Dothead   Well yes, I said, my mother wears a dot. I know they said "third eye" in class, but it's not an eye eye, not like that. It's not some freak third eye that opens on your forehead like on some Chernobyl baby. What it means is, what it's showing is, there's this unseen eye, on the inside. And she's marking it. It's how the X that says where treasure's at is not the treasure, but as good as treasure.-- All right. What I said wasn't half so measured.

In fact, I didn't say a thing. Their laughter had made my mouth go dry. Lunch was after World History; that week was India--myths, caste system, suttee, all the Greatest Hits. The white kids I was sitting with were friends, at least as I defined a friend back then. So wait, said Nick, does your mom wear a dot? I nodded, and I caught a smirk on Todd-- She wear it to the shower? And to bed?-- while Jesse sucked his chocolate milk and Brad was getting ready for another stab. I said, Hand me that ketchup packet there. And Nick said, What? I snatched it, twitched the tear, and squeezed a dollop on my thumb and worked circles till the red planet entered the house of war and on my forehead for the world to see my third eye burned those schoolboys in their seats, their flesh in little puddles underneath, pale pools where Nataraja cooled his feet.     Ode to a Drone   Hell-raiser, razor-feathered riser, windhover over Peshawar,   power's joystick-blithe thousand-mile scythe, proxy executioner's proxy ax pinged by a proxy server, winged victory, pilot cipher unburdened by aught but fuel and bombs, fool of God, savage idiot savant   sucking your benumbed trigger-finger gamer's thumb     His Love of Semicolons   The comma is comely, the period, peerless, but stack them one atop the other, and I am in love; what I love is the end that refuses to stop, the promise that something will come in a moment though the saying seem all said; a grammatical afterlife, fullness that spills past the full stop, not so much dead as taking a breather, at worst, stunned; the sentence regroups and restarts, its notation bespeaking momentum, its silence dividing the beats of a heart;.