Have you seen pigs?
Ken Sparling

I had to go to this meeting where they were going to fuck this guy over. They were always fucking this guy over. But I liked him. I liked him because he always looked like a guy who was getting fucked over. He was always putting his hand on my shoulder. Looking at my feet. Smiling. As though he was getting fucked over right then. "Ah," he seemed to be saying.

*

I knew him when he could stand up. But he can't stand up anymore. It's their heads that I noticed. Okay, who's the guy who keeps saying maybe, and who's the guy who keeps saying no? Who are all these guys?

*

I wanted to see if I could see things as though I'd taken my eyes out of my head and laid them on the things I was trying to see. As though my eyes got out beyond the things they went to see, and when they saw what they went to see, they saw more than what they were seeing, more than what could actually ever be seen. This is the way I wanted to see.

*

I don't remember the guy's name. And Donna -- I made that up.

*

This is just to make things easier.

*

I mailed him the last lock of hair. Left the post office. The sun bright. Eating shadows. He wrote back. "This is not the one." It was the last. A woman seemed to offer me something, but I was mistaken. Her shadow preceded. Her face followed. By then she was gone.

*

You have to begin every day every day. Each day you begin the day and then you begin the day. Each day is the best day, and then, a while later, it is the best day. In the morning, you move like the day is just beginning, like it is morning and it is hard to believe. Then you walk into the afternoon, which is long, and prone to telephone calls.

*

James remains in the car. Radio on. Jane gets in. "I told you about malls," James says. He turns the key. The engine fires. Jane pulls the door closed. She looks down for the seatbelt buckle. Hair falls in her face.
"I told you about malls," James says again. "I've got a theory about malls," he said.
Jane sucked her finger.
"How is that?" James asked.
"It's good," Jane said.
"There are no malls," James said, "only mall entrances."
"I've been in malls," Jane said.
"No you haven't."

*

I could be interesting on a structural level. Structurally.

*

Hair was on the floor. Many hairs. Together. In groups. Single hairs floated down. Stopped. You thought they were going to stay in the air. Eventually they fell. Got on the floor. Other hairs joined them.

*

They wanted us to have fun with our mouths. I wasn't having fun with my mouth. That's what they were telling me to do. But I wasn't doing it. Finally, she went in the water, but she didn't take her shirt off. I would have had fun with my mouth if they weren't telling me to. I would have loved to have had fun with my mouth.

*

One way home is the same as another. One way is maybe farther. There may be other trees, other items by the sidewalk, things out to the garbage that you can't believe, partially completed buildings.

*

I thought, Fine. I thought, Christ. I took a square block of emptiness. I ate the steak in front of me. When the steak was gone, I put the fork and knife on the plate and watched the air outside the window where people blew it from their nostrils.

*

I'll just drive the car. I'll just drive home. I'll get out of the car. I'll be home. Then I'll go somewhere.

*

Behind the lake, where trees meet in frothy multiples, the legs become useless. They walk in modes that bypass certainty, making rules pay off like oak headboards battered by evil.

*

In order to reclaim anything there would have to be a decision. In order to make a decision, the rich loam would have to be spread. You would have to spread whatever it was that needed spreading. Things would need spreading. Growth would once again become primary. Death would become the simple interruption it always was.

*

She was looking at me. Have you seen the pigs? she asked. She continued to look at me. I had seen the pigs, of course, and I was sorry I had.

*

Getting ready to go into a bank to get some money is like the same as running out of money, or the same as practicing what you are going to say, or laughing. I tried that thing where you don't say anything.

*

I was looking for the right word. Or, you know, the right set of words, because one word won't accomplish much, usually. Like the right set of features on the right little boy. The right eyes overtop the right mouth, with the right nose in between and -- above -- the right eyebrows. Not beautiful. Just right.

1996 © 2004