Where sperm goes.

by Jason Nelson

Sitting on the orange carpet, in the main hallway, just past apartment

number three hundred and eight-four, were three small, or not so small,

things. I know thing is a very general word, but then words have

relatives, and they always live longer than they should. Maybe longer

isn’t the right way to put it, because it is a complex noun. And

complexity isn’t linear. I suppose this might account for the way water

separates and then links and then separates. I suppose. But remember

these are small things, and things become linear when they get small.

What happens when things get large, you ask with a frothy mouth and

leaky hands? I’m not quite sure, except that when you plant a tree or

bush or a sloppy kiss, things grow, and growing takes up more space.

Too Much Television

You can’t dodge them all. There are too many of them coming at you, and

at such great velocities. You will fail. Oh, I know you’ll fail. Sure

if you flex your knees and keep your eyes fixed close on the first few,

you might juke and dive your way through five or ten minutes. But these

are high and fancy things, with happy edges that focus on each move.

They miss, only at first to study your head’s desires and the way your

brain commands along lines through nerves and joints and muscles. Even

if after fifteen minutes you still stand on the sweaty gym floor

panting and grunting names from long ago times, these things have

discovered what makes you so much like the other ten million categories

of you. Each pass now they come closer to glancing a shoulder or

clipping your chest. And each pass they learn, even before you learn,

about your concepts of time and love and church and bizarre wood

sculptors. By the rarest chance twenty minutes might be signaled by some

incremental movements by hands and dials and springs and token bursts

of electricity. And when this one third of an hour comes, they will be

stealing your breath with every toss, and drinking sight from the

sockets that you need to fumble through casinos in search of small chips and

full grain leather. And when the moment passes, when clocks run closer

to rhythms or a question, and when room and space do not belong, the

balls won’t feel the miss.