I remember what goats look like. This is not a goat. I can’t even describe it to you, but I can tell you it is, without a doubt, under the scrutiny of fact, not a goat. I have the understanding it is a goat. It has the presence and personality of a goat. It’s just not what I remember goats looking like.
2-Ply, a beach bandit living as a traumatized gun-toting roll of toilet paper, cocks his shotgun and blasts the goat that does not look like a goat but is a goat into many apertures of disappearance.
That was a poet, 2-Ply says. There’s no question in my mind. Pulling that goat shit on us. The tissue community doesn’t take kindly to bullshit, goatshit, or any kind of shit.
Ladders, propped by nothing, extend hundreds of stories into the black sky where suspended lakes have taken the place of clouds. People are swimming inside of them. I notice people walking on the black waters, the sea-level ones, nobody swimming; some people resting on the rolling waves.
The Felician sands hide which scurries. I want to join them.
You promise you’re not a poet? 2-Ply says. I don’t want to have to waste a sheet on you.
The barrel of his shotgun prod the back of my ankle, swollen like a tennis ball from the fall.
No, I’m not a poet.
What do you think of the moon?
Hate it.
Crocuses?
Crocodiles?
Don’t push your luck.
I ask 2-Ply what this place is. He tells me it is a graveyard of relics from blown apart universes. Every phenomenon you see comes from some place else. Everything has a story not necessarily a bonafide reason or explanation.
I ask 2-Ply why poets aren’t allowed. It’s what they bring with them, he tells me. There was a poet from another realm, Noah Fang Quicksilver, who killed all the other poets to absorb their talents and skills. When he came here, he did the same. He even got to kill one poet twice. If you’re witnessed writing verse or reciting Keats, you’re likely to meet Hercules’ Destiny, Noah’s murder beetle. He will stop at nothing to collect you.
Good to know, I say.
Now what about the sky lakes and the people walking on water?
Another fucking instigator, 2-Ply snarls.
I begin to feel queasy again. End of the World fatigue. I want to run from this tattered roll of toilet paper but my ankle won’t have it. Sweat forms on my scalp and forearms. Lightheadedness swirled me inside myself until my jaw unhinged the length of my body and I vomit my bedroom. I vomit my futon on the floor. I puke clothes and books. I puke home.
Barracuda Guarisco is a queer, polyonymous, neurodivergent cartoon goblin and author of several books including “It’s Not A Lie If You Believe It” (Voice Lux Press). He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Really Serious Literature and Chat Rooms. You can find him if you want to.
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