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Ishpeming


by Matthew Simmons


Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets they thereup become. Ishpeming laughs like a frog.

In its lungs, cancer grows like educational dinosaur sponges. In its brain, cancer grows like soap bubbles under a flowing faucet. In its eyes, cataracts are solidifying.

Ishpeming teases the lanes of the roads apart with his fingernail. He grasps and gives a hard tug. Cars fly off into Minnesota. The sparrows in his ears are pissing Ishpeming off.
 
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Lodie is a sniper, and kills cities for a living. She is on a raft in Lake Michigan. When she sees Ishpeming, Lodie pulls the rifle from her back.
 
The bullets are filled with mercury and shaped like little drill bits. And spin like little drill bits.
 
Lodie steadies the boat by steadying her breathing and then steadying the water around the boat. She dips a finger in the water, and it stops all it's God damned roiling.
 
The shot hits Ish's temple, and it burrows in. The mercury injects, hits the blood stream, runs around looking for the heart. When the mercury finds the heart, it coats the sides and dissolves the valves between the chambers. This leaves Ishpeming royally fucked.

Lodie turns away, and does not see the city fall.

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Ishpeming falls. The ground shakes and then the ground stops shaking.
 
Someone opens up a bottle and pours malt liquor on Ishpeming's feet. That same someone walks for a long time in order to pour malt liquor out near each of Ishpeming's hands. The bottle is empty at the final thumb and someone is unable to take a memorial drink.
 
God, who lives in the sky, ignores the entire situation, instead concentrating on a new project. He has started a band with some friends, and is on the phone trying to hustle up a gig or two in the next couple of months. The band has been getting pretty good lately, and has been practicing twice a week. God doesn't think much of his singing voice, but the other members of the band are pretty keen on it. It's a good time for God.
 
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The corpse of Ishpeming does not stink as it rots to pieces. The rot is not so much organic as it is mechanical. It is, like, entropy.

Or something.

The comet, still zipping around the heavens, tears through God's drummer's neck. The drummer dies. Blood is everywhere in God's garage.

Outraged by the death of drummer (the best of all the drummers who called God after seeing his flyer on a light pole) God destroys the universe.
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