“A nurse’s aid threw the contents of a patient’s water glass out a window, the mass of water hitting the ground dislodging a pebble which rolled across the angled pavement and fell with a click on a stone culvert in the ditch below, startling a squirrel having at some sort of nut right there on the concrete pipe, causing the squirrel to run up the nearest tree, in doing which it disturbed a slender brittle branch and surprised a few nervous morning birds, of of which, preparatory to flight released a black-and-white glob of droppings, which glob fell neatly on the windshield of the tiny car of one Lenore Beadsman, just as she pulled into a parking space. Lenore got out of the car while birds flew away, making sounds.”
“Small birds throw seeds out of the feeder; large birds pick them up off the ground, but the squirrels try to muscle in.”
“She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.”
“It was one of those moments when everything is out of balance, I suppose, and just watching an odd thing seems to make sense. The squirrel scampered up a tree trunk, the sound of its nails like water in a tub.”
“Ow! Shit!" She yelped, dropping the wand on the floor and clapping her hand over her eye, the one into which she'd just smooshed a nice glob of viscous black goo. She fumbled for a wash cloth, wet it, and scrubbed at her watering eye. Years of exposure to her foul-mouthed brothers came pouring out all at once. "Piece of shit god damn son of a bitch!”
“Say that the berries on a tree fermented / say that some birds ate them got drunk demented / couldn't fly straight flew straight into instead / wall of an office block and fell down dead / down on the pavement people undeterred / stepping over the mound of broken bird”