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Six

Coming up from the creek / hacking at the bushes / with a homemade sword, / he will step / on the nail, in the shit, / run through poison ivy, / get tick bit, / bee stung / lost — / his bones are growing.

When The War-Father Appears

i can see the worst all right — the earth exploding in some climactic chain reaction and all of us going off sparking out at the same time and i think i am going to like it if it happens that way after all we’ll be learning something together something massive that we’ve been trying to understand for a while and in that final sparking and arcing of the earth’s blow-up we’ll finally get it we’ll understand

Telling The Truth

An unannounced visit, a four-year-old makeup artist, a dead parrot

Mexico

He turned and saw the snow in her hair and smiled at her, and she saw that the last trace of paralysis that had lingered in his facial muscles after the stroke was gone. His face glowed as if in sunshine. Joyful wonder began deep in his eyes.

Summer

There’s the pain denied so many times, in so many ways, that I know its disguises in others, can tell an honest man from a block away: he sways on his vulnerability, no flower but fully human, bends to his breeze, weeps in his rain.

Editor’s Note

On The Word “Witch”

The word witch was invented to describe those who claim to be spirit before form, to be independent of flesh while in the flesh, and the witch on the broomstick flying through the night is a distorted image . . . intended to instill fear and therefore control people, to keep them small, containable.

Friends

Following a voice, skipping stones, jogging in autumn

Parents, Now And Then

A bowl of faded rose petals, a wooden extension ladder, a photograph

Three Wishes

Being hit by a car, driving through Wyoming in the snow, grabbing the wishing ring on the merry-go-round