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Tonsure

March 2, 2020

Forever you find

              your father
in other faces—

a balding head
              or beard enough
to send you following

Illustration by Landis Blair

A Friend

March 2, 2020

Margo’s daughter came home from school that Friday with a new friend. From the window in the kitchen, where she was trying and failing to make decent croissants for the third time this week, Margo watched the bus deposit her eight-year-old daughter, Anya, and some unknown boy, which was odd because the town was so small and Margo had often been at Anya’s school to volunteer and had no memory of him.

Dog Star

March 2, 2020

 Take today. I want there

            to be less
of everything—wind

& worry, of leaves
            littering the ground
& love letters, addressee

Illustration by Landis Blair

The Tobacconist

March 2, 2020

There was a period of my life when I saw wombs all around me, and so of course the chandeliers were uteruses.

Boneyard

March 2, 2020

Like heat he seeks them,
            my son, thirsting 
to learn those

he don’t know
            are his dead—
some with his name

Illustration by Landis Blair

The Year 2003 Minus 20

March 2, 2020

Reney’s bones can feel a fight long before the rest of her wakes to the rising voices and clattering bottles. She is eight, almost nine. Granny and Lula live in a new rent house across the tracks and down a long hill, not so very far. Over there—standing on a chair rolling up balls of dough as Granny’s hearing aids whistle, or lying curled into Granny’s great body napping—is Reney’s best place. But Reney knows that her place is with her mom.

Pegasus

March 2, 2020

Before I leave for good, I lift the pie server a final 
time, drop the receipt facedown next to the lemon 
blueberry slice, then my apron in the parking lot

<i>Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA</i>. By Amaryllis Fox. Knopf, 2020.240. HB, $26.95.

A Most Wanted Woman

March 2, 2020

 Despite President Trump’s fatuous protests about the “Deep State,” we seem to be in a similar place with respect to entertainment relating to the intelligence community, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in particular.

Junker

March 2, 2020

That one smelled 
like a Bradford pear 
you said. 

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