There was once a man stuck to a nose.
It was a superlative nose,
it was a constable and scribe of a nose,
it was a most hairy swordfish.
It was an ill-adjusted sundial,
it was an alembic deep in thought,
it was an elephant upside down,
it was a nosier Ovidius Naso.
It was the prow of a galley,
it was a pyramid of Egypt

I've started wearing my nosering again, mostly because despite the image of purity that radiated from my transfigured face without it, I just didn't look as cool. I missed that little sparkle when the sun caught it, the glint I could just barely see if I closed my left eye.

I sank into a bright orange sofa that exhaled a cloud of dust motes that danced in the sun streaming through the windows. It also exhaled a breath of trapped ancient farts, barf-smell, and antiseptic, the parfum de asylum that gradually numbed my nose to all other scents on the ward. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to look attentive.

The old woman was not only ugly with the ugliness age brings us all but showed signs of formidable ugliness by birth —pickle-jar chin, mainsail ears and a nose like a trigonometry problem. What's more, she had the deep frown and snit wrinkles that come from a lifetime of bad character.

fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms…

“Dad, what does a vagina look like?”

“Son, before sex, a vagina looks like a pink rose, with soft, lovely petals, and the aroma of perfume.”

“What about after sex?”

“Have you ever seen a bulldog eating a milk-shake?”

Ralph, my human resources person, was an unmade bed. Craggy faced, he smoked cigars until their very end, scattering ashes everywhere. He was an administrative nightmare, often staying up all night long to finish the books for our presentations at headquarters. But you couldn't find anyone with a better nose for people.

Under all the powder her face black as Harpo. She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it.