Why his father taught him to bite the corners of handkerchiefs, pout as they had done for the last half millennium, his father’s father and others passing it to their sons—onnagata, woman-like—each generation perfecting it, switching from lead-based paints that left them dumb to shellacking their eyes with vermilion, ash superior for eyebrows, how a second honorific set should sit just below the hairline, be applied by thumb as he was more woman than a woman could be whose neck would snap like asakurabranch under the sheen of a thirty pound wig, the cherry blossoms strewn...

Dear Sir:

I know what your body holds for me—shame, oil and shame. When you first touched me it was like the morning of my seventh birthday when, in helping Grandmother prepare the cake, I cracked open an egg laid by our best hen only to watch a shell’s worth of blood slip into the batter. That is to say I find your kisses dark and gelatinous. They ruin things. Do you know that on our daily walks while in your company I have never seen a bird? What powers you must possess to spirit away such beauty! I...

Yes, the moon is made of gunpowder because that’s how it smells—the whole Sea of Tranquility’s a CIA sham: it’s really a loaded keg, miles of galactic hotbeds waiting to blow those pinko commies off their asses should they ever land one of these days & POW! right in the kisser & then where will Comrade Khrushchev go? I keep the moondust stored in a cool dry place in the third lobe of my right lung because Neil keeps it there too, I can tell from his hot bronchial breath that he’s hoping to corner the market on this organic gunpowder...