Roadside PR

My father invites me to fly in a hot air balloon. My mother is upset. Before I know it, I am speeding down rt. 77 in my car behind a fire truck. It sets itself on fire, then puts itself out by squirting water from inside. My father is and ins't in the car with me. He is driving and so am I. He reminds me not to drive so fast.

We meet his friends on the side of the road in front of an old house. There's a man and a woman. We show each other slips of paper that officially state our worth. We smile gently at one another. I don't bother to look at my father's paper but am oddly interested in his friends'. The woman wants to take a photo of us before we leave in the balloon. My father and I smile and shake hands.

After the woman takes the photo, I place a small red plastic chair by a nearby shed. I face it toward the dark woods and say, "That was a PR shot."

Timeshare

Then we discover a strange new resort spot. From a distance, it resembles a large microwave, but as we approach, it takes on many forms: a toaster, a television, a spoon and then what vaguely looks like a drawing of a horse's mouth. Though we cannot quite describe what is happening, we express faith that we are witnessing the same thing and walk inside.

The interior has more of a corporate medical office aesthetic than anything else. We have nowhere better to be, so we grab a brochure from a neatly stacked pile and decide to stay for a few days.

It is a wonderful place. It seems to exist neither among the dead nor the living, but somehow in the space between. We lie in tanning beds and perform X-rays on each other late at night. A mobile of fax machines and coupons swirl above our heads. For meals, we suck on safety pins and color-coded folders. We staple our tax returns above pictures of our daughters.

We deliver ourselves daily to the CEO and dial every number until we become extensions of ourselves. There is a visible buzz in the air, a static pounding of flourescent rhythm. Our hearts break out of our chests and smack against the lights and seem to us like bloody moths attracted by an electronic fire. We laugh it off, slapping each other high-five, giving thumbs up, winking excessively. Then, we watch as a procession of men in suits insert their heads into computers screens. We celebrate by gulping champagne and frantically waving sparklers. We have very large erections.

At the end of the vacation, we stand on a vast pixilated shore as if pioneers of a new world. We think about our lives and listen to the low hum of the wind until we delete ourselves by pressing each other’s buttons and giggling like schoolgirls. And although we had always been loyal customers of the Cingular network, when three wolves appear on the Verizon, we switch over.

Crosstown Connection

Finding myself on the bus, I stand up -- and not two seats in front of me I catch a glimpse of the back of a head. Thin gray cotton curls, wrinkled neck, a familiar bracelet dangling from the wrist.

Just as I begin to pass, she takes hold of my hand. This is a warmth I know, only slightly colder. She turns and says my name with long, stretched out syllables, voice box shattering with vibration. Dead for 20 winters on the crosstown bus, she says, "They wouldn't let me off. My hands are too rough for them, too old. My hip's broken. I worked too hard, they said."

My hand's on her cheek and I feel tangled in a network of networking webs, spanning timezones, worlds, imperceptible planes.

"Next time I see you, I'll make some coffee," she says. "How's your mother?"

I say my mother is fine, but I don't bother to ask how it would be possible for her to make coffee.

Later that day, after the first bombs explode over the river, my body expands and is long and thin in the alley between two buildings. I climb, scale, float to the top, naked but trailed by a clean brown blanket that wants nothing more than to cover me.

On the roof, I look for the time, but I have never owned a watch. I suddenly know this as a small bone in my wrist begins to pull away from me. I watch as it stretches in the skin, hairs dancing on ends. The small bone dislocates and frees itself from from the joint, from the skin, and drifts into a dark green sky.

The Museum

Suddenly, I invent a new kind of museum -- a place where people stand by themselves in small glass vestibules. During each exhibit, a hologram of a poem appears (often as the original holograph). Certain sections or words, which are highlighted or underlined electronically, are translated or explained by a voice over. Sometimes the information deals with the author or the conditions under which the poem has been written; sometimes it pertains directly to the meaning of the poem. Other times, the brain activity, mood and blood pressure of the viewer are measured; and, based on the results, meaningful relationships of form and function that would otherwise go unnoticed or unfelt are revealed at no additional cost.

Next, a painting, at random, manifests in vivid detail next to the poem. No matter how disparate the association between image and word seems to be, our computers find interesting, often startling, connections -- and disclose them at the expense of the observer's excitement.

I have dreamed it up over night. And after I finish building it, hesitation, regret and serious bouts of guilt set in. But to my surprise, the people come. They flock to the museum in droves, and the line extends from the entrance to the parking lot, off into the hills beyond the smokestacks, all the way back around to the exit, forming a great loop.

There are a few seizures. Otherwise things run smoothly.

Later, a cancer grows in my lung, crawls into my throat and chokes me to death. My grandchildren, as my will dictates, take over operation of the museum -- though not very successfully, because they and everyone else I know are and always will be waiting in line.

Who Are You?

There I am -- a copy of a duplication twice removed. I haven't slept in 20 years. All the clocks are wrong. The trees and the buildings laugh.

I am going bad into the greater telephone. I call you to say that I will give you my time, anytime -- that I will pick up, pour myself into the receiver; I have long distance.

I soak my teeth in goat milk and it gets lonely. I've been losing hair in patches. I smell of death and have nightmares in which I miss myself.

I live on the second floor of a seedy motel made of shit. The lights buzz and flicker with the slap of black flies. A woman rings and I answer only to discover her naked and uneven in the center. I know her but cannot remember her at all. Cheap paperbacks feed like pigs on her parts. I slam the door and hear the sound of angry steps. she tells a man from below that I have rejected her and he threatens to choke on me.

I lock myself in the bath I have boiled. I trace the patterns, touch the spots. In the mirror, one of my eyes swells to twice the size of the other. I am Chinese and I never wake up.

I hear a sound.

Shrinking Here and There

We lie in bed. Suns and moons rise and fall in her womb, and I want to write the perfect definition of the word sleep. I mull it over as she tries to tell me about her weird day, her very weird day, but something's off. She's withholding or cannot access the details of the story -- not a single one. She just says, and keeps saying, you don't understand how weird my day was.

I don't remember what else is happpening, but it is so weird, trust me, the way she just repeats herself.

So I say, maybe it's not actually so weird after all. I mean, you've got nothing here.

She seems suddenly very disappointed in me and turns to the wall, which is covered from top to bottom, left to right, with pictures of her father. There are so many pictures that over time, to fit them all, she buys out the other apartments on the floor, knocks down the walls. She hires contractors to put in additions, expansive hallways, verandas, surveillance systems to monitor the photographs she can't readily see.

Her possessions are otherwise sparse and her bed small.

So, there we are, in her tiny bed, me feeling weird, strange, odd, aberrant, funny, unfamiliar, alien, apart, remote and screwy surrounded by cameras filming photographs of her father while hundreds of televisions project their images. The walls are covered, the floors, the ceilings. The bed is shrinking. I am shrinking, and she is frozen in time, staring dreamily at miles of fatherly faces.