Quarter to Three

By Sparrow

How to Build a Canoe

8/17
In the sky is a shape like a manta ray (a cloud).

8/18
In my dream it’s my birthday. When I wake up, I am discouraged it’s not my birthday.

8/19
I awake to the sound of a huge machine cutting the neighboring house into four pieces.

8/20
Fred and I stand on my porch, eating two small tart apples he bought in Connecticut. It is midnight, Saturday night, and the town is unpeopled. We are discussing the movies of John Travolta.
At this moment the Mostly White Skunk emerges, from the woods, and walks across the street. If you stay awake long enough in Phoenicia, often you see the Mostly White Skunk. She crosses the street with a busy little bustle, as if she is wearing a new dress. Her back is a large white stripe, bright as a daisy petal. Only her sides are black.
The Mostly White Skunk crosses the street, towards the Sportsman’s bar, then turns around, walks back towards us, and wriggles under the porch we’re sitting on.
Soon after, Fred and I finish our apples, go up to bed.

Prison Money
cigarettes
knives
pornography
rings
candy

8/21
A bear defecated in our backyard. My wife found her (or his) feces: like a human’s, only thicker—with apples seeds inside.

A Recipe
And now the first recipe ever featured in Quarter to 3. (If you make it, please write and tell us how it tasted.):

Wood Soup, Flavored with Lemon

3 pieces of wood, small
1 tomato, diced
1 cup lima beans
1 Tbs parsley
1/2 Tbs chives
1 ice cube
1/2 cup macaroni
1/4 tsp black pepper

Simmer until soft. Flavor with lemon. Remove wood and serve.

New Proverbs
Zero is a letter of the alphabet.

Run to Denmark—but who’s in Sweden?

A book floats.

Dimes are not funny.

Lucky Happy Contest
And now the newest contest in Quarter to 3: palindromes. Recently I have invented the following sentences, which read the same backwards and forwards. Send your own entry, and you will be eligible for a small, mystifying book sent to your own home. Please mail your palindromes to: Lucky Happy Contest, Chronogram, Post Box 459, New Paltz, NY 12561.

Die, id!

Butt tub

Sin is

Lion oil

Boss, sob!

Zorro or Roz?

8/22 On The Bus
A guy who sounds like a Kansas farmer is talking into his cell phone, addressing that Confessor everyone on cell phones seems to know: “Yes, I love her very much, with all my heart. And she says she loves me. And I believe her. So I think we really have a chance to make it work. We’re at the right time in our lives. She wants to have children...”
Meanwhile, a Hasidic mother and daughter are speaking Yiddish behind me:
zich draysen der velashen mommet

The Silence of the Lamps
I walked into a room
at night.
The lamps were silent
and off. It was dark

and quiet—
even the lampshades.