Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

“Furthermore, I am dead,” she pleads.

Grandmothers have conditions. Grandmothers sing the blues. Grandmothers wake up. Grandmothers in poverty. Grandmothers ethnic roots. Grandmothers in the home towns. Grandmothers splitting rocks. Grandmothers queer. Grandmothers beat the odds. Grandmothers control the guns. Grandmothers fly the Concorde. Grandmothers know the score. Grandmothers on their skateboards. Grandmothers excellent. Grandmothers have a heart. Grandmothers pickling. Grandmothers hello. Grandmothers of the flesh. Grandmothers concentrate. Grandmothers run the country. Grandmothers down and out. Grandmothers turn technical. Grandmothers to the wall. Grandmothers take no shit. Grandmothers never yield. Grandmothers on the run. Grandmothers with the answers. Grandmothers at the barricades. Grandmothers smoke opium. Grandmothers make yogurt. Grandmothers on Harleys. Grandmothers take a beating. Grandmothers back at seven.

Grandfathers, on the other hand, doze off while watching the store. Around them the predators fly in a circle of bliss. From the grandfathers they can extract a bitter that inculcates a sense of life into those grandchildren who have failed as mates. They know, as grandfathers do, that life is less important; but a sense of life is everything.

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— Hey, sis. Selling any anthrax?

— Come again. What?

— You heard me. Anthrax. I've got you for exchange one fresh kidney, from a white man. But don't try to give none of that animal vaccine crap; I want the military grade. I'm educated in this shit.

— Let's see. All I've got left now is some bubonic. That's it.

— I don't use the bubonic. I need anthrax. I been to your store before.

— How long can you wait?

— What does it take?

— Three weeks, at least. This materiel does not grow on trees.

— I know what it is. Just make it swift. Too much crap going on downtown; makes us edgy. Kids in perambulators. Jugglers on bikes. Tall people. Short people. We need to terminate.

— I'll do what I can, okay. And if you throw in a liver, I'll put some bubonic on for free.

— The anthrax is what makes the deal. Big hurry, too. A lid buys you one kid. Lid-and-a-half gets you the whole sweet pair. But I can't deal with bubonic. It spoils.

— You get yourself a flash freezer. Bubonic keeps in the freezer compartment.

— Yeah. When you defrost you've got ring-around-the-rosie. It's Buboes in the brains, man. Like a hooker's douche-water in there, pardon my French. I don't have funds for new equipment, thank you very much. Listen, I'm tellin’ you this. These kidneys are so fresh your baby sucks them, guaranteed from a white man, a young Caucasian youth. Smell like lilacs in May. Get a certain quantity of the anthrax to me by tomorrow and you can have the whole kit. Heart and lungs too.

— Okay, I can work on it; but something else, and don't take this personal, but we don't take the organs from a man. The ladies won't tolerate the male organs.

— I'm holding a truckload, sis. You can grab whatever you like, gender-specific.

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— How much you get for gas?

— How much you got?

— I give you some lungs.

— More than that.

— I give you the eyes too, my two good eyes for looking out onto the variable expanses, or into the books and on the screens and fair countenance of sons and daughters I give.

— Not basta .

— Okay my eyes my lungs the fair countenances my daughter's skin and ovaries.

— More.

— Okay. Eyes, lungs, fair countenances, daughter's skin and ovaries, testicles of the son, and my complete whole wife, and my plantation, and my gay caballero.

— Closer, but not enough.

— Okay. My eyes, my lungs, the fair countenances, my daughter's skin and ovaries, some testicles, my complete wife, my plantation, my gay caballero. The town I own and love by right of birth and all the people in the town I own — they live there and I roll them into no fault asphalt — and the view of the sweet blue air and the taste of the morning and rosy smudges of early light on our snow-capped mountains and the shining sea and the smell of snow and my country, my whole country and row upon row of pretty maids all in a row and the golden years and the smell of snow again.

— Alright. But I have the option to take more, push comes to shove; in the meanwhile, I don't know why I'm being so generous. You get three gallons for that, and I toss in an additional imperial quart, no extra charge.

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— I'm gonna do it.

— Do what?

— I'm gonna conduct my own first underground nuclear test. I'm definitely gonna conduct it.

— Get outta here.

— It's the first test of its kind by a private citizen, conducted by one.

— That just doesn't sound like something a woman would do. Not some woman I'd want to know.

— Well you already know me, dip-hands; I've got the hole mostly dug, already, and I got the nuke on order; at least, I know where to get it. See how much you know about women?

— Where do you order a nuke for yourself?

— I don't think I can tell you yet. Maybe I'll tell you after.

— What good is this gonna do? Why do you want to do this?

— I'm about to be the first private citizen to demonstrate nuclear capability as a woman. This is going to make a difference. How good are you with a shovel?

— I don't know. This gives me a lot to think about.

— Since when do real men think? Only kidding. Only joshing.

A HUMBLE SUGGESTION

It being well known that conflicts arise in the course of human events that are pursued zealously into action by one and then the other faction, and that these actions result frequently in the production of many tons of human carcass, sometimes in great heaps that heretofore have been disposed of en masse, or hidden and denied in such a way that these mass interments have come to be viewed by ourselves as a great waste of human resource, and in recognition of the fact that the condition of many of those not yet directly affected by these conflictions is for the great part one of deprivation, poverty, starvation, and offering the possibility that we have the will and the technology to affect this situation, we make the following suggestion to those with the power to effectuate such development and change.

We are prepared to establish an organization mobilized to act in situations such as those described above, as well as any other that might eventuate to profit our intentions, such as the common genocide, guerrilla war, cult suicide, air disaster or mudslide, tsunami, postal massacre, schoolboy rampage, ecological reversal, and et cetera and et cetera; we will be prepared to service whatever occurrences might eventuate to interrupt the natural course of human experience and turn significant quantities of fresh human remains into fresh meat; we are prepared to process as few as ten, and as many thousands as will be available. We propose to be present to help any of those who find they've escaped from and are untouched physically by any so-called calamity, to nourish themselves, improve themselves, even prosper through their position outside the abiding pandemonium.