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Before what happens happened
it happened to someone else.
The Juarez puppet flicked its ugly tongue
out-the old carved vaquero with the forked beard.
Before what happened, I had the purpose
of hiding candy bars. Howdy Doody
hissed beneath trains, green and yellow tractors,
to let him breathe. Born, spine tapped, a man's fist
in my stomach-I am stomach. Mother-
pharmacological uptake system.
Ruddy neighbor boy cussed and beat me for living.
Skull rattle-soap-rock-jerky bathroom haircut-
uncapped handlebar fused its rust with mine-
prime grievous nuisances (the memory of).
Transpire means to breathe through-become known-
not to come to pass.
No open windows, never dusting-chicken pox vesicles
lined my dresser (right to left, by age) until disintegrated.
Limit missed each year without failing:
32 days absent: tardy, here, absent, absent.
On the gym floor-fast evaporating
body outlines of sodium and oil.
The guts of twelve candy bars shaped into a mutated apple,
eaten like an apple.
Before what happened happens
nothing happened.
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