From: The Snow Crazy Copybook 16

HAZARD 19 JAMES HAZARD FROM: THE SNOW CRAZY COPYBOOK 16 Towards sundown the storm broke and I went out for the first time in two days. Snowshoeing in the woods I thought of a poem by EmUy Dickinson they had taught us in school. The light, how it was coming across the tips of the pine trees made me think of it. Well, not the whole poem, just one line was all I called to mind. It was a beaut though, so I "read" that line last night, read it over and over and over. The more I'd read it the more that line would mean. So after that comes my dream last night. EmUy Dickinson and me were (it was one of those dream informations you know without it being said) . . . EmUy and me were married. We were living right here in the shack. EmUy is cooking our dinner and I am fixing a snowshoe. My left snowshoe. She says very casually without looking away from the stove, "You got any plans for this evening, sweetheart?" She just keeps on looking at what she is cooking. I keep working on the snowshoe. "Now you know," I say very gently, "we just stay here in the shack. We live in the shack all the time, honey." EmUy Dickinson turns to me from the stove. She has been cooking liver and onions (our favorite). I can smell it. I put down the snowshoe. We look at each other real soft. Any peeping torn at the window would see, just that quick, it is True Love between us. "I was kinda hoping to snow shoe into town," my wife says—not naggy or whiney, just saying the fact—"and maybe sit in the saloon and watch folks play bar dice, you and me have a shot and a beer." EmUy Dickinson is so pretty when she's wistful like that she could break your heart. But I have to say to her: "You know I'd like that too but we live in the shack here, EmUy." She turns back to the liver and onions, and she's not being sulky or anything. The liver and onions now smell so fine turned brown and golden by EmUy Dickinson's small hand. The smell is coming 20 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW across the room at me, it's coming at me sort of sad and beautiful like afternoon light. It comes to me—and makes me so hungry I am speechless. "Oh, shoot," Emily Dickinson says, "I know you're right, sweetheart. But you know how it is, just sitting in a saloon with a shot and a beer. Oh come on now, and eat your liver and onions." She dishes it out, still wistful. . . "on a winter afternoon, I do love a saloon. . . you know how it is, hon, it just has that certain slant of—" I woke up right there. I almost could smell the liver and onions. I had been sleeping on my back. My seeds were still warm in a puddle low on my belly. MARJORIE HAWKSWORTH IN TAIBO In Taibo the women have thick lips. Their hair is as black as a wet inner-tube. Some of their children have blue eyes reminiscent of a race of men who visited the island in a time of long rains. The men of Taibo think of the blue eyes as a delicacy. They pray for the dream of another bird with burning wings to fly into their hungry sleep. ...