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Reading Ulysses in Montana #625

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The chastised watermark bled through the tumblers of the safe like a half-fanatic willow tree in bloom.

Justine could not hold back the demons and the dainties that had pent up their frustrations in her these last lonely livid years. Gone were the battlements; gone were the trapeze artists; here to stay were the new words and the tender buttons of marinated mushrooms au gratin. The grated goose liver struck him on the pate (whether rhyming with late or latte) like alas poor Yorick whether you knew him well or not. Three dozen souls of dead boxelder bugs were enough to waken the living dead on this or that side of the bourne from whom Cordelia heaves her beating heart. But Justine lies there, stricken with the flimsy pallor of unholy valor against the throngs of one too many go-to-sleeps.

Cordelia and Antigone invited Justine to join them in their eternal grief, but Justine said I have no standing here: my father and brothers died peacefully in their sleeps. Cordelia said yeah that’s what they all say. Antigone’s laughter resounds today across the horns of the cosmic background radiation.

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Reading Ulysses in Montana #454

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Tina saw the tiny tenor sweetly fall against the sizzling marionette, doing a jig or two with half a leg missing.

The missing half a leg performed the floor show at the local hall on Friday and Saturday nights with a matinee on Sunday–through the remainder of the season only. Tina lifted the man hole cover with her third and fourth toes and rolled it down the hill to her grandmother’s house–the house where she could get gingerbread cookies without having to get into the oven to check if the gas connections was in order–grannie being old enough to orchestrate such maneuvers of the flesh in the dark herself.

A canary led Tina to the outskirts of town where Cory waited for the coming of someone else. Tina told the canary that’s not the Cory I know. Cory said who are you? The canary said I’m the canary. Cory said there are no coal mines around here. Not anymore, said the canary. Tina lifted her bonnet and two finches escaped.

The finches and the canary flew off to find another Tina in another place who this time knew another Cory whom her grandmother admired and loved so well.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #99

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A box sat over the gravetrestles, but it was not a coffin. It was an empty box, but it was still not a coffin. It was just an empty box.

Miriam looked up the word pedantic in the dictionary and asked her lover if it was pedantic to use the word pedantic. Her lover said in lovemaking? Miriam said any time. Her lover said yes. Miriam thought about the box she saw three days earlier on the gravetrestles at the funeral across the lawn from her mother’s grave. Miriam though that’s a pedantic box if I ever saw one, but no one asked her about pedantic, because the funeral party was too far away, no one else was around, and her mother was muted by six feet of loam and three years of sleep. Miriam’s mother would have asked her what was so pedantic about the box, but she couldn’t, so Miriam asked herself. Miriam’s answer was that she forgot what it meant and would have to look it up in three days during an intimate encounter with her lover–being certain to forget in the intervening interval.

Her lover said yes, but what are we doing in this box? Miriam said let’s look up the word “ardent”.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #403

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Secretly, Ginger fled into the outer reaches of the inner sanctum where a chopped ham sandwich waited for an audience with the glow from the halo of a passable termites nest.

Ginger approved of the style, although the spies took their salt in the form of pillars, not shaken. Singly, Ginger held the shuttered slats under the ancient archway, sodden with history and delight, before she wrapped her shawl tightly around her fondue shoulders and admired the size of the ancient footings holding the archway discreetly. Unannounced, the crowd evaporated in the form of a furious mirage, going nowhere in a hurry. But Ginger had a knack–a special knack–for infiltrating the serious questions of the day, and she turned them into hairy funny bunnies. Stunned at such opulence, the kings of the castle–and a few minions besides–arrived at the crack of dawn.

Ginger emerged from the outer reaches of the inner sanctum stirred to the depths of her slandered soul and said where have all the lemons gone? Long time passing?

Reading Ulysses in Montana #292

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Twelve other ferriers took the ferryman across the river to the other side of the river, and they left a candle burning bright in the loft of a dozen daisies.

Up, up, cried the muffet whose spiders belonged to no one but her. The spiders spun webs of guile and guilt for the benefit of the youngest of the twelve noble virtues. A penny worth of indulgence secured an hour of respite in the hostel of Aunt Fanny’s secular imagination–a penny being all she could afford having lost her wad at BINGO three weeks past. Where would you go if you could? Aunt Fanny asked the little muffet. No answer. No answer again. And again. Aunt Fanny returned to snapping peas, and the muffet let bygones be gone bye and bye.

Crying torches of empty faith and virtue illuminated the way to the laundry room. The muffet crawled into the dryer and asked the spider to set the setting to tumble dry. An hour later, the web of intrigue was enormous. And so was the spider.