“We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST.”

“The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine DisasterWhen you take your pillit's like a mine disaster.I think of all the people lost inside you.”

“I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.”

“With the rain fallingsurgically against the roof,I ate a dish of ice creamthat looked like Kafka's hat.It was a dish of ice creamtasting like an operating tablewith the patient staringup at the ceiling.”

“The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank.There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line.It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck.We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know.”

“Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to RainOh, Marcia,I want your long blonde beautyto be taught in high school,so kids will learn that Godlives like music in the skinand sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.I want high school report cards to look like this:Playing with Gentle Glass Things AComputer Magic AWriting Letters to Those You Love AFinding out about Fish AMarcia's Long Blonde Beauty A+!”

“Finding is losing something else.I think about, perhaps even mourn,what I lost to find this”