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Back on the highway, Willie relaxed, lit a cigarette. He turned on the radio, got Hank Jr. singing a song about Hank Sr. The radio was loud and clear and he could feel the bass through the steering wheel. He went through the gears quickly, like a race car driver, knowing she could hear him as he attacked the quiet road. "I could have been good," he told himself. "Hell, yeah." He bent over the wheel as he'd seen the big-time racers do, the pedal to the metal, racing the cone of light thrown by his high beams which pushed the darkness aside, only to close again around the cab of the pickup. "Hell, yeah," he said again, and then he was going faster than he'd ever gone before, out in front of the world at Talladega , hanging on the edge of his headlights which pulled him, him and the truck only along for the ride, moths spreading themselves on the thin panel of this windshield. Ground's Breaking If wildflowers grew here, the slate could not slice sunlight and frustrate our soil-breaking. We could take the time to skip along the ground and dig with hoes instead of sharp-tipped picks. Instead, we hopscotch from slate slab to stone. Our feet slap, fire-burned, where the trapped sun fails. This field's breaking will be hard. But afterwards we will harvest hand-tilled foods from this place. We will uncover a vegetative retreat brimming with soft soil and bordered by a stone wall, full of flowers. —Mattie F. Quesenberry The Bridge We arrived after dark to begin The slippery climb down the hill Toward home. Feeling my way along a rusty wire Nailed tree-to-tree, I let go To grab the bridge. Its cable cold Under my palms, barely breathing, I slid across by inches; the swinging floor A patchwork of shadow and light, Ready to claim me. Uncle once met a mad fox there, Held his ground, kicked it off, And shot it. But I knew it still lived . . . Up Blaine Creek, or somewhere. I met it at every crossing, Anticipated the rebounding step, Tensed for the moment. "Get you next," He'd say. I heard the water rush beneath me; I was already with it; washed up at the Deep hole; reclaimed. —Victoria Barker The Mailbox Most of all the leaves are underfoot by now, and all the wounds they left behind are healed, (on me and whatever limb or twig or bough relented to October's inevitable yield). The woods deceive the astigmatic eye by granting visions lost since early spring. The mountain ash, in mourning leaves that die, sheds constant streams of seed that spin one wing to fly as far as gravity and wind allow defiant, hopeless denial of fate —as we would like to challange or rescind biology and time and have them wait. The mail distracts with catalogues of seeds, and I've enough of thinking in the weeds. -Frank Vogel 67 ...

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