TRUE STORY


Tobias Wolff wrote this story called called
"Say Yes," and that kind of meaningful slick

    stuck anyway;
One by one, to accumulate companion animals;

to colonize, interpolated with the spaces in the
landscape; Barthelme's "Margins" :

   The silver
bowl held a mixture of harmonious beans (You are

ultra-organized, artful; suffer egoism) . . . Hence the
handwriting all over the majority face; Carl leaning against

   the architect's
building. One of the larger cats growled. She smelled good.

I didn't bother anyone. The brown shadow, the white sun
so delicate on the emerging human feelings. It was like

   watering enthusiastic
patches of dampening hair. The hurricane remained outside

the city. Well you just poke at the inner mechanisms, Carl didn't
say, though I thought it. Then I signed my letter. The sidewalks

   disappeared inside
the envelope. I held the conversation out in front of my body and

walked a block through snow, past Family Dollar, The Men's
Warehouse; the traffic lights in an entire city stopped working.

   Palms trees
again, half bent over. I walked forward, the story in my hand.