Breckinridge Mill Dam: Virginian Summer

. . . This place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged

—Gertrude Stein, "A Frightful Release" (1914)

Victorian, how you fall like waterfor gravity and anything else that pulls you down,claiming chaos—your natural state.In Steinese, a dam is a dam is a dam. But is it? Am I?

You descend in angry fluvials—blind rapidsdetermined to find entrance to pumice-greystones devoid of all mortal sensations; the rocks you choose:of Gibraltar, of Ages, Stonehenge, any, any, any

hobby-store quartz or common fossilized stone. Smashed-facedwater sprites skim your surface then clinglike white-knuckled vines suckered to your back—a tighteddying habit. You have no desire. You kick, bite, scratch,

fight as you course through my fingers stretched wide as floodgates,enraged that I make no effort to catch you. I will not, I shall not.As minnows dart between my toes, I strip to midwaist and diveaway, exposing more of myself than you can bear.