A slim collection of delightfully quirky pieces by Russell Edson, an author who jokingly referred to himself as "Little Mr. Prose Poem." Here is the title piece. At the bottom, beneath the Gary Larson cartoon, is one of my own quirky micro-fictions I had published in years past.

WITH SINCEREST REGRETS
Like a monstrous snail, a toilet slides into a living room on a track of wet, demanding to be loved.
It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets. In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.
And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you, you belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace ...
The toilet slides away ...



THE STIFFS
A cartoonist starts a new comic strip about dead people called The Stiffs. The humor is strictly deadpan, the action dead serious, and the Stiff family a bunch of real stiffs - stiff enough, that is, for all the readers to die laughing.