I was standing not two feet from a red fox and he told me to quit. The hot little bastard had a stone in his jaws and wanted me to turn it to steak. His eyes and demeanor held this arrogant expectation. All around were all these howls and rustlings. I was lost and couldn’t find anything, I took the stone from his mouth and it became mush. A kind of guano, I spread it over my gums like an antiquated salve glowing thick with longing and gloom.
*
Triathlon, marathon, any kind of -thon. A woman wearing a violet thong spit up a baby doll from her past. When the hedgehog entered we scraped our ears against the sweetness of the hedgehog. My dog did that once but it was a nice hedgehog and he got only a small prick lodged in. A hot girl mattered, I mean she muttered a word like “subsistence” under her breath. We are witness to the fury and also the penultimate joy of things so why said the man.
*
It was not yet dark, but the sky was like an urn, a giant ash. A duck was pausing near some ludicrous hunk. It left the hunk where it was smashed, and went back into the pond, shaking its handsome butt. There is something huge here, like a pickup you can leave with, or a laugh that makes other laughs something of a postmortem.
*
The dog died, and it is sad. The boy took a large box and kicked the box to shreds. He also smashed with his body and a half -inflated basketball half of a garage door, then ran into the field, and ran so hard the earth was a like a tuft of his hair blowing off, and then there was rain, and then there was this loneliness, which is horrible when what is needed is another kind of loneliness, the one that assumes the ache and makes it a small bird, which are always ready for such things. In the same moment on the way to the hospital, an expectant father with his delivering wife killed at least five small birds, it was dawn, birds were strewn across the road like flotation devices in a still pond, the world was waiting for the kind of light that makes it the world, its expectations completely relevantly unexpected.
*
This is the invisible picture. It is always visible in a black white light, but then it is not. The most brilliant photo anyone took without film, the way a lover tries to make it known.
*
Dear Shahid,
Is there a way to make that known, the invisible picture? Probably it is a distance runner’s prints in the rain street.
Dear Dara,
There is always a distance runner moving past your mailbox.
Dear Jim,
You know too much of invisible pictures, your eyes are like universes that got lost and you have too about forgiving them for not being there.
Dear John,
You are waiting for a blank space it seems that is waiting for you. The eye of a dog after she has moved on, there is a fire there that seems blank at this time but it is not blank.
Dear Loki,
You were right about the way things go. You ran around everywhere, but mostly I tell myself you liked to sleep. That is where these things are found, I know because you were so peaceful in sleep, your hair-wisps like lovely little steamships cruising the range of our apartment.
Dear Ruby,
When you were spiriting through the sand, do you remember the sand, or is it just the turf of John’s brain?
Dear Scamp,
Your bones became my bones, like bathysphere’s cruising through me.
Dear Invisible space,
Please remember us unless you have better things to do, and you do. It is warm out and the kind of material that has use is like shreds of office supply depots, craggy with rain and train dust.
Dear Ashley,
If I have anything good left, please accept it from me. It is yours. Everything. But it is invisible.
Photo by Viewminder
