aonair.

our words will be simple, our passages to the point.

The Neighborhood believes itself drifted into decay;

in the ‘burbs it goes about its business, quiet & neglected.

but today, we’ll be magnanimous for a moment

& mow the frost-tipped lawns,

giving brief attention the sagging rooftops above our red noses.

The Often Orphan & Sosh are at odds

& poor Charybdis just cowers in the corner,

willing the weedwhackers to a volume greater than the voices.

she’s a little liftoff-challenged these days.

Chimaera gets it

& picks her up in his shiny new somethingorother when the dulcet tones of discord dominate the sound waves at home.

many a night she hops in beside him

& speeds off to recreate that from which she’s fleeing.

& through this problem of nature vs nuture

the mowers drone on.

undertrykke.

The man with the mirror-fingers emits a low whistle.
“Boy, you really did the number on these babies, huh?”

Unsure whether a response is expected/required, Yvaine - or is it Charybdis? - grunts noncommittally.

“I haven’t seen a sitch like this since ’74.”

The disembodied mouth in his chair doesn’t seem amused.

“So, ah...what’s the story? Unfortunate encounter with a...jackhammer?”

His patient’s garbled gurglings are of the indecipherable variety.

“What was that?”

She spits out the gadgets & wipes the blood from her lips.
“It must’ve been the bullets.”

His eyebrows rocket to his hairline & his eyes slither to the floor.
“...ah.”

She shrugs.
“I bite things.”

erba.

The old man with the camera tries her patience & evades her understanding.
Why does he mark his presence & preserve his time spent here?
More to the point, why so fondly?

She grins derisively to herself.
Once a tour guide, always a cynic.

Skye vacations in parables.

With unseeing eyes, she considers the circular seal which represents her literal past & figurative future.

Casually, The GentleMan In the Suit leans against the railing to her right & reads aloud- he does enjoy brochures.
“Why stay in one place when you could be in four?”
Glance = bullet bra.
“Why stay in one piece when you could be in more?”

A scowl, a flick, a fold, a silence.
Hers, hers, his, theirs.

“You can’t live in four corners, you know.”
‘Terse-yet-offhanded’ is copyrighted & on her resume.

He grins like a jackal.
“You can pick one.”

Her shoulders heave.
“I like lightswitches.”

taevalik.

Charybdis runs in place, pedaling her boot-clad feet belligerently but going nowhere.
Held by Sōsh’s invisible pinch, she’ll lash about to no avail.

One must pay one’s dues, intentional membership or no.

Yvaine steps over the cow patty & keeps walking.
She eyes up the tree stump lounging languorously in the center of her plot & raises her axe, muttering threats of destruction.

The image is kodak:
She lifts her arms as the buildings breed mushroom clouds-
Laughs.
Dancing to nothing but the hope of an opus that hasn’t yet been enchanted by paper, she’s all summer smiles & sunshine; nuclear winter be damned.

Oh, Skye.

There may be a new contender in the ring; news is still a mixed bag of jumbled & mum.
Placement: firm pro.

And so the celestial bodies turn.
Meteor showers bring fallout, but goddamn are they a sight to behold.
Sign the mailing list & watch the Stars fall.

end transmission.

kilele.

Like a cursor on a bone-white page,

Subtraction.
This is a subtraction equation.
She looks at her watch (the object in question).
Its mathematical terra-bound spiral matches...

Thoughts shift to the natural disasters filling the space between the ellipses in the sentence last.

It lines up.

The tornados, hurricanes, waterspouts, and maelstroms are always headed for the same place.
That damn four-letter word.
We don’t speak of it.
WASP Rules.
[this.is.how.we.do.things.

this.is.how.we.do.things.]

Jumbled in the jungle, drowning in the air -no water necessary-
Compasses are for pussies.
If one can’t use the heavens which were alloted to us for this purpose, one must just deserve to be lost.
Mustn’t one?

‘Good luck, Chuck,’ she thinks, ‘with your wind-up dolly.’
The doll hospital’s out of business, and there’s a wrench shortage.
Hard times, these.
She was torn out of her pretty plastic packaging long ago by an over-eager two-year-old destructivo.
Batteries not included.

d - o - w - n

we go.

elliler.

Ten points for execution.
The motions are performed perfectly.
Definitely an A in Determination and Composure.
The sad smile is a nice touch, too.

Not a hair out of place, she checks off her lists methodically.
It doesn’t make the rainbows on her arms fade any faster.
In quiet defiance, she begins wearing pearls in matching colors.
Acceptance can be beautiful.

It’s the small victories.

The drone of the vacuum is no engine snarl,
but it gets the job done.
She hangs a speedometer above her bed by way of substitute.

Days go in, and then out again.
Perfectly.
Of course.

Now, if it weren’t for that pesky, gnawing hole somewhere around her middle...