The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part twenty-three


Part twenty-three of the Ishmael Gradsdovic papers. You figure it out...


22 July 1994

A woman identifying herself only as "Baby" was arrested earlier this morning on the charge of undue influence over the weather. Crocodile teeth making hollow sounds as they land on the menses-covered sidewalks like those rattles shaken by stoic South American street musicians touring California farmers' markets with guitar cases full of compact discs. Keeps the news teams away, Alan Dershowitz doing interviews by phone, the wire breaks, the connection goes dead, whooping and hollering the injuns riding bareback mustangs over the ridge of blood-caked wheat, mustangs whinnying and tossing riders as hooves are torn by crocodile teeth. A thousand razor cuts the salt of dry blood the fury of barefoot little bighorn tosses the tommyhawk at the sun. I walk around the carnage collecting scalps casually. I'm making them into lids for mason jars, rhubarb mostly, up on shelves of checkered table cloths and wooden apples and old fashioned lollypops and Ghirardeli's and wooden cutting boards in amusing shapes and selling them there at the country store and inn by the lake rethreading a hook and tossing it in then pulling up the line no hook and rethreading another, yelling to my brother on the bank: "What? Has Dad gone crazy? Has Mom gone crazy?" Floating crocodile teeth like pumpkin seeds slap in the deep red water, bright red salmon eggs float in the soppy bottom of the rowboat. Japanese candies pick up lint from my pocket. People think I'm afraid of the deep water but I'm not afraid to go out away from the shore. Crocodile teeth like oyster shells scrape the skin from my fingers. A doppler mosquito scream becomes a baby cry the wounded sun slides down through the clouds into the gravel.




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