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284 f r o m t h e j u i c e c h o o s i n g for Kittsu Floating with your head back up to the ears in a river you can hear a lot of lives you didn’t expect: an outboard motor starting up beyond your sight somebody’s sinker taps against a drum two kids are yelling mouthfuls In the general flow are sounds you might make yourself and ones you can only imagine: garfish moving along the bottom water moccasins curling into tree roots Chickamauga Dam upstream imperceptibly giving way Half in air half in water your eyes awake your ears adream with soundings the mind can bob and understand where it is Alone on the shining surface buoyed up with creatures in such a dangerous sleep I have created children taking chances underwater at night edging with their fingers along the bluff above the river jumping barefooted into a cellar full of broken glass And one recurring child too young to know what’s risky on a ledge curious only about me down here 285 f r o m t h e j u i c e too far away to reach him where he turns like a dummy falling lands flat on his back each night on the mattress pile of my choice Safer in my dreams than in his and falling more certain of love that the tiny fishlike fact he was when both of us forgot he might exist a strange bit of marine life sticking there on its own bringing up questions of freewill and time and the possibilities that we broke against the motel mirror in plain water glasses thrown to curse and celebrate our combining image Wide awake you chose I chose crash following crash not him not then but to lie there accepting floating as we used to in riverwater filled with silt and muskrats and sunken boats and boys swimming For nothing comes of choosing really in this bed we have fallen into Lay back your head and listen to whatever will be with us to the waters pressing on each eardrum for the life inside ...

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