One warm spring night on a tiny farm in Whistle County, Tennessee, eleven piglets slipped from a sow like marbles from a silk purse, ten boys and one girl. The boys were fine, sturdy specimens, if perhaps a shade dull—more bacon than brains, as the saying goes—but the girl was a wonder, clever and strong and pink as a sunrise.

When Eddie electrocuted himself dead leaving a burnt image of Jesus on his left hand, it was faintly ironic for two reasons: one, he was doing something nice for somebody else at the time, which was out of character to start with; two, nobody had expected him to live long enough to do something nice for somebody else and subsequently electrocute himself.

Dear Applicant,

We have taken your application to register yourself as the sole owner and proprieter of a portion of Hungarian history, specifically 1820-1849, under consideration for inclusion in the Registry of Intangibles.

His faithless cock wants to feel her sigh:
tender, deliberate, slow—
He could never love her like he wants her thighs,
her sleepy bending legs, vulgar phrases she borrows.

Odysseus stood before the food court, flummoxed, bewildered, confused,
bereft of all ideas, no clever scheme could he devise,
None of his considerable craft was of use,
Nothing he knew had prepared him for this, no experience,
Not all of his wanderings in search of his beloved Ithaca had readied him,
he was lost, adrift, as surely as if he had been storm-tossed, alone, on the wine-dark sea.