Spring 2012 Stylus

lion more bacteria in the world than there are you and mes?

I’m sure they’d talk a mighty swagger, Bacteria in Sherriff’s boots, so don’t ever let them vote. My body may be host to trillions of un-me, but there is no court or democracy—no, it’s total tyranny inside, and I suggest you do the same, if you plan on keeping toe and foot in a coordinated dance of twitching muscles.

Puss in Boots strode through the world in his swagger-stagger sherriff shoes. The seven-league boots I mean, but no one ever knows that anymore. All they can think of is that cartoon on steroids that’s hyping crazes into little children until suddenly they all want a Happy Meal so they can Put a Smile On like the old commercials all beg them to do and in the plastic-wrapped synthetic fibers of a hamburger and greased Freedom Fries they’ll find little old Shrek and his cute orange conquistador.

What happened to the seven-league cat of my childhood?

And here the walls keep creeping in, and I can feel a mental breakdown about to happen in mustard fields of pomegranate hues.

I’d much rather chew on clouds and think thoughts unforgotten.

Meow, my sister says, and pounces on my leg. Clinging there as I swing her back and forth. But she’s not that little anymore, and anyway, it causes my leg to cramp. Like a spasm shoveling through my cells, but I just eat bananas and say it will go away. Bananas are medically proven to be good for that—they’re full of… Mother said eat them.

I just wonder how much we really get out of them, the bananas of the world. I mean, they’re picked quite unripe—for shipping efficiency, of course (the same reason they make lamp shades conical not spherical). So young and tender and torn away and I’m supposed to eat the adult that has been artificially matured and pretend that it’s not a psychotic banana that I’m eating? Any human’s mind would flitter-flatter-flap away in fright and leave an empty husk of a skull if they were tinkered with like that, but somehow I’m supposed to accept that these bananas are perfectly normal and healthy and functioning members of society. But I’ve seen the way their empty husks pool in a degenerate pile of brown-spotted leprosy and wait for the unwary foot. Revenge can indeed be had from beyond the grave.

I stare out my window every day, but the view refuses to change. They say the world doesn’t stand still, but then why do I 18