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19 Storming the Warehouse Praise be the river finders and their currents of healing estuary. The yellow boombox throbbing on the motel dresser as she straddles me, her face pierced by fish hooks and beads the color of salmon eggs. I drive her back to the park where swaths of green bisect the city into encampments of corporate flow. Her Indian friend Mighty Mouse recruits me for the tribal basketball team, We ain’t so tall, but we got moves. Follow the river. Purchase a board and cruise to the skate park near the Columbia Bridge underpass. She swore I’d find them here, homeless kids they call trolls soliciting tribute, goat shepherdesses selling broken staffs as Cerebus sprawls beside them, a duffel bag of greased barrels without triggers. Afternoon stunt tricks and withdrawal, 20 the king’s men racing above from castle to castle, office high rise to luxury condo. I am not speaking of the bridge, rather of plywood ramps and lean-tos on these river banks the Indians shunned, calling Portland the valley of sickness. Praise be the river finders, river of suffering, no Ganges of burning pyres, this Columbia where suicides are peppered with cloud spray. She rides me in the motel room as Fugazi pummels her boombox, her face the face of my cousin in pain except he’s 6’8” and bearded. Let our feet trail bandages as we storm the Doc Martens warehouse, ransacking aisles for boots, ox-blood and steel-toed, plastered with pink skulls or green shamrocks that glow in the dark as we march to the castle gates, our torches hissing in the rain. ...

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