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Pear Tree, Bartlett, Quotations Unswim the sky, clouds row across and sink, it’s we who drown. Ballast overboard, it’s me I’m scared of (song said that), July hangs white on heat looms. My mother, my humiliation, born under the archer’s sign, under the broken arrows, snapped string and shattered bow. (See, I have winged you, wordless woman, “him” doesn’t happen here. Watch over me as I slip underneath, unlight my eyes.) Shadows scrawl across slate paving stones, the bitten fruit falls bitter to the lawn. Squirrels spit it out. The green fruit ripens on the ground, yellows toward rot and chewed-through browns. Later I’m walking toward despair with the other roadside detritus, some fatal and irrevocable countryside southwest of who I am. Green leafy inedible words (for ornamental use only sign says, song says too) give shade to roadkill, possums, rabbits, and raccoons, black men who don’t know better than to wander a county highway all night, fucked by the gods and left for dead on the dislocated shoulder of Route 96B. Archer’s wandered 23 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 23 out of sight, cloudcover quarter-moon changes every yes to no. The laden branch can’t be picked, all that unripe just in reach. 24 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 24 ...

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