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My guts gurgle under my hand; yes, a place to hide, yes . . . When
the sun sets in the west, the river shines all the way across. News travels:
a clown,
a man whose job was kids’ parties, shoots himself
at his ex-wife’s house. It’s summer, too hot, all the parking lots
and porches abating in an arrogance of excess. “The new
normal.” While
here at home, under a thin sky of breath, my muscles hold memory together,
a sculpture by Brancusi—a bird in space—arcing past the stars; I was also young
once. Was I ever fond of clowns? A rustle of finches scatters stones under the
reach of
the trumpet vine, the clematis that is piling over everything else. ‘George Arthur, Jr.”
the paper announces the name. He put on his clown make-up, Ron says.
Said that Deidre told him. A gun goes off in the woods. It mixes with the roar
of cars
at the drag strip. The river doesn’t make a sound. It’s slow and mindful. It’s
hard to be brave, hard not to go all the way without leaving
a mess, without harming others. Without excluding them either.