georgie in the sky, no. 11

“Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” – Neutral Milk Hotel (download) (buy)

Georgie in the Sky: no. 1, no. 2, no. 3 , no. 4, no. 5, no. 6, no. 7, no. 8, no. 9, no. 10, no. 11, no. 12, no. 13, no. 14, no. 15, no. 16

The first alien wildlife I saw was a sunflower. Perhaps five years old, maybe six, at a county fair. The stem was thick as my wrist. There was a small, one-track maze of them. My mother was ahead, with my younger brother, around a turn. Without her in view, I felt transported elsewhere, someplace far. I grabbed one in front of me and peeled at its skin. When I was finally able to pierce it, I found its Martian insides wet and furry. I recoiled at the coolness. As Morgan increased her affections with me in the days after she helped me with the parachute, her hands running from my hips and up my chest, it was a severed sunflower she wore behind her ear. And then the spaceship slammed into the water, sunflowers and imagined interplanetary terrains and Morgan’s mouth collapsed by the sudden pressure.