Review: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

The television star woke up under the bed, atop the tabletop hockey game, on the hottest day of the summer. He was gambling in the dark. He walked out of the bedroom. Three private security contractors working for the US government in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad were killed in a rocket attack. The television star jumped on the rotating window sill in his four-dimensional living room with infinity ceiling.

Outside, the Mayakovsky Tree grudged his starry glamor. The god of speed with his ribs intact. His stubble jerked open in speech, the Mayakovsky Tree squabbling in the muck and rubbish. "Megyn Kelly refused to get in the middle," he said. "She made Sean Hannity promise never to let a man tell him what to do. I tried to make out her face, but all the letters were dark."

"She writes to me all the time," the television star said.

"Two Ugandans and one Peruvian were killed and 15 people injured" by "a rocket fired into the international zone," the American embassy said in a statement, using another name for the Green Zone in central Baghdad.

Four gray-wrapped policemen clustered in the light of the candle-like outdoor fixture made of black iron. A cone of perpetual fake flame flickering in the dark. A pat of butter floated in it. Quotas of coal and iron fulfilled, a forest of flags.

The Mayakovsky Tree offered a compromise by indicating a wheelchair.

"In front of a chalkboard, Glenn Beck pours himself a curd of cognac. He says that Sean Hannity has been awake for hours," the Mayakovsky Tree said.

The Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government buildings, and several major embassies in addition to U.S. interests, is the target of frequent rocket and mortar attacks. U.S. officials declined to say exactly where the rocket landed, but an Iraqi police source said it struck near the sprawling U.S. embassy complex.

The drinkers of intoxicating liquor made the television star the subject of their songs. The television star found himself seated in a leather-covered chair, leaning back into crunchy styrofoam, as the policeman held up seven fingers. The records contained no music. Background hiss, inevitable crackles and clicks. No music. The records were blank.