#17

As the match burns down, Natalie Chatterley passes it between the fingers of her right hand and the fingers of her left. The can of cocoa beans corrodes. Angus Mingus’s pillow splits open.

Ruth Reith unstitches the patches from her denims. Bradley Ridley bites into a block of blue soap. Desire dissolves like salt, murmurs Lola Wheeler. Dustin Mostyn’s doughnut dough won’t thaw.

the erosion of the process of erosion is cut short by the process of the erosion of process, thinks Ruth Reith. Bradley Ridley ties his shoes in an ununravellable knot

Nerys Harris draws zigzags on the dusty table. The radio resumes its woozy songs. Natalie Chatterley returns the robin to the rusty cage. A line of paper windmills rotate on the lawn.

#18

Lola Wheeler takes down the mirror and gazes at the wall. The pebbles wear holes in Audrey Chaudri’s pockets. Hank Strunk detaches the balloon string from its rectangle of card.

Lola Wheeler recites from the reference books on the relation between the relations between the relations between things. Audrey Chaudri’s matches are too damp to strike.

Hank Strunk uncrumples the typewriter paper. The herons hover in on an intermittent wind. Lola Wheeler snaps her hacksaw blade. Rainwater runs off the corrugated roof.

Hank Strunk feeds the larks the lawnseed. Audrey Chaudri lets her wristwatch wind down. The shallow river ripples like a slow realization, says Lola Wheeler over a glitchy phone line.

#19

Angus Mingus catapults pebbles at the lemonade cans on the wall. Natalie Chatterley appears in the photograph twice. The salty spaghetti gives Hank Strunk rumbly guts.

The raffia unravels in Nerys Harris’s hands. A blue crow chews through the crocus roots. Angus Mingus pours coffee into an ice-cube tray and places it in the freezer.

As her concentration curdles, Nerys Harris suggests that in theory the theory that theory requires practical proof probably requires little practical proof.

Angus Mingus returns to the library and draws doodles in the dictionary. The midges move like smudges, Nerys Harris says. Natalie Chatterley slits open her mattress. Hank Strunk’s rubber boots rot in the rain.

#20

Audrey Chaudri draws around her left hand, then sharpens her pencil and draws around her right. Nerys Harris’s cider sours. As it bounces, Bradley Ridley’s wet tennis ball leaves its outline across the pavement.

Natalie CHatterley muffles her timpani drums. The moths get lost in the rigorous mist. Sassiness softens like sandpaper, says Ruth Reith and stretches out on the bench.

Hank Strunk refills the cartridge of his inkpen with water. Thistles rustle in the fitful wind. Our conversations convey little besides the conventions of conversation, Lola Wheeler supposes out loud.

Ruth Reith walks out of the walk-in refrigerator. Angus Mingus shivers in his towel. Nuthatches nest in Lola Wheeler’s bike basket. Nerys Harris skulks home in her socks.