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the gun down or they’re going to shoot your head off.
    I’d rather die than listen to this asshole, he says.
    A sniper shoots him right between the eyes.
    St. Maria is eleven and fights a farmhand from raping her, saying it is a mortal sin. He stabs her and she is operated upon without anesthesia. Her last words are, I will think of you in paradise. Ten angels surround her.
    The pain is everywhere as I dream on my boat. There is deep sweet melancholy in my slumbering. I see all. I see the wizards near the peach tree. I see Tuesday and Finger laughing on jet skis. I see Bill and Hillary and Monica having a threesome. I see ships in bottles and fields of white cotton. I see the crazed frat boy gunned down in the street. I see the chess pieces falling and the fifth graders with their piss balloons ready. I hear the Sunset Limited round the bend. I see St. Matthew driving my Saab and I see ponies running through the mountains. I see the blossoming of ten thousand wildflowers and the flocking of birds.
    Nono comes to the boat. I wake up and there’s a cig still burning in my mouth.
    I want to tell you about my life, she says.
    OK, I say.
    I was born in a prison in China and I killed my mother with my birth. When I was fifteen I heard a song by the Beatles on an American channel from Taiwan coming through a guard’s radio and dreamed of escaping. After many years of planning, I did escape to Japan on a raft. It took forty-three days and there I married a wealthy architect, but I left him in time. And then I met a famous British actor and moved to Tangier, but left him, too. Finally, I married a starving poet and we lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Then I came to the South to bury my best friend from my days in Africa. I could not heal her so I am staying here, living her life in her honor.
    What does that have to do with Eli, I ask.
    I love him.
    I look at Nono’s soft lips.
    Why do you love him?
    Because I loved a rich man and wasn’t happy. I loved a famous man and wasn’t happy. And I loved a poor poet and I still wasn’t happy. I’ve gone everywhere, seen everything. Eli makes me happy.
    I load a pipe with hash.

6
    This hate has gone on long enough, pride is reaching epic levels. These mini bros on the hillside are major mischief-makers countywide, exploring violence and lighting farts. These monsters will grow up to lay off people and beat their children and force them to play sports against their will. I call over an officer of the law.
    I am covered in urine from their balloons, officer.
    This happens to be my nephew, says the officer.
    OK, but I’m covered in urine.
    Sounds like a personal problem, he says.
    I am a man of the cloth, I say.
    He tasers my scrotum.
    If a summer day goes wrong it can break you. A girl in Tupelo took an overdose of sleeping pills because her day at the pool wasn’t fun enough. But autumn is coming, season of dark poets, my best time. Football will be back and cold beer and pumpkin-launching contests. I will take Darling to the first game in her gingham dress and sweater. We will drinkchampagne we can’t afford at the restaurant we both hate and walk out on the bill. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Go team. Go.
    I can’t read the news anymore. It’s a racket, Eli. All I need is the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance and have the band play “Dixie” when I die.
    Darling has taken my hand as we walk home and I have taken hers, my heart growing ten thousand. I spend the day cleaning the boat, then drive the Saab to my old house where the tall grass grows around the For Sale sign. I drive to the country to see the cotton. Wise Jane gardens in the pleasant morning in her van Gogh straw hat. We talk flowers.
    These flowers, she says, are called naked ladies. When you pick them they make a good noise.
    How do I do it?
    You snap their necks.
    Wise Jane has a pot of the good chicory coffee and her sweet dog Willie is at my knee.
    What happens when they all run out on