(This must twenty years old. I believe it’s from an collection of all my stuff in a Word document and arranged alphabetically. These were on each letter’s title page. Alas, the Word doc proved unworkable and the alphabet unfinished.)

A

Pronounced uh. Schwa. Sometimes it seems half the vowel sounds in English are pronounced in  a schwa. There’s  reasons. Slow linguistic reasons. Gradual things like how the earth slides off the top of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, slowly carrying rich people with it. Ha.

B

They dance, bees. They find pollen and they dance. I love them for that dance, all those lady bees dancing. I like dancing lady anything. Cowgirls slowdancing with oilmen in a honky tonk.  A beautiful black girl dancing to a good band.  A salsera’s  mathematical perfection. The pure sex of a samba line. One of the girls came by my table and put her spangled tits in my face. She danced and they shook violently from side to side. Then she laughed at my eyeballs following them back and forth. She laughed and kissed me and let me be.   

C

Like see. But it’s usually k. Cat. Cab. Can.  It’s not a sybillant., that c, most of the time. There are maybe fifteen sybillants. Most are s’s. A few z’s. No c’s. But see we say. A B See. Go figure.

D

I worked with a lady named Dee.  She had a baby in some guy’s car.  Women think of that cute baby. Men think of that poor car.

E

In high school I had a friend with a beautiful blue Thunder.bird. One the big ones you could fit four or five strapping teens in. The letters  on the license place said THE. It was The The. We’d drive around in The The and talk about girls and rock’n’roll. We’d go to concerts at the Long Beach Arena. Blue Oyster Cult. Deep Purple. We’d go to the Wilshire Theatre in old downtown Fullerton and watch Stones movies. Sometimes we’d take Kevin Ames. Really weird kid Kevin Ames. Tall, blonde, kinda off.  But fun off. We went to the Wilshire to see a zombie movie and Kevin walked through the theatre like a Thing. He walked like a thing into the old people’s hotel next door. That was gofno. If something was cool he’d say gofno. Two long O’s there, gofno. We’d say that’s cool. He’d say gofno. Just “gofno”. If something was uncool we’d say that’s fucked up.  But Kevin Ames would say eeeeeeeeeeeee.  

F

When I see the letter F I think of fucking. Must be a man thing.

G

Gee. When I was in high school, someone told me that there was a butter in India called gee. With a hard G. Gee. Not jee. It’s a rancid butter. They eat rancid butter? No, they wear it. Wear it? Not really wear it, just smear it all over. Why? Funerals or something. Oh.  It’s called jee? Like the letter? No gee, like the sound of the letter. Jee is like a jay. But why is it spelled gee? The butter? No the letter. They spell it gee. Who does? I dunno, spellers. Gee? Not jee? Yes. But that’s so confusing. Gee whiz.

H

Some people in England don’t even bother with their aitches. It is just barely the, that aitch. Just an exhalation pushed against the roof of the mouth.