Russell Edson

Since the fern can't go to the sink for a drink of
water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two
glasses from the sink.
And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together.
...

A woman prepared a mouse for her husband's dinner,
roasting it with a blueberry in its mouth.

At table he uses a dentist's pick and a surgeon's scalpel,
...

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the
rest of his life.
...

A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He
wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture
for them.
They are like grains of rice.
...

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding
off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that
he'd grown so tired of sleeping.
He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him
...

On the other side of a mirror there's an inverse world,
where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the
earth and recede to the first slime of love.
...

A man is fighting with a cup of coffee. The rules: he must not
break the cup nor spill its coffee; nor must the cup break the
man's bones or spill his blood.
...

There was a road that leads him to go to find
a certain time where he sits.

Smokes quietly in the evening by the four legged
...

Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which
is simply a path leading through an archway called
adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life
...

The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
...

A man is bringing a cup of coffee to his face,
tilting it to his mouth. It's historical, he thinks.
He scratches his head: another historical event.
He really ought to rest, he's making an awful lot of
...

In sleep when an old man's body is no longer
aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by
gravity like a mere of wax in its bed . . . It drips
down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a
...

Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said,
animal did you get on my coffee?

No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
...

We get on a boat, never mind if it sinks, we pay
the captain by throwing him overboard. And when he
gets back onboard we say, captain, please don't be
angry. And he forgives us this time. And so we throw
...

There was once a hog theater where hogs performed
as men, had men been hogs.

One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has
...

A father with a huge eraser erases his daughter. When he
finishes there's only a red smudge on the wall.
His wife says, where is Amyloo?
She's a mistake, I erased her.
...

There was a man who found two leaves and came
indoors holding them out saying to his parents
that he was a tree.
...

The living room is overgrown with grass. It has
come up around the furniture. It stretches through
the dining room, past the swinging door into the
kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the
...

An elephant went to bed and pulled a crazy quilt up under
its tusks.

But just as the great gray head began filling with the gray
...

They have little use. They are best as objects of torment.
No government cares what you do with them.

Like birds, and yet so human . . .
...