The rain ends.
All is lush,
and glistening,
and verdant
and a
beautiful
young girl
yawns from
boredom.

The very tall man, the owner of
a cosmetics company, is reading
a detective novel about a con-artist.

The little girl in the corner of the room
is calculating how long until the end.
The end of what? the very tall man

wonders. In the room above his head,
his wife, a chemist at his company,
is having an affair with the town’s

only physician. Outside in the tall
weeds, lit only by the dim glow of a
waning crescent moon, a fortune-teller,

formerly a lawyer in the public defender’s
office, is giving a reading to the
very tall man’s chronically ill twin sister.

Using ordinary playing cards as her
vehicle, the oracle looks like she’s
playing solitaire. She stares blankly at

the ill woman for several long seconds,
then states flatly and decisively,
No hearts, my dear, simply no hearts at all.

A countryside
dirt-road, a black
crow in the blue
sky, a scarecrow
dressed as Jesus,
and trash swirling
in the late
November wind.

Alone this winter,
an elderly man,  
with an eyebrow
raised at half-mast.

The news anchor,
with perfectly
formed ripe red

lips, describes
another unsavory
political scandal,

as the leaf blower
loudly propels
autumn’s colorful

debris from the
driveway, while the
iron heats up,

poised to press
the wrinkles out
of the white shirt,

with its faint
brown stain of
forgotten origin.

The summer sky is  
a vivid azure blue.
The red hibiscus
is blooming on the
white porch. Below
lies the old photo of  
a man in a gray suit.

The yellow kite,  
tethered to the
handrail is waving
in the breeze,
as the photo
suddenly
flies away.

In the end, it can all
be explained, and none
of it can be explained.

Tomorrow will exist,
of course, but by
then it will be today.

Language becomes
a long gurgle and
a quick sputter, and

as expected, by those
still paying attention,
it is irrevocably broken.