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15 Ave Maria I had a lover once, a good poet, funny, but I didn’t want to take his body into mine. Only occasionally did I go to the lesbian bar, where suddenly my energy was as large as the room, as loud as the music that pulsed under the ticking, glittering globe above. I’ve had two women lovers, one named Eva, the other Maria. From their names, a phrase about which masses have been sung. Right now, one of my students is pregnant, will have an abortion. I look at her, perfect girth of her hips, and I want to tell her don’t send this spirit away— imagine Mary telling Gabriel no,I’m sorry,I’m busy now, it’s not convenient. All those years I kept trading in men, thinking it might happen to me: husband, child, a line I could draw around myself and say family.The angel came to me, Ave Maria,and I sent him away, saying I need Joseph and a couple of mules. I sent him away, when everything that needed to be born was already gestating, all encompassed in the letters that spell Ave Maria: the love that shatters personality, that ends up camping in an ox’s stall. I didn’t look up to see it there, the glittering, spinning, Bethlehem star. ...

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