Her Name Was Name
I had a girl, I named her soap. I had a soap, I named her cat. One day I played the accordion on paper, and it sounded like a birth certificate drifting into the sun, a disintegration station in a vast bewildered wilderness— which sounds like a slide whistle at first but later like the back porch flytrap I named jungle. I have never before mentioned these names in the airway, and neither has the girl I named name ever faltered— though the question of remains in the hallway remains: Does one's imagination also disintegrate, or does it flutter forever like a boa constrictor, circling the world or a warthog? The warthog I named babe; the boa constrictor I called pasture. The last time I found myself ensnared in the pastoral, I imagined a rope and escaped by climbing up it. Then I named it laminate, but I called it overwhelming. Me and overwhelming covered in skulls. One superhero to another to another. I boiled a lobster, I named it travel. I had an agent, and I named her mob. Then I took out the garbage and went running with my dog ostensibly to prove my existence, if not also my purchase. I made a purchase, I named it purpose. There is nothing so bright as a toddler on fire. We don't need no water... I named the water deathstar.
From WOLF FACE, published by H_NGM_N Books. Copyright © 2012 by Matt Hart. Reprinted with permission of the author.