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1. The Piss Steam
 

The children always ask what the steam is hovering above the streets of the city
 

It could come from the sewers
 

Or it could come from something else
 

2. Elvis' Mother is Dying
 

Elvis' mother is dying. Elvis' mother is dying and Elvis is crying and Elvis is singing sad songs, gospel songs about mothers and sons and memories and the hospital is calling and telling Elvis and Vernon to come down and Elvis' mother
 

And Elvis is wailing and Elvis and Vernon are wailing in their hospital and the visitors as they come hang their heads and see them crying with their arms around each other and Elvis and Elvis can't stop touching her face and they cover the coffin with a piece of glass to stop Elvis from touching his mothers' face
 

And if only Elvis wrote songs, if only he really wrote songs he could write a song now a slow sad song about his mother dying, his mother dead, a slow sad song like a pentatonic requiem, he could chase everyone out of the house and sing gospel songs and then maybe from somewhere he'd start singing words like gone gone my mama's gone and I would give up anything and I just want to get out of this now
 

And Elvis isn't wearing his Army uniform on furlough
 

3. The Death of Gladys Presley
 

I'm reading about the death of Gladys Presley in a McDonald's and the strawberry topping on the table is sticking to my forearm. The table is wobbly so I try to keep it all balanced, the big fat hardcover book and the French fries and the jug of soda and the ice cream sundae in four corners like I'm performing a magic spell or I'm Japa-fucking-nese or something.
 

The teenagers from some school somewhere are on lunch break and throwing fries at each other around back. They arc over chairs like shooting stars and land and someone in a uniform with a pail on a stick comes by and sweeps it up, and grumbles to me about the damn teenagers, the damn kids, and I'm not a damn kid, goddamn it, not anymore.
 

So it's raining outside and everyone's brought the rain in with them, and it's steaming up the place. As I sit I feel a drop break free of my hair and run down from the crown of my scalp to my furrowed brow and over the ridges and the girls are yelling at the boys that they ain't all that and the boys are yelling at the girls that you just talkin shit. I eat and we eat and they eat chicken sandwiches like they are pieces of Gladys Presley's dead, fragile body, like the sandwiches she made with her small hands have been multiplied into sacred oblivion.
 

I know I will go outside and I know there will be cops lining the streets around the park here, downtown, because of what's happening there, midtown, and New York's so fucking tragic these days.
 

4. The Pentagon Like Graceland
 

We are going to the Pentagon for Halloween. We're not going to dress up or go trick or treating or anything like that but we wanted to celebrate so we're going to the Pentagon. It's a group trip.
 

I bring my tools, my protractor and my t-square and my graphing calculator, to take measurements and make conclusions. I will extrapolate from what I already know: impacted on one side, the foundations crumbling and nearly broken, badly in need of repair, crowns rotting, the rest intact, still. Underneath a gold vault, I hear, or an old burial ground. It's a giant gaping hole and there's a platform just on the edge where people gather and toss small things in, stones and stuffed animals and pictures, and sometimes they try to jump in, too, but they are restrained by the guards there. You can look in, I hear, to the middle of the Pentagon and see all the activities there, the troop movements and the prisoner transfers and the rows of gleaming vehicles.
 

Bill picked up some small toys in a truck stop on the way, and he fools with them as we walk across the grassy lawns of the nation's capital, the tentacles of a plush octopus wrapped around his neck, a plastic monkey flipping in his hand. Lori likes the hot weather and takes off her top to show off the bikini she bought in a Sears back home. I'm humming a tune we kept playing over and over again in the car, something about diamonds or women or rain. We join the stream of citizens threading their way through the maze of monuments towards the wreck.
 

The line is slow and we're playing a game of catch with a piece of religious art Bill bought off the street. Lori asks if she should flash her boobs for beads, and I tell her that she has the wrong city, and she says she knows, she was just kidding, retard. Bill says she could flash 'em for copies of the Declaration of Independence. Lori punches him and then he punches me and then we're all punching each other, as the people around us try and look like we're not, but we're giggling anyway.
 

The square now is ringed with people in costumes, ready for the evening ahead, and they almost are standing guard, almost are closing in, costumes of soldiers and costumes of monsters and some of the real thing all closing a perimeter around us, getting smaller and smaller, bumping up against us.
 

The hole is close now--I can hear it, hear the reflections of sound coming out of its hollowness. Where do they go after they see the hole? Where will we go? There is steam rising from it.
 

5. Oh Sad Songs Are Like Richard Said
 

Songs play when you're walking It's easy he said Just break out the piano like a knife and Oh we'll make 'em cry tears real tears Sad songs taste like onions like watermelons he said
 

Sad songs are easy, he said. Any song can be a sad song. Like how actors get themselves to cry by bringing up their saddest memory, you just do that and then write about it, but try not to write about too much of it, otherwise you won't have anything left when you want another sad song. But it don't matter too much because any song can be a sad song, like a song about clowns or puppies or big, strong men that are really sad inside. Sad songs are all about the notes and what order they're in and what plays them and when and how much. It's all about the breathing, the breathing, how the air comes out of your throat. Easy.
 

Sad songs are the rain just before it hits you. Sad songs are a mist that never touches you. Sad songs are always about you and that's why they don't need words, just a piano or a guitar or a voice making sounds out of air. Sad songs are walking and sad songs are talking even when they're not talking about anything. Sad songs are what you hum to yourself just outside a bar before going in and hearing the music there and you forget and never hum it again.
 

6. Elvis Eating Escargot in Heaven and Shooting TVs Just Because
 

The glass breaks in a spiral and maybe we will ascend on a beam tracing patterns on a screen 24 times a second, maybe we will burst forth feetfirst into pants and then mechanical arms will put a sweater over our naked torsos and we will be launched facefirst down a slide where bits of food dangle for us waiting for us to slide right through with mouths open and gulp them down, one after another, roll, gulp, cheese, gulp, snail, gulp, block of glue, gulp, grouting, gulp. And then we'll get to the bottom and land on a soft pillow on a comfortable chair and be sitting at a table on which is placed a boundless meal of everything you have ever put in your mouth or thought of putting in your mouth, maybe, saw looking on the ground or hanging in the subway and thought I'd like to put my mouth on that or I wonder what that would taste like if I just gave it a little lick? And you start in and Elvis comes and joins you and he's young again and thin and you just have a nice conversation about southern cooking and about his mama and about how he'd like to live and you say "Elvis, so why don't you live that way?" and he smiles and grabs a biscuit off your plate and touches your shoulder and says tag, you're it.