Susan Wheeler

Oh, dangling long sleeves in the Mercurochrome. Parking her punch on her knees. I’m not a joiner. In the night, a visitation, small as a thumb, enters the sealed house and ascends. Mother wouldn’t have stood for that long. Drippy-drooping around on heels. Leaving the blue cheese out.

Thanks, Ray, this is just what the doctor ordered. No, you never see me have one with olives—your father likes olives but I can’t stand them. No, cocktail onions are just picked small. Turn that down, Dan. Avocados, toothpicks. Coleus, root sprawl. The diffident glints of a late-day sun, rays splintered by leaves: they shake and, in their shaking, streak the light. Transparent murk of glasses at the glass. Would you move just one inch over? There. The light was in my eye.

So I'll speak ill of the dead. A was crooked, planting the small left finger of the raccoon in the upholstery before he sold the car. B made certain to point out Celia's bewildered look before her pink slip came in the flimsy institution. In the videos of C, a jejune overwhelmed the cast. D built dollhouses. Even Lonnie down at Shell found him less a man for it, the night they went off to see the stock cars break. I wanted E's hair, but by the end it was no more. F refused alms, pulling the man up by his shirt in the street, and G sought rewards. Marybeth said H fondled her for sport. Now you, I, Smokey, hell bent on a village version of Club 21, embarrassed by our attentions. Mistrust it was. Dig me a chamber of preparedness. William T. Osborn, 1964-1993