Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifteen

picker could snatch from its intrepid twig. Suppose you saw an insect buzz away from the apple, a tiny black spot against the burling whites and grays, the watery blue. Suppose you lifted binoculars, the ones you’d just picked up from the table on the porch, a little girl running away from you down the block, passing as she does a boy molded of birdseed, and with those binoculars you looked at the defiant apple. Would you decide, after all, it was a tomato? Would you note details of the fly, the landing wheels permanently extended, the tiny head cowled

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fourteen

“It is a tomato,” he says, if asked directly. “It is a tomato in honor of The Tomato, the Greatest Pilot in the World!” He erected a tower to raise this tomato high into the clouds. The tower was painted to blend in with the gray prairie that stretches away on all sides. If you happen to be standing under a tree, perhaps on one of those elm-lined avenues of old houses, and you look up through branches stripped naked by autumn, you may mistake the aerodrome for an apple, the sweetest apple, that one not even the deftest apple

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirteen

clay tablet too retro? The teletype too modern? What were the presidents, kaisers, kings, and prime ministers supposed to make of a peacock chair? And a shell-shocked private, flies swarming the blackberry juice on his head? Perhaps the message The Tomato was sending was more easily read. Did she shorten the war? I doubt it. After the armistice an American industrialist fell in love with her and dipped into his wealth to build her a mansion and out on the great plains a beautiful aerodrome. The aerodrome he constructed in the form of a tomato. Most people see an apple.

Thousand: Eight Hundred Twelve

Clutching the lock of hair in his hands, the grip getting slippier as his hands sweat, the soldier watches his mates standing at attention engulfed in flames. All that done, the god sets up her little messenger in a peacock chair woven from sheaves of wheat. She lays gently on his head a garland of thistle flowers and blackberries, the berries so ripe their purple-red juices leak onto the soldier’s pale forehead. The poor guy remembers nothing when he is discovered in the stinking, still smoking field. So it is with gods, never happy with an unambiguous message. Was the

Thousand: Eight Hundred Eleven

the other soldiers, at his commander, at the life flashing before his eyes. “Come here. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s OK.” So he walks forward. What else can he do? And everyone else feels relieved, you know, it’s not them. And the young soldier steps into the god’s open palm. She lifts him to her shoulder and whispers, “Sit. Hold onto a lock of my hair.” While he’s doing that, sitting on her shoulder holding onto a lock of golden hair, the god sets fire to the other soldiers and to all the other witnesses, including the reporters.

Thousand: Eight Hundred Ten

any odds on that. Could be you emerge from your bunker smiling and hoisting a bottle of chill champagne, its mouth bursting with foam. I’m telling you what I’m going to do, you see? What you do? How it all turns out in your personal experience? That’s for you to find out. Is it all mapped out ahead of time? Is your fate decided?” The motherly god shrugs. “I’m just giving you information.” She scratches a bare arm then looks over at a young soldier standing at attention. “Come here, honey,” she says. His eyes widen, he looks around at

Thousand: Eight hundred Nine

ride my beautiful burning sun over your rivers and reservoirs until they fade to trickle and muck and the fruits of your field droop and rot. One day a shy little bolt of lightning from a modest thunderhead will spark a wildfire and that fire will rampage through your villages and light up like Roman candles the proud glass pillars of your cities. I won’t spare the innocent. I won’t set aside a place of sanctuary for the just. Some will survive. Probably not you. Or you. Or you over there. Probably you will die suffering. But I won’t lay

Thousand: Eight Hundred Eight

the bad things those scheming wretches have been getting away with, the injustices, the indignities, the atrocities. I don’t fucking care about it. When I’m done I’ll give you a fiver and you can hire a historian. Get a microphone and put it all on tape. Don’t worry I’ll make the rest of this short. I hear another bomb blast, I see another body in the street, I hear the crackle of one more broadcast about how great thou art and what evil them be, I will take your rain. I will put it in a box. Then I will

Thousand: Eight Hundred Seven

don’t care who hit who first. Yes, I don’t care if he raped and killed your daughter. You don’t get to bomb the fuck out of his village. And I don’t care if that one pissed on your flag. I don’t care if your feelings were hurt or your face wasn’t saved or your beach was stormed or your water ran with blood or they made a joke of your national honor or if suddenly you got really really angry and had to do something about all the bad things the other one’s been up to all this time, all

Thousand: Eight Hundred Six

more frequently than an accounting of bullets from both sides would indicate. Might there have been a third force, one that struck without regard to flag or color? A force that sought to rid the skies entirely of violence? Using violence to eradicate violence? It would hardly be the first time that was tried. Wasn’t it the War to End All Wars anyway? Still, picture a god who came down from the stars, hand on hip, stern as a mother. “I don’t care who started it. Neither of you get to hit the other. Not even one more time. I

Thousand: Eight Hundred Five

territory? “The breeze of freedom unfurls every flag. It shall not lift the wings of those who strive to steal it for tyrants.” Or: “Let no nation try to take the air for its own. The air belongs to every man, to every infant crying out in her crib! The air will be clear from sea level to the stratosphere; the clouds of war driving their shadows across the face of the sun shall not justify the smoke of gunpowder and the sputtering exhaust of brightly painted little fighting planes.” Sorties from all the warring parties seemed to go down

Thousand: Eight Hundred Four

have never been able to get anything done unless I first got something else done that I’d been putting off. Make of that what you will. The Tomato was the world’s greatest female stunt flier of the barnstormer era. Secretly she also was one of the greatest fighter pilots during the Great War. It’s such a secret nobody can confirm which side she fought for. Maybe she just took down anything in the air. There are people like that. It’s a pride thing? Actually, that does sound sort of familiar. Wasn’t there a widely-circulated pamphlet that declared the air neutral

Thousand: Eight Hundred Three

loons calling in response. The long-necked grebes like a good rubdown. Citadels of salt sparkle with the essence of envy and empathy. When you finish your cream, recycle your cup. Remember to lick your chops. Wear endless sheets of rain. Explore the renovated nuclear engine with a toothpick and wire cutters until the scene responds to the metallic ding of the retrograde hypnosphere. End nocturnal sinecure with the wild pith helmet of the mangled Watusi brothers’ costume budget. I’m going to express as best I can the importance of working through your issues and then I’ll let it go. I

Thousand: Eight Hundred Two

and awful things, but people especially, pointing at their tears. Leap from high places into soft objects. Cut pieces from your body, freeze-dry them, and distribute them in small glass boxes at art events. Return to nature by ingesting large quantities of ground up stone. Before swallowing wallow the grit and sand around in your mouth in order to mix it thoroughly with saliva. Write in a language you have never been exposed to and make sure you write several pages at a sitting in order to have material to declaim on a sailboat out on the lake with the

Thousand: Eight Hundred One

that deserve praise. Note the beauty of the dragonfly and its service in keeping a check on the mosquito. Observe the convenience of gravity. Extol the efficiencies of the central nervous system. Count your blessings, is that what I’m saying? Sure. Tote ‘em right up. Do a cost-benefit analysis. Smile more often. Do that thing you do. Dance around. Buy flowers. Drop exquisite dumps in finely crafted commodes. Refrain from poking out your eyes with burning sticks and ask others not to do so who are considering it. Never give good advice; stick to bad bad advice. Laugh at sad

Thousand: Eight Hundred

be possible, really, don’t get your hopes up, but you never know, might as well try, if you have the time on your hands, and you feel, you know, what the heck, why not, let’s do it, and you go ahead and check out realms where our physical laws do not apply. Don’t blame me if there are bad consequences. Like ceasing to exist or whatever. I do have one piece of advice that I would like you to take to heart: Appreciate your dog. Or octopus? Appreciate your octopus. Deprecateth not thy magpie. Find in the dragon those qualities

Thousand: Seven Hundred Ninety-Nine

dignified and contemplative manner for which the dog is known. And how useful then I should be! Such, alas, is not the case! Unless in some alternate universe I have yet to encounter. There always will be one I’ll never see. Or rather, infinity. Still, there are limits to the unlimited. Just anything can’t happen. Certain forces must be in order for things to come together. Gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, what have you. If not, pfft. Might as well not bother with those universes. If, on the other hand, you find yourself able to, which might not

Thousand: Seven Hundred Ninety-Eight

This is one of the occasions life goes about its business. Although the unified entity called “dog” or, in the case of this dog, King, stops living, dies, what proceeds to destroy it is not death but life, and not just foreign invaders but the very microorganisms that lived along with the dog, that, in some ways, made life possible for a King. If I were to delight the single-celled critters that teem in the bowel, a King would be happier, would live longer, would prosper and be able then to trot about his domain, pissing on it in that

Thousand: Seven Hundred Ninety-Seven

come upon it so quick, there are more. No way you turn up exactly what you’re looking for and it’s the only instance in all the billions of alternate universes. Who knows how many times it happens in any one, in this one? The universe with the planet where a dog is scheduled to stop breathing, its meat go cold, and people who loved it, paying amazing amounts of money to hook it up to the latest medical technology, break into tears. This is not one of the occasions where life ceases entirely then starts up again, a different creation.

Thousand: Seven Hundred Ninety-Six

by tears. I don’t understand death. Life seems to use death in all sorts of ways. To feed itself. To change itself. To save versions of itself. So life uses death as a tool, but death seems a dangerous tool. Perhaps once life existed it bumped up against forces hostile to its continued existence and some life forms lost the ability to continue to thrive. Was there any point at which life ceased to exist entirely? And then was created wholly new? Let me riffle through some alternate universes. Yup. There is one. And if I find one like that,