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75 | Virgin Behind Security Bars Only jasmine, chorizo, and suicide prayers sift through these locked bars that would ruffle the wings of a weaker saint. Still, I have no way to leave or enter the night. From my cage of netting and electric lights, I watch the parade to Joy’s Liquor King, with elephants, angels, aloe vera, and American flags for comfort, and black-widow eggs rolled softly into the nape of my neck. Sometimes a falling star twines with a cry from childhood, circling back to its beginning; a song escapes from a cracked headstone and finds me standing here, stalled like a broken-down circus on the freeway. But sometimes objects that may appear smaller in side-view mirrors really are smaller | 76 and swerve into the moon’s blind spot— saving a family of six; sometimes a bomb doesn’t go off, a cancer cell refuses to divide, and someone opens the tracks of their arms— palms upward to the Milky Way. These are the miracles no one sees, immovable objects that collide— the moon growling at a three-legged dog, the wind gathering petitions even of the faithless, who don’t ask favors, don’t ask if I can grace their dashboards or tilt their wheels into the spin when it comes, which is the real test— the only one that matters. ...

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