In the red-bellied cup,

rests in the last drop

of broth flecked with miso.

The tips of my chopsticks,

too slick to grip

its silken facets,

splice whole into twin

jellied fragments:

white legs and a red hood.

Some days I wake and I am made of jaws.
Poppy, I will take your throat
and make it a cold and thrilling song.
I thought you slept beside me in this matted hole,
but my dreams draw you out of me.
Your throat is a waxy candle melting,
tearing itself for food.

The moss has soaked up all the sunlight,
and now like minor notes
it vomits light back dimly.
I will come for you when no one waits,
thin like a hand lacking at your thigh,
smoke. Your blood prefers its vices
in a glass: I will teach you to swallow gin.

The good live to see their hearts dismembered.
I feel a tight relief that something can be broken,
that you are glorious torn.
It is beautiful how the many parts
cut the inward cage:
no good to me whole. I wish
you would run faster.

Granny Chief sat and lived in her stuffed sofa chair, room for one,

bottom cushion fat and arm covers of thin cloth, knit blanket

draped blue on the chair’s back, round as a top eyelid.

Her hands stitched pastel daisies into pillowcases

as we sat piecing puzzles on the low brown table.

We ate pretzel sticks from plastic bowls,

bowls squat on beaded coasters;

I thought they were pretty enough to be hats.

They slipped off my clean hair, crumpled on the linoleum,

and I blushed.

We would kiss her cheek, before we sat at the low table,

but we never asked why she was Chief,

and not Granny with a pretty first name, like Helen, she must have had one

when her cheeks were firm and pink, and she flirted

before a husband, daughter and grandsons,

boys who threw apples from her roof

or shot at the neighbor’s wooden leg.

- Wm. Shakespeare

As men stick colored pushpins into
grayscale maps, tracing trade patterns and
bemoaning the tragedy of steel shortages
I imagine him, larger than dreaming,
gliding somewhere down the Nile,
flooding himself with wine and lust
to the point where order became
incomprehensible, ridiculous.

They say in dying, blood rushed
from his swelling breast. I imagine the clay
there still perfumed by those gushes,
those crimson testaments to vitality.

She, not caring to give herself over to
another Caesar slipped into bed
with the asp, clutching it to her bosom
(as she may have him, only nights ago).
Death hardly perceptible; had she
merely fallen asleep with a new lover?

Confronted with realities
(and not conflations of dreams)
there’s no heroism in dying for
drunken delusions of love.
Yet there must be something more
than the pallid practicality of snakebite.

After a frantic rubbish rummage,

there’s no sign of the bones,

those bastions of calcium

that were,

in fact,

a pamphleteer.

(What are the odds,   

       the odds that Thomas Paine’s remains

would be under your bed?)

Dawn breaks on the cycle of arm and hoe, one man casting up the soil in a whirl of pollen under the coral clouds. The cold snap has not left the air. The seeing sun draws two shadows on the plain, he, and his sundial, a marble column. The orbit of swung stick, the heartbeat of the sharp head sheathing in earth, drawn again and flung out over one bronze shoulder, the silhouetted spray of peat and pebble, tiny patterings returning to earth. The man pauses, stares across the flood plain at the ascending eye, his intimate moment with eternity. He sees the gold legion scud before the sun, its own storm, its own dust. When the army kneels before him, the sun has crowned the sky’s dome, their shadows are not pillars but pools, as if each has sweated shade. Towering above even the crest of the man who speaks, and who reaches out one hand towards his wrist like a scorned lover, the man draws himself up and casts down his hoe into the pillow-bed of pollen. In the doorway of the stead, after kissing his grizzled, black-browed wife, plump and aromatic like all the peninsula women, the man takes up the offered sword, bequeathed of peace, singing, clean. The old armor too, somehow snaps over the barrel column of his body. In the back of the moiling legion, youths laugh in scorn. One slays a calf with his sword through the small fence of fig-tree wood. Another, unlettered, stares at the sundial, making slivers of shadows on it with his dagger, finally dragging his gloved fist across it, crushing the small marked sphere, bending the stylus.

When they have buried the innominate dead, and laid the swords in lines to mark the losses of each regiment, and have piled the heathens and horses and war-hammers into a great pile and burned it, the general and seven gold-clad men gallop away. Returned to his farmstead, dismounting, he glances at the southern sky’s smoke. He neatly tightens the leather thongs around the bundle of reeds, and gives it with his sword to the man, who kisses the fasces and sheathes the swords. The great man’s face in the sun is dark, lined, bloodied and rusted. ‘Quid tempus est?’ he asks. The horizon is still smoldering, smoking. The sun falters in its throne, the eastern sky is ashen. ‘What does the sundial say?’ The other man squints. His helmet crest snaps against the wind. ‘Nona hora.’ And stares confusedly at the sundial. The general looks upon it as well, frowning. ‘No. It was noon when we started this madness.’

On the eighth Thursday of my freshman year in college I finished a biology assignment, ate dinner, packed my bag, and by 7:00 began walking east toward the train yard. My ambition was to catch a freighter from Spokane to Seattle and be there in time for my high school’s homecoming game. The idea had captivated me for weeks. In class I was visited by wild train dreams and tingled with excitement. In my small stuffy dorm room of textbooks and pizza boxes I’d hear the blast of a train horn a quarter-mile away and smile with anticipation. I’d studied maps, read books, and e-mailed experts. The time had come.

For warmth: a puffy down jacket, a hat, and fingerless gloves. For sustenance: 4 Clif Bars, pumpkin seeds, an orange, an apple, beef jerky, and water. For orientation: a printout map of Burlington Northern’s rail system. For leisure: my school’s journal of student-submitted writings on travel. For posterity: a digital camera and a notebook.

I reached the yard around 8:00 PM. Waited in the broken concrete of a demolished building, alternately sitting and pacing; not tired, running like always on nervous energy. It was quiet. Few trains passed. A meteor rolled across the sky. Once, the lights of the bullmobile (railroad police car) sent me into the bushes. It was about 2 hours before I found the train I wanted – full of shipping containers; had to be headed for the Seattle port. It was moving so I sprinted across the tracks, scampered down a dirt berm, grabbed a ladder and swung myself onto the car. The train kept going for a minute before stopping, allowing me to get off and size up my ride.

It was a long intermodal double-stacked with shipping containers. Both ends were lost to view where the track curved into darkness. My car had a cozy little well where I could lie down out of view, out of the wind, and under the stars. Then the air brakes hissed and the entire train shuddered forward. Soon it was accelerating through the light-speckled city with terrible squeals and groans. I was euphoric and flushed with excitement and disbelief, panting and grinning and screaming my triumph from the back of an iron dragon as we roared out of Spokane. The city lights disappeared before I stopped screaming. Then I pulled off my boots and just lay there and watched the world flicker past. Every so often we’d fly through a RR crossing. There’d be a flash of red and a rhythmic DING DING DING with solemn cars on either side. We cut the middle of nowhere in half.

After the most harrowing urination my life (it goes downwind no matter where you point) I sought the warmth of my sleeping bag. At some point I dozed; woke up maybe 20 minutes later flying through a town I didn’t know - a laundromat and hardware-store kind of place. After miles of grassland and little farmhouses with swing sets out front we sidled up to the moonlit Columbia. Oh, how I felt like Woody Guthrie. Soon we were at the Wenatchee yard and the train slowed to a painful creep. I was paranoid in my inexperience; the suspense was terrible. Would I be caught? My car stopped underneath a floodlight. It was 2:00 AM. Down the tracks I heard car-knockers working in my direction. After 0 minutes I tugged on my shoes and ditched my car to explore the yard. I’d heard that yard-workers were friendly towards hobos but I played cat and mouse out of uncertainty. For three hours I breathed steam and watched them hump cars around with tremendous racket. One train did leave but just as I decided to hop it, the last car rolled past and left me tired and frustrated in the shadow of a shipping container.

 My decision to hitchhike accompanied a brilliant sunrise. The air was crisp and cold and as I followed the tracks to the edge of town the railroad ballast crunched under my boots. A twenty-year-old welder in a dilapidated Pontiac picked me up outside of Wenatchee. The Pontiac’s engine was louder than the train. He shouted that he was cruising for pot and commended me for being “pretty ballsy for someone from a Catholic school.” We parted ways in Leavenworth. I walked 30 minutes into the canyon before I got a ride from a gentleman and his 4-year-old son. For the first hour we talked about train hopping (which he had done to get to a Grateful Dead concert), rock climbing, music, and school. After that I slept upright and woke drooling with a delirious recollection of my situation. He dropped me off in Bothell (a Seattle suburb) where a bus driver gave me a free ride to another stop. From there I paid $2.00 for a $ .50 bus fare to Bellevue but was upset because they didn’t give change back. From the Bellevue transit center I walked home and surprised my family, who didn’t know I was coming. I went to the game; our team won 52-7. I was very tired. When I went to bed I had not slept for 38 hours not counting an hour of napping. I had traveled 300 miles on two dollars. My feet were sore and blistered. I was happy and satisfied and already planning my next adventure.

Loosening joints
widen my pelvis into a protective sea
blue veins darken the ancient cartography of

breasts
uterus
placenta

channels of lifeblood to the sacred passenger
intersected only by the silvery fish lines
of flesh pulled into taut, overworked sails
marking the voyage long after my perfect daughter
slips out from the waves of my imperfect vessel.

Does your eye hide the unspoken truth
you borrowed yesterday?
A realization you waited
on empty containers of sidetracked
memories, filled with regret
it wasn’t made right.

You were never meant to walk
a line between idealities and reality – an indecent
truth to endure. What does it mean, spontaneity
in your thoughts of what it could have been:
you, me, or this thought
of a place unknown to men,
to saturate our knowing, our seeing
of blinded eyes

Limb by limb, we walk through
the woods of your thoughts, inspecting
branches and fallen leaves, unamused
with symptoms of time. Do you
miss the possibility of unnumbered moments
within your grasp, the warmth
of words against your ear, the epicenter
between the eternal moment of our touch?
Do you know it? Can you
seek it with lips, unblinded?

Cast a fire, forget the trees.
Feel the glowing red hotness against your cheeks
and the throbbing of my gut
to tell you the true meaning
of that which you call hope
and that which I call an impossibility.

Let the sky bleed the truth.
I cannot give you what I can’t make
true. This poetry you call writing
is a forgetful tune.

The phone tastes of your voice, which had charmed me

once over sautéed spinach and then

my first soymilk-and-egg-white omelet.

Now a year later, without the white wine,

a salty bitterness.

I thought my eyes were ready to hear your monologues.

The old woman in the terminal looks at me

with sympathetic glances.

You don’t deserve my airy tone,

“I’m flying to San Diego, not D.C.

I know you don’t sleep alone.”

God rested on the seventh day.
The Supreme CEO sets the standard for sabbatical intermission.
For some, sabbatical rest is the ultimate proof of a Benevolent Being
Who grants welcomed recreation for reading, writing, and decompressing.

Most sabbaticals are not as dramatic as the Genesis big bang.
After all, God did emplace a lot of infrastructure in six poetic days.
Quite a Guinness record of divine imagination
That still holds to this day.

And while the seventh day reigns as the first official chill out,
This interlude is not about self-absorption or avoidance of responsibility.
Sabbatical implies intentional reflection on universe and humanity.
Gazing upon all that was made, God said, “It is very good.”

Sabbatical leisure allows us to revisit the energy and mystery of the first six days
To ponder the pervasive imago Dei stamped in nature’s core,
Located in the structural identity of creation, the DNA of Adam and Eve,
Their complex what’s, how’s, differences and relationships.

In the midst of constant busyness, overextended commitments, and endless distractions,
Sabbatical calls us to stop for our own sanity’s sake and for God’s sake.
Renewed with serene insight, we return home with refreshed lens
To appreciate our dignity and beauty within the majesty of this graced world.

Space between space fills us with holy no-
Thingness, a great boundless void in which mere
Flakes of unfathomable lightness snow,
Ever falling. The realization we’re

Nothing more than soft melodies, quiet
Strands played upon incorporeal strings
Plucked wistfully by some unseen quartet,
Dawns as our twilight beats her purple wings.

We lack the ears. Hearing improperly,
Confused by the false pretense of tense, dead
Men stumble in and out of life drunkenly,
Till collapse, warm nothingness, into bed.

We live falling, singing, stumbling through time
Unaware a perfect sonnet needn’t rhyme.

On the night ferry
I watch the white flecks
Of waves raise themselves
Up, fly away as
Gulls.

There above my head,
Where ten Thousand wings
Flutter-- the wake of
Commuters floating
Home.

It doesn’t seem difficult,

so I’ll do it later.

Tomorrow is a better day for essays.

Tonight I will spin under a half moon

in Mission Park and climb

the phallic art, searching for the

beginning of gender. I may think

about World War II and why men were

“breadwinners” in the 50’s. It may help

my essay. But for now I will not

analyze the social restrictions Shakespeare

batted down like cobwebs in window

corners. Right here, in this moment,

I will consider Battered-Wives’ Syndrome,

not because it pertains to my essay, but

because I may decide to be one some day.

The press coverage wouldn’t be

that horrendous. And now Philosophy

creeps into my head. If I were a battered-wife,

would it be a free will choice, or

would it have been determined long before

my birth, mid-day on a June afternoon?

Ayer would say my thinking is irrational.

Another would proclaim, “Gays can’t

be battered. It’s a choice.” And still

another, “It’s a chance we women have to take.”

That last one irks me; as if women

must bow to male counterparts. I’m

beginning to ignore the first spectator.

He knows nothing of struggles and I feel

pity for him because of his overly cautious

life. I have considered bending gender roles.

Once I thought of shaving my head

and wearing flannel to stand against

society’s unjust expectations of what

women should look like.

I have no maternal instincts. Children

are alarming specters who cry for

no reason, who need attention at all

times and my mind wanders through long thickets of thorns.

I would forget my child.

And because of this

I am deficient as

a woman.

I do not envy single mothers.

How does gender affect individual worth in our social

expectations of families?

Maybe I should turn in my poem

to explain why gender sucks.

Here I sit atop this erection piercing

into a naked sky, partially breaking Lady

Moon, and I think:

tomorrow is a better day for essays.

After he died, his father said:
"The world is a much poorer place now."

Nobody is safe from the fight.
Just the tide that washes it clean,
singing your lullaby.
Where the starlight is you,
and the diamond-like snow of the mist
turns me back to maps of Africa,
your walls platered with geography,
your mind overflowing with dreams,
the rushing rapids where
my arms unfold to you.

Where your breath fades,
your voice passes through,
and your sound, like morning, envelops me
like the soft summer smoke of your memory.
You are not gone.
You are here in my arms,
where my hand against yours,
and my eyes turned towards you
are the way things always were.

Where your laugh is here inside me,
and your side beside me,
where I can feel the pebbles underneath me,
and the sweet warm water washes everything but you away.
For as the world falls apart,
Adam, you stay.

Shit Mary, if I could write it all I’d still iron
anvil to the bottom of my beer. Sick
again, and somehow content, or at least relieved.

My head feels like after being hit by the butt
of a rifle. You know nothing of my thoughts,
and that woman drowned years ago. Give

up on her, I already have. Haven’t dreamed
of her for longer than that barrage— we thought
it would never end, but it did and we felt sorry.

There was still youth then, and confidence,
and the feeling that you could walk away
and marry, or at least walk away. Instead

you walked right into no man’s land, tripping
on every invisible coil of barbed wire,
and they shot at you, and you just hanging

there. Later when they cleared the wire
and sent you home, you needed those cold
and twisted metal thorns for comfort.

But none of this matters now that I am walking
out into the sagebrush that is no longer a field
of grain in the wind on the side of a hill. Sagebrush

is like the nothing that crouches in the back
of ambulances while you tell a dying
man that he won’t die, and when he does

you try to listen to the shells that rip apart
the dirt road in front of you. You never
think about the man. There was fishing

then, in Italy, when she worked at the hospital
and in my leg were a million tiny metal shards
like the bird-shot in the twelve-gauge I carry.

Mary, there is a trout stream over the hill that you climb
to see the valley which looks like a poisoned meadow.
You must peel back the stems from birches that line

the game trail or they sting your cheeks like the wet
emptiness of the last good kiss. Follow the deer trail
up the hill and past the wash, then cross the barbed-wire

fence. Arterial sign that led Keats to that overwhelming
conclusion will guide you to the bank where I bed.
And when you get there you can catch bull-trout

and never throw them back.

When all she wanted was rest,

he was a glass of warm milk.

She had him

and felt an ache

in her stomach,

as she stared at the ceiling,

begging for sleep.

In this world lies a warm house in a grassy plain

With smoke ascending from the chimney.

A single path inviting you and I to maneuver the

Tall grass and occasional weed, finding ourselves

At the threshold of a tiny unlocked house.

Neither you nor I have ever set eye upon

Nor foot within and yet still feeling as if

At home.

The door opens creak-less with ease to

What suddenly appears to be a house able to furnish

Millions.

Three rooms are present at first;

Left, an empty dining room, where simple wooden table

With chairs stand and expired candles sit unlit.

Right, a woman resides upon the floor

Dressed in silken robes cascading down her shoulders

And continuing on to eclipse much of the wooden floor.

Her eyes closed with absolute content as the playful

Fire flickers behind, her shadow dancing with life.

No sound was made by us, she smiles but speaks not.

Ahead lies another room which upon entering

Unveils two men appearing to be twins.

Kneeling, bowing their heads in prayer.

We stand unnoticed as they bow and pray, bow and pray.

Our attention leaves the men after some time

And an unnoticed staircase appears in the corner.

Upon ascending the men quickly become still, in turn so do we.

A hallway dimly lit presented several more rooms.

The first houses a man dawned in feathers and paint

Looking out a window at the night’s sky chanting

In a language never heard but somehow we understand.

He stood weeping, yet in thanksgiving—that is all we can hear.

A visible moon-lit tear pads the floor as we begin to leave,

I turn back, our eyes met in the reflection, but only for a moment

As we continuously move into the hall.

Another room holds a man reading what could be poetry or jazz,

His words again another tongue but somehow familiar.

Any fear or uncertainty left in our hearts has passed

With the delight of this man’s aria.

Turning the pages without pause,

Swaying rhythmically with his prayer.

We step into the hall and with the catch of the door

The music suddenly stops.

Two doors remain un-greeted, within one

A woman of dark complexion with eyes mirroring

The surrounding candlelight paces

Cyclically around the room,

Playing her lips a song of no tone.

Never ceasing her step to notice our presence.

We cautiously dart into the center of the room

To avoid collision, the moment we step

She stops.

Timing has placed her in the doorway.

She looks up giving a genuine laugh to the sky

And continues on her pace with a new sprightly step.

With needed precision we gently slide exiting the room.

The final room presents no candles or torch

Yet it can be maneuvered by the light of the moon.

Nothing presents itself; but as we leave

The moon seems to shift, revealing the outline of a figure,

Of what size or nature we cannot be sure,

It kneels, face towards the corner.

We stand for a time easily a moment or an eternity.

Only to have it break with a hollow bell

Sounding three times from below.

The figure stands, turns, revealing a face

Which seems as familiar as a mother or father

Yet he is neither.

He puts his hands upon our shoulders, speaking,

“Come, supper is ready.”

He leads us down the hall, descending the stairs

And to the dining room where the other members

Have been waiting with melted candles now lit.

The table displays two extra settings, one for me

The other for you.

The man who led us is the last to sit,

Upon which the members take each others hands,

The pacing woman taking your left,

And the cloaked man my right.

Lowering their heads for a moment’s silence, we do the same.

The silence was broken with a knock at the door,

The cloaked man stood, opening it with a smile,

Then gesturing for those at the table to come.

Continuing his gesture to us when we did not stand.

Pushing through the members of the house towards the gateway

Reveals a sight so divine.

The fields present a crowd of people stretching

To the horizon where a seemingly mystical sun rise

Lights a million faces.

The cloaked man made his way to the porch

Speaking with a toothed smile

Painted with the springtime colors of the sun,

“Come, supper is ready.”

For the musician, it is an interesting moment—
when he decides not to strum his six-string
but instead picks up a pen for poetry,
rubbing his callouses and resting his voice;
hoping the cadenced words will keep him warm,
the way his songs do, sung just right.

In the poems, you need not worry about right
or wrong, you just pounce on that moment
when the words glide together in these weird warm
ways, when you are very careful to string
them together so that it sounds like your voice
is speaking in light or perfume: that’s poetry,

good poetry, living poetry, not dead. Poetry
where the lines are all rigidly placed, it’s not right—
it doesn’t capture the living, breathing voice
that is the voice of life as it is lived, in the moment.
Never mind the merits of the elevator string
quartet—it’s the sax solo keeping the soul warm.

Now, it might be good for waxing didactic in warm
tones and hidden meanings, but it seems to me that poetry
is really blessed because we can carry it like Ariadne’s string
into the labyrinth of all our concepts about peace and right
and in the poem, a peace is created, at least for a moment,
by the unpretentious stirring of the inner voice.

And on a night when only mist and shudders could give voice
to the warlike cold, and the struggle was just to keep warm,
you mounted the hall’s stage, and for a moment
everyone was shocked, because you weren’t reading poetry
at all, but telling jokes! Something wasn’t quite right.
Some laughed uproariously, some held on by a string

as you nattered booze, Oprah, Indians—even making a string
of jokes about Jesuits, in your irreverent, accented voice—
jokes I’m told you’ve been telling for years—and right
when people were getting tired, you stopped; warm
applause; one person asked you to read some poetry
and you said, “Poetry is dead to me, for the moment.”

I see now, you’re right—and it is a sweet and seemly thing that poetry
only really lives for a moment, like us, or like notes from a guitar string:
mortal, interred into the silence where we exhume our voice.

He says, “Tell me,” to the awkward bulk of a man, becoming in mature wisdom, whose eyes answer back, “It’s simple, just listen.” Again the boy wonders, does the man back away? When the timidity shakes itself loose, the boy smiles—again, he thinks, and the man may answer with reservation befitting his intense speculation, “Like a bowl of strawberries, christened with vanilla…often and never forgotten…punctured and the sweetness is dripping and pooling… and you’ll know it and you’ll love it…” Anything. An answer and

the boy’s eyes would shine blue, emerald, starlight, whatever. Anything. That would be it, and we could hope. Anything. A cool note of love. The persistence of joy and longing and bonding. Anything. But he won’t give it. “What you could say,” begins the boy, hopeful, “is that our beings possess an ever-longing bond, and that I can’t fail but to observe the likeness. So I’ll tell you now. I’ll show you now.” Then the trees listen. The wind racks the ear. The man takes it in. Speckles of dew, crystalline and pure, drip upon the green flannel, exploding

in a thousand fragmenting filaments—the possibilities of action, bounding, glittering—and the man responds, “I’ll tell you, just listen.”—In the infinite silence he says it: ringing metal, a concussive blast that cuts through leaf, pine, and sky. The birds of the field go up, pass overhead, and come back down to earth.

I used to wish
to get the doll
with the bright and giant eyes.
She had a skirt
with stars of gold.
She had three different cries.

I wished for her,
I cried with rage,
that doll just had to be mine.
I’d stomp and run,
pout like a pro,
but my parents just let me whine.

My brother dear,
so old and wise,
suggested a movie to see.
It had a doll
that was a boy,
dear brother watched with me.

I used to wish
I had that doll
with eyes so bright and clear.
That was till Chucky,
and now I know
to be wary with dolls near.

What’s that noise?
Is someone there?
There’s creaking at the door.
I used to wish
I had that doll
But I don’t want her anymore.

The streetlamp scatters in stark
while the fog smiles like smoke
in tapered roads where homes
root themselves in the dark.

The giant oak had veins
gripping into the soil,
like milk. They groaned as
he pulled them up in strains.

Opened, the peeling gate is
heavy in front of bare windows,
catching the broken brick stones
like teeth, scraping, sedated.

He does not know,
that he forgot
that I am grown,
that I forgot.
I used to be a boy.

In the house he stumbles,
Fumbles between tools.
Some are for cooking.
Some are for building.

Outside, I look a while
at the brick walkway. Cold,
leading me on the frozen land
where the giant oak used to stand.

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of trick cards and face makeup. His daughter filed her nails, his son had gone out for the night. There were whipped cream pies, magic wands, a rubber chicken on the flamingo beside him. A loon fought a bear on a tightrope in front of the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Seltzer bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to splash night guests from long range or soak their electronics to waste. On the windows there were drawings,

like those in children’s stores. We had dinner, chicken soup, blood dyed, a gold bell was on the table for calling a rabbit. The rabbit brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the show. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His helper monkey took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to entertain. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The clown told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: this is getting awkward. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many red rubber noses on the table. They were like fresh baby tomatoes. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It floated in there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the parties of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the noses to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something to play with, no? he coughed. Some of the noses on the floor caught the crap in his throat. Some of the noses on the floor were honking.