A List of Conversational Topics

Marilyn Monroe. Collective unconscious. Final Fantasy. Memory. Repression. Something beyond. John Powers. Whether or not genes alter during the course of a lifetime. Beards. Genital piercings. The inability to decipher dreams. Beer. Whether or not brothers and sisters are affectionate. Time travel. The sharpness of a leg bone. Having a best friend. The split in the self as more than DSM interest. Fear as intensity. Mania as beauty. Finding what needs found. Creating preserving and destroying. Pressing buttons on an accordion. Losing the self in a long trek through the desert, witnessing the boundaries dissolve.

I Still Can't Talk to Trees

Every noon, I sit underneath a specific tree. I can't tell if it likes my company or wishes I'd go elsewhere.

A Left-Handed Wind-Up at Diversey Rock & Bowl

His wrist and arm orbited his shoulder with a greater lack of gravitational pull than a discus Olympian under the embarrassing throes of Zeus' disfavor, and the bowling ball slipped from his fingers and bounced backwards on the lane.

Tom Cruise

looks like a well-bred dog.

Q: And who were you today?

A: The gal actually chugging a Milk Chug & she who snagged a noon nap under a tree in UIC's Medical District.

Q: I feel that I, too, need some nature after spending hours under 60-times-a-second blinking florescent lights cooped in an office with no way to open the window short of a well-heaved stapler.

A: Yes. But the grass was brittle.

Still Life with Little Black Girl

I thought she was a cardboard cutout. She faced me in the White Hen Pantry, straight and tall, hand raised in wave, Miss America smile, barretted head, completely still, like a painting whose eyes follow you.

The Great Race Wars

On Polk, a little black girl, barrettes clicking, chucked rocks at two white men in suits.

The Wedding Photo I Missed

Thirty minutes before the ceremony: the bride kneeled on the motor home carpet eating a banana, her dress a parachute around her.

West on Highway 121

A young coyote sidesteps across the highway's shoulder.

Chinese Fire Drill

At North and Wells, I got out of the car while waiting for a red stoplight to see where the movie theater was. My brother said Chinese fire drill! and I ran a lap around the car.

Into the Forest

We're on God's time. The backyard has twisted
away from the sun so the oven clock radiates 01:39.

A bodhisattva offers me strawberries, plucks
a voice from a toy piano. Gravity stretches
the shadows & pulls light into sycamore leaves.

The branches bend, an offering.

From A Message Dispatched to the Concrete Jungle, or Green Grass and Greener Jealousy:

I went with Todd E. down to Autumn's parents farm over the weekend. It was alot of fun. They have 300 acres of wooded and farm ground. Their parent's house sits right next to their pond. You can walk out their back door and there is a deck that extends out over the water. Fucking beautiful! We picked strawberries during the day and drank some beers at night. This was the last weekend for strawberry picking. Made some salads with strawberries , strawberry cobbler, strawberry shakes, and ate them fresh off the vine!

House Seeking

Locking my Bianchi to the gate, headphones around my neck, brown corduroy skirt, he rode up, headphones around his neck, brown corduroy pants, said You can bring that inside.

Riding the El After 3 Weeks of Insomnia

The train stopped at Racine en route to Jackson during rush hour. My head kept pace with its ghost, still rushing.

Handed to Me in an Envelope

sealed with wax in the shape of a bottle, typewritten:

"RAISE YOUR BUTTOCKS AS HIGH AS YOU CAN FOR
APPROXIMATELY 420 SECONDS

TRY IT ON YOUR TIPTOES"

The World In Miniature

On west Augusta, a knee-high little boy in a man's ball cap skipped down the sidewalk. Leashed behind him, a baby chihuaua scurried.

Belief & The Streets and Sanitation Department

At Ashland and Harrison, a city worker sat inside a Streets and Sanitation Department truck, the passenger door open for air. Professionally painted on the door was I Believe. Underneath, a tagger had scrawled Santa.

How to Make Wine by Recycling

Hungover we ate tart pale grapes from a plastic bag.

That one tasted like propane he said. This one tastes like Pernod.

You'll have a stomachful of wine soon I said.