But first, he learned to sit quiet and still and long. He could stop his breath. He could stop his heart. He could be a stone, a piece of wood, a leaf.

Only then would things start to stir. From where they’d hidden themselves, all of the rare, careful animals would rise—slowly, warily, testing the air—even the lonesome men who spent their days crouched among the thorny shrubs and rough, wild grasses.

SMALL PINK FEMALE

I’ve courted in the traditional fashion, of course—coming together on evenings arranged in advance, in the dark, on padded seats, facing the brash rectangle, or else in simulated candlelight with knees beneath a drooping white cloth, enduring protracted sessions of mastication and, later, abbreviated fornication.

Then, on a fine afternoon—sprung loose from any duty or thought—I found myself in the far corner of a florist’s shop, sniffing around. From behind an enormous pittosporum emerged a small pink female, neatly aproned. I let her lead me to her chilled case of product. Here were entities that had unfurled slowly, elongated steadily—until severed.

The odor of that place—it did something to me. I love you, I said, handing her all of my money. I walked stiffly out the door, clutching the cold bundle to my chest. From the bottom, it leaked gently onto my arm.

Later, in private, I undid the wrapping and gazed at the gangly splay across my table. Some positioning was necessary—as well as some trimming, pinching, plucking, and shoving—to reveal their best advantage.

I did glimpse her once more—little, bulbous, waddling slightly ahead of me, her hair like a toasted dinner roll on the back of her head—and I ran forward gasping, spraying my face with spittle. I flung a wild arm and spun her by the shoulder and dropped to my knees, grabbing a plump hand. Please! I shouted. I’d never been happier.

But I’ve made bad choices from the start—ask any of my associates. In my temperate apartment, the heads relaxed one by one—then burst in fits of yellow dander. And oh, how quickly they shriveled then—falling limply as wads of used tissue, issuing no scent whatever.

POWER TOOLS

He lights his lawn on fire once a year. He does his weeding on hands and knees, with a knife. The neighborhood is dense and suburban, the freeway and airport just adjacent, but in cool months has a northwoods smell, a frontier kind of aroma, because he heats his house with a woodstove. He scavenges the wood and prepares it with a chainsaw early mornings. The chainsaw enters our dreams, then breaks them into wakefulness.

On certain nights he lights his homemade fireworks. They sizzle, flare. Some, inevitably, are duds.

He rides an old bicycle with a milk crate tied to the back, which he fills with things he finds on the ground. His house he built by hand, from scrap, piece by piece by piece by piece. Still, he can never decide whether the ground objects are things found or things lost. Does he live in a found house or a lost one?