a nise day
rain scrubs off dander scruff
scrumpy leaves, stuffy crud bugs
groomed willow! no fleas!
my name is snooples. sometimes they call me yeats. Sometimes they call me fondue ear.
but my name still stays snooples, no matter. i am gracies left kiddley. it is a terrible honor.
Sometimes I poke the charlie through the screen door. he is my friend. i like to give him some coffee beans. one time I poke the Charlie through the screen door and he goes blop! blop! all the way down the stairs. Then he brings me a bottle of homemade stinkbug wine.
as i am speaking of beans: maMA calls us the every flavor beans!
but now I must tell you something very serious. I have a anvil in the yard. his name is iron john.
a nise day
i forgot to say something. i forgot to say that i have very pointy feets. thus my sneakers fit dainty. also i have one brown toe. i like to place this toe into the nutella jar, but i leave hairs and crumbs and that is pretty bad.
a nise day
iron john sits in the yard and daisies grow all around. I sit on iron john and read my poems loud and swing my feets. sometimes chessie and i play horse.
iron john is very patient.
iron john weighs 300 pounds.
a nise day
gracie, she is busy writing papers. sometimes gracie is a poop pie.
i am gracie's deputy in charge, as i have a certain penmanship.
here write this. that is what gracie says. don't say anything embarrrassing.
so now i do not know what to write.
oh i know.
here is my favorite thing: sousa marches!
a nise day
if you ever dress up a toad it is a thing to see. a bullfrog in frilly pants: it is not the same.
sometimes late at night i put my chin on the window sill and there is moonlight and the toads are playing their electric guitars underneath the ground. i can hear that much!
that means it is soon toads bedtime. then i know autum is nigh. crickets will chupp!
: )
a nise day
i have 2 brothers. one is a monestary munk. he writes a goodish things.
Beloved Snooples;
I am hoping this letter finds you in fine fettle.
We are raising Danish Ballheads to make sauerkraut for the poor. They are amazingly large blue balls and glow like moons in the starlight. It is a sight to see.
An elderly bluetick hound tends the vegetables and roses. He wears a jingle bell tied to his left front leg so as to warn the cats of his arrival. Though I fail to see what threat he poses, as he is toothless and half-blind. His name is Earl.
Wonderful news about the gold pieces you sent. We spent them to build an orphange for the children of road kills. We already have dozens of baby possums, and a busload of young armadillos is due to arrive this Sunday. In honor of your infinite goodness, we have named this orphange
Snooples House
Until next time all my love,
Brother Nosegay
St. Claws Monestary & BreweryP.S. Do not be discouraged by Gracie's snits. Remember that her sire was a skunk, and they are naturally huffy.
a nise day
auntie pia says dingobat dingobat!
that is how i know she respects me most tremendously.
in this life pia is a handsome negress. but in some future lifes, pia is a narwal, a beer coaster, and a spotty hen. no one knows this but me.
a nise day
it is a well known secret that i am a horsefly whisperer. i can talk to a horsefly anytime! stop it from biting by telling it a funny joke!
for this reason i am very popular with all horses.
in a future life i am a froot fly. but only for a short while.
a nise day
jay bird jeering from his jaybird tree.
jaybird silent. his eye on me.
do your ears clip on and clip off? mine do. it is a handy thing.
if you do not have ears that clip on and clip off you might want to get some. when soup pans are falling you take your ears off and you put them in the pockets of your raincoat and thats that. no more soup pans falling.
a nise day
sometimes chessie and i sit on iron john and swing our feets and eat peanut butter sanwiches and watch the bees fly past wearing their yellow pantaloonies.
sometimes we play a game where i walk mysteriously around the other side of iron john. chessie calls out miranda! miranda!
it is goodish fun.
a nise day
that picture of me up there that is after my fine solo. i am singing bassso profundo with the bullfrog choir. everybody is drying their eyes and standing up and clapping their paws or hoofs or whatever. i am exceedingly proud!
not very many kittens get to sing with some bullfrogs. i am most humbly grateful.
a nise day
one time I saw some goat cheese, right in this house! then it was on auntie pia's whiskers and then it was gone! that is how goat cheese comes and goes.
experience has taught me this and more.
a nise day
And now a rumor: rot gut does not actually rot your gut!
a nise day
squaller cat, caterwauler cat
quarrelly patch
nose of woes
a sad scratch
sometimes i ring like a telephone. this i cannot help.
then maMA has to pick me up. no answering machine!
a nise day
my other brother he is a novelist. he writes novels.
he is a writer in residence in the hemingway colony.
Dear Sis:
Fished for marlin this a.m. and am easing the pain in the paws with a nip of stinkbug wine.
Am whupped but can scratch out a few lines.
Say, do you remember that game of Turtle Basket we played all one October afternoon while the leaves were blowing in torrents off the Norway maples? You rocketed the most mice, won paws down. Can't look at a suede mouse or a pumkin- colored leaf without thinking back to that afternoon.
You recall my mentioning Heracles. He lost one of his toes yesterday in a game of Ice Banger. Bound to happen, game always goes out of control. Anyway, the ole boy's polydactl; got toes to spare.
Guess that's what got me thinking of Turtle Basket. What a time that was.
Published "Big Two-Handled Toilet" in New Yorker this month. Did you catch it? Oh, forgot, you stopped getting the New Yorker. Novel about the lost donkeys coming out mid-winter.
Lunched at the Algonquin with Stephen King. Of all people. He isn't all that crazy about cats, as you know; always whacking them in kinky ways in his fiction. At least I got to ask him that Big Question we've all wanted to know forever. You'll never guess what he said: Rainslickers. I'm not kidding!
Luv Ya,
Pork Boat
a nise day
pia runned into iron john with the lawn mower. but never mind, he is all right.
a nise day
soon gracie will have this diary back. then, vaya con DOS!
so i will give you my important advise right away.
- be nise
- never ever do anything embarrassing as you will remember it always, and you will topple right over every time you think about it. even in future lifes.
- never put a bee on your tongue. i learned this yesterday.
a nise day
i went to take a boquet of little roses to iron jon this morning, and he was gone!
a nise day
paPA, he dragged iron john away! he put iron john in the potty shed!
a nise day
chessie and me dragged iron john back out in the yard. we put iron john in the shade under the walla walla trees.
it will be nise and shady under there. we will set in the shade and eat peanut butter sanwiches and sing
hooray for the flag of the free!
until paPA pulls up all the walla wallas and eats them on hamburgs.
the end