200words.

All Ye Lands: World Cultures and Geography is open, gripped and flipped arbitrarily to what I, what we were supposed to be paying attention to. Down with the pages, down with the binding, anything to pin this insistence down. Under the weight of my grocery bag-wrapped text, brown corduroys that vip vip vip through these Catholic halls are being tested. Like in a Station of the Cross, stained glass biology & halos, these husky cords are engaged in a mythic battle against blood, a Holy one that seeks to smite this zipper, part this fabric, unleash something I can’t say.

There is Dan Johnson and his hair gelled just back just perfectly. His jaw is the softest hard square ever manifest in human form. I imagine him a boxer, without use for words or of anything but fists and movement and impact. Mrs. Reilly’s rattling on dynasties thatches a faint, airy web overhead, along the classroom walls, snaking down like crepe paper to be yanked. I pull a few words in then focus back on Dan, All Ye Lands pressed into my lap for protection. But hiding myself has become erotic; the snugness, pressure, the back of his neck, oh.

Goldie’s sits equidistant between Abeline and Topeka. On the cattle drive up through the plains, ropers take comfort at the lonely watering hole. It is the only place in Ardmore for whiskey by the glass, a hand of parlor poker, or a chance with a gal. Ardmore’s only other claim is a piddling spring and half a general store. The most assured draw to Goldie’s is certainly the entertainment. Some years ago an eccentric homesteader Bohemian musician carried a finely crafted piano by wagon from the port of Baltimore. Breaking open the crate chipped the marbled wood, but after he tuned it the strings played true. Now each night, with travelers and cowpokes gathered, Vaclav runs his fingers across the inlay, across the precisely hewn veneers of ivory, once carried afront snouts in Africa, now an undulating keyboard on an unfamiliar plain. The old world minor chords resonate through the rough wood floor. The bone keys have yellowed and split from heat and silt.

i counted 206 again and again but
i remember your clavicle most clearly.

freckled skin stretched up and over
delicious hollows where light never reached.

even when above eye level, its length was
the best place for my mouth to land.

cool and sleeping pressed to my lips or
damp and warm between my teeth,
it fit perfectly.

the broken parts of you were second only
to the expanse of collarbone beneath collar:

twisted ankle and tangibly chipped hip,
rising knot of bone on the back of your hand.

the evidence of reckless motion and
history of breakneck speed read like braille.

minerals, water and salt hardened into
unequal parts cancellous and compact,

each of them holds the vibration of your
heartbeat, like a tuning fork or divining rod.

inside with jellied marrow and osteocytes,
my name is written in ash and,

when you look inside to find your way back,
you’ll remember me like a dusty fingerprint.

I’ve never been very good at hitting the brakes. I almost made it through the second grade without learning to ride a bicycle sans training wheels. The day before the year-end picnic, my mom took me to K-Mart to pick out my first two-wheeler: The Huffy Space Invader – sleek, black, arched handlebars, stellar mural on the chain guard and a beautiful vinyl banana seat. My brother John took charge of the Invader’s assembly and Jimmy, the oldest, gave me my maiden shove down the chasm-filled, boulder-strewn obstacle course that was Terrace Road. I couldn’t wait to show the Hamlin twins my newly acquired skill. However, having committed some grievous offense, according to Mrs. Hamlin, they were confined to a wedge shaped room in their circular house at the top of the hill. Coasting back down the hill was elation unbound, pedals spinning wildly beneath my feet. In a flash, my glee turned to terror as I failed to grip the pedals with my toes. I hit the bottom of the hill and pulled a Kerry Strug over the handlebars, landing squarely on my left arm. The break was so bad that I had to sleep sitting up for six weeks.

CAN
1.) did you have a penis
2.) did you squat to do things around a fire
3.) did you have hip dysplasia as a result
4.) did you have a fever or infection, was there pus
5.) did you carry around children, whether they were yours or not
6.) did you get beaten, did you break it
7.) did you have syphillis (simple flashlight test)
8.) did you have a life with a lot of manual labor
9.) did you eat vegetables or corn (which is really just some sugary starch)
10.) did you get eaten
     10a.) by wild animals
      10b.) by humans
11.) did you have monster quads
12.) did you have healthy bloodvessels
13.) did you get a proper burial

CANNOT (that I know of)
1.) did you feel happy to be alive
2.) did you recognize your sister after all those years
3.) did you vote
4.) did you ever realize it would be used as a weapon
5.) did you know literary terms such as synecdoche
6.) did you live in a yurt/teepee
7.) did you know how to swim
8.) did you love him