You can get used to anything--merciless debt, infidelity, death--anything, the photojournalist thinks as he stares out his open hotel window to the beach where two boys lay covered with white sheets.

The bombs fell an hour earlier. Upon impact they didn't so much make a sound as absorb it, syphoning off laughter over mimosas in the first floor cafe, blurring the start-stop of traffic into a shapeless background hiss. He was out there when it happened, on the beach, walking his morning walk.

From one hundred yards he took in the flash, the upheaval of sand, reaching for heaven and then, all at once, subject to gravity's retreat. He knew there would be a second bomb, like when you're cutting a tomato, and you look at your finger then to the knife, and think, I'm going to cut myself, and a couple slices later fulfill the prophecy.

He didn't rush to the boys. He got his camera out of the bag, grabbed the lens, adjusted for distance, for the wane morning light. Boys screamed and ran. He wasn't sure how many, four, five. The second bomb hit. One boy, smaller than the others, rode the sand upwards and back down. The photojournalist thought he tried to get up, but he wasn't sure.

He knew better than to rush over. An unidentified person pointing a vague object at the children on a satellite feed would garner backlash. So he waited, surveying the slight waves break, the gulls continuing flight.

Parents, people he assumed to be parents, moaned in an unfamiliar language. Their sounds though, both guttural and sharp, said all. He approached. A man picked up the smallest boy, his lifeless limbs, doll-like and pierced with shrapnel, hung off to the side.

He took twenty-five shots from behind the lifeguard's post, using the telephoto zoom. He lowered the camera and made eye contact with the father.

Now, in his hotel room, there's an urgent knock at the door. A voice shouts. The email sends. He drops his laptop in the bag with the rest of the gear. A taxi pulls into the roundabout outside.

When he lands he's not sure if he's fractured his ankle or just sprained it. He limps to the door, climbs in, says, "Airport."

"Maa?" the driver says.

The photojournalist punches the seat. The father of the boy, along with three other men, approach.

"Maa?"

a little raw beautiful you are the way.


                                            and ,ti evol I


the mouth that soft(that cruel) of teeth
and lips
is like it. thorn'd

and prim and

ringed in pinkness
of petals parting

on a pistil between.


such smoothness that rushes,
such skinness that prickles exactly
at the right arch
of its rising hips.

to meet with the riding
heartness of my surging taste:

blood and just
that tiny tang
of left behind from.




                                               (can i begin?)'(




and to fold you;
into my hands–as fists–
that unfold–inside you.

The troubadour planted his last name between
a she-vegan's legs in San Marcos;
rambled north to that country of love, Oklahoma City,
where he took hits of windowsill acid every three hours
for a week straight.

To escape, to begin.

He spent his nights in the St. Cloud Hotel, trying to
sleep on a carpeted floor. He saw a color between
lavender and orange, nameless and impossible to
recreate. He knew all, including he'd forget all.
He shared a room with two high fashion,
burgundy-lipped lesbians, Viv and Jean, and
one night, the last night the troubadour, our troubadour,
was allowed to stay, Jean went out for some fresh air,
code for a cigarette.

"She never smokes just one," Viv said, little Oprahs reflected in her eyes from the plasma screen. She lay on her stomach on the bed,
atop a jungle green comforter. For your discretion and for the discretion of those before you.

Viv brought him between her legs.

"Gentle. Gentle," she said.

The troubadour thought of those Pepsi Challenge commercials as he tongued her ****. A lesbian has an edge when it comes to oral pleasure. Across the nation more people prefer Pepsi. She's got the same parts, sure, but as the troubadour wordlessly recited the alphabet with his tongue to her, he felt confident Jean hadn't put in this kind of effort, not lately anyways. And so what if he's Coke? The troubadour preferred Coke. Viv snagged a handful of his hair, "Don't stop," she said. "Don't stop."

And it all ended, as drug-addled, hetero-on-**** escapades always do: abruptly and with an "I think you should leave before she comes back," a "But sweetheart, this, us, I think this means something," an "I like girls," a "But," an "I just needed an edge," and later that night as he marveled at the  brilliance of the common streetlight, tripping his *** off on his last hit of LSD, he empathized.

Rachel Ray is speaking.

The room in which he lays, passed out, continues on without his permission. Dead moths feather down from the less-than-steady window unit. A cockroach delights in the cabinet. The peanut butter the man swore he wouldn't touch, on account of his lack of self-discipline, self-denial, self-awareness--maybe just self--is not sealed, the lid at an acute angle, the cockroach rubbing its antennae together.

Gluten-free fish fry with a modern, chic potato salad, Rachel Ray says.
Easy to make on a work night or after the kids get out of soccer practice.
I like easy. Do you like easy? What about fast? That's what I thought.

The power flickers as the power always does when someone on the first floor of the apartment building starts a load of laundry. The man does not stir; he dreams.

But more than that, more weighty a subject than one two three lovers or falling from heaven, the muck of common dreams, submerges the dreamer.

The scene is this: The man is a boy again, three years younger than his waking self. He is in military file with boys his age. It is raining; it is night, the sky a starless miasma of electric blue.

There are men, old men, flat-topped and heavy-browed, walking the rows, handing out hammers. The dreamer receives his.

Now, a man the dreamer knows--just knows--to be the general says, lift up your hammers. On the count of three you will strike the boy in front of you. If you should survive, congratulations. You're now a man. If you shouldn't, we say thank you and goodbye.

One, the general says.

The dreamer does not lift his hammer. Won't lift his hammer.

Two, the general says.

In anticipation of three, boys start striking, skulls fracture, an odd harmony rides the air, hundreds of arms bringing down hundreds of hammers, hundreds of minds punctured, spilling hundreds of future glories and failures.

The dreamer still stands, hammer to his side. His peers groan at his feet. He is alone.

The general, taking long, purposeful strides, approaches the dreamer. He, the general, lifts the hammer in his hand, and with a singular word, three, strikes the dreamer in the forehead.


And it's just as simple as that, Rachel Ray says, presenting the boiled potatoes, baptized in mustard and vinegar, topped beautifully with celery and finely chopped shallots. Now back to our fish.

When he went through the windshield, amid the shrill fracture of glass and above the curling guardrail, he did not think of Junebug or his mother or his boyhood summers at Lake Tenkiller. He thought only of deep-grooved ritual: get in, turn the key, press power on the radio, turn the air to 1, and buckle in.

He saw the guardrail. He saw the guardrail and knew, or half-knew, what would come next.

He headed straight for it, going sixty, sixty-five.

He used to play a game to break up the monotony of interstate travel, back when he worked the night shift at Wolverine. He'd close his eyes for as long as he could while driving. He began with five seconds then ten, no peeking, eventually making it an entire minute, speeding down I-44 alongside the eighteen-wheelers and the farming crowd. It was around 5 a.m., sure, but a minute still.

Before he cut the ignition he turned off the air and the radio, always. His dad told him it made it easier on a vehicle when you started it. A mechanic later told him that wasn't true. Not even remotely. He still did it.

He saw the guardrail and thought of it in the same realm as driving blind, a game of chicken ending inevitably in forfeit although victory and loss weren't clearly defined, only the edge tangible, the heart rate going mad, the blood rushing through the tributaries of the body.

He thought brake. He even said it out loud, alone in the car. The air was on 1. The radio was on NPR, some story about "hacking" your closet. He saw the guardrail. His foot pressed down on the gas harder. He wondered what it'd be like to fly over the edge then he was flying over the edge.

He glided above the first snag of rocks, small cuts on his cheeks burning against gravity's drag. The car did not. While the engine continued to hum, pieces fell around him, shards of glass and jagged bits of the valance and bumper. The radio played Muzak. They were between segments.

He turned the air to 1. He hit the power button on the radio. Why didn't he buckle the seatbelt?

His screams came out in long monotonal bursts, automatic and not quite human. Turn the ignition, power button, turn **** to 1, click.

He didn't think about what he'd hit first, tree or rock. There was still some fifty feet to fall before that decision was made for him. He didn't wonder if the car would land on top of him. He got in. He turned the key. Radio on. Air to 1. Then he clicked, didn't he?

Marie didn't call tonight. Marie. Her shape started to form in his mind, waiting for him on the couch in that stupid shawl, her face lit, a bright blue, by the glow of the television screen.

A tree, he hit a tree first.

The rough bark tore at his face, chest and arm. He could feel the tree bend then repel him. He took a branch to the rib and continued his fall to the stony earth. He hit the ground and kept falling.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

On a flybuzz afternoon in late June, the unshaven man in corduroy everything ashes into a shoe beside the bed. He takes another drag. He half hums, half sings "Fight this Generation." Outside he hears a car alarm. He looks through the blinds. Not his. An unopened letter rests on the night stand. He looks at it and then doesn't. His phone rings for the ninth or tenth time. He picks it up and throws it at the wall. Pieces with names like RF amplifier, microprocessor, and flash memory chip divide and shower onto the hardwood floor.

An hour and half a pack of cigarettes pass. She fiddles with her key in the door.  A few failed turns then she walks into the living room, into the bedroom.

She looks at the broken phone.

"At least I told you," she says.

"I didn't read it."

"I don't care. I already told you. That was just to soften the blow, a nice thing."

"Look for the splinters. You might see where they come out."

"We already talked about this. You said you wanted to stay together. You know and I know this wasn't completely my fault."

"Yeah."

"Yeah? Yeah. Absolutely. You've got to take care of yourself. I said nice things in the letter."

"I'm not going to read the letter."

She opens the window by the bed to vent the smoke. There's another siren in the distance. Someone protected, someone hunted.

"Your life is selected," he says.

"So select yours, too."

He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing the matted mess out of his eyes.

"For you to have the life you want, I give up the one I want."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We've already talked about this. We've already had this fight."

"I want to have it again."

"Why?"

"I just need to."

"You're saying the same things."

"Maybe in a general sense, but I feel like I'm saying them better."

"I'm not going to listen to you refine your arguments for the rest of my life. We already got past this."

"Already is a strange word."

She turns her back to him and heads into the living room. "Everything is strange when you think too much, when you refine," she says through the wall.

"It's something that happened before or something that came too soon yet sounds like something inclusive, all ready to fight, to die. It's strange."

"You're not ready," she says. "I'm going to stay at Amy's again tonight."

She doesn't slam the front door. She eases it closed, locks it, and leaves.

"All ready," he says to himself. "All ready."