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Banana Creme Pies for Sixty Percents


by Shawn Misener


        She's talking to me about solar flares. There are so many words that I can't make out, even though she is standing right in front of me. I think that on some meta-level we have bad transmission.

         It's bone quiet in the desert yet her words come at me through an invisible storm. She doesn't seem to notice that I can't understand her. I hear THE SUN and ELECTRICITY and MOTHER and GHOSTS. I hear SOLAR FLARES a few times. She is smiling. I know somehow that her name is Bobbi.

        Suddenly the auditory havoc dies down and she falls into a loop, saying BANANA CREME PIES FOR SIXTY PERCENTS over and over.

        I find my drums half-buried in the next dune over and play a funky beat over her ongoing vocal sample. There is a juice welling up inside of my gut.

        My cell phone rings and it's James Brown looking for Kenny G. I peer around the horizon but I can't find the curly-maned soprano saxophonist. Bobbi continues looping on about the pies.

        For a terrible second I realize that the desert is infinite, and that means death.

        The aroma of coffee seeps through the cracks, followed in by the crying of an infant.

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