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He crawls through the cracks of my stone foundation, sly and sleek as I tempt him with food. He stays out of habit; I cook out of love for things that move. We grow accustomed to each other’s trails and smells, the skins we’ve shed along the long, long road of rubbing each other smooth. Till all the skins we’ve shed lie sparkling like so many stones in this desert land. I scoop him up in my hand and eat him.

Miss Nancy Ellicott Strode across the hills and broke them, Rode across the hills and broke them — The barren New England hills — Riding to hounds Over the cow-pasture. Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked And danced all the modern dances; And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, But they knew that it was modern. Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

The oldest sister, her two hands on the table, about to push herself up, stares with grim determination at the affronting dishes, waiting, it seems, until the middle sister finishes her story, so she can clear them away. Her gaze so tense with purpose she can almost see germs spawning in the mess of white fish flaking from the spines, the smear of egg yolk and the torn rolls disfiguring the china; as if the meal, the moment it is over, the meal she made a point of telling them she shopped for, got up early to prepare, were now inedible, because uneaten. It’s no great comfort either that her brother sitting opposite holds up a flared match over the pipe from which smoke rolls away across the table like a phantom mold in and around the open tub of butter, the gouged block of cream cheese and the coffee cups; so in a moment when she finally does stand she’ll say again, as always, For love or money in my mouth I’d never put such filth, and he’ll say, winking at the middle sister, That’s what she said on her honeymoon. The youngest sister is sitting on the couch behind the table; her face—sheer disengagement, toneless and still—appears to hang suspended beyond the oldest sister’s shoulder, far enough away for no one yet to notice as her legs cross that the ashtray in her lap spills ash over the sunflowers of her housedress. Or that the cigarette between her fingers sags loosely and is dangling while the hand lifts like a puppet’s on a string of smoke. Her death is just three months away. Even though it’s summer (otherwise the brother and middle sister would be home, in Florida), summer and late morning— with sunlight only just now catching on a corner of the window shut behind them, shut against the smog, the steady traffic and the panicked blare and drawn-out whining fade of sirens—the apartment is still quiet, still cool enough, right now, to keep the body in the wavering frail zone of what it needs to be forgotten, so they can sit like this together, with the oldest sister’s sharp eye on the wrecked meal, the brother and sister talking: Listen, she would be saying, listen, Charlie, her elbows on the table, both hands open, the body fashioned to the voice’s weary What can you do? What are ya gonna do? in answer to some story of a cousin’s sudden illness (And he was my age, just like that one day he’s shaving with the toothpaste), or a friend’s death (That one, she didn’t care how sick she got, she always had her hair done), his back pain, her arthritis, or the daughter who won’t diet (And she’d be such a beauty!); after his joke about the nurse, and hers about the bedpan, Listen, they each say, Listen, what are ya gonna do? “The Schmo, he never should’ve married her, for Christ sake, until he told her that he had a problem, that was his first mistake, then he goes throwing away his pills, because he’s happy he doesn’t need them anymore, the schmo, so of course what happens is she wakes up and finds him weeping at the kitchen table, just weeping, he doesn’t know why, he won’t eat, won’t get dressed, says he’s quittin’ his job, you know, nuts, nuts, so naturally she leaves him, the poor schmo, and he’s such a good boy . . . ” All of the harm that’s imperceptibly but surely coming for them (the way the sun burns brick by brick all morning toward the window like a slow fuse)—all of the bad news now is in the body only enough to hold the middle sister’s two hands open, shrug her shoulders in a way they recognize as hers, the way their mother did; as if all trouble were, for now, no heavier than the familiar voice repeating, Listen, Listen it could be worse; So who’s to say?; What was, was; When your number’s up—like old charms woven around each story till they’ve made what happens what was only meant to happen, coherent with fate, fated as family. After the funeral three months from now, they’ll have to listen to the oldest sister tell them they had no business moving away to Florida, and Irene sick as she was. And selfish. She was selfish, that one. After all those years of living with that bum, her husband, may his cheap soul rest in peace, didn’t she deserve a little pleasure? And anyway, what could be done for her? Didn’t the stroke just make it easier for her to sit all day, and smoke, and not care ashes were falling on the couch, the carpet; her bathrobe filthy, filthy? Oh it was terrible— and now they will hear the old unfairnesses, old feuds and resentments come to her voice like consolation, like a mother helping her recite the story of that last bad day— all that smoke, and running in with nothing but the dishtowel to beat down the flames, and Irene, just Irene, just sitting there, the queen of Sheba—What difference did it make since she was there,she was always there, her big sister, to clean up the mess? Only three months, and yet it could be years, or decades, for the sun has only just now caught in the window, and its bright plaque warms the air so gradually that none of them can know it’s warming, or that soon someone, distracted by a faint sheen prickling the skin, will break the story, look up toward the window and, startled by the full glare, check the time. Right now, though, the future is a luxury of instances in which the cigarette, raised halfway to the lips, will go on rising. Nothing bad, right now, can happen here except as news, bad news the brother and sister mull and rehearse, puzzle and fret until it seems the very telling of it is what keeps them safe. And safe, too, the oldest sister, dreaming of all the perishables sealed, wrapped up and hurried back into the fridge’s uncontaminated airlessness, dreaming of how the soapsuds curdle and slide over the dishes in a soothing fury, not minding that it scalds her hands to hold each plate and cup and bowl under the hot, hard jet of water, if it gets them clean.

I can remember when I wanted X more than anything ever—for X fill in from your own childhood [balloon, pencil lead, trading card, shoelaces, a bow or not to have to wear a bow] and now I am moved to action, when I am moved, principally by a memory of what to want. The point is to be, in your own eyes, what you are, or to keep your own tools, so that you can pretend. And so it was no surprise, to me at least, when Cooper, who is two, collapsed in fortissimo fits when he could not have a $20, three-foot-long stuffed frog in the image of Frog from Frog and Toad, since he is Toad. That morning, needing a nap, he had thrown, from the third-story balcony of Miller's Cafe and Bakery, into the whistling rapids and shallows of the Ammonoosuc River, with its arrowheads and caravans of stones, his Red Sox cap. His hair was shining like another planet's second sun, as he explained, looking up, "I threw my hat in the river. I would like my hat back now."

After a funeral, they were covered with black cloth, some draped with shawls like a scalloped valance. Leftover sewing scraps, wool, linen, synthetic, anything to shroud the odd-shaped mirrors, though sometimes a corner was exposed like a woman whose ankle peeks forbidden from under a long skirt. A mourner must shun vanity during shiva, focusing inward but as a child I wondered if this were to avoid ghosts, for don't the dead take their time leaving? I'm of a generation where grandparents disappeared, great aunts with European accents, rarely an explanation provided to us children. My mother died too young. With a baby in arms I couldn't bear to fling that dark cloth over the glass. After all she had come back from the dead so often, even the doctors could not explain it. Each time I looked in a mirror my mother gazed back. I could never tell if she were trying to tell me something or to take the baby with her.

The man slapped her bottom like a man did in a video, then he waited as if for shadow to completely cover the sun. Moments later archeologists found him. * The idea that they were reenacting something which had been staged in the first place bothered her. If she wanted to go on, she’d need to ignore this limp chronology. She assumed he was conscious of the same constraint. But she almost always did want to proceed. Procedure! If only either one of them believed in the spontaneity of the original actors and could identify with one. Be one. For this to work, she reasoned, one of us would have to be gone. * “Well, look who missed the fleeting moment,” Green Giant gloats over dazed children. If to transpose is to know, we can cover our losses. But only If talking, Formerly food, Now meant Not now So recovery Ran rings. If to traverse is to envelop, I am held and sung to sleep.

For Thomas Lux I heard them, far-off, deep calling from behind death’s invisible floor door. Their wallow metronome from the after-rain mud was one giant body. Arizona’s yellow arm’s length of light all the way to my own body standing at the edge of their field held me. I moved toward them and they toward me, as if to ask for something from nothing, as memory does, each face dumbfounded    ...    dumb and found by the timeframe of my own fear, surrounded at dusk. There was a plastic grocery bag, its ghost body cornered small against a tree, and there was a heavy smell. Desolation is equal to contained energy now. Their heavy bodies slow toward me, my own slow inside their circle without kulning. Kulning is a Swedish song for cows, not a pillowcase pulled over the head. Here, the mountains could be seen from far away. There’s an abandoned physics, a floor door, my own head-call herding me, in-hearing nothing but them. Bone for bone’s female indicates the inside of the mouth when singing is grief alone and is curved. You can’t stop shifting no matter how slow. It sounds like confusion in one direction. I wanted to tell you this in your absence. It sounds like the oak, it sounds like the oak of floorboards in God’s head.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Someone had spread an elaborate rumor about me, that I was in possession of an extraterrestrial being, and I thought I knew who it was. It was Roger Lawson. Roger was a practical joker of the worst sort, and up till now I had not been one of his victims, so I kind of knew my time had come. People parked in front of my house for hours and took pictures. I had to draw all my blinds and only went out when I had to. Then there was a barrage of questions. “What does he look like?" “What do you feed him?” “How did you capture him?” And I simply denied the presence of an extraterrestrial in my house. And, of course, this excited them all the more. The press showed up and started creeping around my yard. It got to be very irritating. More and more came and parked up and down the street. Roger was really working overtime on this one. I had to do something. Finally, I made an announcement. I said, “The little fellow died peacefully in his sleep at 11:02 last night.” “Let us see the body,” they clamored. “He went up in smoke instantly,” I said. “I don’t believe you,” one of them said. “There is no body in the house or I would have buried it myself,” I said. About half of them got in their cars and drove off. The rest of them kept their vigil, but more solemnly now. I went out and bought some groceries. When I came back about an hour later another half of them had gone. When I went into the kitchen I nearly dropped the groceries. There was a nearly transparent fellow with large pink eyes standing about three feet tall. “Why did you tell them I was dead? That was a lie,” he said. “You speak English,” I said. “I listen to the radio. It wasn’t very hard to learn. Also we have television. We get all your channels. I like cowboys, especially John Ford movies John Ford movies John Ford (1894-1973) was a Hollywood director, famous for a number of movies, including cowboy movies starring John Wayne, such as “Rio Grande,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and “Stagecoach.” . They’re the best,” he said. “What am I going to do with you?” I said. “Take me to meet a real cowboy. That would make me happy,” he said. “I don’t know any real cowboys, but maybe we could find one. But people will go crazy if they see you. We’d have press following us everywhere. It would be the story of the century,” I said. “I can be invisible. It’s not hard for me to do,” he said. “I’ll think about it. Wyoming or Montana would be our best bet, but they’re a long way from here,” I said. “Please, I won’t cause you any trouble,” he said. “It would take some planning,” I said. I put the groceries down and started putting them away. I tried not to think of the cosmic meaning of all this. Instead, I treated him like a smart little kid. “Do you have any sarsaparilla sarsaparilla An old-fashioned soft drink. When a character in a Western film would order a sarsaparilla in a bar, instead of an alcoholic beverage, he would be mocked by cowboys. ?” he said. “No, but I have some orange juice. It’s good for you,” I said. He drank it and made a face. “I’m going to get the maps out,” I said. “We’ll see how we could get there.” When I came back he was dancing on the kitchen table, a sort of ballet, but very sad. “I have the maps,” I said. “We won’t need them. I just received word. I’m going to die tonight. It’s really a joyous occasion, and I hope you’ll help me celebrate by watching The The / Magnificent Seven A famous 1960 western, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn Magnificent Seven The / Magnificent Seven A famous 1960 western, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn ,” he said. I stood there with the maps in my hand. I felt an unbearable sadness come over me. “Why must you die?” I said. “Father decides these things. It is probably my reward for coming here safely and meeting you,” he said. “But I was going to take you to meet a real cowboy,” I said. “Let’s pretend you are my cowboy,” he said.

In Stetson and calico vest, spandex and Calvin jeans, she was the best at the bar. Does Gucci make range boots? Hers were snakeskin with heels like railroad spikes. The rest you could guess: eyes the blue of West Texas yonder, complexion like hot coffee with cream. All night I gave her slack but kept my dally-knot tight, hoping she’d like the stories I could tell—drunk Indian twins fighting with icepicks in Cheyenne, Carolina moonshine, deer breaking open watermelons out of crazy hunger. Regular as breath she’d say, “Damn!” or “Yes!” and stomp a heel through sawdust to the pine floor. I nearly had the rest of my life planned out, downing Coors and forking out for God-knows-whose, till a dude in a Brooks Brothers suit moved in, flashing a wad of Andrew Jacksons like cold cash grew on trees, and she said to me—she fairly spat it— “Get lost!” So I did, prostrate all night in a roadside hay field, watching the sky sleek as a coal-black stallion’s flank. Damn if every star wasn’t a spur burning its wheels into my foolish eyes.

After seven lean years we are promised seven fat ones, if the cows do not die first. Some care must be taken to prevent their demise in the scrub or the slaughterhouse. There must be enough bones to throw and to bury. The skull of a cow, I put it on. There are many strewn in the field, there has not been much rain. I look through the eyes, that is, my eyes replace the eyes that death has taken. I can see out or through. It is not a bad fate to be a cow, to be, at once, so awkward, so full of grace, so full of milk. Everywhere the udders are full, the teats are ready, the mouth of the calf is soft and deep. I would thrust my hand in it for the wet joy of being so used. My own breasts are marked from the time the milk came in too fast; I did not have time to grow to the moment of giving. It is fitting that beauty leaves such scars. Milk has passed through my fingers, has spurted through my fingers, but not once during these seven lean years.