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67 At the DQ Is the dream of the sod just the dream to get out of the sod? Did the geranium snapping its tonsils against the Dairy Queen window push upward in its pot for this— to live, to look out on a rust-covered crane with its jaw full of rocks, an awning burdened with wind, two girls leaning against the picnic table, licking swirly cones, aching in the cores of their bones just to grow? Is that why they’re so quiet, listening for gossip to catch like sticky napkins in the wind? They listen beneath a tree, which sounds like far-off applause, beside a river, which sounds like a woman rushing to braid their shining hair, pulling more and more length from the stinging banks. Soon it will swell over all it knows— flat, clattering stones etched with the delicate backbones of creatures that lived, then went extinct. ...

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