Leaving Las Vegas

When JP Moonsberry speaks, his words become a boat, and the ship grows as out from a shell; the air around becomes abuzz with tiny ghosts, who pick and gulp at the strings. The ghosts gather around the edges of things: a tree, a wall, a shadow, and the light beyond the arc is where they sip, as the redness takes them. Some of the ghosts are not ghosts but moths, the size of a small hand; these nest inside moonflowers. The flower pulls its center up from roots so that the ovum eat.

JP Moonsberry is standing beside Darwin with an umbrella, shielding the enormous bird from the summer sun.  \\\ (He also comes in the rain, and he whispers to the timeless, lapping sea.)

Moonsberry looked towards Paradise Park, and there, suddenly, there she was: a white opalescence moving out from the grass. She had gold crystals around her neck, crystals which fell from man’s knowing about her, and she wore white gloves, though her fingers were free—she had the most beautiful hands anyone had ever seen—and on her ring finger she wore an enormous amethyst. Gold wire was wrapped around the stone and around her skin. It was not difficult for men to know what to give, as the things became a part of her, the jewels and stones and shells. She had an abalone pearl in the shape of a seahorse. She was as a bird but belonged to a species of lily; this was Stella.

Stella had come from a pond in the desert, only a one hour car ride from Las Vegas. She had been the housekeeper for the town’s hotel and their café. She was most beloved by the owner of that town and all the people there. Her air was as mycelium. She had no need to eat or drink because she ate directly from the sun. She drew from the soil.

In the morning you could feel her as a ghost come crawling next to you, her long soft hair smelling of a floral lawn, the rooster crowing already and her silk nightgown flowing in droves in the air around. The space she made was infinite, but could fit perfectly beneath your desk.

Well,                Stella               said JP Moonsberry. [[and the first two little ghosts: bzz bzz, grabbing at the words]]

Moonsberry had given Stella the gifts she most treasured: a little cloth pouch containing seven tiny dolls---a a family, made of little sticks and colored string. She told them her worries and what made her frightened. The dolls stayed with her all night. Of course Moonsberry had also given her the night, had given it to her on a dish with almonds and cranberry. It was Moonsberry that had given her the amethyst in gold wire and with it, he gave her the sphere.

At night Stella prepared her body for ghosts. Ghosts from all places and all times preferred to visit her; once she had had an old man come from the apple country. His body was light as snow, just flurries from the dark sky. She had white foxes, some of them made of paper, some of stone, some of them crumbling to sand or a fine mist, bringing with them the scent of their deep, green woods. She had a messenger once from her pond, and the messenger was a cat and her kittens, as well as a hummingbird. The lilies on that pond opened at night.

Stella was visited by the black widow, the very one she watched at night from her chair on the patio, stars from the spider’s eight feet sticking into Stella’s hair and unfolding upon her.

At this moment, Stella was walking from the park where she had gathered crickets and some thick nettle. (For even though she need not eat but for the sun, she often took dried insects, tied with a loop of string and baked with salt and sesame, and the bitter grass she took for calm.

{{        I can see vaguely the shore of some distant world      }}

Moonsberry's words were a great vessel moving towards the park. The ship was called True Love. The ghosts were spreading off of it, slipping in and out of one another, their sounds of verdant flame and wings.

In Paradise Park, there are growing many mulberry trees but only one which bears fruit. Sparrows and grackles and magpies eat the berries from the branches, and for Stella the tree lays its fruit on the ground.

A house is burning. This is just after a crack had been opened in the mouth of history; Rip was a Cherokee man, robust and healthy, running quick out of the dwelling place, rearing towards the meadow who loosed itself upon the night, so that he bit the ear of this man, so that he bit the ear clean out of the man’s head. When the man screamed it was the sound of a whale. The only one able to hear the sound was Darwin, and out of his eyes fell red and glowing roses, raised from Castilian seed.

Moonsberry was still holding the umbrella over Darwin’s body, his own body become as a stack of plates in the hot sun.

Stella knelt and spread her hands around the falling roses, the flowers coming apart so that the petals were carried by the wind down the sidewalk, through the wire fence and into the city’s flood channel.

The roses did not stop letting go. Stella laughed. JP Moonsberry looked down and a smile pressed across his lips.

Stella could not hear anything he said. The ghosts were in their own separate frenzy, having bound themselves; they were as a spider, the circles spreading out now, beyond the park and the burning house. [[The Indian would be found years later in a cave by himself; men would take a photograph beside his bones.]]

Darwin was steadying himself now.  

Stella, Moonsberry said again, and the ghosts went wild.

Stella heard an eagle in the distance, and she saw herself beside Lemongrass pool. She could see the eucalyptus towering over the field and something small falling past the trees.

The tiger and the rose are white as the sun.

The ghosts erupted in a roar. Darwin opened his eyes and from them came the sign of the bird onto the sidewalk.

Stella saw a swallow and a dove.

Take out the space

The bird appeared to be flying up from the ground, so that the arc between each wing and its tail made the shape of the letter m.

Stella was hungry; Darwin knew this. Inside she was already crawling towards the man who had lost his ear, and the spirit which had come from the hole. It was the basket-maker that materialized in this man’s death, entered into the shape of music, the shape of an owl.

It’s cleaning me, you see, I’m getting clean.

The ghost was on Stella’s hands, wet and clear between her fingers. She could hear the air going around and around and, as she held a petal to her lip, she could feel that which descended upon her; inside her every fold, its shadow moving.

Joseph, someone said.    

The sign of the dove appeared again in the cement, now inside the flood channel, now on the wall of the Burlington Coat Factory. It beat its wings.

Love is not rest. Neither is love a timepiece.

At this moment a man inside the flood channel started becoming a bowl of fruit. First his body became a tangerine, and then an apricot, and finally an orange and an apple, a plum and a strawberry. He became the bowl as well. [[To be at that moment one of the blue figures painted on the wall behind him—to have seen that transformation.]]

The sun was getting near the mountain, and so JP Moonsberry would return home. He closed his umbrella and patted Darwin on the back of the head. He turned and started towards the sun and the red rock. Darwin stayed motionless on the sidewalk, breathing.