Thirteen Ways of Looking at Six Black Door-to-Door Preachers

1. They tower above the apartments, bending over to find door bells and knockers.

2. They are old and friendly, dressed in old preacher clothes.

3. They ask for help finding the doorbells. I'm not that small, but can still get on my knees on a street with double-parked cars and dead bodies.

4. It's the end of times, the end of times! Small buildings are a sign of the end of times. I admit, it's unusual, not the way it was when I came to work.

5. They sway as they pray for the scale of human suffering to diminish to that which can be saved.

6. I sway with them wondering just how I could paint these doll houses. I'd have to buy artist brushes.

7. How can we find these lost souls? The preachers have roused my curiosity.

8. I put a hose in one of the apartment windows and turned on the water.

9. We agree that we like rivers for fishing and as metaphors.

10. They are determined to outlast this shrunken devilment. I suggest it has something to do with the Savings and Loan debacle. We will just get smaller until we were the size of bacteria and enter the Promised Land.

11. They decide that I am the source of the devilment. I lift one of the apartments to show them the wet paint drying on the living room wall. A small woman sits inside clawing at a laptop.

12. They begin to chase me. But they are old and slow. I hide behind a van and they pass on.

13. I see them from time to time around the city towering over the buildings.