Big Sky

I looked up at the sky. The sky said, “Have you got nothing better to do than stare at me?”

I said, “I’m in awe of your forevering.”

The sky began to rain on me. I still kept looking.

The sky said, “What’s it gonna take for you to get going?”

I said, “I guess when I get hungry.”

The sky started listing off foods like BBQ chicken, biscuits and gravy, and figs. I got hungry, but I remained eye entranced by the sky.

The hunger made me salivate and a drop of saliva fell from my mouth and hit an ant.

The ant said, “What the hell’s going on up there?”

what’s in the box

There was a knock at the door. I opened it. No one was there but a sealed container about the size of a lunch box. I picked it up. There was no address. I shook it. Something moved around in there but I couldn’t tell what it was.

I brought the container inside and sat down on the couch with it on my lap. A little bit of me wanted to open it and see what was inside. But a greater part liked not knowing. I tend toward mystery. It gives me the juice. Once I find something out, I lose interest and want to go to sleep.

My dog Rexy came into the room. She said, “What’s in the box?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

She said, “Can I take it out to the backyard and paw and bite it for a while?” and I said, “Yes.”

My dog Rexy took the box in her mouth and went out back through the doggy door.

I stayed on the couch. I felt the impression the box had left on the top of my thighs.

My temp job in 1868

I worked for Salmon P. Chase when he ran for President of the United States in 1868. I was an assistant in his office. I filed papers and did errands, but I didn’t actually believe in his cause. I needed a job and answered his campaign’s ad in the Harking Times, a local Columbus, Ohio newspaper. They hired me because of my work history with the writer Edgar Allen Poe as his comma counter. Poe at the time was noted for his great use of commas and didn’t want to disappoint his readers. I spent hours everyday, counting and adding commas to Poe’s manuscripts if they ran below his 15,000 comma quota.

Salmon P. Chase would come into the election headquarters every morning, yelling stinging chastisements at me and the other employees. With red face and bug-eyes, he wailed that we were inefficient hacks. But even though he regularly claimed we were failing him, he never fired any of us. It didn’t bother us because it was well known that Chase was a follower of the famous ascetic D. Micker Binning, who claimed that the vibrations from continuous shouts of disappointment would create in any listener the necessary gumption to complete difficult tasks.

The yelling went on day after day. One day in mid-yell, Chase lost his voice in an apparent attack of laryngitis. He collapsed in frustration. I picked him up and sat him in a chair. I made him a cup of tea and sat by his side, holding his hand. Back then you could hold a man’s hand and no one thought the lesser of you.

Photonish

I took this picture of myself with a photon camera. It eliminates the usual light from bulbs and sunlight and just registers the illumination from photons trapped in a person’s pores. I didn’t realize I was that attractive.

I have a celebrity parent

I have a celebrity parent. My father was Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States. When I was a youngin’, I didn’t know he was all that special. He would go off to work and I would stay at home with my mom. I was a big fan of running around the yard, rolling down the hill, and licking trees. My dad would come home from work, agitated with his hair a mess. When he got stressed he would pull at his hair. I once told him it looked like the mop and broom had a baby. This got me a bitter spoonful of the stupor inducing Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.

Me and Abe

I met Abraham Lincoln when we were both six, at the rural school house in Spencer Country, Indiana. We sat next to each other. I used to copy off his test papers. Abe knew and didn’t mind. To make things even, I gave him a dead muskrat I’d found by the creek.

We would walk home together since our folks homes were both southwest. We would pick up small rocks and throw them at bigger rocks. Abe was really good at hitting the big rock with either his first or second rock he’d throw. I’d throw a handful of rocks at the big rock, figuring at least one would hit. But they would always. Abe was nice and tell me that I was good at throwing in general.

Abe used to share with his ambitions. He said that when he got older, he wanted to run for public office, for instance as a sheriff, or treasurer. I revealed that I didn’t know what I wanted to do later in life. Abe asked me what I liked doing now. I said that I liked laying down and looking at the sky or ceiling.

When I turned five, I began eating worms. I couldn’t get enough of them. I used to take my daddy’s shovel and dig holes in the backyard in the hopes of finding worms I could eat. Abe watched me dig and devour the worms, but he never partook. Not even once. I asked him why. He said they were dirty. I said he ate other things that came out of dirt, like potatoes, carrots, and turnips. He still said no.