Or I will wear so thin and slight that light
will fade me out completely
I will then address all shades and spots as
brothers, nieces, long-dead mothers

All things old and treasured,
patterned silver, china, linens
doctors, deacons, soldiers, fathers
tucked away, brought out and shown
on holidays

The wheels I rode up dusty roads
turn over, down, dip low again,
revolve
bow, splinter at the spokes, crack
collapsing under load of threadbare gown
and plastic tubing.

Portered of all other cargo long ago,
I bear through black dream night no burden
but memory –
a crying child, a shame-faced fight,
dignity, cowardice, cold water, red leaves,
silver-white streets slick with morning rain,
unanswered prayers, unknown replies,
all sin and honor,

Big hands, tar-stained,
that lift and throw me high, aloft,

Alone that night in his room, he tested a new resolve.  He must just never have tried hard enough.  The simplest method seemed to be a straight-out pull, gripping around the second knuckle to crack the third.  He chose his left middle finger as the most promising candidate.  Pull once . . . pull again, harder . . . nothing.  If he was honest with himself, though, he still wasn’t using his full strength.  The third time he braced his wrists against his ribcage, elbows to the side, eyes to the ceiling, and pulled out and back with his whole arms and shoulders.  Pop!

No.  This was wrong.  His hands had flown apart, and there was the finger, still locked in his right fist, and there were the four remaining fingers of his left hand splayed two to a side and shaking.  In a panic, almost without thinking, he rammed the middle finger back onto its stub: with a snap.  And there it stood again as though it had never left—except, that is, for a bright, thin ring of blood all the way around, circling the place where seconds before his flesh had given way to emptiness.  Bewildered, he stroked the length of the finger, front and back, and felt every touch.  The finger still curled and extended in unison with the rest of the hand, or in a ripple, and it wiggled side to side at his brain’s command.  He licked the blood clean, where he could reach, and stared.  It stung a little: almost like a paper cut, but he imagined that he could feel the sting all the way through.

For the first time in his life, Maxwell began to suspect that he was not entirely human.

“It doesn’t matter. I love her. What do you have against zombies anyway? Just because they’re
undead doesn’t mean they aren’t human.”

“Zombies are not human, Jim.  They are the living dead!  They are abominations!”

“Sticks and stones.”

“Your attraction to an animated corpse is absolutely disgusting.  I mean, she’s rotting for heaven’s sake!”

“In some perfumes is there more delight than from my mistress reeks….”

“That’s not funny, and you’ve misquoted. You know how this has to end! The first chance she gets, she’ll eat your damn brains!”

“But she has already stolen my heart.”

On late into the night she types, and when her eyes will stay open no longer
she throws herself on the couch and sleeps in her clothing, teeth unbrushed,
mouth open, snoring.  As light creeps back into the disheveled room, she
rises, guzzles some milk from the jug, and continues typing.

After many days, her fingers stall.  She types a few more words, hesitates,
and stops.  She looks around, rubs her eyes, stretches.  She stares at the
walls and ceiling.  She knits her fingers.  She stands, paces the room -
notices the empty bowls, the greasy plates.  Slowly, she moves through the
room, gathering debris and carrying it to the trash, the dishwasher.  She
opens the blinds.  She tilts her head, as though listening for an inner
voice – but seems to hear nothing.

More days unfold.  The apartment is tidy, the crumbs vacuumed, the counters
wiped.  From time to time she sits in front of the computer, her fingers
perched on the keys – but the fingers remain still.  She slumps in her
chair, sighs, and gets up to straighten a pile of books into a neat stack.

Then one morning, as suddenly as it had departed, the muse returns.  The mad
typing resumes.  She smiles, lifts one hand briefly to stroke her ponytail,
types.

She clicks on her printer, and the loose papers churn out.  She gathers them
into a pile, its solid heft resting comfortably on her desk.  The cover
sheet, printed in size 36 font, is visible from across the room:

“Ron Bites It:  Harry and Hermione’s True Love Story”

[break]

M: How was that?
D: Great. Thanks for the biscuits and water, too.
M: Are you more comfortable here in the den?
D: Believe it or not I can still smell when someone had a nosebleed in here, but I’ve stopped sniffing that spot. That’s this room to me, though, an ancient nosebleed. I might probe the couch for Cheez-Its when we’re done.
M: Can I ask — licking hands? Every dog I know…
D: You may not know this, but hands are completely fascinating. Have you noticed — [extends front paw] — my front legs end the same way as my back. Wait, they do, don’t they? Yeah. Yeah, if I had hands, well, Old Yeller might have ended the other way around. No, I mean, it’s not quite like that, but — I have a mouth, to relate to the world I basically have teeth, a jaw, and a tongue. Paws are good for digging, some European dogs live in houses with door handles, but you really had us whipped when you started putting knobs on everything you use to go outside. I can’t look at a brass finish without feeling helpless. You know, maybe you have obstacles, impediments in your life that you struggle with — maybe you don’t meet the kind of girl that you’d like to, I don’t know, [ed: cheeky!] but if you have troubles they generally aren’t of the I can’t get outside by myself variety. If I see a stranger, though, or hear a sound, or smell something really amazing, I always know I’m probably not going to meet them, or smell it, or eat it. I bark, because I can and it drives you crazy, but I know I’m not going to get to it. It’s right there, literally at your fingertips, and you just watch Judge Judy and eat ice cream. For some dogs hands become a fetish, they literally start to worship them — and they probably get more rubdowns because of it. When I got past puppyhood I found it embarrassing, so I don’t lick anymore unless they’re coated with something delicious, and you think that’s gross but everyone does it to me. But yeah, I can understand why some dogs lick hands all the time.
M: Have you ever met a dog you think you could always want to be with?
D: … no easy answer for that.
M: No dog in the neighborhood?
D: If you want to get into it — dogs, wolves, don’t mate for life. Usually if dogs mate anymore, at least in my circles, it’s been arranged by their masters. I can’t, you know, I never will father puppies — sorry to be graphic but you brought it here — and humans are a lot like dogs, you know, families, packs. And a good family, you never worry about being the Alpha, I’ve never even thought about how to lead a pack. There are dogs I know who try to be Alpha, or I guess they experience a void in leadership, and they try to fill it in, but they aren’t happier than me. I’ve met them, and they’re not. You can always pick them out at the park, they’re tense and they try to dominate you. Tough for them at home, but even worse, they have to keep it up outside. I don’t try to play with them, there’s no give-and-take.
M: Would you rather live with dogs, though, if you had your choice?
D: I’ve answered that as well as I can, I think. I don’t worry about it. Man has war, and work, and wages and worries. Lions and bears have to hunt –
M: It sets you apart, then, you have this — occupational niche?
D: Yeah.
M: If you’re never challenged, though…you don’t miss, wonder, for lost potential?
D: These dilemmas — your question, not mine! What would my puppies look like, could I keep a pack intact, survive in the wild? Keep that up and I will need Prozac! I have a deep respect for the traditional relationship –
M: I guess that’s where I’m going with this, hasn’t that relationship changed? Dogs were valuable when they had work to do –
D: Poodles were guard dogs, Labradors went out on the hunt, but most breeds have been coming inside at night for hundreds of years — let me finish this thought, please — valuable when they had work? How many poems, songs, stories about dogs? It’s a confused history, isn’t it? Easy to view it through the lens of economics, I guess, but feelings, respect and compassion for one another — we don’t know which came first. Unique among all animals, this bond. What if a man without a fire needed warmth one night and a mother wolf brought him in? Why is it we can tell when you’re about to have a seizure? Something happened, not just once, but enough that now I wouldn’t be more comfortable with a wolf than you would be, or than I am with you. If you tell me I’m diminished, you don’t see my true nature. It’s more than the job I was bred for. I wouldn’t trade places with the wild dogs, they have the streets, they have hunger, they have short lives, mistrust, rabies, fear. Show me a dog who thinks that’s his “true nature” and I’ll gladly chew on his toys. And take any of his nice collars, too.
M: Speaking of collars — do you wanna go for a walk?
D: I see a patch of sun under the window with my name on it. Maybe next time.
M: Can I pet you?
D: Get me another biscuit.

The Universe expresses its sense of literary symbolism in an unrelenting grayness, showing in cross-hatched peeks above you as you make your daily way from the high tower keep down through the streets of Tedium to the Phone Support Center dungeons. You know the exact shape and dimensions of a black hole: a box, five foot on each side, whose walls you can peer over into hundreds of neighboring, identical black holes. Though no light has ever escaped their surfaces, you know their rough Berber-carpeted walls to be a dingy mauve, identical to the color of your elementary school. Astronomers spend their lives at the telescope searching for such wonders, but you need go no further than your daily routine: a descent into the grottos of 5^th and Grove St.

You rise, cross to shut off the talking heads, and end your epic journey in heroic repose, forehead cradled in hand against the window. The only variety in your view of brick and rust is offered by the adventurous greasy rain droplet on the pane of glass, gathering round its friends and neighbors for a precipitous plunge into the great unknown.

Office, ticket, platform. No one. Clock. Bench. Stare. Silence, wind. Sky, currents, clouds, sparrows.

Window seat. Skyline. Thistles, pebbles, tracks, ties. Speed, blur. Sleeper car, noon. Fold-out bed. Blankets, tangle. Heat, sweat, hair, hand, blankets feet knots wonder fear doubt. Left. Gone. Gone. Gone. Kitchen, carpets, televisions, cupboards, rubber gloves dishes dinners book groups neighbors summers swimming carseats — hands, heads, kids, hearts. Spit, blood, mud, haircuts, Happy Meals, crumbs, corners, cavities, bread crusts spilled milk spoiled bananas. Thinking stretching breaking aching making, taking, burning time, settling down setting roots set up blind date jaw set set ways, eyes hands shoulders shoulders shoulders, back, laughter, relax melt, food, fools.

Kansas sunset, shadows, dusk. West. No map, no plan except — I won’t leave at midnight.

“Mrs. Prince sits down to a lamb chop supper.” Brilliant but impossible, like most of Quinn’s ideas.

“We needed that two weeks ago, Quinn. Lamb could have eaten the lion but he tickled it in the tall grass.”

“An unnamed top aide makes a remark insinuating Mr. Lamb’s connections with the Elders of Zion.”

“Everyone knows Lamb’s an anti-Semite. Besides, we can’t afford to lose Palm Springs.”

“You ever been around lions? They stink. Why’d he crawl into that cage?”

“Nobody cares. He pulled the dang thing under his arm and noogied it like his little brother. In the videos you can hear it purring. Our candidate won’t even kiss babies.”

“Well have to take the hit. We have nothing to swing back with.”

“We can’t just take the hit. He’s fulfilled prophecy.”

The room seems to darken. Everyone inhales.

“Quinn’s right. We need an image. We can’t top him, but we can draw some focus. There’s something we can use, we just have to find it.”

Nobody speaks. Quinn casts around smugly.

“Unless you’ve got us a picture, Quinn, lower your damn eyebrows.”

From the wall, an intern coughs once, then coughs again more zealously.

“…Tessa?”

“I’m sorry, Hugh – ”

“Shut up and talk, I’m about to fire everybody on retainer and give you their jobs. What is it?”

” – it’s just that I was reading Mrs. Prince’s memoirs again – ”

Quinn snorts.

” – and she – I’m sorry, this is so nothing – ”

“Ms. Bollaert if you apologize again I will ruin you, I will throw you out and tell everyone you are a spy for Mr. Lamb’s campaign – ”

” – Lynette’s favorite subject in high school was botany – ”

“Plants, Ms. Bollaert?”

“Plants, Quinn. Tessa?”

” – she spent all her time in the greenhouse – ”

“Global warming? Briliant. Hugh, if you let every intern with a cold talk in strategy meetings – ”

“Quinn, I’m sending you ahead to Ohio. I want pictures of farmer’s wives at bowling alleys holding signs for Lynette Prince. Right now. Pack. Go. Tess?”

” – she cultivated – flowers, orchids, irises – ”

” – Lilies.”

“Lilies, sir.”

“Lilies.”

Hugh hears the triumphant strains of Copland’s “Appalachian Suite.”

“Ms. Bollaert, your parents were American patriots, believers in the righteous destiny of mankind. No doubt your father mowed the summer grass short and raked autumn leaves, Tess?”

“He raised ferrets, Mr Langstrom.”

“Glorious American ferrets, Tessa. Always remember that. Call your mother and tell her you saved the most important primary campaign of the twenty-first century. Fly home this Sunday and take your parents to church.”

“We’re atheists, Mr. Langstrom.”

“Fly home this Sunday and take your godless parents to Disneyland.”

“Thank you, Hugh.”

“Quinn, your’re building a greenhouse. Call Joseph Anderson at the College of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences at Purdue, tell him he’s flying down here with his all of his Indian undergraduates. I want Mrs. Prince growing lilies by the weekend. We get the hippies back, we get academia — Lynette Prince gets the entire agriculture industrial complex. Mr. Lamb cavorts with mammals but ignores the roots of life on earth.”

“I heard him.”

“Dad’s not a liar.”

“Kevin, he doesn’t make promises like you and I make promises, like grandma makes a promise. Like we should make a promise.”

He promises like my dad made promises, like a doctor makes a promise, like an old indian makes promises.

George always made the biggest promises. He had promised not to stay out late with the truck. He had promised to return Brother Anderson’s lawnmower and left it rusting in the shed all fall, winter, and spring. He promised to get his mission papers ready and drove to Washington with his friends. He promised the bishop he had repented.

He promised Linda he would buy her a better ring. He promised her he was saving for a down payment. He promised he hadn’t been with anyone else.

He promised Kevin a big dog and brought him one, a tattered stuffed plush brown hound from DI. He promised Kevin a big vacation and tooled him around the valley then bummed a big, sweet shake for them to share from a friend at The Purple Turtle. He promised Kevin that Linda wouldn’t die. Reed hoped Kevin hadn’t been big enough to remember that promise. After twenty years of lies, Reed still held hope for his son until Wendy told him about that promise.

“How the hell could you tell him that?” Out of temper, his gentile vocabulary sparked.

“Dad, Kevin doesn’t need to worry, he’s only -”

“She’ll be gone before the end of the month.”

” – and there’s still no reason to tell him that.”

“George now he’s sure his mom is going to get better -”

“So were you! What about that blessing you gave her?”

Reed flinched and fled to the bedroom, rage gone but his hands still shaking, his body wrenched by indefatigable love and worry. George turned on The History Channel, setting the volume low enough that Reed couldn’t ask him to turn it down but loud enough that Reed couldn’t forget he was there, couldn’t sleep, withdraw. Reed had known that Linda wasn’t going to leave his grandson alone with Reed’s son, had known that the Spirit had told him that, and had promised Linda all this in choice words with the whole family listening. When Linda was put on the breathing machine Reed waited for George to bring it up, but as time passed he started to wonder if George had finally learned restraint. George had just learned better control of his weapons.

Reed’s promises stayed with him. Kevin had been given Linda’s green eyes, George’s crooked smile, and Reed’s earnestness, credulity. This skinny gullible boy was his solace. Reed knew he vested too much in him but he didn’t want to learn not to. Kevin was filled with integrity of his own initiative just as Reed had always been. George made his own break from the chain but Reed would not let him break away with the boy.