A bird whistles like a bullet fired from hiding. I pick up a stone and put it in my
pocket just in case. Jews are each given a brush and a can of white paint and told to
number the trees. I take a piss against the wall, a wrinkled old woman peering over
my shoulder. The ground shakes at shorter and shorter intervals. And such wind!
Like a sword waving in glittering circles above our heads! I wasn’t born with so many
questions. I acquired them the way prehistoric fish acquired limbs. You don’t want
friends, you want admirers, my therapist accuses. I spend the rest of the afternoon in
the car. Twice every hour on the radio, Major Thomas E. Kennedy of New York dies
again when a suicide bomber detonates a dynamite vest.
--Howie Good