Language: English
ISBN-10: 0882681281
ISBN-13: 978-0882681283

  I died. Deader and deader.
"Little joke corpse!" Yeah, I
shrank beyond belief; I'd even fit quite neatly
inside the bowl of my ridiculously
miniscule briarwood pipe.
  Ishmael they call me, Father
Ishmael. I'm such a pipsqueak, though,
they have got to be kidding.
  Being dead means
    very light housekeeping.
  It's dark,
    and cold.
  Cold as the dawn of a new
Ice Age. A sage frostbitten
under gelid palmtrees. The pallor
of one's foibles.
  Dark: A rat standing
at attention on the tip of his
hairless tail squealing bloody
murder without the slightest movement of his snout.
  Cold: Across an almond-green plain
a procession of pale blue elephants
walking backwards.
  Dark: A diminutive stringbean of a rat hovers
on dragonfly wings.
  Cold: A wee purple face glares out of a winejar's
bulging glassy midriff.
  Dark: Two perfectly identical human mouths
kiss each other to death.
  Cold: A truncated male torso
gives with a significant wink.
  Dark: Above clouds or
black sands. Idols of old religions
set up. Facing them,
horror in tar: the grin of certain dead people.
Cold ...—Polar ...— I'm entombed