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  • Herr's Ridge, 1983A Reenactment
  • Adair Allison (bio)

I think the knuckles in the wall will breakthrough tonight. The hollows hang there,

indentations his closed hand left once, and again,shadows of instinct. People now don't speak

this language of apology, of small desperate jointsasking the sheetrock to stop closing in on a man.

We hear the narrow cabinet open. We are highup the walnut tree, above the well rebuilt

after summer hail. The point of the old pine lieson its side by the shed, and everywhere earth

mocks the carroty wood of repair.In the house, heavy plates thrum on a table—

someone wants to know they can survive a hard fall.Soon the tourists will return in new boots, to listen

for the ground's distorted heart. Their metaldetectors warp and whine into the fields' uncivil

core. They live for war. But won't trace the rabbit'srapid pulse, bottom of the litter, drowning in nest.

Hushed by the squirming weight of the rest.Even now, muscles thrusting, its papery flesh starts

to stew back into rich July soil—the damp new facewe'll never see, still hairless, still blind. [End Page 30]

Adair Allison

Allison Adair's recent poems appear in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Boston Review, Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, Missouri Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and Third Coast, among other journals. Adair teaches literature and creative writing at Grub Street and at Boston College, where she is an associate professor of the practice.

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