THE REST OF THE WORLD SEEMS UNLIKELY

KIM PARKO

FLASH FICTION / PROSE POEMS

32 PGS.

from The Rest of the World Seems Unlikely:

Symbiotic beast

Everywhere there is dirt. Crumbs. Growing balls of hair. And the visitor is due any day now. Our family has read about the symbiotic beast. It will trail a person, an animal, any organic creature, and eat what falls, sheds, emits, and flakes off of them. The symbiotic beast arrives at our home seven days later. The symbiotic beast is well dressed, sleek, and handsome in a beastly way, not at all what we expected. The symbiotic beast becomes very popular in our home. All our floors shine. Every crevice is immaculate. When the visitor arrives, she is pleased with the order of our home. She stays well past her welcome. She stops bathing. She rolls around in mud and dribbles food down her breast. Every night she is filthy, but when she emerges from her room in the morning, she gleams like a well-scrubbed kitchen.


The elkhood

The elkhood live in the glade behind our house. They like to chew, methodically, on the tough forest greens. Their top teeth are like pestles. Their bottom teeth like mortars. They grind seed and grain to flour in their mouths. My wife employs the elkhood as she would a gristmill. She allows the elkhood to consume one eighth of the food they process. The elkhood are slender and sinewy. Their jaws have biceps. The elkhood have a leader who has many rounded breasts and a large, open vagina that doubles as a nursery. The many elkhood children are often found playing within her. The walls of her vagina are covered in bright posters. The floor of her vagina is always vacuumed after snack time. The elkhood tower over us. We are small and plump and barely move. When I yell into my wife’s vagina, my voice circles around inside and comes back diminished in loneliness. But we own the elkhood and have many other wonderful possessions.