• The hard-won privileges of the dead
• Dead men's tales
• The clothes never get clean
• Title belt
• St. Sophronia's cathedral
• Or cough up smoke into a handkerchief
• Now that she's been high enough up to see Paris

Now that she's been high enough up to see Paris

I call her my angel, my sweet, my faery queene,
my Sarah, but this is not to say she has wings.
It is a jet-pack from World War II.  It was her grandfather's
It runs on kerosene.  She can travel short distances,
from here to the torn-down chicken fence.
The wings are cardboard.  Her sister Laura
made them, and they fall off when the duct tape gets too hot.
I think she looks like a chicken trying to fly,
her legs kicking, caught in the trap of the wind,
but you can't tell her that.  "Don't I look like an angel?"
She even said, "Dying won't be so bad."  I didn't
know about that.  We were trying to fish, but she doesn't
have the rippleless voice or the patience.  "Think of
all the fun you could have--flying around
without a heavy weight on your back.
"Walking through walls.  Having a shrine
out of turquoise, candles, and the peasants come
to visit me, asking for--I don't know--rain--
anything.  I wouldn't let them down."