String Theory
Blades turning over in the eld, humming
            for all that becomes lost, but still is. On the last
day of a borrowed year, I watch a dog
            refusing to play fetch here, bleating across grass, snapping
at nothing at all. I promise to start opening myself like a door                                                                                                             or a wound, and the cut becomes something
I can walk through, into Silver Lake, Washington
            where my father’s telephones always escaped over the lip
of his boat. A machine in his hand plays birdcalls                                                                                                                                     and bullfrogs. Imitating sh, my family twists
around and around, disappearing turned steel
            down the wet line of a bad memory. Imagine
what moves through us without asking, tacitly engaging the blotted                                                                                                 curse of another year, the bend in a knife wasted
gutting rocks. When St. Helens erupts, it clays the bottom of a lake.                                                                                                 It kills a man with no face. You can buy ash in plastic jars
as novel as shark teeth. I promise to start opening myself like a door                                                                                                 and a pyroclastic display sizzles from the split lining
sending the world through its own tear. A rainbow trout struggles                                                                                                 through the ventricle heart. A father throws
a daughter over starboard by her ankles. Water swallows
            fabric into a dark wish, like a sick dog desperate, eating grass.
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