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66 Ida Saxton McKinley, the First Lady, Seizes during a Dinner Party It begins, Love, as a high cough, the chirrup of a spoon scraping toward an end, and this tureen — be calm now, hear me whisper? — this tureen. Mad fit of the body. (Do not love the invalid. Only love the girl behind the bank’s grillwork.) Epilepsy is not only stored grief released violently into the air. It is a secret pleasure. What do you have? An office of papers, the grate of train brakes, worry collecting worry — a decision to preserve yourself like a berry jam. You, like this tureen, so calm, know nothing of agony, stitch after stitch —slippers for children long dead. The newspapers will call it a fainting spell — How delicate! How ladylike! But this rugged habit is fit for cowboys. (Do not look at me with your round eyes.) Electric, one doctor said. (Am I now a modern contrivance?) Maybe it is that some light snaps on, my skin begins to burn —the body a lamp 67 (you used to make my body burn) and my blood pumps until my neck is fat with it. My vision goes rigid and I see your white handkerchief sailing toward my face. (It is not love for me —woman with clipped hair.) I know that I am the president’s wife — pitiable with my clipped hair — but then the comfort comes, and I am swallowed —lifted, yes, happily, from your hovered love — into the shivering throat of a loon. ...

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