I forget to rent a car for my brother's wedding, and it's pouring, so I wait for an elevated light rail through the Berkely hills, but since it doesn't come, I take another train from the same platform, which lets me off in the hills of Kensington, where I wander for a while, drenched, until I find my cousins Anna and Jesse, both younger than I remember them, and reversed in birth order, but very understanding, and dry.

Buying a third baguette for Grandma at the bread counter. She greets a train labelled SPENCER in green lights.

Steve is expecting me but I put off the trip so long I have to wait for morning. Once there, after nibbling my own finger clippings in his kitchen, I lop off my own thumbs, painlessly. But then, for fear of disturbing him in his deicate state, I cover the tiny cold thumbs with starch white paper.

Inkjet drafts of unfinished poems on the Girls in Trouble table.

Dad is sure we'll be rained out, but Mom knows it will take the pressure down.

The jeu de paume court is taken by my brother, so I browse the foreign language aisle and get distracted by the work of a pair of surreal Turkish cartoonists, brothers, each one trying to outdo the other.

Just before bed, I decide to order in for some hard drugs. They are are shaped like fountain pen cartridges with acupuncture quills at the end. My lover asks me to cancel the order, but I remain calm. She leaves.

The flight to the Holy Land is full--and they have no idea where they're going.

Off a cliff in a chair and down to the sea below.

At the fair, some woman has filled a set of giant Coke bottles with plastic straws in different numbers and arrangements, making for a kind of bottleneck pan orchestra.