I opened the menu. Within twenty minutes, a wide shadow stepped up to the table. Ah, the waiter. Rumpled pad of paper in his meaty hand, my host stared dully through me as I hemmed over my order. His eyes, red-rimmed, were like overripe cherries liquifying in a too-large head. His nose had healed into what one could only politely call a mass of bone and flesh. His chin was armed with thick black stubble; I couldn't help thinking the table could use a good scouring.

As he leaned over to take my order (and not, as I had hoped, to scrub the tables), a cruel blast of acrid breath overcame my senses, and my toes curled tightly in my shoes. Urging the memory of a thousand bad alleyways, this was sufficient odoriferous force to set dogs howling and rats scurring for cover. Which they did. I recoiled with relief as the waiter acknowledged my order with a grunt and a courtesy sneer and shuffled heavily off toward the kitchen.

Within twenty minutes, I heard a rumbling of voices coming from the kitchen and the lazy scraping of a metal spatula on an iron pan. A pot clattered loudly to the floor and was soundly scolded by the chef. A moment of silence, then a fantastic explosion of grease and more curses. After several more minutes, I heard a crashing of plates, a clatter of silver and the unceremoniously plop of food meeting plate. Finally, a surly warning that lunch was served. My waiter set down my order with a belch as I held a napkin tightly to my nose.

Alone with my long-awaited meal, I lifted a forkful of mash to my lips and, suddenly, my tastebuds stood up and sang Halleluiah. Lightly crispy and lovingly seasoned, the hash browns melted in my mouth. Exquisitely seasoned with fresh dill and rosemary, the poached eggs were a true ovo-tribute to the chickens who lay them. As I chewed contently on thick, warm slices of rye toast and raspberry jam, my right leg giggled with satisfaction. The coffee was hot and fresh and laced with hazelnut cream. I hummed through my meal to the very last drop of the divine refill.

Oh, right, I reminded myself. That's why I come here.

“Fleischmann” meant “Meatman” in English, we laughed. It kind of spooked me out this week, though, when I realized I’d have to have my mouth cut up by “Dr. Meatman”. After it was done, Dr. Fleischmann gave me some extra Novocaine to take home with me, so that was cool. Bowling thinks it’s funny that I’m puffy and he’s not. He says my face looks as blue and bloated as Uncle Dottie’s ass in winter. I don’t have a comeback, but see if I share my Novocaine with him.

But, the big advantage to being all swollen IS, I can’t talk properly. This time, we didn’t have to draw pencil tips to decide who would have to talk to Dad about his purple ears.

I got to watch, puffy and silent, while Bowling stepped up to Dad.

“Hey, Dad!”

……………….

“Hey, Dad! Hey, Ruthie! Hey, DadDadDadDadDadDadDadDadDAD! Ruthie!!”

“Oh, hey, Sport…..I must of dozed off for a minute there.”

“But, Dad, your eyes were open.”

“They were? Oh.”

I looked at Bowling. He was chewing his bottom lip like bubble gum.

“Hey, Dad. Ever seen something you’ve never seen before?”

“No. Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like a chicken with two heads.”

“Never seen a chicken with two heads. Never will. One head or no head. No such thing as a two-headed chicken.”

Bowling was taking the long road to the big question.

“But say you saw one, Dad.”

“Then I’d say someone snuck Lite Beer into my glass.”

“Yeah, Dad, say you saw a two-headed chicken one day, and then the next day you saw it AGAIN. And the day after that, too. Right in your own yard.”

“Well, then, I’d say there was either something up with the well or there was something up with that chicken.”

Then, out of nowhere, Bowling zinged him.

“Dad, why’ve your socks been matching every day all of a sudden?”

That’s when I saw Dad’s ears turn purpler than I’ve ever seen them.

Dad’s mouth fell to the floor, and we had to dust it off for him.

“Oh, boys. Oh, boys, boys, boys. You got old Ruthie tarred and feathered like an outlaw.”

He sighed, and stared at the floor for a long time.

He sighed again, then, quieter than a mosquito’s whisper:

“Boys, she likes to match my socks.”

pale as the april mist
you drifted into my reverie
you found me with a glance casting away coins into the empty night
and through my delicate sorrow your eyes glimmered like water on fire
then silently you spun silken threads of longing to lead me to the sirens' den
and in your embrace, like a beautiful dream,
you carved your tender words on the pillar of my pride
you took the catseye moon into your hands and placed it at the foot of my disbelief
you called the rusted swan from the stillness of the pond
and kissed away the coalblack curses on my brow
instead tracing there a wish

i wanted never to awake
never to awake from your inebriant bliss then
since that moment i left you sleeping
the moon has dissolved in a single sigh
and the dew has settled on my fingertips
still i feel your touch with every breath
i feel your whisper echo in my breast
and upon my brow a wish:

where memory and breath are one
we will meet again
where whisper and thought entangle in the night
we will meet again

callah

in faith

Facts had to be faced, so Bowling and I drew pencil tips to see who would have to break the news to the other. Bowling drew the short pencil tip (because I knew which one to pick), so he had to call it for what it was : Ruthie DeMont was a’courtin’.

‘Fishing,’ Bowling told me, ‘I think a lady must of crowbarred into Dad’s heart.’

Now there aren’t too many ladies in our town, so we weren’t sure of who it could be. Still, the signs were there, slapping us in the face every morning. Our dad was brushing his teeth three times a week, was tucking the right side of his shirts in his jeans instead of the left and had bought a new raspberry comb from the Gofer’s Drugstore. Even last night the factory phoned our neighbors to say that Ruthie was slipping up at work.

It turns out that all this week our dad has been shipping rotoengines instead of receiving them, which is a very embarrassing mistake for our dad to be making, seeing as he’s a rotoengine receiver. Even if we had been born stupid, Bowling and I could not have denied that some bewitching woman had felled our dad with Cupid’s ax.

Because it was as bright as a Kansas day : Ruthie DeMont was wearing his courting shoes.

My name is Fishing DeMont and I'm fifteen years old. I'm two months younger than my twin brother, which some people find strange, but I don't. I live in the most boring state in the United States - Kansas. My brother Bowling calls it Ken's Ass. He thinks that's funny. I think it's obvious. People in the Midwest might have heard of me because I was the first kid in the area to ever bite through a chickenbone. I was famous for about three weeks, and then some kid ate a shoe and that was it. In Grade 6, I painted a giant UFO on the principal's door, and the homeroom teacher smashed a chalkboard over my head. I suffered a big brain injury and later died in the hospital. I still had to go to school the next day. My dad said that happened to him when he was a kid, too, so it was no big deal.

My dad Ruthie lives with Bowling and I. He works as a receiver at the local rotoengine factory. In addition to being color blind, my dad is also color deaf. Before the government took the piano away, I used to like to play music for my dad. He would sit in his chair across the room, where he couldn't see my hands,

I'd play the color green, and he'd say "red", because he couldn't tell the difference. Then we'd laugh ourselves silly. But that's enough about my dad.

Unlike most people in Ken's Ass, I know two languages: the one that my teachers want to hear and the one I invented to amuse myself. When I tell fancy people I know more than one language, they're impressed.

I'm also an avid anti-collector of bottlecaps. To date, I have over 5,943 bottlecaps not-collected. Whenever I see a bottlecap on the street, I don't collect it, and my anti-collection grows from there. I'm also starting to not collect flattened gum wrappers and pencil tips.

Not much happens in my town, in my life. For example: On Wednesday, April 17^th, 1994, nothing happened to me. On January 12^th, 1995, nothing also happened to me again. That's pretty typical. So, to pass the time, I'm working on my autobiography. But at the rate of nothing-happeningness that goes on here, it will take me another 771,085,441,223 days for me to fill up the 200 pages it takes to make a real autobiography. I guess my book will have to have lots of pictures.

i've forgotten what the real thing was listen to a clicking backbeat as the blood rises in the needle and shoots into the vein with this liquid ticket i'm goin away from the place in which i live just for a little while i have no choice without my mind i really have a good time gracious who needs friends when a game of hide and seek is all there is each day clinging to a cliffedge the weight of the drop is pulling on the trouser leg if i had the worth to look at the sky i'd pull myself up i'm no hero though another man's dungeon was my dream my hell seems paradise for every lost tourist in sight some see the world only from the outside i can only see what's in my skin if i could get the waves here crashing i would swim right home i would surely swim to shore

i had holes in my shoes and not a friend in the world i stood at the edge of the schoolyard rubbing my nose with the sleeve of my coat quietly sobbing the trees held out their bare limbs to a cold grey sky i didn't know who was lonelier, who needed the hug more -- the trees or the sky -- all i knew that i was lonelier than them both i heard the kids in the playground laughing and shouting cause they had homes moms dads and jelly sandwiches they had time to laugh because they had these things i had a torn coat a small empty room and midnight visits from a stranger my mother told me i had to be nice to i didn't want to go home it was springtime and i stood at the edge of my hope i had holes in my shoes and not a friend in the world and you took me by my pale orphan hand you bought me ice cream i don't know why you bothered to care about the invisible kid in your grade three class but your butterscotch sundae is the reason i did not fall that day i wish you to understand it meant my life to me thank you for your kindness dear mrs. hum i just wanted to thank you

i want flaming skies and car crashes of ecstasy i want to be deafened by the thunderclap of my own thoughts when you reach for my hand or my wallet i want everything that is grand but now as we drive aimlessly into oblivion with each flash of each indifferent streetlight i am sinking further and further into tedium's silent swallow for god sakes say something that will make me feel something to make me laugh something to hurtle myself out of this shell of mediocrity are you happy dear should i care hell -- let's stop for pie then i need a breath of air

in the dreams i don't have i hear no applause

keep the faith and scrub till it shines