The professors with their words.
the secretaries with their papers
and the service people with their labor

“Uh.” Wayman says. “I think my car has been stolen.”
Well, the voice demands, has it been stolen
or hasn’t it? “I guess it has.’” Wayman says.

She stumbled on it. The story
had wrapped itself around her so long,
tapping and typing its coy music, that finally

Rapunzel had her hair. All she had
was a phone she couldn’t dial out on
and a second set of sheets—twin-sized

there’s a stink somewhere. One day the cat has sprayed your bookcase. Or the sewer’s backed up. Or the Thai woman downstairs is cooking rancid fish.

Then there is the question, how to disrobe for swimming? For if a girl simply strips naked, she is immodest. If she takes off some clothes but leaves on others, she is still undressing, still immodest, her body motions sure to spawn lewd

Remember how we’d gape at those g-strings and pasties, and giggle and yell and leave blue-balled and pretending not to be?

Each has a foot-square paper napkin stuck
to the headrest: a bow to budget travelers' sensibilities.
Too bad each square evokes a paper toilet seat:

He could be on acid, the way he holds them
to the light and stares. “Wow,
man. Heavy. Oh wow ...”

He tells of headless people with eyes on their shoulders,
dog-headed people who bark, one-legged people
who hop fast, mouthless people fed by the scent