L3FT R16HTin memory of Elena Popova, my mother-in-law,back thenOne shoewas onthe dead one'sfoot and wentwith her. The otherstayed on the thirdstep from the top,and is there yet,for those who aren'tentitled to forget.The when and where would soon enoughbe said and done. (A gown can bea drag, for instance, giventhe current events or the holesin your craft. But she had moon-and-stars pajamas. I've been assignedto study everything since then.Look floaters up. Get eiders down.

And tell some kindof truth.) The last detailin both her presences (the one, after the fall,when she was still alive, irreparably alone;and then the other, in which medicalexaminers would stand too close to herby-then-eternally averted gaze)was some enormous particle, rightat the stairway's base--a bitof dust I'd failed, first onceand then forever,to sweep up.PICKED UP AT A 3-WAY INTERSECTIONIWhen he was just a boy in EdinburghA. Graham Bell contriveda talking doll. The doll said "Mama."Later, it appears, he wouldn't evertelephone his mother or his wife. (They bothwere deaf.) These facts can makea grown-up, all at once,and all alone,lie down and weep real tears.

IIThe Himalayan, largestof the honeybees, makes honey notable for itshallucinogens.(Hallucinogens for us, that is.Of their imaginations, weare ignorant.)IIIDo geese see god?the dog-god asked.The question andthe questioner himselfare perfect palindromes.IVAntarctic glacier iceis known to testas high as 3 percentfor penguin piss.VWithin an averagehuman lifetimeyou producesaliva of a quantityto fill two good-sized (ifcompletely uninviting)swimming pools.VIDid you know oysters changetheir genders as they will? It's not that theyare exhibitionists.

Oh, no. At theseslow dances, they are only outto multiply their chances.VIIAfter a battle's lost, an apeinclines to masturbate.In this, as inmuch else, he quiteresembles humans.(Human men, I mean:our women much preferto jack off when they win.)VIIIJust off the coast of Icelandclimate-change researcherswere dredging earnestlyfor clams, to checktheir age and health and seehow global warming was affecting them.They froze and then dissectedseveral hundred clams, which now(quite unsurprisingly)could qualifyas dead. Amongthe gathered clamsthey found this onewhose shell ringsplaced its birth at five to sevenhundred years before.

In other words,they learned they'd killedthe oldest animal on earth.IXPerhaps for all these reasons(if in formicultural domainsa reasoning endeavors to exist)no antcan sleep.No ant is sleeping, ever.