We Make Mud

There are people here in this town, in this dirty river town with this dirty river running through it, who will be quick to tell you that what happened to our father, when he walked out into the river, was that he, our father, in the river, drowned. But us brothers, we are here to tell you this: that our father, when he walked out into the river, no, our father, he did not die. He lived is what our father did. Our father was saved, that night, when he walked out into the river, when he walked out across the river’s muddy water. Yes, our father, he is right now safe and sound and he is more than just alive, down on the bottom of this dirty river, down here where the rest of this dirty river’s dirty river fish live like the dirty river fish that these fish are and will always in the river be. Us brothers, we go to see and to be with our father on those nights when the river’s other dirty river fish aren’t, for us brothers, biting. Those other dirty river fish, we tell this to ourselves, we tell this to each other, they must be hanging out, these fish must be hanging down, down at the muddy bottom of the muddy river’s bottom. And so, on nights like this, us brothers, what we do is this: we take two deep breaths down inside of our boy mouths, and us brothers, like this, we dive down to the river’s bottom. Us brothers, here in the river, down where the water down here is thick and dirty with mud and river and fish, the way we like it to be, us brothers, see, we can breathe. When we open up our boy mouths, this river’s muddy water, it turns to air. It is like this with our father, too. Our father, he was the one of us who taught us brothers how to under the river’s muddy water breathe. Breathe in is what our father told us, the first time we came down to the river to see him, down here at the river’s bottom. Don’t worry about breathing, our father to us brothers said. All you got to do is believe. Believe what? was what Brother wanted to know. And what our father said to this was, Believe in the river, he said. Don’t you see, our father asked us. Our father said, The river is like sky. Then he told us to dive inside. Us brothers, we sometimes do what it is we are told. And so, dive inside, this we did. When we did, when we dove head-first down into the river, the river shattered into a billion pieces. Each broken piece became a star.

Girl Breathes a River

There is a river flowing inside Girl’s body that floats up out of Girl whenever Girl breathes. Brothers other than us might say, that’s no river, that’s just some girl breathing out her girl breath, but us brothers who made Girl and us brothers who believe Girl, we know a river when a river’s what we see. No, yes, us brothers, we know better than to say no to what we see and what we say and what we believe to be true. So what us brothers say instead of us saying no is we say Girl. We hop up on board of our made-out-of-mud boat and we oar our way down along this muddy river that flows, just like a river flows, up and out of Girl’s mouth. Us brothers, we float our made-out-of-mud boat down this made-out-of-mud river. We row-row-row our boat singing songs that float up from the bottom of our boots. Girl breathes a river is what us brothers sing as we dip our mud oars into this muddy water, this muddy river where, sometimes, in some places, it is so muddy that our paddles become shovels digging down into dirt. And this boat that is us brothers’? It is no longer a boat for us brothers to row in. What this boat becomes is, it becomes a tractor. And back behind us, in our mud-tailed rooster’s tail of a wake, we spit out from our singing fish mouths songs that turn into seeds, then seedlings, that turn into full-grown trees: trees that rise up and leaf up from the bottom of this river’s bottom: so many islands of so much green growing in the middle of so much water: so much water that looks so much like mud that it must be mud. And this, brother, are you picturing this? This muddy river that we are now floating down, that we are going down: it is a garden. It is ours for us brothers to keep.

Fish Heads: Revisited, or The Fish Head that Got Away