Still Waters & Deep Dead Ends
Ceremonies Leading To A Capsize and A Fall
Do You Want Your Palm Red?
There is a dolphin at the zoo that speaks Italian—your sister says she’s shared an anchovy with it. She always brings this up as distraction whenever talk of your demise comes up.
When she was a teen Adeline wanted to be a dancer selling gelato down by the riverside, but you, replacing both of your dead parents, discouraged her with searing harshness. (Sherlock never managed to plumb the depths of your cruel psyche to reach anything resembling a reason for this vile behavior. The book was just titled The Case of The Devil Brother.)
Whenever it was time to carry the waterlogged hexagon over to the shredding machine you’d slip on your Auguste Rodin mask, and deeply carve into her self esteem with snide remarks.
Yes, she still remembers those days—each as dreadful as a hangnail or stubbed toe—when the setting sun disappeared over Missouri like a slice of rotting baloney. There you always were, arms akimbo, flaunting your moist dodecahedron as the machine excitedly sliced it to slivers. Like chalkmarks on a dungeon wall—torments, day after day.
Who could blame her for emptying a thimble-full of cold tears onto a venus fly trap at her office when she saw that photograph taken from above—your arms and legs outstretched as if in flight.
She went to college, got a degree in…
