Mr. Pinky
The windup clock had not been on the bus stop seat moments ago, but there it was, rattling its two-bell alarm like so much clucking in the early rain. He didn’t dare touch it, as it belonged to some person not yet visible inside or outside the Plexiglass shelter through which he stared in expectation of Bus 52. “Infidel” said a voice. He jumped at the sudden sound. He could see that the alarm clock had been replaced by a short man in denim coveralls and a plaid shirt. It wasn’t his pork pie hat that made the costume absurd as what must have been size 12 shoes in ruby red which completed it. “Sorry to startle you, little chick,” said the man. “I’m Larry. Couldn’t help myself.” The rain had made a little pond on the floor of the shelter and sent a little leaf spiraling around like a lost boat. “I have diverticulitis,” said Larry. “Little pockets in the colon that go all painful, like hot pizza or snake bites.” Larry offered a hand. “What’s your name?” He hesitated to respond, more out of city conditioning than anything else. Then he reluctantly produced his name. “I’m Mr. Pinky,” he said. “I’m a stand-up tragedian. I get fifty bucks for five minutes. Tell people the most depressing things—about being stashed in a dumpster at six months of age, or about vivisection. People like to cry their eyes out. When I’m off stage, I like to wear these feathers, because I self-identify as a chicken.” Larry looked Mr. Pinky over. “Polyester feathers can give you the hives,” he whispered. “You should go to a chicken farm, get some feathers there, and wash them in sodium borate. Stick them to a union suit.”Mr. Pinky shook his head. “I’m allergic,” he sighed. “Poly is all I’ve got.” Larry nodded gravely, and then brightened at the sight of the spinning leaf. He knelt down to pick it up. “Maple,” he said triumphantly. “I like a good maple tree, don’t you?” But Mr. Pinky was not there to respond. He had seen the Bus 52 in the near distance, and had braced the heavy rain to board it—just in time to look back and see a maple grandfather clock chiming at the bus shelter door.
Night Soil
I am a night soil man
In the night I haul off your excrement
Along with your sordid thoughts and vanity
I take it to the countryside
And use it to fertilize cabbages for your corned beef
And when you eat the lovely cabbages
You get roundworms by the hundreds
Which choke you
And make parts of your mind, heart and soul
Gangrenous
I get two shillings for every ton of your night soil
And sleep while you wither
Under the sun
Stock-Still in 3D
The glowing harpy
Takes a spent product benign in origin and transforms it into a middling object inferior to its new purpose
Meanwhile, our collective of fat bottoms further deflates a razed earth
We rescue the air to further inflate our undersides
So that should a typhoon occur
We shall be able to float to safety
If we don’t sink first
By Gate 26 on the water
The aging Pomeranian sits at his master’s desk
In the square mill building standing on tall legs by rust-stained silos
And attached to said silos by means of long chutes and ducts that serve
As weather-proof tunnels for rats of all sorts
Is an office
Where the Pomeranian serves as temp supervisor
Over a canary-gone-cuckoo in her bamboo cage
And that brick-built cat of course hair
And in vinyl blind- filtered-sunlit midair
Through dust enumerated but not registered
This mutt’s heart revolves on its axis
Around his brain
And as it does its sleepless walk
It is acknowledged by this brain
While the other side of the heart
Remains in shadow
The cat eyes the bird
As she titters:
“What do you think I should do?”
“What do you think I should do?”
“What do you think I should do?”
And the cat makes hissing sounds
And paws the stand
That holds the bamboo cage
And the dog growls in such a way
To say: “Bark incoming—and you won’t like it!”
And his heart turns cold toward his charges
And then
After what seems to be a season or so
He warms up to them
Only to hate them again
But then in the coldest of winters
There is that unexpected thaw
And wouldn’t his master
Absent following closure of the factory
Have been proud of his overcoming personal emotions
For the betterment of all
Rationing his own biscuits and seeking out seed
Opening the window to seek water caught
In the window box
And through neglected sunflowers one might see
Enlarged cracks in the pavement below
Through which
Weeds and trees grow
And through the wind-beaten steel gate
Obstructing holes that plunge
Into salty water
Water baptizes
Salt preserves
But forgotten jackets and newspapers
Keep winter away from the living
And this mutt’s heart warms up
What the brain forgot
And the brain reminds one
Of what the heart has turned from
And the two seek intercourse
Over living while waiting
And
While industry turns into history
Nathaniel S. Rounds writes from an illuminated box
using a carpenter’s pencil. When he has filled the inside
walls of the box with words and has no room left,
Mr. Rounds sells the box to a publisher
and moves to another box.