1- In Perpetual Spring

Gardens are also good places to sulk. You pass beds of spiky voodoo lilies and trip over the roots of a sweet gum tree, in search of medieval plants whose leaves, when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land, and colored carp if they plop into water. Suddenly the archetypal human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you. The lion and the lamb cuddling up.The snake and the snail, kissing.Even the prick of the thistle, queen of the weeds, revives your secret belief in perpetual spring, your faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it.

2- Lost in the Forest

I’d given up hope. Hadn’t eaten in three days. Resigned to being wolf meat ...when, unbelievably, I found myself in a clearing. Two goats with bells round their necks stared at me: their pupils like coin slots in piggy banks. I could have gotten the truth out of those two, if goats spoke. I saw leeks and radishes planted in rows; wash billowing on a clothesline ... and the innocuous-looking cottage in the woods with its lapping tongue of a welcome mat slurped me in.In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex is barely discernible pours a glass of fraudulent milk. I’m so hungry my hand shakes. But what is this liquid? “Drink up, sweetheart,” she says,and as I wipe the white mustache off with the back of my hand:“Atta girl.” Have I stumbled into the clutches of St. Somebody?Who can tell. “You’ll find I prevail here in my own little kingdom,” she says as she leads me upstairs—her bony grip on my arm a proclamation of ownership, as though I've always been hers.

3- Hymn to the Neck

Tamed by starched collars or looped by the noose, all hail the stem that holds up the frail cranial buttercup. The neck throbs with dread of the guillotine's kiss, while the silly, bracelet-craving wrists chafe in their handcuffs. Your one and only neck, home to glottis, tonsils, and many other highly specialized pieces of meat, is covered with stubble. Three mornings ago, undeserving sinner though she is, yours truly got to watch you shave in the bath. Soap matted your chest hair. A clouded hand mirror reflected a piece of your cheek. Vapor rose all around like spirit-infested mist in some fabled rainforest. The throat is the road. Speech is its pilgrim. Something pulses visibly in your neck as the words hand me a towel flower from your mouth.