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In This One World

The grassland comes up to the edge

of the road on which I’m standing.

The car has turned off.

 

Has been turned off.

A gunshot is easily heard.

The grassland exists. My eyes see

 

that the land is a banner

the wind holds up. The ground turns

under and around and then becomes

 

a densely forested park where

the trees are all lying on their sides.

After the hurricane came through

 

I couldn’t find my way out.

The erasable beginning

kept coming back like a weaving

 

I took out at night. By noon,

it was yesterday again—a sketch

barely held together by a stitch

 

or two. As another woman once said,

“A circle lower than this one

is waiting for the one

 

who kept coming at me.”

She knew how nice

a tormenter looks when buried in ice.