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As in accidental death and dismemberment, as in the insurance policy the Idaho StateJournal took out on me, their newest paperboy, including a number I could dial if I losta limb. I carried disaster like a rabbit’s foot.Suppose a neighbor’s stray arrow took out my eye, $5,000. Suppose Old LadyAllsop tripped while mowing and her …

It’s impossible to feed you when I can’t findyour mouth, an inconvenience when you levitateor pass through walls. How to coax a whale on the beach back into water. How to rescue a jellyfishwithout becoming one.Forget what you learned in school about silence and standing still, abouthow a cricket is just a cockroach that sings.When …

Is there other life? I stare out my shower’s window, through Orion’s polygonal window into deeper void.And do they have something like ass hairthat they hate on themselves and scrape away? My milky way of blood and cream swirls down the drain. I lie downhuman and smooth for just myself and this psychedelic gummy cube …

You alter the path once and once the children see the shadows in the alcove under the school’s front steps, the bars, the down-white plumage, the herb-green feathering, you walk closer to peer into the aviary at the parrots and parakeets. “Hello,” you said, and the birds said nothing. “Hello,” the children said in their …

You look under the low tent sheltering from the sun, the compromise in showing them, the best way to protect the color is to keep them covered, as if under the surface of the dry, sandy dirt as they were before excavation. The pigmented stones, none of them larger than a tooth, and the picture …

The performance over and the crowd’s dispersal into the dark, rain sheened, winter streets. We among them in the amber glow of streetlights, our silhouettes across the cobblestones, elongated and elegant. The restaurant we chose at a late hour, the server’s affectionate confidence, leading us with her hand, her Madame et monsieur, pleased to have …

“What, for example, is born in England, but is never, not even on a cloudy day, English?” —Bhanu Kapil You must liveIn the footnotes of a one-drop rule. Or blood quantum. Remember, Never both. You must pull out Your heartIn exchange for a card. Antithesis To citizenship. SpitAt the border or they will send troops …

Where there was a meadow,a shore. Wouldn’t that be beautiful, he thought—to return by sea, which of course implies leaving, or a kind of reliefif we can allow it. And it’s true, the beginning of a painting may also bethe beginning of a room. How we followed the canvas toward a door and there was …

From a Folgers can onto a cold acre Of Vinton County regrowth my uncleScattered his dad. He claimed a sprinkle, An errant paternal flake, had takenTo wind then found the slot between his Stroh’s And his throat as he swigged a farewell toast.That beer, he said, was smokier than most. Must’ve tasted sweet enough, too, …