GRIZZLY PEAR
It’s a short walk between the stairs and the kitchen.
A row of lego creatures lined the path.
Behind them, our cohort of our stuffed animals stood at attention.
I salute the honor guard and slink towards the snacks.
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[The sentence]
from Several short sentences about writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
It names the world, using the actual names the world already contains.
Perhaps it renames the world.
And this is only the beginning.
䷒䷙
My dad bought a new touchscreen computer.
Today’s zoom call was filled with caricatures on a digital whiteboard.
He drew mice, then a cat.
My daughter caged the cat.
The boy asked for a bear.
My dad drew the head; she added the body.
A racing dog and a silly elephant.
An angry bull and a gorilla.
A fish with a cavernous jaw facing a squiggly worm.
The girl hooked the worm with a fishing line but changed her mind.
She dressed the worm and fish in dark suits with red ties.
She gave them a computer.
My dad added a mouse, with two buttons.
I did the same at her age.
On rice paper.
A black cotton ball with a beak and claws in front of a brood of chicks.
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Rule a big country
from “60” in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (transl. Ursula K. Le Guin)
the way you cook a small fish.
䷋
A ravenous flock pursued us on the lawn.
We fled.
She was his age, last time we fed the ducks.
Today, the waterfowl waited patiently in the pond.
They’ve learned manners over the pandemic.
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The bottom of the quail’s foot is always itching for the ground ; and he seems never so happy as when leaving the enemy far behind him. His little legs take him through the brush so fast that you cannot keep up with him. Every muscle in him is as tough as a watch-spring.
from “Winged Life” in The Desert by John C. Van Dyke
䷨䷼
Our backyard is a sea of landscape rocks.
A shaded corner harbors a scrawny patch of wild grass.
The boy harvests the grain.
He severs the seeds from their slender stalks with a chipped rock.
It was her idea.
They’ve discovered the stone age.
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Nothing means anything except by having qualities.
from “Pronouns & Roles”, by Fred Hatt
The world is woven by thrummed strings.
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He jumped off a box set of Roald Dahl books onto the ottoman.
He jumped back onto the floor to repeat this routine.
He paused and stared at the hanging light in the center of the room.
He grabbed the box set, placed it on the ottoman, climbed up, stepped on top of the books, and stretched.
He was a few inches short but grabbed my attention.
He didn’t get a second chance.
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For Lucretius, letters were atoms in continual motion, creating the most diverse words and sounds by means of their permutations.
“Lightness”, from Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino
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The boy leaned over a pile of rocks.
He grabbed a faded bottle with both hands.
Fluid grey shapes appeared on the patio.
I knocked on the window.
He looked up.
What are you doing? 你在做什麼?
我在煮饭. I’m cooking.
好.
OK.
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I invented some people telling the story in a comic way in order to make it harder and more pitiless.
Jorge Luis Borges on “The End of the Duel” in Borges on Writing
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A United States Senator toured my building!
What an honor!
No.
The real:
They let me to deliver a daycare that serves forty eight children.
Every day, year over year, decade after decade.
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The purpose of a sentence is to say what it has to say
from Several short sentences about writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg
but also to be itself,
Not merely a substrate for the extraction of meaning.
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I cut myself.
An experimental bread process left a hardened loaf.
The knife slipped and tapped my finger.
I had just sharpened the knife.
It landed true.
Should I rue the success or celebrate the failure?
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As Hoffmannsthal said: “Depth is hidden. Where? On the surface.”
“Exactitude”, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino
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The boy was wearing a sock on his right foot.
He started the morning with a pair but shed the left when it developed a hole.
I went upstairs and found a replacement.
Two hours later, he was wearing the new sock on his left foot.
The sock on the right had developed a hole.
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You give me money, I’ll give you creative.
I’ll start when the check clears.
Time is money. More time is more money.
I’ll listen to you. You listen to me.
You tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what you need.
You want me to be on time, I want you to be on time.
What you use is yours, what you don’t is mine.
I can’t give you stuff I don’t own.
I’ll try not to be an ass, you should do the same.
If you want something that’s been done before, use that.PRO BONO
If you want your way, you have to pay.
If you don’t pay, I have final say.Let’s create something great together.
Segura Contract, via Signal v. Noise
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I tuck the kids into bed.
At their feet, I swing the blanket up into the air and let it float onto them.
We call it a floooph.
Occasionally, I’ll whip the blanket down with a whoosh!
The kids clamor for this 快 (quick) floooph, but mommy frowns upon this ritual of generating dust clouds.
We laundered the sheets this afternoon.
Tonight’s dust is clean.
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We’re It!
“A Cosmic Belly-Laugh“, William Martin
We always have been, and always will be.
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