EXCERPTS FROM THE FACT MODULE

prose pieces

If you take a wire and connect it to another wire that is connected to the foot of a rabbit, the rabbit’s liver will rupture if you send electric current through the connected wires—at least enough electricity to produce the ruptured liver. Of course the rabbit will die then you can dissect the rabbit and examine the ruptured liver and study it if you want. But would you want to. Some would. And why not just connect one wire from the electric source straight to the rabbit’s foot. Why have two wires. Well, it’s a free experiment, do what you want, it just doesn’t make much sense and requires more work. Oh well.


Inside the briefcase is a small notebook that he takes with him on long trips, and inside the notebook are a lot of facts and figures he jots down as collected information when he takes the long trips to various parts of Earth. Yes, Earth, because that’s the planet he lives on, isn’t it? So the notes in the notebook are facts and figures and when he gets alone somewhere, either while on the long trips or when he returns home, he looks in the notebook and marvels at all the information it contains. Wow, he sometimes says to himself, and sometimes he says Wow so loud that someone nearby may hear him and look over to stop talking to someone or stop thinking about something, and wonder why he said Wow while he was looking at a small notebook, the inside of which of course cannot be seen.


The coffee is percolating and the mother is in a green gown watching the sun rise over the cluttered yard. The mother hears the percolating coffee go click, click, click but does not think in terms of coffee percolating, only in terms of the sun making no sound whatsoever as it seems to rise above the cluttered yard where no one is playing or standing in. The morning is quiet except for the minutiae clicking-sound of the percolating coffee. The mother waits for the coffee to finish its percolation mode then pours a cup and prepares to sit at an empty table. For a moment she looks at the telephone hanging on a hook on the wall. The telephone doesn’t ring, but the mother does not think of the phone ringing or not ringing when she looks at it. She only thinks that she is looking at the phone because she likes the way it looks but does not know why.


One thousand three hundred and thirty-three and he keeps going like a roadrunner escaping danger. The wheels of the car he imagines are rotating galaxies.


Replace the hammer in the sling, he says, looking at the one with the hammer as if he’s about to attack. Did you go to college, he asks, and the one who has replaced the hammer in the sling says Yes, I did, and the other one says Well, then, I guess we got a smarty-pants on our hands. Others gather around when they hear the news, that the one with the hammer in the sling went to college and is now considered a smarty-pants. Some of the others think among themselves what they will eventually do to the one with the hammer, the one who went to college and now can formally be considered Mr. Smarty Pants. The days pass as the nights pass with them and the others plot their respective/non-respective course/s of action but nothing ever comes of it, because the one named Mr. Smarty Pants returns for his third year of college and is never seen again.


Just tell me and they will let you go. If you tell me everything they will release you.


Smiling with a wink he makes a funny face and she laughs and forgets what he said and instead pours him a glass of white wine and herself a glass of red wine and they drink it together and fall asleep on a ratty couch and in the morning at about 2:31 they discover each other all over again.


One animal and another animal enter a restaurant and the one animal says to the other animal Hey this is good place to be, and the other animals says Yeah it is. So the one animal and the other animal commence ripping the place apart, body parts flying everywhere, limbs splashing into soup buckets, severed fingers scattering into salad basins, bits and pieces and sections of scalps flung against windows and into half-full glasses of liquids. The animals finish their ripping-session and leave, licking their chops, as the manager emerges from the back and throws up at the sight.


Marginal means to ends and when the office opens no one is present until the receptionist arrives and places her purple purse under her desk near where her feet will be and touches buttons on a phone and goes to the break-room and makes coffee with bot reg and decaf and returns to her desk and sits and suddenly realizes she did not turn on the lights so she prepares to rise and go turn on the lights but hesitates and says to herself before completing the motion of rising, I like it dark in here, it’s kind of romantic, but then also realizes that she is still alone and it will be at least another twenty minutes before anyone else arrives at least is scheduled to arrive so she tells herself that being in the dark alone in an office is not romantic at all and that actually it’s kind of dumb and why did she think it would be romantic when there is no one else present to enjoy the dark office with so she gets up and hurries to the light switch and flips it up and finds that the lights somehow don’t work so she immediately thinks Wow, now this is something.


Ronnie would (will) never become a rock star and he knows it but hates to admit it and it’s all because he has no real talent and that all he does have talent for anyone else can do just as well as he can so in essence he is talentless and the world is a place where he really does not need to belong because everyone else has just as much talent as he does and maybe more than he does because there is nothing he can do that they can’t so Ronnie rents a car and drives to Denver and tries to freeze to death but some skiers find him shivering near a tree and take him to a lodge and give him cocoa and donuts and ask him where he’s from and what he does for a living and this makes him mad so he throws the cocoa at them and spits the chewed donuts into their faces and runs back out in the sub-freezing weather wearing only a t-shirt and jeans and then a sheriff’s deputy finds him and takes him downtown to the precinct and wraps Ronnie in a gray blanket and tells him to site there and shut up and that if he tries to go outside again he will be handcuffed to the chair. Ronnie just glares at everyone as they pass him by, his physicality meaningless, mundane, and misunderstood.


Bouncing the baby on her lap she bounces until the baby burps. The burping baby keeps burping and then the baby goes on burping until long after midnight and when the baby demonstrates that the burping won’t stop she takes the baby to the doctor who tells her that the baby’s burping is only normal for a few minutes of burping but that now since the burping has been going on for hours it’s not, so she tells the doctor Duh that’s why I brought the baby in, do you think I came here for a martini, and the doctor tells her he will give the baby something to help stop the burping so the doctor goes and gets something and comes back and gives the baby something in a bottle and pretty soon the baby stops burping, looking at the mother with a wan face, as if the world means nothing, as if everything in the world doesn’t really mean much. She thanks the doctor and apologizes for the martini quip and the doctor apologizes for any curtness taken as an affront, and watches as the baby leaves in the arms of the one who brought the baby in.


The glee of rotation spins their minds into malleable mush. They are drunk with motion and laughing. Is this what it means, they think, to be mad?