The Farmer

They called him a farmer in wordplay, but it also fit somehow, if farmers worked without sunlight. They said he was short on intelligence but he had a particular aptitude for machines and so he was placed in the warehouse, a converted hangar filled with row on row of computer servers stacked 20 stories high, cables snaking down to the floor like Medusa’s hair caught inside a great humming hairdryer made of metal and cement. They thought he’d bear it better than most, being deaf.

The farmer’s job was to watch the machines and react when something went wrong. He carried a handheld fan, though in most instances of overheating this was not enough. For more serious malfunctions, he would carefully disconnect the aberrant calculator from its wire maze and carry it back to his office, where he would take it apart, adjust and test, and most of the time return it to its place within a few hours. In some cases, the electrical pulse was simply gone for good. These servers he stacked against the wall next to his table and the coffee maker, whose ON light was yellow.

His office was a small room added to the scaffold-cum-staircase halfway up the hangar, where he could sit and watch monitors, waiting for the orange light of a server summons. He spent most of the time pacing between rows on the clanking catwalks  full of spaces--looking down or up was like looking through a book of clockwork spiderwebs. He watched with his own eyes as the machines cranked from their shelves. Day after day they churned, each server with a blue light flickering its own irregular pattern. The sun came up from windows on one side of the warehouse, behind shades, and down on the other, behind shades.

Once the entire building lost power and the generators didn’t come on for an hour. Then the farmer paced the rows and reached his hand out, touching the machines lightly every so often to note the loss of vibration, heat dissipation.

Once they had introduced androids into the warehouse, presumably to help the farmer tend his rows. Instead they needed constant attention of their own, maintenance and direction and debugging. The farmer neglected his servers to fix them and became overly distressed when, as a result, a week’s worth of problems were backlogged. He went to his office and began watching for orange alerts from his chair for hours at a time, leaving only when needed and ignoring all else.

They removed the androids soon after, without a word to the farmer. One broken fleet member was left in a dusty corner of the warehouse. When the transport service later noticed the short number, they determined the  oversight was not worth a return trip.

The farmer played rummy alone, stopping to walk a lap of a level of the farm at each shuffle. He started at the top and went down.

He found the lone android one day in his fifth game, at 382 points, walking the 11th floor. It seemed dead. The farmer hoisted it over his shoulders, its plastic frame smaller and lighter than his but still awkwardly pointy. Took it back to the office, saw it was easy: one blown circuit. While the soldering iron heated next to the coffeepot, he drank a cup. Then he worked.

The android made a squealing sound while turning on that the farmer missed entirely, but he did see when its console lit up, green. The farmer couldn’t stare directly at it. He shooed the android out the door. It stood a moment, then walked off into the nearest row. The farmer watched until it turned a corner and was lost again.

He did not see the android in the maze, but sometimes he thought he saw a flash of green and would head that way, but it always disappeared.

Outside, the farmer found a wife. He brought her to the warehouse; she looked through the catwalk spaces, admired the machines, and after a few minutes complained of an awful headache. He’d forgotten about her ears. He found plugs somewhere in his office, but still she could not hear correctly for a few days. She decided she knew her husband a little better after that. He apologized and kissed her.

How can you make any sense of anything, all those flashing lights all day in the darkness? She asked.

It’s a system you get to know, he replied.

Later when she’d left, he thought of another question he might have asked: How can you hear, with all that noise? But then he looked out the window of his office and truly it was chaos in blues and spaces. So you look for the orange, and when you’re tired the yellow, and late at night maybe you will see a hint of green showing itself, he thought. For months the green was missing. He wondered, knowing the androids looked for orange as he did, whether the machine had found the sun behind the door and been drawn outside, to melt or burn or run in circles, east and then west and then east until all its power had drained. But the sun was hardly ever really orange, and the doors so far away and small.

From the top or the bottom of the warehouse the farmer always felt small. But in the middle he could stand just so where all the edges became only places he knew like a memory or a recipe and there he was wrapped up on all sides by electricity the same each way. In the middle he stood, Da Vinci’s man, measurable by protractor and pencil, the center of answers and he felt he should stick fingers and toes from each limb into sockets, plug himself in, set the warehouse spinning.

The machines never turned off. When he went home after turning the coffee off, the monitors black, and turned himself to his wife, they kept going. If he were to stay away, they would keep going. But the farmer always came back.


His dying vision was a smattering of blue lights blurred, his very last thought: there comes the green.

The android found him singed, bent strangely on the 12th floor, not far above where the farmer had once found it. His arm and forehead bled through the cracks, dripping down to floors 11, 10, and 9. The entire row of servers was black, still, reverent, the office a single orange scream.

The android carried the farmer to the table by the coffeepot. It assessed, pulled spare pieces from the pile at the wall. It filled his veins with coffee, his heart with gears. The farmer's very first thought: orange, everywhere.

He sat up. How long had it been? He turned to the android and they both moved out, returning to floor 12. They  began to fix the servers. Many were dark.

It must have been some time I was gone, thought the farmer, but he couldn’t say, felt warm and jumpy, a fuse in some joint not quite aligned; he had a recurring left leg twitch.

A clatter started on the ground floor, but neither man nor machine could hear it. It clanged up the stairs, level 1, 2, 3 …

The farmer and the android worked steadily -- it must have been a long time, thought the farmer, but he couldn’t tell anymore -- and yet there was half the row to fix, at least, other alerts piling up. We'll get there, thought the farmer. He needed juice and reached a finger instinctively for the nearest socket. Something under his skin felt warm, a pumping yellow glow.

He didn’t notice the dying of the buzz, but felt a sort of pressure leaving the air. His leg twitched.

The clatter was at 8, now 9, headed up to 12, coming noisy, careless.

A hundred years, thought the farmer, that’s how long we’ve been here fixing this row, at least. And then he thought, my wife -- has it been a hundred years for her as well? The android had taken a lead, his green light growing tinier by the minute, or was it the hour.

The clatter-makers arrived. They told the farmer to leave. He turned and saw darkness, no blue anywhere. At once the shades on either side of the building raised, and in rushed day. The android was still at work; they switched it off, carried it away.


The farmer left and stood outside, watching as workers disassembled the warehouse, took servers away piece by piece in boxes on forklifts.

His wife came running towards him, Darling, she called, Is it really you? She was old. So it had been a hundred years. They told me you were dead, she was crying. His skin dulled, leg started twitching, and he put out his arm to touch her face. But they figured it out, you see! she said. She held up an arm, glowing green from somewhere deep. I waited--and your ears, she said, They can let you hear, it’s amazing.

Had it only been minutes? He thought. Just that one row.

They embraced. Arm across her lower back, he felt for a button on her spine. He switched her off, carried her away.

always signs: young men, dreams, and kids

At the Method Church:

And the Catholics smoke after 6pm. For the kids:

Puddles

Leaving the graveyard, entranced suddenly by all the puddles, just the right light to put the sky on the ground to reflect everything onto (best of all) the black asphalt and smashing together dimensions so if I wanted to, maybe I could examine the treetops or roofs as closely as in a microscope. Slides cut by the shape of the ground.

Hello me!

Hello row, hello windows.

Cars reflect too.

Union Ave

No turn on red.

Graveyard Walk

What happened to Charles H., born 1888 and yet to be buried. I know I know, but I like to think, wandering , a vampire, an immortal, or just a very old man. Would he be incredibly wise, jaded, or senile? Would he be a drunk, use false teeth, be done with making friends, making anything, waking up, and maybe he's just sleeping somewhere and it's the hibernation keeping him. Or indeed I'm standing on top of him to take this; no one ever bothered to chisel it out. The numbers aren't years at all, just pinball scores and he's still playing.

Time is but a shadow

Arthur W.: Death by Vegetation

Thrown away before they're dead/for their dead.

Slowly all dismembered, none remembered slowly

Poems

o to what windy shores wild gushing waving windy bending, torn and tired or fierce and alert to save itself or only angry laughing rasping grabbing raging coming for the evening and the nighttime soldiers floating in on planks solitary surfboards boating hundreds of rushing gushing raging windy seascapes, reaching asking dashing wanting to slam into the beach and move the sand gushing popping wind blown fart in a blizzard everywhere sand up into the sky and the wind raging at the shoreline and the land and angry spirits lifting hissing yelling roaring rushing gushing everywhere raging and engaging on the shoreline, a line of seedy surfboard soldiers and a battle ragey engagy windy, to those, to which, what map and latitude will rushing gushing suddenly receive your kiss-off, hushing?

inside the lead thunk of an ice cube falling not into a glass, into metal melting, coating the insides. watching ice melt and remembering that lead thunk, a silenced splash, the crash of frozen water.

call it something, dozens a number, mis-connecting phrases (ask for a baker's dozen of roses, hoses, noses) but call it something because you have to it's not like connecting the dots, it's not realistic, to follow dotted lines. it's not treacherous or lecherous to fall off into negative space (the dots are white on black, reaching to forever and back) and in a follow-the-dots of the quantum variety, must you only use each option once? the picture: an endless field of starbursts, the definition of blackness entire.

speaking of things that are spontaneous, like combustion and thought and life (nothing jumping out of sterile haystacks, just the meta jump the haystack in the barn of goddamnit) and rambles, the most spontaneous thought sink of them all perhaps but if only the subconscious would just speak up, if only -- then we might be able to correct the view, the black plane made of asters, sparks, starbursts of unknown but infinite volume, audially, the great following dots that makes up travel, in time in presumably what you thought may have had to do with hayBUT WAIT there you found it, that volume control at last turned down. back to the show (it's an epic battle on a shoreline)

how often does the punchline turn out to be a brick? the only example i have is a multiple-day long joke, based on not being funny, where the brick is only a stand in to something subtle, sad, silly.

3 oz's or less includes many stick deodorants, small lotions, razors but not technically, the small things, a bottle of liquid or a chapstick covered in unintentional kisses, except for the last one which i put there explicitly for you. bon voyage.

don't pause if you've never paused before, because you don't want to break the record and it seems perhaps unorthodox, and there's no telling if you'll ever be able to start again?

at the swiss embassy: a large poster about being eco-friendly, bullet point advice, each ending in exclamation! fly in airplanes less! bring your own bags to the grocery store! buy local! printing visas with solar power, but what about that whole busload of children who were walking in as i was walking out? surely be sure, the superior is reminding the tour guide, that surely you don't play up the motherland too much. we don't want them taking airplanes, ruining our pristine water with their little, graphite dusted hands, eager eyes, innocence and senses, if they've come to them. one never can tell with americans.

i cannot picture a herring, specifically, or a yellow throated warbler or the other creatures that seem to be standard somehow or that i should know in accordance with being aware of surroundings or something like that, but i doubt they know my name and it's no matter in our relationship, because i say so and by consent in glances the birds agree with me. so back off field guides and urban naturalists and language and libraries.

from waking up standing going to pee and filling up a glass of water maybe thinking for a moment, before the pants are on and it's still morning, about the morning a little bit and the sunlight behind still closed blinds knowing things have started before you long and many millenia before in fact, but maybe only 13.6 billion years at that, if you have an understanding of finiteness, it might make a difference, think to yourself, from there going, dream to dream.

What the artist drew

The artist set up in the park at the top of the hill with no easel, just a sketchbook, some pencils, and pens to go over really outstanding lines. The park was waterfront, grassy, with old fashioned street lamps and lots of kids playing, dog walkers. Small sailboats meandered on the water that went straight out to sea. The artist had a baseball cap on, but flipped it backwards now because the shadow of the brim kept falling across the paper. After staring for a while, turning and looking up, down, taking it in, sipping something from a canteen, the artist set to work. In twenty minutes, a pulse, a zone, had been found, and the whole scene of movements, kids playing dogs walking boats sailing, was one jello-like solid, one scene of motion all around the artist who was making lines and lines and lines.

The artist kept looking up, off to the ocean. Kept studying the fine shadows and curves of the leaves and the grass, the particular turn of a child's cheek. Tried looking at what inquisitive dogs were seeking out, nose to ground, and the artist kept looking up and kept going back to the sketchbook now to erase or to add, to smudge with a tongue-moistened finger and then hold out, look at with head slightly tilted. Once the artist turned to the next sheet and started fresh. The children down the hill sounded distant, the way people at the swimming pool do just as sleep begins to arrive, from a lounge chair.

For two hours, the artist worked and looked, finally getting out some colors – but that only lasted a minute; they didn't seem to be working out right. A woman reading on a nearby bench was so curious, kept looking up over her pages trying to watch what the artist drew, but couldn't quite see well enough, was not aware that the book had moved to her lap and she was just staring. And still the artist drew.

A cloud passed overhead, the temperature dropped a few degrees. The artist had a sweater on the grass, but didn't make a move for it. Turned the baseball cap to front facing. Did not know the woman was watching from behind, and finally, all at once, as an apparently spontaneous decision with the pencil barely lifted from the page and not an extra moment of contemplation, the artist packed everything up, checked the time, and walked off up the hill.

Most of the sailboats were turning in and the cries of the children showed some tiredness, hunger, laced over happiness from an afternoon outdoors. The woman on the bench kept reading, but now the breeze was a little too cold, the shadows a little too distracting on the page, and she'd get to the end and realize she had only been thinking about what she saw on the artist's page -- surely it wasn't what she thought she saw, was it? -- but she couldn't really know, might never know for sure. It was probably time to go home, make something to eat.

The woman went home, made something to eat. Took a shower and poured some wine, ready to try the book again, now from the couch in the lamplight. But instead she only opened the page and saw the park. So she hesitated, grabbed a sheet of blank paper (which took her a moment to find, for all the paper she had in the apartment, none seemed to be blank) and picked up a pencil with determination, poised to make a mark and stopped. Looked up. Only the clock was ticking, and beside her, that same ocean was visible through the glass leading to her balcony. She looked out into the sea beyond the town and could see quite a bit of the waves, the sleeping sailboats, in the moonlight. And she squinted her eyes, tried to look out as far as she could but the never-ending lapping blackness of the sky and the water only melted out and away. She stood and pressed her nose to the glass (too chilly, it had become, to stand out on the balcony) and she tried to see farther. Tried to see the sea.

Finally she turned around and picked her book back up. Stopped every once in a while to look at the blank paper and the pencil, thinking of the blackness and everything that could be, out there, and she was certain of what the artist must have been drawing.

X, Y, Z

Luke was depressed again. He laid in bed while the morning started and regretted only having closed the shade halfway last night. Under the blankets, he rolled onto his stomach, willed his eyes shut though by now he was clearly awake.

What was the point of it all? (You're so original Luke. That's the question of the day.)

At least he didn't need to go to work, or maybe that was only lucky for The Universe. The one outside of him. Because in bed it was just Luke, Luke and a pile of unsubstantiated, unnecessary misery.

Well, fuck 'em. Sigh.

His face breaks and crunches inwards but he stays still. He is clutching the corners of the pillow underneath his head.

Why do I feel feeling x (all alone), feeling y (ill), and feeling z (driftwood)?

X and y were getting old, seemed a little cruel anyway, for returning so often, striking from anywhere till Luke sought out the bed, his room and the solitude to face them like the sniveling man he was. Z though, z was approachable, almost friendly. Z was already in the day by day, familiar to any young person who'd ever given more than half a damn about

Life. Gah. What was he doing with his life? What could he do with his life? Why did it matter, anyway?

Always pragmatic, Luke decided to try and sort z out.

Well, he was living, comfortably by most standards in the house he rented with his best friend since college, Mark. His job was not great, or maybe it was – no sometimes it was. But most of the time, Luke was bored. He was in sales. Looking for a nobler calling? No, not really, though if it should strike him, he might take a second glance. He'd always admired his friends that went to medical school – not for their ambition or hard work, but for their passion, so to speak. To think one could do something significant in this world, to have a whole life mapped out by what in all measures was a solid plan, trusting that this path was right.

Right? What did that even mean, for anyone? No one could really know, could they? Luke had rolled to his side by now, had been staring at a point on the wood panels of his wall concentrating and not seeing. Now he reached under his mattress which was on the floor without frame or box spring, and pulled out the knife he kept there, a small paring knife. For a moment, he handled it, passed it back and forth between his hands. He rolled onto his back, feeling its weight and contours. Delicate was his touch, like he might be stroking a woman if one were in his bed.

There was no right or wrong, of this Luke was sure. But it didn't matter, so much. That wasn't the question really, and far too often it seemed to muddy the waters of Figuring It Out, even Holden knew that.

The traffic was picking up outside now, with the light. Mark was awake; Luke could hear him in kitchen, making coffee no doubt. Luke loved coffee, pictured putting on pants and going downstairs – but only for a second. Matters at hand, he looked into the knife, which was gray. The room was gray, everywhere the sun did not stream, which was a little less by the minute.

No point really, Luke thought, looking at the knife in his hand. He'd laced his fingers over-under-over, undid them, redid them. Makes no difference if I'm here or there, if anyone is here or there. Aren't we all just a blip on the radar. The tea kettle beneath him screamed.

I'm so tired, thought Luke.

I'm so x, y, and z. And now he had the paring knife in a grip, a pose like a horror movie stabber would take, in miniature.

So goddamn – he rolled over to his stomach, to the middle of the bed, and plunged the knife into the electrical outlet above the mattress – x – the shock made him shake, his hand burned, clutched hard and he let go.

He picked the knife back up and plunged again – y – and this time he felt fuzz, like he intimately knew each electron running along his skin.

And z! The last time, throwing in the paring knife, singed. A distant snapping noise floated up from downstairs, Mark's muffled fuck.

The knife was scorched, dark gray, and Luke left it on the mattress. Got up – wait, he felt weak – ok now he got up, put on pants. He bounces down the stairs, meets Mark coming up from the basement, who says – hey man, I reset the breaker, fucking electrical went out in this house again. We really need to call Antoinette about this, I mean, I was making toast.

Luke nods and passes him, entering the kitchen. Don't worry dude, he says, Look, the light's back on the toaster and I'm going to make us pancakes.

Royal Farms Holdup

The veterinarian is walking toward Royal Farms, the house is out of toilet paper. He always means to buy more, but forgets until his roommate does first so now

He's walking into the store, thinking about whether he'll go for extra ply (probably just the value pack, the best deal, he'll work it out) when he feels a jab into his upper back, smells panic like a breeze that just rushed in, hears from behind him the muffled yet loud “Hands Up! And sir, if you will please, continue walking right towards that register in front of you.”

Hands up, the veterinarian approaches the cashier. Starting to sweat, not losing his cool. He did two surgeries today, he's thought about life and death, good and evil, a great deal. But was not expecting this. And for a second, he thinks about all the options with his eyes calculating down the row of items as he walks step by step the few feet towards the register (it's only a few seconds). He sees a line of umbrellas, but the metal they're made from is probably too weak, and hairspray, but uncapping or shaking could hold that up too, but then

And the vet was a pacifist, every day saving dogs, cats, parakeets, horses, fish, you name it – but always a price tag at the end, always a bottom line, and sometimes in that operating room with the lights and the animal, not like a person, the animal always afraid and you could never reassure it, a cat, that everything would be OK, that you're the good guy. Even when it's over and the tumor is gone, the cat hisses. The cat knows that something in the balance of things, of life and death and good and bad, just got thrown off.

But then he sees the broken rack just under the register, Hershey's bars sliding downwards and before he debates (it's only been seconds) he reaches down, yanks it off and continues the motion thrusting backwards as he dodges left, impaling his assailant in the abdomen. He can only see the cashier staring behind him and hear the attacker's quiet grunt – soft like an old man, he thinks, a note of helplessness. The the thud, body hitting floor and now the footsteps, noise as the few other customers run out of the room and the cashier is already on the phone and he must be imagining it, the sirens he thinks he hears in the distance, though this is Baltimore.

The man behind him is making gasping sounds and now the vet turns. His ski mask is pulled away and he's not so old, probably about the same age as the vet, he thinks. And he looks a moment into the man's eyes, recognizes a pain universal. Automatically, the vet makes motions (he can't feel his own hands). Grabs bandannas off the rack, pulls out the bent metal swiftly, stabilizes – the wound is narrow and deadly as from a small shank. The sirens outside, he now knows, are real.

On the floor the man struggles at the sound,twists violently to the side and the vet holds one hand pressing the makeshift compression bandage into the man's abdomen, grabs the broken piece of metal with the other and insists loud, firm, but not quite yelling, “I'll put this right back in you!” For a moment they catch eyes, are both still except for hard breathing, one shallow and labored, one angry and charged. They can hear where the cruisers must be now, less than five blocks away, and the vet is looking nowhere else and then the man's eyes close a second too long. A whimper and he seems to say something. What, the vet leans forward. He has to get inches from the man's face to hear him. Just kill me between breaths. The vet is still, the man's eyes open and lock on his. I can't go back to prison. Sirens, a block away. I'm sorry, please. Here, take my gun. He's trying to reach for the object, it's less than a foot away from his body; the vet is paralyzed, somehow the man reaches it. They'll never arrest you. Self-defense. About the same age as me, thinks the vet, he'll never make it, he thinks. Then as if all his effort would go into one word, one action (but he cannot lift the gun, only nudge it on the floor. It brushes the vet's knuckles) Please. The man's eyes close. The vet has seen this before. He picks up the gun, the sirens are outside now, he hears voices even, running on the sidewalk. He stands, the man is unconscious, he can feel it, his breath is hardly visible and the vet stands up, with both hands, one steadying the other he aims, square

Now! The man behind the register watches a cop push through the door take in the man standing, gun ready at arms length towards a bloody body. Now! The cop fires. The gun falls from the vet's hand.

Wires, short notes

The bird in the back porch planter-cum-hot tub, city stretching behind but what are they doing here still (the birds), haunting the nooks of my house, when someone toppled the nest days, weeks ago and no more eggs, no pile of twigs remain, nothing, what are these birds looking for, up down and inside everything?

And here's the real Wire, the wires, a man-made track and tracing, an electric web to look through and see the skyline hazy downere by de oshun. From here they look flat, almost, except for the phone lines in delicate long curves getting farther away, and I remember when a Comcast guy was up on that pole, wondering if he'd cut the right one, and who'd know with so many, how can anyone be un-connected in this city with so many wires? Where are all the beginnings and ends -- if we could put pot-of-gold screensavers on every tv and computer, what a strange rainbow hunt. What a strange sliced up view and how nice to have the Internet inside.

From the ground below, from a rat's view, perhaps, another dissection takes place. spring chaos.

spring chaos and plants burst out like hulks from nowhere, out of hiding, breaking barriers, pots. Making a general mess of things, putting terra cotta in its place. 

Safari

On safari you observe from the jeep -- at any moment you can jump down and become the lion maybe, or the giraffe. You pass another jeep, going the other way. Both vehicles stop. In between them is a gazelle, with nowhere to run (but you suspect that is a joke, because the gazelle is fast, faster than any of you even in your jeeps -- jeeps contend with people and rocks and potholes -- and the gazelle knows where she is, knows how to run and get away and she is just tricking you, acting dumb) you hope, you know, you want to think that, and you do. Then someone from the other jeep pulls out a rifle and you realize that the other jeep was on a very different kind of safari from yours and suddenly the Nikon falls on your neck cold and heavy, a dead weight, the reels of egrets and hippos inside are useless. And you see that gazelle, though you are yards off you think you can see the hairs raising on the back of that gazelle's neck -- but she's looking at you. Her hairs are raising at the camera, the wrong jeep, the friends and she just doesn't see! No little gazelle, this isn't Facebook, this isn't a moment for privacy concerns and I'm sorry, so sorry, I took all those pictures of you, invaded your home, but please, please just RUN.

The shot cuts the savannah like a thunderbolt; you are thrown backwards to the far wall of the jeep. As you groggily lift your head and look around through the chaos, the panic, the people-panic, the animals are gone. The gazelle must have made it and you look down onto the floor of the jeep where your Nikon lays in pieces, scattered. One of them seems to be embedded in your chest. But you're alive, it's ok, "we can get you back to the hospital in time, just hang on," the passengers who aren't crying, screaming, are comforting you.

The driver has left the jeep, in some kind of yelling fight with the people from the other jeep. You can't move in the vehicle, think you could maybe see the glint of more metal, guns, but you cannot really focus, don't really know for sure, and it probably doesn't matter just get back in the goddamn jeep and go, please. I'm sorry! (the broken Nikon, you know it's only plastic and lenses but you imagine it's the scattered remains, a giraffe tail to the left, zebra hoof right, and you broken in the center. The shouting, shoves, and you wonder was that really a safari after all (but what's the difference?) and the African sky is darkening (was it a real thunderbolt, was there really no shot at all)) and you know at once, that somewhere around the little squabbling group between the car, the lions are watching. They might be in a ring, they might be in disdain and leaving -- but they might be in a ring waiting. And your throat catches realizing just where you have sent the little gazelle off too.

And now members of the other jeep are pushing, ordering, boarding your van. They spot you, against the wall in your safari wreckage, lift you like a tied hog from arms and legs. Carry you out into the deep blue, wind-starting-to-whisp world. A first raindrop hits your face and you are very afraid, but scared paralyzed. Your eyes roll back, showing whites. They tie you to the top of their jeep and now the rain is picking up and all you can feel is the wetness and the metal body beneath you and then they are speeding off, over rough terrain and you bounce and bounce, to a destination unknown.

Religion

 Mary (is that Mary?)  Some Saint is keeping watch over the porch, on the alter of iced tea and Star Wars Monopoly. Less mocking than a pink flamingo might be, and less serious than religion mocking real life. And possibly more fun than either... except where were the people, leaving that big pitcher out there to condense on the Monopoly? Out of the frame lay a broom half-standing, tossed onto a chair, like maybe they'd been in a hurry to clean something up, clean up the porch for the Holy Game ritual. Across the street a cat watched through the window screen in another porch empty of people, two shrines dissected by street traffic.

 In front of my house, Steph's bike sits right at the bottom of St Thomas Aquinas. Showing respect, praying for safety that no more assholes tip and run on the street. Covering itself in reverence. Even that purple tree is bowing. The tip of my car noses slowly in line, waiting for its turn to move into the sacred parking spot.

And here the height of tall things in the sky reverses, where the street lamp towers above like it might shine a spotlight, an interrogation, a reverse inquisition on the church steeple, and there at the bottom, most lowly and useless, the t.v. tower cowers most spindly ugly and alien.

SADIE MAKES BREAKFAST, INJURES ONE

The morning of Sunday, February 3^rd, dawns slightly later than expected, at least in the Graham household, 246 W 30^th St. Sadie Graham, mother of two and adorned in a pink bathrobe and mismatched socks, arrives in the kitchen no earlier than half past ten, with a plan to make pancakes.

Midway through the first batch enter Scott, 10, and Kevin, 15, who sit at the table without speaking, presumably still somewhat asleep, until Sadie hands Kevin a plate, his arm promptly turns to ceramics, and he yells: “MOOOOOOOMMMMMM!”

For the past six months Kevin has been experiencing unexpected manifestations of a skin-changing mutation which his mother refers to as his “chameleon charm.” When the Baltimore Polytechnic High School freshman makes contact with certain materials – which, exactly, he is still determining – a portion of his skin from as little as a finger to his entire body takes on the properties of that object.


Kevin was ejected from a lacrosse game last summer when his arms and torso temporarily became aluminum and a collision with another player resulted in that player's breaking four ribs; however, the call was later retracted on the grounds that lacrosse is a dangerous sport to begin with and the injury was not out of the ordinary enough to to merit such an exception.

But this morning in the kitchen, the Graham family is coping with the more emotional frustrations of adjusting to a newly mutant-human mixed household.

“That's it. I'm not touching anything else, ever,” says Kevin, whose arm is rapidly re-humanizing in a fade from shoulder to fingertips. “I refuse to turn into a pancake.”

“Kevin, honey, don't be stupid. You can use a fork,” responds his mother. A heartfelt supporter of mayoral candidate Grace, Sadie Graham admits that though she believes in the mutants-are-people-too mantra, she is often at a loss for how to deal with her own mutant son.

“True, a fork won't solve the problem, but he needs to eat,” Graham explains. “Teenagers.”

Scott, meanwhile, has remained unperturbed, watching the exchange from behind his plate of syrup with pancakes and only pausing in his food-absorption for a moment during Kevin's arm metamorphosis.

“Pick up your fork and take a bite,” Sadie addresses Kevin in a tone turned suddenly hard. For a few seconds, the two elder Grahams glare at one another and Scott takes the chance to serve himself two more pancakes.

“You follow Grace like a sheep,” Kevin finally growls, “But I'm sick of you humans deciding what's best for everyone.”

“Kevin, you watch--”

“--You included. You don't have a clue.”

“Put the pancake in your mouth.”

“You can't force me.”

Sadie reaches for a fork, stabs a stack and leans toward Kevin, who suddenly panics and yells to her not to touch him. Sadie stops and puts the fork down. Kevin is tilted back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.

He falls back and hits his head after Sadie replies, “fine,” loads her spatula with pancakes, and flings them at his face. “Oh Kevin! Honey-- are you alright?”

This time, maybe, turning into a pancake may have been preferable for the mutant teen.

GRACE'S RACE: NEWEST CANDIDATE SPEAKS TO CITY

“Soon as he said he'd bring HAMMR to Baltimore, I liked the guy,” says Sadie Graham, 32, of Remington, “And after this speech, I might be in love.”

Graham's comment outside the Convention Center following Tuesday afternoon's press conference captured the spirit of a crowd smitten with lately-announced mayoral candidate Cameron Grace.

In a follow up to his announcement of candidacy last week, Grace spoke to a mixed crowd of humans and mutants about his positions on all issues from city education reform to the proposed Chesapeake restocking with Old Bay-Maryland Blue crab hybrids. However, his efforts were overwhelmingly focused on his standout initiative to establish the Nation's next HAMMR location in Baltimore City.

The Human and Mutant Mediated Relations group, which typically goes by the acronym HAMMR (pronounced “hammer”), is the foremost organization dedicated to cultivating peace between the human and mutant races. Founded in Westchester County, NY, by advocacy leader Charles Xavier six years ago, HAMMR has established offices in a dozen cities worldwide and has passed peacekeeping legislation in over thirty countries.

“I believe in Baltimore, and I believe that HAMMR will help break barriers in this city so that it will continue to be the Greatest City in America,” said Grace, “It's time time to work together and fight the chaos plaguing our nation's capital right next door.”

Grace claims he will entice HAMMR to open a development center in the heart of Baltimore, possibly downtown or in Harborplace. He has mentioned an unconfirmed personal connection from within the Xavier Institute, HAMMR's umbrella organization, as well as potential zoning and tax incentives. By keeping the location prominent for both city citizens and tourists, Grace says he plans to make Baltimore an example for other cities struggling with violence and intolerance between races.

Thus far HAMMR been his single most touted pursuit. Though candidate Grace has never overtly worked for a peace group himself, he has spent over a decade working for social justice and campaigning with various peaceable causes in the Baltimore and DC metropolitan areas. He is a board member of nonprofit advocacy groups Marylanders for Mutantkind and Bmore Coexists and holds a law degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

And in a time of uncertainty in both the nation and one's own backyard, people seem ready to at least listen for a while to the Grace doctrine.“They ain't nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded machines down there,” said one unnamed bystander, of Washington politicians. “They just got no idea.”

“But Grace,” said a woman to his left, “He knows what we need– and he'll deliver.”