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IN A CHAPEL OF LITTLE CHIMES<br />
by Katherine LaRue<br />
Write my mother’s name on a railroad track because I<br />
want a train to wrap around myself. Plant a garden but<br />
it grows wrong. Everything is about our parents. You<br />
must have to be a nice person to grow plants, I heard<br />
someone say that and it was me. I meant to say parents,<br />
grow parents. Go down to the lemon grove and<br />
apologize in the lemon grove. After all that’s where<br />
they live. In lemon groves, in olive groves, in orchards.<br />
Eventually.<br />
Let my apology not be an insistence. Push out my chin,<br />
my religious chin, the one below our mouths where out<br />
fly lying birds, little ribbons in their beaks, red ribbons.<br />
Lying two-dimensional birds tattooing the sky with<br />
banners that say things like “Death Before…” and “All<br />
is fair…” and “Mama Tried.” They push out their<br />
beaks, their religious beaks. The tattoos are religious. I<br />
mean they have a faith, a juniper box of bones and<br />
many skins. Imagine actually vomiting birds like that.<br />
I was hoping for more animals and only<br />
got people. My altar store was all out of altars. I believe<br />
in these things upon finding the world too full. Forests<br />
spill over themselves like milk on a table, a luminous<br />
milk invading, domesticating the daydream. I couldn’t,<br />
possibly go, no. No, I am not going back no not for a<br />
second.<br />
I want to talk language of return right off a<br />
cliff. You want to apologize for the shitty things you<br />
say but not for the carnage. You cannot talk carnage<br />
off a cliff, sink anvil in its silk. Some trees are just<br />
kidding. Some heat escaping the both of us. Seizures<br />
air. There are so many of us we aren’t anything<br />
anymore. Did I inherent your eyes? Or are they just<br />
your eyes, removed and sketched on leaves?<br />
Not sure what any of us want from the softquick<br />
talks. Have you seen a church so beautiful you<br />
decide to attend its services? All that glass makes it<br />
seem worth time, as a hand is on top of another hand<br />
or a leg over another leg falling simple. There is light all<br />
over you to shake off your shoulder at the end of the<br />
day. A drink to put down on a table and walk away<br />
from your entire life. The bells that ring overlap over<br />
and over. There is spare brimstone. Give me a shot at<br />
that cloud and I will down it.<br />
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