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By Jim Meirose

Gotten out already his big forceps, he clamped onto the thing and pulled it free—advantaging the fact that the subject is far past killing—and as he swung the device—looking even more large, out free of its host—out over and into a stainless pan, its metallic nature was made known immediately by its the clank. Clearly this is a foreign object.

That’s a foreign object, is it not?

Obviously—and the thick shreds of stomach all th’ came ‘way with it, indicate that, most likely—most certainly—this is a top candidate for the cause ‘o this-mann’s final death.

How did it get there? How could one—as he prodded the gadget with a long rib-spreader lying by handily—ingest such a thing, after all, and by Peter, it’s two or three baseballs big.

Quite frankly yah yes, but—no. t’was not ingested as stated—had to become there by some unnaturally means. But—of its function, Doc—of what could that these, or those, if multiplee’ they be, what does it do. Can we tell?

Uh. It could not have grown there, ‘cause he’s not been ‘ver no machine. So, wipe that. It could not’ve been swallowed ‘cause of its immensity, and its grasping sharp appendages would have snagged it back, way up hiss throatwise most ‘mmediately. So, wipe that. Lastly was it implanted. Before dissertizing on that, maybe we got to nail down, 1. Surgically implanted? Ah, no, he’s no surgical scars. 2. Planted in, disguised as food or drink? Noah. Same quis’etty as swallowed. So, since there’s nothing else, what have we mis-guessed priorly back out ‘bout some coupla’ hunnerd’s ‘o words? To wit, I have just scanned all previous possible reasons down, once. And again, twice. And, again, once over one last time. And no.

Into the sudden breaking wave if silence was said aloud, So. We’ll never know?

Non no never eck—but it is what killed him.

That thing that there—oh, wook! Where did ye place it?

Right there—oh no, maybe?

No! Where did it go? No games, please.

I am not gaming. It was—I don’t know, look under these ‘n that’s.

And.

‘fter thoroughly scanning ‘der every these and that’s maybe-kimbo the whole room, eh.

I don’t get it.

Me neither, Chuck.

Eck, the masters, what should they be told?

A magic technology. Programmed to disappear if discovered. Like—like—like—the story at the front ‘o them olde tyme Mishdey-ing, if at all Posstibule, ‘terentainmenty shows.

Hic. What is that?

Oh, as the child you are here, you could not possibly remember. So never mind. But it is not your fault ye’re young as you are. You will grow up, someday.

But what about this? Why—

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photo: @johnwestrock

There is no language. I try to talk. I try to speak. I am met with silence. I am the Wilderness. I belong in the Wilderness. Scrub oak & crooked pine. Stick-figure creatures. Peculiar man from a very very very long island. I am Zig. Naming it makes it so. Call it what you must. Earth. I know no other. This planet is my planet. The Cosmos. Space. Echoes in perpetuity. I have not forgotten. The near simultaneity of our orgasms. A certain awareness is required for existence. All the goodbyes we said. I think of Berlin. Sex is unfinished. She holds by head between her thighs. She wants me to put my tongue on her clitoris. She pushes my head further down her belly. She says: Are there patterns in our movements? Bracing myself. I am down below. Nipples like ripe berries. She wants me to see her breasts. She holds up her hair as she fucks me. The failing light of a dying sun. Eightyeightthousand frames per second. I examine the granular particles of each frame. Text is my film. Epicenters. We make love in small circles. Am I the total enchilada? Am I half-mad? Am I mad? It is yesterday. Czechoslovakian milk comes in a bag. Am I real? Is this normal behavior? I am bewildered. Amerika is a State of puzzlement. Orgasm is an expression of love. We do it. I have a girlfriend. She has a boyfriend. The fuck is singularly inappropriate. Zig & Zoë are a Machine. Knees & hands on the floorboards. Opening. Awestruck. Gasping. Nearly falling over with pleasure. She fellates me. Something I can tell. Something I can relate. An episode. Anything. Something to happen. Waiting for an event. I enter a space. I enter a room. I animate. I breathe. Space contracts. Time expires. Sideways. Fucking. Zoë has a leg up on me. Nobody has a leg on me. Picasso. Lucky Charms. I delight in the art. Trapezoids. Quadrilaterals. Cubes. Perfect cardboard boxes. Such beautiful packaging. It is remarkable. The food from the supermarket. I eat the food. I. Me. You. Machines. Apartments. Making us helpless and stupid. Ancient city, what are you doing to us?  Yet we remain. It is safer to leave. We wander the ruins of a metropolis. Nothing matters except what remains. Ass in his hands. Zig admires the backs of her thighs. Just to see. Pull the curtains. Do you guess at normal behavior? Your phone is a supercomputer. We are electronic beings. This book is no longer made of paper. Makes no difference. Might keep going too. Let the manuscript unscroll. I might end it here. We are getting uncomfortably close to the epicenter of my being. Volkswagen Beetle. Ferdinand Porsche stole the design for Hitler. I like the Tatra 411. Look it up. It exists. Zetor. Grandpa drove a tractor. I make nothing. Grandma used to make dumplings. The goulash of existence. Waiting for the porridge. Waiting to be poured. A vessel. I am an empty cup. I have no skills. All of them. I believe in my skills. Who can live on 25K? Who can say: a novelette? A novella. 25K and what have you got? Floating. Floating. Am I really so terribly alone? Am I really here? Is this the Cosmos? Searching. Outstretched. Fingers and palms. Tactile experience. Feeling my way around. I am in an apartment. Echolocation. Reflections. Shadows. Neanderthal kitchens. Cabinets. Angles. Corners. Bats are the only flying mammals. How now? If so, what next? Is it collapsing? Are my thoughts gathered? Does my hair look good? I am terrified. Looking out a window. Sipping coffee. Alert. Awake. Everything is like whatever it is, right? Who forgets? Sounds & scents of fucking. She folds her labia over his Ben Jonson. Every new technology brings a war. The increasing wakefulness of being. Amerika beguiles. Fedora? Trench coat? Camouflage underpants? Parachute pants? Velcro? Electromagnetic? What fibers? What sort of clothing does one wear in the electronic environment? Open yourself. Open this novel. This is the news you need to read like right the fuck now! Did we lose the trajectory of Zig and Stefani? You said yes in thunder. Between her lips you feel like a god. Lowers your fly. She unsuits you. A gift. A flicker. You exist. There are no guarantees in the Universe. Vermillion is a city in South Dakota. Ochre is an ancient pigment. 

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Concept of Eggs
Seranoga (trans 1974 from Collected Rhymes)

Into the cold flat
Wandered the stranger
Distant from me
And yet still filled with hunger

Contemplates dinner
Penultimate meal
Fried imperfection
The unholy round

And as the liquids boiling sear
He thinks of protein filled with fear
The lies of man behind the box
The slice of death that darkness locks

Alien blackness
Potential nothing
Hopeful of life
Yet so sinful the supping

Feed me on high
Lest I  fall from the sky
I have no bite left…
Only my bark

And as you fry without a care
I  wasn’t really anywhere
The name of God is oh so flat
Behind these lines that I am trapped

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Calmly Considering what Clothing to wear Tonight.
Jim Meirose

Was cause of death not determined immediately, no no, after death as the law requires? I am not sure I need to know this is a special case more before I proceed no this is down from the top but this is highly irregular very much so Doc, listen, don’t; no st’, wait—I’ve been licensed on the condition now listen this is from the top, Doc that I work just do the autopsy according to the law okay buh’ listen the sooner you are done huh why and we get out of here the better off all concerned will be. Okay?

During this debate the mysterious men stood firm, so—angry still, but knowing there was no point, Pig gathered the necessary tools around him; plugged in his saws, counted out his scissoring scalpelsharps, and bellied up and; yes and; as always when gazing on the subject to be opened, all fell away and he bent down braced ‘gainst the table and began to cut. Cut and snip trim and spread push out of the way this and push out of the way that all smelling of alcohol ‘r formaldehyde or perhaps simply picklejuice, but no time for reflection, because this man—which he ’mmediately had to admit might no’ be so—such was the state of its faulty preservation—the tissues organs some fat ‘n some shriveled, were hard to cut—and as he went through the steps for this day’s lesson, which day was quite long back ‘ctually, he recalled them all ‘round him ‘n human anatomy twelve, lab group five, so remarked to Lavender boy, who was just finishing up gowning, Christ, in the real world where the meat’s super-fresh, will the cutting be this hard? This’s all pickled-down brittle like this—Lavender boy stepped up but the answer came ‘ctually from Venisienne which said she loud, as she usually louded out this way when in mid-slice ‘n slash, no, those ought to be butter-like eh, knives o’er butter, and Lavender boy leant in, saying, Yes, but, if in fact those we do in the future protest in such a rock-hard way, they will need to be put in their places, like this! And he randomly slashed o’er the pickleydown organmass, and, Like that! as he stabbed deep, direct a’ blow, to the random masse of stale hard meat before them, and; he said; and they all three agreed; the best line of work for us after we get th’ fat hanging sheepies, would be to skinny down as pathologists, or funeral stab-slashers, or what have we, you, them, or how out our anyhoots, you can’t kill the dead fuck up so what have a bad day and fuck up, so what, have a few too many whatever night’s prior and fuck up, so what—he gang, silly! ‘f ya can’t kill ‘em they can’t die! And, way back that day’s wave of hilarity washed over a rogue wave actually and in their hilarity, they stab, slice, eyes closed ‘r eyes open, so what? Push, shove, test the sharp of this knife off the sharp of that there, how far in the heart can we stab? We stab? Come out the other end, the encore being a prick down the leg of the long eh eh, so what? And that we the best day Pig had God bless Chester, Venisienne, and this random dead person, who meant to help humanity by their selfless sciencestiffic donation of their whole entire body, all babyfat still hung there, nor there, no issue—and Pig smilingly sliced some big hard lumpy thing with a knife, expecting the usual slimy nameless mass of a closeup shot, down into a bowl of pork and beans, or perhaps something else entirely, but—there’s a spidery metallic manylegger of some grasp of a thing there, all-stead, hey. Plainly deadly ‘ffn y’all ask me Doc. Hup.

They pulled back agape.

What the hell can this be?

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photo: Karan Karnik

Really … a felt marker? Is that all that is required? To write things down. Had I known earlier I’d had taken notes. As it stands, I remain. She is so hot. She kneels on the bed. She pulls down the front of my briefs and my cock springs into action. I watch her mouth open. A woman’s face so close to my sex. Her blonde tresses spill onto my lap. I grab her ass. She comes at me sideways. I want her sex on my nose. My ears are burning as I lick her pussy. She holds me there with her thighs. Rubbing the back of my head. She starts twisting and bucking. I worry about a broken neck. We stare blankly ahead as we make love. She wants to come. I want to come. Go ahead already, she says. Come into my pussy. Zig sleeps in beds of women who adore him. Makes no sense. He is as ugly as a Neanderthal. Fragile. Broken. The world could crush him at a moment’s notice. Zig spends his life bewildered. Fleeing from one place to the next. Flannel shirts. Dungarees. He does not require much. Night becomes impossible. Day. We breathe. We are the bellows of the fire. Exhale. Inhale. Snore if you must. Keep the planet spinning. Atmosphere and all. We make love under an enormous sky. Her buttocks press tightly against my loins. I look at her back. Spine. Shoulders. Under her armpits I can see the curve of her breasts.  I yelp a cosmic scream. I always forget what I forget. Then I remember. And it begins all over again. The Being. The walking.

Sixty-eight pages of nonsense. The writer’s job is to be alone. I am never alone. I am haunted by ghosts. Hungry ghosts. The blue-blinking ghosts of Pac-Man. Chasing after you. Like the Kraken. Thirteen thousand words. None of them are mine. I borrowed words from the borrowers. Language is mind control. If you don’t think so, think again. Escape. Be real. Be fake. She is so angry at me. Glaring at me. Wanting me to… what? Am I not enough? Am I too much? I am a handful. I admit. Handfuls of ass. 3:33 pm. We make love in a rough arc. Zig feels her vagina inching down the shaft of his penis. She starts pumping her ass. Incredible. I know not at all what I say. How can I? What? Is it not strange how seagulls use the medium of air in our atmosphere? As fish use the medium of water. Man is so fixed to a horizontal axis by gravity. Books. People. Autobuses. Strange how we keep things going. Keep moving. Even the mind is restless. Especially the mind. Particles bouncing. Ping-ponging against each other. I had a girlfriend. We used to fuck in my bed. It was nice. We made love. Now, all I do is work. Pleasure of the text. Metropolis. Take care, Big Man! See you later, Boss. I was walking. Zooming. Coffee man wished me salutations. I gave him my best Peter Falk impersonation. The hand wave. Serpico under the Hell Gate Bridge. I am a filmmaker. I am an eyeball. New York is a city of empty beer bottles. How can it be otherwise. Somebody has to guzzle the stuff. Easy on the Pilsner. Leave some for me. You and your electronic masks. Ruby Waves. Two faces looking at each other as their groins and hips find each other. Yowling and grunting. Ass-grabbing. His cock has increased in thickness. She feels it through her panties. Through his briefs. They are kissing on a single bed with their jeans off. Fantastic. Unbelievable. At length … approach the glistening. Zig holds up three fingers, five fingers, four fingers. He is doing some weird calculus with his hand. Anybody who sees him thinks he is a madman! A supercomputer! Language collapses. You become a lunatic. Everybody else says something except for you. His hand slides up her skirt and cups her pubic mound. His ass swings to and fro, a pendulum between her buckled knees. She braces herself for an orgasm. Hands balling into fists, grasping the Queen-sized fitted sheets. ”Fuck!” she says. “Fuck!” The endgame is at hand. Possibly a few last moves. The penultimate. It is good one can stop and think between moves. Possibly forever. She is a dazzling lover. No question. I can hardly keep my eyeballs in my sockets. Let alone not tell all my friends at the tavern the next day. I have no friends. I keep our secret to myself. I am discrete. She tells everybody. We are gliding towards Nirvana. Nothing can stop us now, she says. She is on top. I am holding her ass. My palms bigger than she or I imagined. When she comes, we are everybody everywhere. The perplexity of our existence is beyond the beyond the beyond. The bafflings. What else can we call it? Moments of Uncertainty. Pretty much all the time. I hear the clattering of Marley’s chains. Yes. I am terrified. How can I not be? I push the sofa against the metal door. Useless. I wait. I listen. Silence. Buttocks in our hands. A breast in the mouth. The nipple is hard like a pebble. We are twenty-two, twenty, nineteen. We are forty-four. We are eighty-eight. We still want. Tenderness & intimacy eluding us for so long too long, so precious, so rare. Her gaze fixes on my rising cock. I watch her take off her panties. Her sex glistens. We get into position. The excitement. The approach. The angle. We prepare our bodies for too much pleasure. 6.24.73. Stella Blue. Something is wrong, really, what. I sit in a Toyota. I stare blankly ahead. Waiting for something to happen. Now, I am in an apartment. A box. A machine. If you spend too much time writing the electronic interviews, there is no time for the novel. Do not let this happen to you. Is it happening to me? Not yet. Almost. I must fight it! The Kraken! Toast with butter. Marmalade. The number 13666 is terrifying. What does it mean? Word count? She lays back and lifts her buttocks to removes her panties. I lay on my side and I caress her belly. Everybody says stay inside. We are already inside. Peeping through peepholes. Listening. I hear the hum of a television machine. There are thirteen pine slats supporting the single mattress of a bunkbed. I sleep in the wilderness of the imagination. In other words, I do not sleep. Everything is real. Every syllable. Every vowel. She feels with a hand for the cock in his briefs. It comes flying out like a dangerous adder. She starts to giggle. Gives it a fast suck. She wants to fuck. Her pussy charms the snake. Lures it into the dark. The man worships the woman’s small breasts and big ass for the rest of his life. The clangor of steel wheels and a loose underbelly. The machine moves along iron rails. Passengers ignore being in motion. Pretend otherwise. Reading novels. Eating potato chips. The dishwashing machines is washing dishes with boiling sprays of water. The brainwashing machine is washing human brains in electronic whirlpools of information. Click if you like it. Double-click if it gets you horny. We are half-limp plastic people in the exploding Universe. What happens next? Eh? Are you prophet? Are you an engineer? Are you a harpooner? Did you see something in the water? A shadow in the deep? Keep your belly on the boogie-board. Kick a little less. Splash a little less. The Kraken lurks. Submerged. Invisible. Waiting to emerge. Nothing phone. Pick it up. Hello? Nobody. Nobody is there. Or here. Pressed tightly. A backwards glance. Truckin’. 9.10.72. Stop burning fossil fuels. Cannot help it, pal. I am American. It’s just funny to even have language.