The Sentient Telephone Pole

 The sentient telephone pole stands beside a road that it cannot travel down.

"I am encumbered, bound to the ground and the air by soil and wires." Always, the sentient telephone pole reaches out, but no one eases into the offered embrace. Once in a while a maintenance worker climbs the iron rungs held in its body like a kind of jewelry, a harsh piercing. The worker rises, does what he will, touches, changes, and then leaves. Conversations go on all day and night in the wires, but none address the sentient telephone pole. "My sister has cancer." "Hi, let me talk to Annie. The court said you have to." "Let's go bowling." "We're getting married!" Once, the sentient telephone pole was a sentient tree with a network of roots, part of an endless conversation. The woods were peaceful, sparrows visited its branches, the sun shone on its leaves, nourishing it. It had vibrancy, but now only utility. The modern world has passed the sentient telephone pole by. Cables run underground. Satellites babble from above. Day by day, the sentient telephone pole grows drier, weaker. Its skin develops fissures and the wind whips the wires. A red-wing blackbird lands atop its flat head, fussing. Hello old friend, says the sentient telephone pole, but nothing is the same and the bird flies off across an indifferent sky.

Model Railroad

 A man has built a model railroad

and on this model railroad it is forever 1952 or 1961 or 1970 it is impossible to be sure. Time is not linear, but the track on the model railroad is. Does the railroad exist outside of time? of morality? of the intentions and designs of God? Most of the model railroad is made of plastic or painted foam. There is a miniature ice cream shop. The man longs to visit the ice cream shop, or to somehow roll himself into the tiny bowling alley. The oval of the model railroad returns to itself again and again. The man wishes to return to himself and so has built a model railroad. His wife has built an elaborate dollhouse. "You cannot do that," says the man. "I have done it," says his wife. A man moves into his model railroad town. His wife moves into her dollhouse. They call out to each other occasionally.

Meal

 we know you're hungry.

everybody's hungry. food looks good, yeah? you, not so much. food is steaming straight from the oven. you, not so much. we appreciate you helping in the kitchen. we're pretty much improv, winging it, playing by ear. you actually know what you're about. Huh. dinner's at six. bad break, it's already eight. we know you're hungry everybody's hungry even though we eat and eat and still want more even though you want more but there isn't any. everybody wants more but you know it in your bones-- the more is for us.

Uncle Richie

 "I was digging a grave when God spoke to me," Uncle Richie said

while pushing me on a swing, making the world veer crazily. "I told Him, 'I'm working. What's so important?' " Uncle Richie was lying on his side on the laminate, adding another Lego to our castle's tower when he added, "He told me that wanting love but believing I had never had it, was like sandpaper against my heart." I thought about that while offering Theodore Bruin some tea, though the teacup was empty. "Sometimes you have to pretend," I said to Uncle Richie where he sat, knees higher than my play table. "I was digging a grave for a woman named Helen Mendenhall," Uncle Richie continued as we lay on the fragrant lawn while the sun went down. "She was wonderful--quiet, self-contained, unavailable. My type." "What if God is like Theodore Bruin?" I asked Uncle Richie when he paused from reading Frog and Toad Are Friends to me at bedtime. He looked sad so I held out Teddy. "Your type! You can have him if you want!" Uncle Richie leaned in and hugged me, with Theodore between us. Then he closed the book, got up, looked back once and winked. "Love ya Uncle Richie," I said. "Yeah," he said, and left the door ajar.

Crows

 There are crows, like poppy seeds on a bun.

There are trees at the edge of a meadow like the hairs on the head of a girl sitting in algebra class. The girl is not popular but can perform bird calls. Along the classroom windows, crows. Class is disrupted, the janitor dispatched to break up the pageantry. Bakers have befriended the crows. They give them buns and laudatory anthems that the bakers sing. The girl becomes a baker. At the school, algebra class devolves into boredom and ruin. The crows call an assembly at which they crown the girl Crow Queen. Each student is given a marble. All of them become bakers. There continue to be crows, like poppy seeds on a bun, like bakers at their work, strutting and whistling in the dawn.

Henry

 A woman gives birth to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

except this time he has a hard shell and feelers. "Write something," says the woman to her newborn monster. The infant is placed in a terrarium with rocks and alphabet blocks. The woman feeds him pancakes with some sort of unidentified berries. Poems begin to appear, scrawled in the condensation on the walls. Literary journals from all over clamor to reject the newborn's work. However, a servant surreptitiously releases the babe into a local pond. In the fullness of time, in the mud, this: "The day is done and darkness falls From the wings of night."

The Child of the Future

 I walk in and The Man of the Past is sitting at my desk

dandling The Child of the Future on his knee. "Five tickets, five dollars," he sings out. This is a child, perhaps even mine, and my mother bone activates. "You can't raffle off The Child of the Future!" "I can and I am," says The Man of the Past. The Child of the Future has a scruff of beard, is six feet if he's an inch and clearly works out. He is well past dandling age. "Five tickets, five dollars," The Man of the Past yodels. The Child of the Future leans over and bites off The Man of the Past's head, torso, and legs in sequence, then belches and stands up. "Manners," I say automatically. The Child of the Future calls me "bro" on his way out and lets the cat escape despite the post-it on the door saying not to.