In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

64 easter Twenty minutes before the crowds begin to show, the regulars, the once-a-years, the ones who come and go, she appears, freak, car crash, skin graft, so badly burned, head too big for the world, the woman they let on the Oprah show to tell us drunk driving victims don’t always die like the rest, that sometimes they fry before the EMT’s can get them out. But today she comes walking, bedecked, grotesque, past the parking lot of this church in the heart of the Midwest, where I am sitting, early for once. She looks at me with the eye that is left, then totters by, past dogwood, spiky grass, the shock of righteous spring, goes up the church steps one step at a time. I cannot tell you how quiet she is. Perhaps it has never been quieter here, not since the buffalo have gone. Now the trains have gone too and the mills have shut down. Only she is this quiet moving so slowly inside of herself. She knows the doors of Sacred Heart will be open by now, the great stone rolled away, the vestibule water waiting sacred, alone, for her melded, speckled claw-hand to curve inside and touch, in sequence, her Easter Island head, her harrowed heart, the East and West of her dreams. Then she will go, Easter done, walk past me again and go home, having risen so early from the house of the dead, having come so far, her hand having touched the holiest water, forgiving us already for all we have done, for how far we still have to go, for being ourselves, the thing that we are, for not knowing, for never knowing the thing that we do. ...

Share