Lynn cancelled my ballet class on Sundays due to the incessant fear of cats she shared only with her Great Aunt Anastasia who now resided in Greece with her duck and broken hearing aid. The nurse, who bathes her and listens to her fragrant stories of mystery, romance and stale potato chips, is an elderly woman with false teeth and a true sense of grief for missing and exploited macadamia nuts. In the year 1974 she single-handedly created the Lost of Macadamia Institute in the East Coast, the first of such institutes to flourish around the world.

there are arms and legs

there are arms and legs behind the counter
who dares to say today what became of the torso
the left eye was sinking behind
cascades of miracle life

sometimes I wonder
under the young apricot tree in his
gustav of a backyard

how come reactionaries in the dead of winter
enjoy the basking of the sun

when did he ever become entangled
in such a glamorous web of tangerines?

here lies the answer
in my hands
in my hyperactive exultation
in the questioning look of
tender and complicated youth.

Spotty enjoys cream cheese and honest cowboys, especially if they come in the same container. The limousine he used to drive around was sticky and it had a faint smell of agoraphobia. Very slight, but very distinct.

Salty were the circurmstances of his arrest. An incalculable sense of fatigue overtook his carefully calculated body and resting his head lightly on my pillow, he became disoriented and oblique like the slow, deafening sound of a leaking balloon.

Olaf

Olaf was I man I spoke with when I was in France. He said he found me particularly repulsive.

He did.

He did it with a smile and then he patted me on the head as he walked on. One could not fault him for his observation since it was true. I knew it well.

He said it so non-chalantly and with such warmth and distaste.