I only have two feet and I cannot, for the life of me, think of what made the other footprint and I am deeply disturbed and scared.

Jesus said:

My son, there were only your footprints, because when things are going fine, I'm helping any one of almost seven billion people on the earth. And the extra footprint? When you were going through your toughest times, I strapped one of your legs to mine and we ran the three-legged race. And let it be known that, when you're down, I'm doing most of the work. Which I am more than capable of doing, but I just want you to know that you're lazy and it pisses me off. Why are you always at the beach?

Good Luck Mutt

I must have prayed for something over ten years that someone would watch The Great Piggy Bank Robbery with me (Neon Noodle! P-P-Pumpkin Puss!), that the same person would cock their head to hear the smashed gibberish that pours out of me and these opinions. That I could pick through their bins of stories and sore spots, or that, with telekinesis, underpants would be torn from their body! That's some goddamn witchcraft! And you read?

The falling propinquity gets to be a hurtful little string that gets plucked by anything. What was once a speeding car, driving past those receding bastard totems that would jump out and beat me stupid, were we not driving. We are not driving.

Life has turned into a scramble, like a little mouse does and the cats, clumsily charging, will be outwitted and I have no idea what they are, but they are pissed and huge and mean to eat me. But more of the same should not be harried and confused with impoverished, brothers and sisters. When at the bottom of someone's sight, just fly over them--the summation of this life being glory and no less. Little shreds that remain well-tended in place are the best ones preserved. I am now coming through louder, and of what has left, I am wearing what I was taught like a drooping coat crusted with badges that are names.

Morning in Another World

The flower pot on the patio of her apartment was filled with ashes and cigarette butts. She had three dishes, with the thought that simplicity would help her keep tidy, but they were sitting in a small, guilty pile in the sink.

She took a shower, absent-mindedly, and prepared and ate an omelet with tiny sausages on the side. Ate it off a magazine.

This was a somewhat magical world. She called a unicorn over to her window and stepped onto his back.

Whoosh!

Let me tell you the difference between this world and ours. By trekking through work and the banal, you were awarded fantastical prizes and privileges in this increasingly magical realm. At the end, it was like stepping off a boat you had suffered on, to land in a place of mystery and beauty. Believing in this possibility was a large part of making the humdrum everyone knew more palatable. The unicorn taxis, the water-spirits in the drinking fountains and werewolf hairdressers were all evidence that a better world was coming.

Our heroine would take the unicorn to get to her job, a shoe-store for the wealthy and uneasy to impress. His name was Fancycorn and he would let her off at a gas station for a few seconds if she needed something to drink before going in to her job, or some cigarettes. He wouldn't let her waste time, so if she, let's say, read a magazine before buying something, she could expect to find Fancycorn floating in the sky above the awning over the pumps, using the power of his magical horn, which, you should know, lit up and played spirited elven music when in use. To her, that was the sound of guilt. She would have to apologize to him to get him to come down, but she knew it was for her own good.

And off they would fly! Amazing!

[elven-style flutes heard]

Scummer's Strategic Reserve

Wesley and this awful guy, Crayon, who was always around, started some stupid shit. At first they collected seeds from their shaky bags of weed in a candy dish, and then, in the bathroom, cool rocks they found. I found a stash of old National Geographics packed away behind the couch.

Then it became dumpstered cookies and potato chips, shit that, under no circumstances, would it be tolerable for us to eat regularly. But there they were, in the far corner of the kitchen, a whole shitty treasurebox full.

Wesley was Suzie's brother. She had to move and he came up to take her place. This guy Crayon just started showing up, staying later and later, until he was installed on the couch. He said he was a shaman, but he was a real asshole. He just smoked Drum and watched TV all day. I think he was looking to get laid, too. We knew we'd have to get him out somehow.

The thing that did it was the corn syrup. These two stole some from the soda bottling plant out on the highway and somehow siphoned it into a half-keg, which they rolled back through the parking lot and under the fence that surrounded it. Some third party must have been involved, because they certainly didn't carry it here.

I was getting ready for work when they dragged it in. Yes, I had a job then. Shut up.

I heard alternating scrapes and whumps on the stairs, like they were dragging a sculpture or big speakers up the stairs. They got it through the door and were high-fiving. They kept talking about their "strategic reserve." You know, enough sugar to live off of. I think they were gonna put it in coffee and everything and thought we were going to be all for it. You know, 'Hooray, let's just eat a bunch of high-fructose corn syrup.'

When they told me what it was I told them to get it the fuck out of here. They were crestfallen. Crayon's stupid mohawk/rat-rail thing hung in his eyes like he was ashamed and he looked down, but dogs make the same face when you yell at them.

I got back from work. Mind you, I was gone for seven hours. The thing was tipped over and there was a slick of corn syrup all over the floor. The two of them were asleep on the couch, head-to-toe. The Nintendo was on and there was an empty bottle of Pappy Sam whiskey sitting there.

I roused them by screaming in their faces.

Now Wesley was a young one. He was eighteen and easily influenced. I could see how this type of life would appeal to him. His scummer friend could be no less than thirty and I always had him pegged for a deadbeat dad, a traveler-kid with warrants and someone who routinely burns up good faith like it was that brown, headache weed they loved, that probably cost them five cents or a crystal.

Ants were already swarming this thing and getting trapped. There was a ring of dead ones surrounding the globby puddle of it in the kitchen and a bunch more were struggling in futility to get free.

The deal was that someone else told them it was okay to keep it here for the day, one of the other roommates, Nicole. They tried to use a tap on it, like it was beer, but it wouldn't pump, so they took the tap off and poured it, from the keg. They had been mixing it with their whiskey and were quite impressed with themselves. They had made a jar of "Super-sweet Pepsi" which was labeled as such in the fridge. They had it propped on some National Geographics, under one side, so they wouldn't have to wait so long for it to pour. It tipped while they were drunk and asleep.

I told them to clean it up and they started throwing dirty towels onto it, like that was going to do anything. I told them to scoop it up with a dust pan and chuck it into the sink. I boiled a pot of water on the stove and told them to pour the water onto the corn syrup and get the rest of it it up that way. It had a taffy consistency at that point and was hardening still. I left, because if I had to look at them, I was going to just lose it. I drove out to a field and screamed in my car for the better part of a half hour.

When I came back, the entire floor was sticky and they were gone. The downstairs neighbor had left a note saying that water was leaking through his ceiling, everywhere. They had boiled pot after pot of water and poured it on their mess. It went into the heating vents in the floor. We had fucking corn syrup in our vents.

The next day there were yellowjackets everywhere. No one would go inside. Crayon was nowhere to be found and all his asshole friends in town were pretty tight-lipped about where he could be. I found Wesley at the laundromat and tried, as best as I could, to gently tell him that he was no longer welcome around here. He started crying and apologizing, but how much goodwill can you extend to someone like that? I was firm and as nice as I could be. His sister had been so sensible, so you know, I was trying to see the balance of it.

We all got evicted. It was nothing we could fight. We couldn't even go up there for two weeks to get our stuff out, because the pest-control guys had a hell of a time getting the wasps out.

Now every time I see ratty kids down by Safeway begging for change, with their fatigues and overalls, their sunburns and mangy saddle-bagged dogs or kittens tied to string-leashes, I look closely. If I see Crayon, I will destroy him. I might even go to Rainbow one year, to catch him, but I doubt I will. There are probably hundreds of him there that even the Rainbow Family can't deal with, a whole tribe of people hard-wired to haplessly dismantle everything.

Swamp Hag

Swamp Hag walked into the general store and the cascade of whispers that accompanied her up the road came through the door. She had the appearance of a vomitous burlap sack that was full of dead flesh. Her teeth, when she grimaced at passersby were horrible green pebbles.

The men by the feed barrels stopped playing strip poker and tried so hard not to blush, as the lumpy, lichenous, saddled curves of her body, under her rotten frock went back towards the ice chest. She undid the latch and grabbed two cases of beer. She grabbed some saltwater taffy and some pemmican, a free copy of Horse-coach Trader and took it up towards Dillard, the shop-keeper.

"Dillard," she croaked with her decayed breath, "you will charge this to my account."

Dillard frowned. The other items looked like pathetic little accessories to the two wooden crates of beer. It would be less conspicuous if she just bought the beer.

"Swamp Hag," Dillard said, "You have never paid your tab. I don't know why you persist in this vanity."

Such pert things were never said to the Swamp Hag. If she came into town, the people knew to placate her, to hasten her departure back to her accursed home.

The Swamp Hag looked him in the eye. Slime dripped from her hair. Dillard had wandered near her fence when he was a little sapling of a near-man and she had done for him what she had done for many of these miserable sucks of men. They would come back for further trysts, the ones that had been obviously marked and could not marry (they called this "Hagitis"), and to trade for Swamp Grog, the dangerous psychoactive liquor made from mold, bugs and swamp-water.

"Listen," the Swamp Hag said, "I am curdled and disgusting and I live in a goddamn swamp. And I drink a lot and I never asked anyone's pity."

Dillard started to wave his hands, that she should just leave.

The Swamp Hag continued. "But you know I relieved you of your boyhood and at that time, I put a hex on your precious little piece of flesh and if you or anyone else wants to deny I had them and show me disrespect, I will collect on that hex and it'll make that Hagitis you all chirp about look like a steak and a show at a ten-dollar whore house."

Dillard busied himself straightening out the counter. The men playing strip poker looked down at the table. The Swamp Hag snatched the cases of beer from under the other sundries, which landed on the floor. She walked out the door.

Gorilla Suits

Doubtless, you've all heard. About the gorilla suits in the park. How countless men, children, women, infirm and elderly were lured inside by the slapshod promise of merriment these costumes seemed to promise.

And how, once these gorilla suits were donned, they would catch fire! And the shrieks from the wearers of the gorilla suits would be anguished. But it was sort of a little funny to watch people die in agony while clutching, trying to rip off, a gorilla suit.

They were much more sinister than the two-person horse costume that made its wearers have sex that appeared behind the Diner.

The gorilla suits burned and burned, but never consumed themselves. Folks came to their own conclusions about what lesson this was meant to teach us.

Why did people keep putting the gorilla suits on, knowing they'd be incinerated? Well, wouldn't it be funny to wear a gorilla suit? It's something you always think of, but would never go out of your way to do. Maybe they forgot they'd be brutally killed.

Why didn't the village do anything about it? Most elected officials were day-dreaming about oiled, olive-skinned Grecian wrestlers struggling against each others' supple bodies, or drinking at the Village Hall-basement ping-pong table with no lights on.

She's Your Deborah Now

Downtown was not restive tonight. Sometimes it is infused with the feeling that someone is about to really snap and give everything they've got to some shouted curse or they'll try to break someone's arm to rob them, or they're said no to for the last fucking time. Or sometimes they, unprompted, sing to you. After the people that work there leave and the people who circulate through to drink start creeping in. It's like it's a canyon that contains people, regardless.

I was at a bus stop. The bridge was out to my left, the one I'd go over to go toward my home. This guy got up from sitting, leaning up against a building. He had been muttering to himself, like he was arguing in court. On a courtroom drama, quietly. He stood up and walked towards me and said I know who you are. I know your games and how you're trying to play them. You dogged us the whole time and picked at us and picked at us and picked us apart. You took her ideas and fucked with them and gave them back to her. And we were solid together and we were going to make everything that we wanted, but you just wouldn't let us. And I want you to know that I see that. She won't even speak to me. She's like a ghost and you can see her because you have blood on your hands. I could see her when she was my Deborah, but she's your Deborah now.

Impending

Slid back into the stomach pit, the slick bomb shelter inside, white fingerling mollusk turning back in on itself. Wait it out.

By burrowing and burrowing, you will eventually come topside on the complete other surface of what was to be evaded. By waiting in the ground, you rot to seed and become part of a microbial constellation, a great rhizomal string coiled beneath everything. And the string sings.

These are your real body, one that joins you to others. Nothing can be run from too long.

The world beyond the bounds of that insufficient skin and mask of face will reach in, a cold fog to wake you, or tendrils of sun that lead you out into a field where you never could have guessed what was being born, running and someday dying, the beginning of it, or a time when you can go to meet it.