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Crystal / Window / Gem


ISSUE:  Spring 1992

With the witch, and the batwinged monkeys, Kim thought
Emmie would be nightmared-up for days. But Emmie’s
three and a half. She doesn’t understand these stand
for half of what’s out there waiting. “Mommy this is all
in Dorty’s ‘magination, right?” Right, Mommy says.
The crystal ball the witch grins from malignantly is
perfectly round, and everything comes full circle:
Dorothy, home again; the faces around her, kind.
Then Emmie’s sweeped to bed, and Kim stares out the
 window.
She can see some stars more clearly than that Buy-Low
over there. It doesn’t matter how far your eyes go, though.
You try to get away somewhere and you hit an invisible
 wall,
an invisible corner. It’s like living in a beveled gem. The
 world
is a bezel. Not that she’s thought of it in those words,
exactly. She only knows Doyle, the one-year-old, is wailing
by now, the pleats about her eyes are growing
confused with the cracks in the plaster, and somewhere
a house siding salesman calls up her face
in that cheap pinky ring they once scrimped for.

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