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4 Fact-Checking Water moccasins, not copperheads. I fed her halvah, not raspberries. The first time she’d eaten it, she said as it crumbled going in. She was Jewish as my wife, but I, addled joy, was first to feed her that sweet sand. Hermit crabs, not blue & I never tipped oysters down my throat. That was Bud, born 1920, but the aromatic painter I should have kissed still wets the tip of each new brush before swirling it in brilliant goo. Her rapt silence failed to note my Verlaine-ish abjection, even though I knew from Philadelphia. My mother’s scoldings took, so we never waded the creek in summer—too much poison, no matter name & now poison is all the water is, dribbling under the W.P.A. bridge where Mark gave me “Papa’s Got a Brand-New Bag,” not “My Girl,” learning me for good, though I forget & forget. ...

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