Bird Eating Bird Read Online Free PDF Page A

us. Brick house . My ‘h’ always trampled by the static ‘k’ makes grinding from the mouth.”
    But brash ‘k’ shot up before ‘bri-’ could stop her.
    ‘k’: “Look here, /-k’ouse/. Your ‘h’ is a foolish place-holder. For ‘k’ was all friction, and knew not of the ebbs in clausal frailty.
    ‘k’: “You know, house, this sentence can sentence without you.” As the other sounds begged ‘k’ not to, she finished it.
    ‘k’: “There was a brick on Macon Avenue.”
     
    So house was gone, a drifter blowing sentence-to-sentence, ‘k’-job to ‘k’job—her specialization. From “a trick house for catching mice and small pests,” to the first drafts of “Bleak House” before the typesetting, to odd jobs at “the smoke house,” “the break house,” “the steak house one must never return to…”
     
    Then house, broken, wandered to other sentence, sound-combinations. “We should go to your house,” depressed ‘h’ to a gurgle, next to the rasping and passive-aggressive ‘r,’ who claimed her pal’s,’ “Does the work of you, house, and still more.” In “The green house on the left,” green was full of advice at the bar.
    Green: “You know house, don’t complain about ‘n.’ You need thickerskin. Take ‘g,’ for example. A green girl—she wouldn’t complain.”
    Then a series of ‘b’-jobs, and ‘p’-jobs, and ‘s’-work that bowled the ‘h’ over. While house slept quietly, ‘z’ rang in her head.
     
    And for the rest of her days misfortune followed her, sentence, language, country, continent. When house traipsed Europe: Liaison, liaison, mon amis , the French words said. In Spanish, ‘h’ suffered mistaken identity. ¿‘Hache’ o ‘ge’ o ‘equis’ o ‘jota,’ ¿cuál es su nombre, ‘h’? The Spanish words said.
     
    So house found a quiet spot in the country, just to the right of the silent period. House. And spent her days sounding her name to herself. And wondering if she’d ever be heard from again, started her autobiography.
     
    “Once, there was a house with no ‘h.’”
     
    5.
    Suppose there is a bubble that flutters inside you. Or suppose it builds in the plastic air. Or the plastic that is liquid and luminous yet air. Or suppose in reverse the air plastic. And in its sloshing to-and-fro forms teacups of air unsettling its layers. In the teacups is air air not plastic. And teacups are cool and porcelain as anything that’s cool and porcelain. And suppose bubble—though never a bubble before—porcelain and cool as anything once thrown from a wheel, a fired thing, a red thing before it sits and cools on a rack thing, formed of the sloshing that makes bubbles in the plastic air. And bubble air inside of it, an echo of liquid spun into its well. And the echo of heat as liquid brews in the smile that’s the bottom of the well.
     
    6.
    Houses come in two sizes—big and bigger. Since the rich always get richer, there will always be a need for bigger, more gigantic houses. Houses big enough for all the dough they make.
     
    It is not empirically possible to prove the existence of the rich. (So say studies funded by the rich.) Nor possible to prove the existence of the poor. (Cite similar studies.)
     
    7.
    There are purple houses in America that make a stink with their neighborhood associations. There are enormous red houses we call ‘barns’ that stand in the country, where farmers stack their feed, and tools, and sometimes chickens—but for nostalgia—no one mentions them. There are houses in the warmer states put together of hay bails and dirt and cement-like fixatives and painted the color of the land and no one, not even the shifty fox, complains. There are houses made of wood or painted to resemble wood in the deep forests. And just last summer when neighbors painted their house ‘Cape Cod Grey,’ and the rest of us snickered, But this is not Cape Cod , and beside the too-doo a gaggle of book-worms made over the spelling