Hisen

- "Hisen" by Susumu Yokota, from Sakura (1999)

Everybody's Stalking

- "Everybody's Stalking," by Badly Drawn Boy, from The Hour of Bewilderbeast (2000)

This Week's School Lunches.

This piece was taken from McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

This Week's School Lunches.

Monday:
Chicken-crisps (hamburger may be substituted), peas, milk. Dessert: apple or chocolate cookie. I can’t sleep unless I check all the switches. 

Tuesday:
Choice of French-bread pizza or turkey ham sandwich, steamed vegetable mix, chilled peaches, milk. If I bang my head I count 1 plus 1 is 2, 2 plus 2 is 4, 4 plus 4 is 8, 8 plus 8 is 16, and I keep going until I ‘m sure I don’t have brain damage. 

Wednesday:
If everyone had seven fingers it wouldn’t even be weird because everyone would have seven fingers. We would all go around and say, wouldn’t it be weird if we had five fingers. I can see into the future. Choice of steak-um sandwich or Italian-style cold-cut sub with lettuce and tomato, quick-baked potato, fruit shortcake, milk. 

Thursday:
Sometimes when I have to pee I drop a tissue square in the toilet first and then pee on it so no one will hear me, peeing. It really helps to quiet the sound, of the pee, when it goes in the toilet. Steak and cheese sub, carrots, applesauce, milk. Secondary schools add green beans. 

Friday:
When I am older I will carry things around in buckets. All kinds of things. I will have secret areas that I will put them in, and then each day the things in the buckets will be different. I don’t know why I like buckets, but I saw a picture of a lady with wooden shoes on and she was carrying around things in buckets attached to a pole. I asked my dad why, and he said it’s her job. I could do that, easy. Alternate for the week: Chef’s choice.

- by the hilarious Peter Bebergal

Gradations of Blue

The sunshine today is so warm and insistent I can't help but feel like a coddled child. I just want to yell and run and jump and forego any and all schoolwork.

...In case it wasn't obvious, I'm becoming extremely sentimental as the semester progresses.

"Gradations of Blue"

The scent of pig is faint tonight
as the lime trees hang their heads against gradations of blue, 

looking at the lone suitcase in the middle of the farmyard
with a sense of solidarity. Also forgotten. 

Its owner never once looked up at them and exclaimed
I was still soft-fingered when I planted you. 

In the plane, her gaze rests on a flock of cloud-birds,
pinkish purple with elongated necks, rests 

on the plane’s wing-tip colored pink by the sun.
Her head is heavy with this childhood cargo,

like the hawk that usually flies between or above their branches,
found skimming the ground with its catch of mouse or mole,

or the barge that passes every day at four, its metal nose
just out of the water, while empty at eight, its sleek sides 

flash signals to those on shore. Later, on the highway
a row of trucks lit like orange squares in the setting sun— 

a colony of ants each with a piece of chrysanthemum
on their backs—begins to reassemble memories; 

the petals become lining, the shape of the flower is lost,
so that years later, looking at an old photograph, 

she will not remember the names of cousins and uncles
but the exact bend in the river behind them, the pattern of trees.

by Matthea Harvey, from Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (2000)

It Wasn't Me

I could write a book about this song, at the very least. But I'll leave it at this: "Angel," Shaggy's subsequent single, was undoubtedly about "the girl next door."

- "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy, from Hot Shot (2000)