Tuesday, December 9, 2008

>CAM<



I am the president of Salt-lick Fence Corporation. We have been in business until the day I am born. Word in the trade publications is that I am not pregant or pregnant or is. I don't really care but it would be nice sometimes to know... to sometimes have a crow in my ear.

My company is dedicated to the cause of allowing Horses the freedom to destroy their boundaries if they want to. If they're getting enough salt elsewhere then they probably won't want to - not sure actually. Deer are another matter. We proudly arm each of our fences with a sensitive anti-Deer device that shoots them - that turns them into a puddle of sentient mucous inside a sausage-like membrane.

Best wishes,

-Helen Drivle

Monday, December 8, 2008

Tanny and Me

One day I ate some stale crackers.
The next day I had some more stale crackers along with some cheese doodles.
The next day I didn't have anything, just sort of rolled around a bit between sleeps.
Wasn't feeling too good the day after that. Had a headache and a fever. I went swimming in the marsh outside my shack, just floating actually, didn't feel too good but was better than lying indoors. It was still summer, the water was warm and soothing but the salty smell and taste started to give me yet another headache. I ate some oysters and kelp that I found stuck to the side of my porch.
I scraped my foot climbing back into my shack. Some barnacle-particles were stuck in my tender instep.
After that a few days went by before I was willing to leave the house. I stayed in bed and lived on a bottle of cough syrup and some hard licorice that I found on my bed stand. That was a pretty good day actually, finding the licorice really cheered me up.
My friend Tanny payed me a visit late one night (wasn't sure how much time passed since the licorice -- stopped keeping track). He wouldn't say what he wanted and just sat in a chair in a corner of my room.
I didn't hear him come in and didn't even notice his presence until I struck a match. I woke up from a dream (something about snakes in the Elymus mollis) . I squirmed around my bed looking for the matches that I knew I had folded into a secret pocket in the bed sheet.

Striking a match after a troubled dream is a good way to clear the head, it's become a ritual of mine to just peer around and get a good look of my room whenever I have one of these dreams, but this time the light revealed Tanny unexpectedly sitting in the corner looking at me.

I saw him through the narrow bars of my foot board

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For some reason I wasn't really startled, but I wasn't curious either, I was still thinking about snakes when I started to ask questions. I don't even remember the words, but it didn't really matter because he just kept staring at me. I invited him to spend the night in the chair or on the floor or where he would and went back to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning my friend had apparently left, but I found his canoe still on my porch. I thought: maybe he decided to swim home.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Monday, December 1, 2008

flace


Sadly I could no longer watch while my best friend repeated her fall from the bicycle. She wasn't ready to go the distance so we put the training wheels back on. Maybe she would never be ready. Maybe re-learning to ride was too hard. My sorrow pinched me somewhere fleshy but I bit my lip. I could feel sunlight in my breast in spite of the drizzle on my scalp.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Saturday, September 13, 2008

brakes

side pull caliper, center pull, cantilever.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Mildy Pew

Mildy Pew, boy with no eyelids. This is a rare disorder, I think it must have been because as most of his body grew normally with age, his eyelids stayed small. His eyeballs grew too until there wasn't enough thin membrane to cover them. So he could close his eyelids about half way, but in order to moisten the eyeball he'd have to keep them half closed. Visualize this: when half closed it always looked somewhat like he was trying to suck them back into his skull, holding them like this he'd roll his eyeballs up then down thereby moistening them a half at a time.

I first noticed Mildy when i was working at the night store. He wore a bright red jumpsuit and was sort of walking with quick steps along the sidewalk opposite from my stoop (where I'd be waiting to greet the occasional customer). He was hard to miss, and a few nights later I was surprised that I didn't spot him sooner, as his habit was to walk several quick steps, then stop and do a careful turn to the side as though he was being followed and knew he was being followed, but just barely lacked the guts to turn full around and confront his tail. There never was anyone behind him of course.

But after that, for a full week I watched his nocturnal habits from my stoop, his funny way of walking, the way that his eyes bulged out of their sockets, and how whenever he'd stop, turn, twist his face, lips curl up in a wince, his eyelids half-closed [each one covering the eyeball one quarter of the whole at the top and 1/4 at the bottom] and his Adam's Apple peek out at me. Everywhere you look, Mildy Pew was having a hard time.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Monday, September 8, 2008

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Friday, September 5, 2008

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Monday, September 1, 2008

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Saturday, August 30, 2008

someone said

today i was wearing a hat and somebody asked me: bad hair day? but somebody else jumped to my defense: no, it's a good hat day.

joyfulness and salvation always find you on a good hat day.

Friday, August 29, 2008

idea for a novel/a novel idea

1. He saved the pate of Mrs. Chortle Sister, but sadly he no longer knows where his own face sits.

2. On nine out of a hundred happy occasions he can bat seven innings into a figurative figure.

3. The other one infinity times he has to walk the intangible puppy through fields of frozen heads singing chattering ballads of where the wells used to be and how much longer his transom wire can bleed.

4. He knows it will one day sally forth into the glassy dew.

"them's the rules"

said smug mister Flit, with a bob of his head to some unseen customer.

"I'd rule it impossible for you to not breed with the hair of Lacy Ramsmilk, but the wife of my son's wife does not approve of bets or leisure suits. Her wife's son died trying to welch on a bet when the sap of his leisure suit got stuck like gum in the little hairs on back of his hand. We never saw from, or heard him again."

"A little bit unruly, that."

"Don't you mean a master of bent rules and rulers twisted into other people's armpits?"

"A regal swarm of bladder bees, descending in neat folds, twisting the pleats of my black socks and wrinkling my best attire is more than likely when speaking of armpits."

"I know what you mean, the drones are hard enough to kill but they breed like rabbits on fire and unless you sever the head of the mayor, they never go into hibernation."

Scut1

A picture from my sketchbook.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

chew and think

I chew slow and I think slow.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Monday, August 25, 2008

Sunday, August 24, 2008


This guy had a nightly ritual of wearing fresh Jelly Fishes over his eyes and staring up at his bedroom ceiling. Sometimes he saw colors while other times he saw silhouettes of seashore creatures scurrying about.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

TALK

So what if I sometimes pretend that other people are me? It makes them easier to talk to.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Saturday, August 16, 2008