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  • Sheath
  • Jeff Mann (bio)

What blessed sheath is this, to know none of those who died?

Sheath of the milkweed, sheath of green-gold the tulip tree leaves split like votive smoke. [End Page 143]

Sheath of the cicada, its claws of dirty glass left clinging to tree bark, emptiness and a split back the soul’s only evidence.

Six months later, carefully timed, there are candles, there are lawsuits,

as if burning wax or financial recompense could ever answer accident, make of madness

an etiology one could comprehend, clutch in the palm, apotropaic as buckeye

or rabbit’s foot. I’m rereading Marcus Aurelius, and he seems to be trying

to convince himself that all he and we suffer is weakness. The strong, it seems, detach.

This is not helpful. Now there are peepholes in classroom doors, complex locks, there are 32

poles bearing the flags of victim nations erected before the Baptist church. In strong

or even moderate wind, there’s a rattling, rattling, as if the flags were cursing or confabulating. I more than understand

viciousness justifiably directed. I have a hit list a mile long I dream of working down were I diagnosed with six months to live.

Like Raskolnikov, I might be fooling myself, but my guess is that some killing would find me rapturous,

the rush of reservoir waters undammed at last, a great milky load after being cruelly edged for hours. [End Page 144]

Sheath of the pig-fucker’s handgun, sheath of the hunting knife beneath my pickup seat, sheath of the army knife beside my bed.

Insanity’s imbedded in the random, we’re in agreement there? Agreed I drink too much. I contemplate how much human happiness

a few precognitive abortions might provide. The drought’s gone on so long the governor’s talking disaster area.

At night, someone keeps tugging the blankets off me. Gin keeps me up. I cannot sleep till I hear my husband snore.

Jeff Mann

Jeff Mann’s books include two collections of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue; a book of personal essays, Edge; a novella, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire; a collection of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and a volume of short fiction, A History of Barbed Wire, winner of the Lambda Literary Award.

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