The Americans landed as planned. Somewhat off course, one of them, Jon from the Bronx recognized the farmhouse. "It's Helena's" he said breathing out, relieved. "anyone got a smoke?" he said smiling and looking around quickly at his buddies.

"Are you shitting? this woman's a spy and God knows who's in there with her. Ten to one there's Germans", said the Captain snapping the Camel right out of Jon's mouth. He grinned and the Captain motioned for four of his men to advance.

In the window, Helena seemed angelic. The man at her feet was indeed very blond, the men...

"Son" I said squinting, I think we are here. "it's Colorado, wake up." I dug out the petrified french fry for Charlie, who was ripping up the upholstery in my v.w.

"Mom, why did we drop Frances on the highway, again?" Eric asked sleepily. He was plump and pink from sleep. I felt for him. There were many books under his rump, but looking in the rear view mirror, he seemed cozy with the dog. The sky was a deep navy, the long prairie grass synchronized so beautifully with the wind. And the black cows lying, trusting all this open...

"I want that and that and that" said the blond girl in the dark woman's pennycandy store. She wore an old dress and brought in a quarter, all in pennies. The woman, an Armenian, was her best friend Marie's mother. It didn't matter that she was. She was still frightening to many children, with her dark thick brows and the scowl. The long silver yellow hair and the odor of meat that is just beginning to sour.

"You have enough, get some more" said Sonya. "Marie is upstairs doing her homework. You shouldn't bother her", she said to the girl...

Chairman Mao came into town at the insistence of his family. He was not happy. His mother, whom he had loved far more for every difference from his father, did not look well. Chairman Mao, accustomed to finding his mother pleasant to look at, did not want to see her.

"YOU have abandoned your father!" cried his relatives.

"And my father abandoned me well before" said the man who remembered his father's cruelties all too well. Who were these people to remind him of the past. He loved his mother and he doted on her.

He despised his father. He...

The man wrote to the woman down by the river Yo. He had finished in the fields and his brother was calling from the high hill.

"Young!" he screamed "the soldiers are here!"

The man dropped his pen. The notepaper, pink and full of tiny perforations the man had made in the shape of a lotus flower, flew in the direction of a crane's nest. A young bird who was wading blinked at it. Soon, it began to rain.

The soldiers carried out the brother and left behind the others. A girl ran to the river for the pen as...

to My son before I die

Take me from this bed, your knuckled curtained hands the fear the dread, for I have none of that. Throw away the flowers, for I am not yet dead.

Take me out to lie again on the Earth
if there is any left
and let me paw the Earth like the Animal I am
here I lie, and She is warming to me.