The Icy Grass

cut open moving around. He took off the bandage to look at the wound. It was about four inches long. He looked for a washcloth to wipe off the blood. He couldn't find one, so he got a towel instead. Sitting down again, he knocked the beer bottle onto the floor. He was trying to wipe up the floor with the towel when Phyllis appeared in the doorway. "Oh, my God, Tim!" "It's all right, honey. It's just a scratch." "What's come over you?" Phyllis cried. "What's happened to the man I married?" Tim knew he should try to console her, but at that moment he had another one of those spells when his wife seemed to be a stranger. Sue Ellen appeared beside her, and the two of them stared at him like he was an ax murderer. "Daddy, are you drunk?" Tim, who felt as bestial and ugly as the head in the freezer, could think of nothing to say in his own behalf. Looking down at his wound, it struck him that he would now have a scar like Ed and Vic, and he was filled with immense, boyish pride. The Icy Grass The icy grass is some old needle here it breaks to sew together some new world of knotted trees with gnarly roots, emptied and meatless, hollow trees with climbable smooth centers. Water veins flow through the snow. Can melodies be trapped in jars for nights like this, and paraffined over to keep retrievable? The gates have fallen down in distant yards. A pocket watch has stopped ticking, a string has come loose from its quilt. Go roast up the entailment nuts, the smell of blackened hickory brings memories of that old man that died at the auction while bidding on a box of buttons. A piece of thread is tied around the leg of some old junebug flapping in this air. —Rosemary Pitman-Redmon 45 ...