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spirit car and driver goes right through you, right! Maybe you notice. Maybe no. But then spirit goes off on his own track, one completely perpendicular to yours, maybe all the way to the next town or he crosses three borders, showing his passport at each one and getting his passport stamped with artful rubber stamps. He jokes with the border agents about how the passport photo doesn’t look like him at all. He buys some groceries or souvenirs or invests in spiritual real estate. Eventually he comes back and this time he’s pacing you on the left. He’s wearing

Thousand: Two Hundred Forty

trying to get across, utilizing a metaphor with which you were familiar (but I seem to have been thinking of a metaphor with which someone else I once knew was familiar, he was big into cars, big cars, and fast cars), was a different way of looking at the interaction between the worlds. Let me go back to the highway you’re driving down, right, I don’t get the house thing, sue me, and your spirit self careens out of the right lane, the fast lane, and plows right into you, only instead of you guys getting in a big wreck,

Thousand: Two Hunded Thirty-Nine

are no crashes. Keep your eyes on the road! There are no airbags in spirit world! Uh. I call myself a butler, not a driving instructor. Butler? That’s weird. Why would you do that? I consider the person a house which is inhabited and visited by spirits. Keeping those spirits in harmony, working together for the good of all, that is what I advertise. I used to advertise, but now I get all my work via referral. I assumed you knew what I did. Why hire me otherwise? I see. Yes. We’re inhabiting different worlds. You see, what I was

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Eight

In the physical world you are driving along in your Toyota sedan convertible XL3 turbo hybrid with racing stripes. The spirit realm is the next lane over and your spirit self is piloting the spirit equivalent of a Toyota Cressilantro. If you take your eyes off the road you can glance over at your spirit self and maybe your spirit self glances back, there’s an immediate connection, and sparks fly. In your case you try to get the two drivers to coordinate who perhaps weren’t, who were racing each other, say, or drifting apart. You want to make sure there

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Seven

up to the flow, and becomes one with it. One is such a lonely number. So you imagine the spirit world to be essentially the same world as the one you’re familiar with, that’s right, Samuel? Only to the left, just off stage, running parallel. Concurrent with, hewing to somewhat different laws. Laws a mercy. That’s not totally wrong. Who could ever be totally wrong! It’s not like the universe doesn’t have enough space for every wrong to be right. Or the multitude of universes stacked upon, within, below and through. I’m going to get didactic here for a sec.

Two Hundred Thirty-Six

sparkly at that), or the number of cilia in my intestines, are these me? It’s an old question. I could count back to the first year it was asked. I’m spirit, we can do things like that. Though it involves more travel than I’m interested in at the moment. He takes a deep breath. A necessary breath or one for show? Are you doubting my sincerity? I didn’t say anything. Samuel isn’t even sure he thought something. Samuel has trained his mind to ride the currents at the border between the spirit and the concrete. He doesn’t doubt, he opens

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Five

led him through the red land, who disappeared into the pool. The blond curls, the shoulders, and he has a good-sized cock, too. Well. You look good dead, Mayor. Call me Ed. Ed. You look good. Yes. Thanks. I never really looked like this. This is my Peter Frampton spirit self. Peter Frampton lost his hair, too. Are you ashamed of what you really looked like? The now-familiar smile. Not at all. But are you your face? Are these limbs, this (he glances down at his sex) endowment, the blue paint on my toenails (yes, Samuel notes, blue polish and

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Four

into the flesh, digging with his teeth. Samuel feels a gentle pressure, like a massage, and a wetness. He looks out over the city. Half of it is in darkness and atwinkle with lights. On the other half the sun blazes, washing the shadows until they are sheer and hide nothing. Samuel looks down again and sees Mayor Rumiere, Ed, has located the pull cord; the yellow ring grip protrudes from the palm while the injured flesh drips a watery blood. There, Ed, says, wiping his mouth. He stands up, facing Samuel, naked. No surprise that it’s the youth who

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Three

they glide apart with the grace of elephants and the sun stretch its long warm legs upon the tiles like a proud spider? What do you think? Tell us. I think he took too many theoceuticals. Entheogens? God is a chemical. Who? The mayor takes Samuel’s hand and leads him out of the bathroom, both stepping carefully over the draped corpse. I’m sorry, he says. The noise in there could wake Brahma. At the window, a very nice window, you can easily forget it and drift over the city, the mayor, call me Ed, kisses Samuel’s palm, no, he’s biting

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-Two

end of the lining, isn’t it. Shut up. The tranquility, then, was amazing, wouldn’t you say? The solar disk ceased to ripple. The wind quit moaning and lay down in its own dust. The water going into the drain whispered as closely against the drainpipe’s wall as it could navigate to do. Very little splashing. The dying became circumspect. The angels, yes, even the angels, lowered their incessant and essential gossiping to a low background murmur. And what of you, Samuel, service worker, organizer, butler? How is the shine on the art pottery? And the drapes, upon the drawing, don’t

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty-One

there dead about? I wouldn’t know dead. Dead is done, isn’t it? What is dead going to do with tears! The day is measured out in soup spoons, coffee cups, ampoules, and seed pods. We carry our houses on our heads, the rain sloughing off the shingles, sluicing down the gutters onto the nice shirts our mothers pressed for us. Frankly, I think you are too tall. 3900 feet and rising? My name is Samuel P. Good4U. Isn’t. A new tolerance shall be construed over the objections of sundry restrictionists. The nice thing about asceticism is the et. It’s the

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirty

leanings. Watch the red line. No, take the red line. Line up in yellow. The linings of clouds are of a spongy material that naturally holds heat and repels cold. The ignorance of the other side has often been likened to a pizza, particularly with basil and olives, more rarely with three kinds of cheese. And this, said the angel, is what your tears taste like. Ethereal eternal tears, the tears that have been stowed in the box of destiny just for you. When did you say that? I always say that. You say that to all the dead? Is

Two Hundred Twenty-Nine

What do they come to? You mean, when do they come to? There’s nothing letting the light in. The dark room has your name on it. Things develop in the dark. Pictures come out of it to the slightly less dark. Eyes lose their red eye. Ah, yes. Look into the red, my love. Let the red rise, full of head, and spill over. Blink. Remember to breathe. Put that out there. The first breath of winter. The cloud doesn’t know its linings. Are they green? Growing and leaved, fruited and fresh. Are they black? Samuel. Listen to the green

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name is the name you give yourself. Or the name pressed on you when you’re born? You grow into your name. It’s a hope. It’s a dream. It’s a change. It’s tradition. Gathered into the tribe. Your story is the name’s story. All story gets name. Names weren’t the first words. Nowhere near. If they were, they’d be easy to remember. And you know they are hard! You should earn a name. You should pay for a name. A name should eat your breakfast. Or be breakfast. I been crossin’ names off de liss ah day. And adding them up.

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know. Muhammads? Haven’t seen one. Not lately. There was a spate. There are places in the world. A capital attitude. That’s what she told me. You are angry at me over nothing, she said. A death in the family and then what? You expect sympathy for every sob. It’s not going to happen. The world is a hard place. The stones crumble along the rim. Those are the obvious ones. But down here, hidden under the grass, the stones below, cracks here too, and all the way through. Samuel. That’s his name. The name he’s chosen for himself. The truer

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty-Six

can catch a peep. This one can hear you, you know. What attitude! You wonder what a meat is thinking, don’t you. You can lay thought eggs in their heads. I’ve done it. Makes ‘em writhe in bed, it does. The other day a Jesus was sitting with us, we’re poking it in the belly, poking it in the belly, we are, and it keeps hissing at us, hissing! Like it’s going to scare somebody. Not a demon, one of the Jesuses, blood dripping from its hands and all, gash in the side, crown of thorns, the whole bit. You

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty-Five

those painful-looking yogic positions that takes so much work to achieve. Being able to still the body does help one escape distraction when keying into the subtle vibrations. Something about this client has destabilized the expected connections. The worlds are no longer aligned. Hopefully it’s a localized phenomenon. In any case it wouldn’t be the first time. Samuel has had hints of this on previous jobs, a little doubling of the person, phantom scents and voices. Could throw you if you hadn’t any training. Samuel is listening past several conversations, most of them not taking place where the surveillance system

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty-Four

The august retrovert, supplied by the near term servant class, ordered by cinder by, a newsy crew flattering tidy teak ash avocets. Wonder of partners, the green whiff of the merry eventuality. I see you’ve returned with that headache. Let me put it to you this way. Another bath. Yes, you have not a corpse but a tinsel. Samuel takes off his shoes and settles down on the flooded tile floor of the bath. The bloated body of the billionaire mayor, neatly covered with a sheet, stretches full length on a pink rug. Samuel tucks his legs into one of

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beautiful he combines two realities, puts the stem of a striped lily to his lips and draws deep into his third spirit self its silvery smoke. “Allegro,” he says. “Another one unctuous.” But Samuel moves on across valleys of burnishment and glacial esprit. A nervous elegance destroys a stolid blanch at the union of the avalanche and the nostrum. Ms L’s face stands for the revolutionary in hard candies, but for the red stripes of the white peppermint wheel. After the rebuff of two and the commission of a lightly greased ceiling, a candled chandelier hungers into the master bath.

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty-Two

the errand, like an abraxas, know what I mean, a grand refibrillator in the sense a symbolist might enhance with a parabolic wave and a parson’s whip. Friends occasionally recompense the fandango, okay, but what I’m really after is a pulchritude bombarded with the vagaries of wine and Roosevelt heat. I don’t see why elderberries knock spiral-bound salt savages for a loop in a novena. It just isn’t video. The far version. What has to happen, even in these benighted orgiastic avenues, is welt gravy parboiled, vanishing specks of garden art.” One of the other EMTs, a black boy so

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty-One

up short of heaven, and the toe of an angel jabs him in the eye. Ms L’s third form steps out, followed by her second form. The angel, leaning from a mattress of unknowing cloud, nibbles on Samuel’s ear, the one that seems most relevant at the moment. Three emergency medical technicians are smoking in the penthouse foyer and chatting about seraphim classes. The prettiest looks Samuel over as, distracted by the nudging of the angel, he bumps a potted fern. “I don’t know,” the EMT says, “if another certification is absolutely necessary. The daylight model is a frame around

Thousand: Two Hundred Twenty

if heard with an ear he doesn’t yet have access to. Although he has been working this terrain for years now, he isn’t ready. His own spirits (or, better, one might say, those spirits that have chosen to cooperate with his business) have negotiated positive outcomes for over one hundred clients, and his reputation has been well regarded across two planes. This reality and the spirit world have been enough to deal with. But as the elevator barrels upward, at least four realities and eight spirit worlds are sliding apart and in conjunction. His stomach lurches as the elevator pulls

Thousand: Two Hundred Nineteen

rapid that Samuel’s spiritual and physical bodies move out of sync. Ms L also doubles, then triples, although her emotional affect does not alter. Not so far as Samuel can tell, anyway. And he has the advantage of being able to compare her spirit versions to her physical version or versions. In that rapidly rising elevator there seem to be multiple realities, each the sort to which we apply the term readily, a world one apprehends with the senses, a shared world, a world that behaves. Samuel hears resonances, some as song, some as noise, which might also be song

Thousand: Two Hundred Eighteen

in the bath. If he were to try to bite it, it would bounce away before his jaws, too small to encompass it, its skin too resistant to his blunt human teeth to be caught and held. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t tempting to try. He closes his eyes and the water closes over his head. Is it leaking through the zipper? When he opens his eyes Ms L the mayor’s appointment secretary is squeezing his hand. “Mayor Rumiere is asking for you.” Samuel Obie nods. He follows her to the private penthouse elevator. The elevator’s rise is so

Thousand: Two Hundred Seventeen

inner body. You think the soul resides somewhere inside. It doesn’t. The spirit body resonates on the spirit plane, coterminous with the physical body on the plane we consider reality. Samuel runs his tongue over the zipper where it cinches his upper lip. Yet another thing that’s always been there that he’s never noticed. The red dot is blinking. Other dots are converging upon it. Dots of different and uncomfortable color. The water is up to his knees, the water is up to his ass, the water tips into his navel, a closed port. An apple bobs like an iceberg

Thousand: Two Hundred Sixteen

head, feeling for the thread that will start the raveling. There is no such thread. However, he does find a zipper. He fingers its rough teeth, edges along them until they run out at the base of his skull. Then he fumbles forward, trembling, he has to take off the heavy work gloves in order to feel every tooth of the zipper. The grip will be where? He traces the zipper over the top of his head, down his forehead, down the nose, over the lip. Like train tracks into a tunnel it plunges into the hidden world of his

Thousand: Two Hundred Fifteen

bug bites, which are starting to itch. He pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket of his pea coat and, mopping his brow, knocks off his fedora. The wool scarf, fine as it is, is also itchy, so Samuel whips it off and drops it in the mud. He takes off his glasses, having never needed glasses. He peels off the swim cap that was hiding under the fedora and the yarmulke that was bobby-pinned to his scalp under the cap. He dangles from two fingers the toupee to which the yarmulke is pinned. The other hand probes his damp

Thousand: Two Hundred Fourteen

quickly. He bends his knees, and dives. Samuel reaches to unbutton his collar. His tie is in the way. It’s a red tie with tiny yellow paiselys. His mother-in-law gave it to him before she died. She was standing on the roof, which was where his birthday party was being thrown, and she was laughing as she tossed the wrapped box in the air, catching it, tossing it, laughing. Something tickles his fingers. A spider. Tiny and red, bigger than a mite, easily. Must have been living in the red grass. The back of his hand is dotted with red

Thousand: Two Hundred Thirteen

Samuel wants to say. Let’s strip naked and wallow in the mud. But the youth. Youth? Has drawn them to a pool, a swimming hole under a spreading oak. A slow moving stream spreads into a wide half circle. He steps out of his trousers and underwear. The chest is sunken, the hair on it gray. His lips are thin, his cheekbones jutting. This is an old man. But when he looks over at Samuel his smile is as warm as before, the same smile, unhurt by the bodily transformation. He sloshes into the shallows. The water ascends his calves

Thousand: Two Hundred Twelve

spotted, and the skin isn’t flattering the muscles of the back but sagging, not hanging off, this is no sudden horror, but the skin betrays a looseness Samuel notices, he decides, only because he has been admiring the back’s shape and movement. When did the hair go? It’s gone. The youth might have been bald for years. Samuel looks down at the hand pulling him along. He follows willingly enough. The hand is cool now and dry. His own is sweaty and must feel hot because his clothes stick to him and they itch. Let’s take off all our clothes,

Thousand: Two Hundred Eleven

going to marsh, and they are surprised by puddles they don’t see until they’ve stepped in up to the knee in grass that looked as firm as lawn. They are slogging now, not bothering to pull their bodies onto the relatively dry, solid humps because they’d just have to step right off again. In this increasingly difficult trek Samuel wonders where they are going. He slows, though the muck has already slowed them, and his tiring would be expected, and he watches the back ahead. The pink skin, once rosy from too much sun, perhaps, has gone pale and faintly