carnivals

She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife _ flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave _ she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared.

But this dagger _ this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy__ toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

A tired man lay down his headin a dusty room so dim,and for so long his wife did shakeand yell to waken him.Meanwhile his thoughts, his dreams, did stirof sandy, red bullfights,of powder-blasts in the airand carnival delights.Yet still his wife was in despairin a dusty room so dim,for she knew death was a whorenot far from tempting him.