3439.

He swept that dark place hard, killing many spiders as he did.

3438.

He was annoyed at the yelling coming down the street until he saw the source: a woman, who could not even direct her electronic wheelchair, talking loudly, seemingly only in vowels, to her sometimes uncomprehending companion.

3437.

He wondered how many thousand maple seedlings he had killed that day.

3436.

He was lost in the weeds, in every way he could imagine.

3435.

The mowing reminded him of grass without representing grass or the concept of grass.

3434.

He thought nothing had changed; he thought nothing had changed.

3433.

He didn't wear underwear all weekend.

3432.

The cherries rest—old, gnarled, formal, but weeping—after abundant but fruitless blossom.

3431.

Seed fluff accumulated at the curved corners of the lawns, like suds that wouldn't pop, like tadpole eggs that would never produce.

3430.

The clouds broken into a string of islands in the blue sea of the sky was the most beautiful sight on that walk.

3429.

He wondered when was the last time anyone had cared for that house.

3428.

It he didn't care, it wouldn't matter.

3427.

He thought maybe sleep would come before he had to wake.

3426.

There was no end, he noted, to ending.

3425.

He could sleep only until he'd gone to bed.

3424.

The guitarist continued strumming but stopped to say hello as the passed each other.

3423.

As he had entered his bed, he thought of a note for the poem but decided not to write it down until the next morning.

3422.

A forest of tiny purple trees stretched over the spotty lawn, but only temporarily, taking the form of wilting grape hyacinths.

3421.

“She” was, to him, a word that existed without antecedent.

3420.

The junipers, low-slung and wet from rain, became an instant of his childhood in Millbrae, their rich resinous blue-green scent.

3419.

Yet afterwards he saw the first furry leaves of mullein sprouting from a lawn.

3418.

He prepared to sleep beside a blue light releasing a gentle stream of steam.

3417.

This time he did not break the flute when he kicked it over.

3416.

I'm smart enough . . . but not smart enough, he thought.

3415.

The apartment building was loud that night, but he was exhausted enough to fall asleep.

3414.

The rain came in loud fat drops that night, and suddenly.

3413.

He was the only person on the bus wearing a suit and carrying a leather suitcase—actually doing either.

3412.

The face of the church he waited by formed an almost perfect equilateral triangle.

3411

He smiled in the dark when the cabbie turned on the radio very low to entertain herself as she drove him through the city.

3410.

He could feel even the slightest onset of a plane's descent—“Years of practice,” he thought.

3409.

He ate again alone in a foreign city without a heart.

3408.

A small flock of little brown birds, converged and diverged, in the air and on the floor, converged and diverged, through the long terminal of the airport.

3407.

As the plane descended roughly towards Detroit, he hoped to finish the book before the crash.

3406.

On his son's first visit to the apartment, he focused his attention and praise on the track lighting.

3405.

He heard, inside the darkness of that room, the loud clicking of clocks, the sound of rain hitting its two windows, and what he thought was the small voice of someone sleeping through her talking.

3404.

He asked about the scent, if any, of tulips.

3403.

After one margarita, the scene around him seemed brighter, crisper; after two, he did not yet know.

3402.

He sat still, leaning into the beautiful spiral descent of the plane, observing the gentle twisting of perception, of spaces, towers, trees, traffic.

3401.

His view from the porthole was cloud, not cloudy, not clouds.

3400.

At sunset and from the plane, he saw the woods shorn flat for farmland and the long shadows of their remnants stretching over where the woods used to be.

3399.

The blossoms drifting from the trees smelled pink.

3398.

Only two, so far as he could remember.

3397.

There was no more reason for it.

3396.

Because her nametage said "Screll," he knew her name was Shirelle.

3395.

The trees has become hazy clouds over the houses, and even the forsythia had gone green.

3394.

The fire did not reach him, but the firetrucks did, and a smell like burnt rubber.

3393.

He pulled the splinter out of his knuckle with his teeth.

3392.

His smaller dog, the tan one, had a fang sticking out of its mouth, which he could not pull out.

3391.

After drinking his spritz, the world seemed sharper, visually.

3390.

He admired the perfect astral anus that pushed the pit out the other side of the olive.

3389.

He knelt into the dark scent of the blackcurrant bush, just starting to leaf.

3388.

He needed to complete the first half of it.

3387.

He heard someone receiving a call from him himself, but it was just a song playing.

3386.

Fartleberries were the only fruit he made.

3385.

He was told Shawn Connerie was the name.

3384.

"I'm afraid, I'm afraid," he heard but couldn't interpret.

3383.

His heart was often broken.

3382.

The ligament between the two capsules of the g bent out dramatically away from the rest of the word he was reading.

3381.

The me and the not-me are the same person, he said to one of himself.

3380.

He watched television so he could see people moving.

3379.

The little dogs loved to be petted because no-one ever petted them because they smelled so bad.

3378.

He could not forget to let the dogs in from the cold, he thought to himself was something he should think, yet not quite sure who "he" should be.

3377.

He took the damp book to read in bed because it was the book he had to read.

3376.

From his hiding place, he heard the girl ask, “Where is that balden man?”

3600.

Maybe that was far enough, he thought, maybe that was exactly far enough.

3599.

He pondered how the people below him watched TV so deep into the early morning.

3598.

He could not determine the shape of any sentence before he wrote it, but he could vaguely sense its shape and use that sense to discover it.

3597.

There was no end to it because neither was there any beginning.

3596.

He recalled (it seemed an echo of his thinking) when he sent his mother back to Somalia because she was driving him crazy.

3595.

Every puzzle he considered was separated into pieces a dog could chew.

3594.

Why did she want him to die? he wondered, Why did they?

3592.

What made his jokes funny was how sad they were.

3593.

He wondered if he could type an entire novel with an index finger.

3591.

When asked to define his happiness on a scale of 1 to ten, he was a gum wrapper.

3590.

He could grow into death, he assured himself.

3589.

He had so many children he could not count both of them.

3588.

He was not the one.

3587.

He was led into a small dusty room with a sheet crumpled in the corner by an open closet door and a pillow with a yellow pillowcase, and still he could not sleep, even though this was a flash of a dream he had experienced as his body urged him to sleep.

3586.

“Sir God loved the admen,” the song sang to him.

3585.

He was so glad he was not a poet.

3584.

Negative, he had no capability.

3583.

Writing it all down had made him more tired, especially when there was nothing real in the writing.

3582.

Seeing had become for him the same as saying.

3581.

He had the sense he was senseless, incapable of perceiving any aspect of reality, yet there was still so much he could see.

3480.

He dreamed of dreaming of an old factory where senses melded into one.

3479.

All he could taste was his tongue; all he could smell was his nose.

3478.

The end was more palpable than the present.

3477.

It was the echo of her voice or the reflection of her shadow.

3476.

Anyway, he could not think of any way to do it, not any way at all.

3475.

He lived in eternal limbo, the infants always inconsolably in tears, and every bar too low for him to pass under to the other side, which was anyway a place he could not imagine.

3474.

He had shuttered himself away, yet he could still always find himself.

3473.

He could feel in his head every pulse of his blood as a shudder.

3372.

His nightmares had become so frequent and savagely violent that he tried to believe not sleeping was his most precious respite.

3371.

He had a talent for nothingness.

3380.

He yawned a tear into his left eye.

3379.

He yawned a tear out of his left eye.

3378.

The light was a whisper he heard as a shout.

3377.

He wondered if his daughter would eventually call.

3375.

His was a tranquil sleeplessness, his hands the weight of falling.

3376.

He imagined the morning as the end of it.

3374.

What was the sound of soundly? he wondered.

3373.

She was sleeping soundly (he knew it).

3372.

It was the wait of his heart that held him in place.

3371.

It was the weight of his heart that held him in place.

3370.

They could not break him because there was nothing left to him.

3369.

He could not fix everything he had broken, and he had broken everything, even the musicless flute.

3368.

He could not be perfect.

3367.

Weary from the medicine he had taken, he still could not sleep through the noise below him, he could not sleep, and he dreamed of crashing through the light, of moving through a great and fracturing light, towards a morning he could only imagine as darkness.