Thistling at the Seams

  ____________________________________________________ Hail the Size of Birth Also, hope there is no god, as you've been declaring since the hailstorm of 1979, because that would be an irreconcilable error in judgment, a dispurgatory twist. Without punishment for the ants you've killed, the times you've been late to pap smears, blew off an email, misremembered a name, disparaged accountants, you would never reemerge from the loch. That hailstorm was writ into history, blood to lit screen, by a bead-eyed miscreant. The people in town are still pissed about damage to cars they never owned. What kind of god damages cars? What kind of god creates chipmunks? What kind doesn't wear scrubs and a mask, carry water across the Kalahari to you from the magic fountain?

_____________________________________________________________ Spot I: Groceulogy in Gravel Gum in hair and cheek bloody from skidding across gravel in the trailer-park lot comes with fear and punishment: It was a picture day. I should have not fallen off my bike. This is the story. This is the lesson. This is the permanent pothole on that side street flanking the pig's way to market. I worry the biggest lesson my children will learn from me is how not to be a mother. The story rotates 180 °. Hope to god, as you stand there with your bunch of cilantro and romas  that there  isn't too much story in the woman behind you. Those big red lips,  that forward lean.  That officious maternity.  Some are eager to empty, and the sound gravels you.  Learn to recognize a eulogy when you hear it. It might be yours as you ride into the lot.