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Eating Crow

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened the birds began to sing, On TV the Bizarre Foods host leans over a rickety market stall in Bangkok. He picks at the toothpick bones of a sparrow, licks his lips and…

Cremains

Her kitchen is filled with the neighbors’ dishes—all well-meaning, pity-stained, uncleaned. She can’t quite think, so she shuffles about the house, marveling at the strangeness. Touching the bill pile, a bruised spot in the oak banister, his fleece jacket on a coat rack, the cannon-shaped back of a wedding gift mixer, the crumbling scone on…

Marshland

We are all intruders here               though we fool ourselves this late winter day, carving a place on the banks                            to anchor our heels. We stretch over the water, hoping               to slip onto the wings of a Great Blue Heron but afraid to get caught in the trap of reeds, twisting                            in the…

The Wolves of Illinois

When I stopped along the road and climbed the platform that the wildlife people built, I saw the dead grass moving. A darker gold that broke free from the pale gold of the field. “Wolves,” said the man who stood beside me on the platform. On his other side stood his wife and children, I…

The Mass Has Ended Go in Peace

—not in knowledge, but in calm; not in indifference, but nearly. Under bullying fog the white houses stand with effort on the coast, the tides teasing the scrub blue, the land beneath hassled by waves, drowning in salt-wine. The lichen, as scalloped and ridged as the cliffs, breathes red and gold; its smell, like the…

The Fish God Provides

I’m a pea farmer. There’s a stream out back. I like the sound of it. One day out of the week, I bring home a string of brown trout and slap them down on the kitchen table. The fish god provides. If someone knocks on my door rather than stroll in, I don’t like it….

Bluebird

A swirl of leaves tosses its bag of colors over the shoulder of an unmarked road. In the century- old barn where the leaves take refuge, the wind is a permanent resident rehearsing the music of abandonment. And in this hollow the leaves— who found each other before they got lost and braided—are endlessly tweaking…