[specimen]
The articles featured photographs of the top-secret aircraft that was at the root of UFO reports. The policeman told me to recite the alphabet backwards from Q to D and I could, so I knew I was drunk. We need to tinker with the memory machine. The first thing the patient remembered was that he didn’t know who he was. She asked if I was frightened of uncertainty, and I was too scared to admit I never thought about it. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow”—Helen Keller said that.
[specimen]
“Where did the spoon go?” he asked, so we knew his focus had changed at least twice. If I start counting with my thumb as one, I often make it to six before I reach my little finger. You don’t really understand the whole concept of April air getting cooler as we go up the mountain, do you: I mean, oh, we’re going back in time? Crossing South Georgia, Shackleton and his two crew members thought there were four in their group. The portrait was so intimate, I didn’t recognize myself.
[specimen]
The first thing I get from the bottle of vitamins is the coupon for the next bottle. You know you’re in the country when you step outside and cast only one shadow. I did some stretches first, because I was going to be sitting down for several hours. Yes, Mark Rothko said, I am watching paint dry. The sun is yellow and its light mostly white: I’m not sure the cosmic egg has actually cracked yet. She could be counted on to say, “That is so random.”
[specimen]
I’d be surprised if someone named Bear hadn’t seen Gremlins at least five times. “That it is able to be returned to makes something’s existence more probable.” He said it wasn’t a hair; it was a special spice. I had to agree with him. It was the best tasting hair I ever ate. My itchy ankles distracted me from my existential crisis. I read about it in the super-secret lost book of lost super-secrets I bought at Barnes and Noble.
Mark Cunningham has published three books: 80 Beetle, from Otoliths; Body Language, from Tarpaulin Sky Press; and 71 Leaves, an ebook from BlazeVox.
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