IS AS

The ground falls to the tray melding with the deceased ways of troping and mellowing out for more uptight renditions of nauseating soliloquies pent up and squelched by cattle cubed and hammered into submissive prepositions where she took off her hairband and played with it while watching the children run off into the wash funny how dry those things are what a dry sense of humor the cracks in the desert are surrounded by piracy from above and below stretching your expressions until they come apart in all their horror and superficial ordering from the menu of repetitive lines of code.

I want her
to stop

Got no one with that didn't see it coming just stings saw it come and drip and pour like an old filthy bathtub that wants to vomit but can't but does it ever so slowly and painfully just stings.

"I want her," she said to the stuffed fish.
"To stop?" he asked looking at the tan spot by its gill knit shut.
"Among other things," she said looking past him to the china closet filled instead with papers riddled with algebra.
"Among other things?" he asked feeling like he had to shit but knew who wouldn't be able to again.
"That's what I want her for," she said thinking of the feathers that stuck to the carpet under the bed under the ceiling under the sky under the universe.
"My time here," he began squinting at her hair limp with sweat.
"Among other things?" she offered tilting her chin down to the broken vacuum cleaner under the table.
"Among other things," he trailed off in a haze of certain exhaustion.

Her notes
mixed with knuckles
expelling anxious misgivings
palms turned up then down
pretending to force stale air
to the rest of the room
the message will get across
eventually after they've left
and forgotten
all we've tried to erase
no longer scrawling it in the dirt
behind the heel prints


- Max Stoltenberg