200words.

They just sat there, tiny slivers, stark and unabashadly mingling
throughout oddly-shaped pink chunks with flaky shreds dangling from the ends, as if they were all at some obscene dinner party where something just wasn’t quite right.  And here and there were round knuckle-sized ones, fresh and wet with a smelly juice, an eerie, whispering omen to anyone approaching, “where’s my finger I need a finger where is it?”  This wasn’t happening - what were we supposed to do now?  Ignore them? We couldn’t just ignore them.  What could we do? We’d been waiting all day, planning and positing methods, following steps throughout to make sure everything was in place, and now we stared, shocked, stunned into hesitation and quizzical looks.

I picked it up, turning it slowly, finding it finally. “Traditional-Style Salmon - ‘The naturally-occurring slivered and round bones in this can are totally edible and a great source of calcium!’  Uh-uh - no way.  That’s gross.”

“Screw it,” he said. “Chipotle?”

I took a medical terminology class last quarter.  There was a section dedicated to the skeletal system, which also lead to the different types of fractures that can incur on a body.

I’ve never had a bone broken in my body.

After studying that chapter I put the different kinds of fractures in order of what I would prefer if, you know, I ever had to have a bone broken but had a choice as to how the bone would be broken (think good guy meets bad guy in a bad Bond movie and the good guy has some agency because he gets to choose how his fingers will be broken, or something like that…).

1.  Greenstick fracture-an incomplete break of the bone and the bone bends (most common in children)
2.  Simple fracture-just broken in one place but the skin isn’t broken
3.  Compound fracture-your bone is broken and it breaks through the skin
4.  Transverse fracture-when the break is at a right angle to the length of the bone
5.  Comminuted fracture-when a bone breaks into two or more pieces, or is splintered and crushed

“I’ll grind his bones to make my bread,” that’s what that stupid giant
said. Little did he understand that Jack’s a proper Englishman. The
English always get their mark, and that goose was golden for this lark.
So Jack grabbed the egss and ran away, the giant fell and died, ok?
Jack chopped that weed down to its root, which made the big guy go
kaput. And Don’t ask me about the giant’s bones, I think they’re
petrified to stones. And of course this is all very dumb, but I can’t
can’t think of anything else so shut the fuck up!

All Ye Lands: World Cultures and Geography is open, gripped and flipped arbitrarily to what I, what we were supposed to be paying attention to. Down with the pages, down with the binding, anything to pin this insistence down. Under the weight of my grocery bag-wrapped text, brown corduroys that vip vip vip through these Catholic halls are being tested. Like in a Station of the Cross, stained glass biology & halos, these husky cords are engaged in a mythic battle against blood, a Holy one that seeks to smite this zipper, part this fabric, unleash something I can’t say.

There is Dan Johnson and his hair gelled just back just perfectly. His jaw is the softest hard square ever manifest in human form. I imagine him a boxer, without use for words or of anything but fists and movement and impact. Mrs. Reilly’s rattling on dynasties thatches a faint, airy web overhead, along the classroom walls, snaking down like crepe paper to be yanked. I pull a few words in then focus back on Dan, All Ye Lands pressed into my lap for protection. But hiding myself has become erotic; the snugness, pressure, the back of his neck, oh.

Goldie’s sits equidistant between Abeline and Topeka. On the cattle drive up through the plains, ropers take comfort at the lonely watering hole. It is the only place in Ardmore for whiskey by the glass, a hand of parlor poker, or a chance with a gal. Ardmore’s only other claim is a piddling spring and half a general store. The most assured draw to Goldie’s is certainly the entertainment. Some years ago an eccentric homesteader Bohemian musician carried a finely crafted piano by wagon from the port of Baltimore. Breaking open the crate chipped the marbled wood, but after he tuned it the strings played true. Now each night, with travelers and cowpokes gathered, Vaclav runs his fingers across the inlay, across the precisely hewn veneers of ivory, once carried afront snouts in Africa, now an undulating keyboard on an unfamiliar plain. The old world minor chords resonate through the rough wood floor. The bone keys have yellowed and split from heat and silt.