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L I T A N Y W I T H G A R B A G E K E E P E R A N D B O N E S For the ragged man grinding his teeth at Adams & Main and for the ten thousand clattering things in his shopping cart, phone books, coat hangers, soda cans, floor mats that say Volvo. For noises of the air command him. For Vietnam, for a cock-bastard father archived in that spindrift avalanche. For a day beyond use, for he has saved the world within worlds, one string connecting every necessary eggshell, redeemer of our irreducible stuff. For I toil not, neither do I spin. For the street we are on right now and the curbs we are about to breach. For his small, hard, distracted wave goodbye when he turns his corner, a charity to me— for Christ’s good sake, don’t leave me here alone I could say but I keep walking. For the dead man in the Times who went uncollected for months  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 23 in bushes along the  Freeway. For the coroner’s report, and for James H. Armbruster Jr., Los Angeles County Deputy Assistant Coroner who filed it so capably. For a wood rat had dragged the skull thirty feet away from the rest of the body to couch a nest in dusty weeds. “You’d be surprised what a rat can haul under the right circumstances,” Mr. Armbruster said. For fourteen babies socketed in that human cup, worm pink, squirming for milk.  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 24 ...

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