Documentary

After the mayor has visited the disaster scene at the collapsed bridge he calls the president. “Mister President,” the mayor begins, “the howls of the dying are, I think, becoming amplified. It’s like, I hear them at city hall—I hear them at home. My home is nowhere near that bridge.” And the howls; you can feel them inside of your teeth. Stringy and cold and hissing. One howl ebbs, to count as quickly as it can its love and each connection. You can hear it in the voice: she feels extracted, like a flight data recorder. “And Mister President, you get the suspicion,” the mayor continues, “listening to them, that the howls are learning to harmonize.”

Autobiography

We were thinking up names for ourselves. We said, “I’m more a Loudness than a Choosey,” thinking back to when we were yelling all that stuff indiscriminately. Spindles of light structured the sky and we were mistaking an airplane for Jupiter. That’s just how it goes. “I’m more a Double-Decker than a Moistened,” we said, because we’re so fond of parallel constructions, not plush pastorals. Jupiter parted the sky like a book. The light was in our eyes and nowhere else. We became proud and criminal, visibly. “Me, I’m an Autobiography,” we said. “How about you?” Jupiter exploded into a National Emergency. “Oh, me, I’m Valuable and Comfy.”

Donald Dunbar: http://www.sparethe.blogspot.com