adhesive gertrude sting Adhesive Carl stares at a brick because it is cracked. The entire wall is crumbling as he thinks about it; he wonders if he’ll finally be buried. I’ve talked to him about death, and again, he tells me the same story— “imagine the chaos of currents if hummingbirds had underwater capabilities; always fucking with the fish as they dip into the hollow of sponges with needle beaks, burning nano-calories in their journeys through aqua expanse, their intentions in this ecosystem being only to cause stimulation— affecting waves in distant places to a microscale, energizing the plankton shake, confusing the hell out of sharks who misidentify them as prey. Eventually they’d become tank pets or even considered a delicacy by pretentious swine. There’d be a lone sea hummingbird staring back through glass at the entrance of a bistro, frantically pseudo-swimming every time the chef hurries by. Of course, it probably doesn’t see him at all.” Carl and I spend the rest of the day, out and about, walking and talking. A mild sunrise leads us to a restaurant open late, then sitting again at a benign table, and he is not paying attention to me: Mysterious rears up next to him, his eyes fluctuate, mining the sight of a memory. I saw him go. He diverged into a swan— A Japanese bottle tree is incredibly thin but stands close to ten feet high. It’s an elongated snout of an anteater or maybe an idea somewhere reaching past its desire to be restrained. In the backyard, it’s far beyond its natural habitat staked and nurtured, persuading the soil to allow a crisp whispering. My understanding: he saw the leaves first, shadows of bleached organic outlines, exactly entrancing. Subtle blisters of numb from the sight of the shadows, a cluster of leaves clinging to their lanky branch, each branch feeling the shadows and passive to the glow of a moon persuading nothing. The branches like fragments of urgent ears, but more like the eager fingers of a new lover confined to just being enthralled. Branches become the trunk, involatile and mute— a smooth invisible knight. Then the base of the trunk, diameter of dog knuckle. The plastic chair he sits in is about to break from the stress of his lean and he is sweating, generously, as the moon’s blue acne is gazed upon by him and the entire half of a planet. 020820 what's it to you? who go blather from