We Make Mud

There are stones along this river’s muddy bank that do not sink. They float, though in us brothers’ hands, these stones, they feel heavy to us brothers — feel the way that we believe stones should feel: hard, solid, things made from the dirt to be out over the dirt thrown. Throw them into the river, though, and these stones become boats that float on top of the river. Us brothers, we don’t know what to believe when we see a thing like this happen. This hasn’t always been the way with us brothers and stones. There was a time when, us brothers, we remember stones that used to sink. We’d throw them up and above and into the river and watch them disappear. In the darkness of the river we’d hear these stones go plunk and plunk. Maybe now it’s the river and not the stones. Maybe it’s that the river is more mud than it is water now, and the stones that we are throwing aren’t really floating. Maybe what these stones are doing is, they are just sitting there the way that stones sometimes sit in the mud: sit, and sit, for years, for centuries, until us brothers come walking up and along the river’s muddy shore and reach down with our muddy boy hands to pick the stones up from the mud. We pick the stones up from the mud so that we can throw them, so we can see a stone in flight, can stand and watch this thing without any wings rise above this earth.

We Eat Mud

Us brothers, we kept reaching down, with our hands, down into the mud. We kept on with our hands reaching down, into the mud, and when we did, us brothers, we kept on pulling up mud. But then once, when we reached with our hands down into the mud, us brothers, we pulled up Girl. We pulled Girl up, out of the mud, until Girl became a tree. Us brothers, up this girl tree, up, us brothers, we climbed. We climbed up this girl tree that used to be Girl, this tree that used to be mud, until us brothers got up to this tree’s top. Up here, at the top of this tree, us brothers, out of tree branches and tree leaves, all the color of mud, we made us a nest. In the sky above our heads, there was a cloud up there in the shape of a bird. This cloud, it was so shaped like how a bird is shaped that it became, it turned into, it was: a bird. This bird, it flew over to where, us brothers, we were standing up watching with our heads lifted up to see. When this bird that was once a cloud was close enough for us to touch it, us brothers, we reached out with our hands to touch it. We touched it. We touched this bird that was once a cloud once shaped in the shape of a bird, and when we did, this bird, it started singing. Then, this bird, this bird that, it was singing, then it and its singing, it flew away. When it came back, this bird, a little while later, like a good bird that always comes back, its bird mouth was filled with mud. This bird, with its bird mouth filled up with mud, this bird, it wasn’t singing. What this bird did, even though it wasn’t a bird singing to us brothers anymore, it flew back up close to us brothers above us our boy heads. Us brothers, looking up at this bird, we opened up our boy mouths. When we did this with our mouths, this bird, it opened up its mouth too, it started back up singing. And like this, with mud dripping down from this bird’s singing mouth and down into ours, us brothers, we began to eat.

Fish Heads