We, who always felt way in over our heads,were still trying to tell how we got hung up–yet we’d already found new ways to get by,by the skin of our teeth. We watched the others:when our cartons dropped, eleven eggs would crack,all the yolks run out; but nothing of theirs broke–and we always left behind some telltale tracks.Our tragic feelings seemed opposed to reason:the boy was taken by arthritic hands that said,“This is me; but these will be your hands someday–”and though the young girl’s neck wasn’t yet broken,pictures of her body lay trembling withinthose places where “Life may give you a reducedsentence,” they said, “but never gets you released.”As fires return to the hands that started them,fire became like any other anxious wordto save for the occasions when we’d savorsomeone falling in love with somebody else,two sensibilities meeting, then meeting upwith the unpacking of their baggage, setting upfor some new detours inside of their darkness…Now, everyone’s getting ready again forthe advent of summer, the summit, putting outnew questions like soft feelers into gardens,so that their eyes, of very deep blue, that waxagainst other people’s bodies may seemless dangerous, even unremarkable–like anything else that rests or rots within.As we come back down by way of rocky slopes,the stones’ sounds, answering, seem the only sensethat might survive. In our case, we overlapon our own internal maps, as certain asthe stopped clock, the hairbrush, fallen hair insidethe basin– found, like our memories of this placewhere we dug up some old bones once, descending.___David Schloss was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1944, and attended Columbia, U.S.C. Cinema School, Brooklyn College and The Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA, 1967). He has been a Professor of English, first at Cincinnati, 1968-74, then Miami (OH), 1974– .His books and chapbooks include: The Beloved (Ashland, 1973); Legends (Windmill, 1976); Sex Lives of the Poor and Obscure (Carnegie Mellon, 2001; Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2004); and Group Portrait From Hell (Carnegie Mellon, forthcoming, 2006).