Ben Blumstein

Cypress scepters in the rocks, paint-green water 



crept like shadows about our feet. Swallows 



ricocheting overhead in aimless cursive like the 



accident of evolution, the calligraphy of the 



wind. An evening is like a postcard so easy to 



cherish. The easy memories. The familiar 



grooves, well-worn, my vision slides into. 



Where are those buried ones, the dusted with 



forgetfulness? There, the untrodden soil 



unstamped by the wheels, still loose about the 



fingers. The time I was nine I told my parents 



every once in a while a moment comes and I 



know I am really alive again, I exist and I know 



it and it is as though I have been unaware all 



this time and there arrives a second so vivid 



suddenly and they said are you okay I get taken 



to the hospital they sticker wires to my head and 



told me sleep why couldn’t that be beautiful. 



Why couldn’t we resist. Wherefore did the 



anxiety arise like dew, indiscriminate. You 



couldn’t forget this now, though the spines 



would crack like whips and the spells would 



pass and the results were inconclusive and we 



all just lived with the symptoms, symptoms of 



nothing like your fabric flowers. The 



arrangement we outlived. The water we could 



not, the fire we could the scissors we could not, 



take me those geraniums break me the cassettes. 



Slurp me like a spool and pin me by my neck. 



The flowerbeds, the furrows were ordained.