Help Desk

Help Desk

Help DeskBefore I address your call, please confirm your name and password.A temporary code has been sent to your mobile phone, please enter this into the keypad.You must answer your security question before we can proceed: What is your favorite root vegetable?I’m sorry, your answers don’t match. Try again. What is your favorite root vegetable?I’m sorry, your answers don’t match. Try again. What is your favorite root vegetable?I’m sorry, your answers don’t match.Would you like to try a different security question?How many goats do you see in the following picture?☐ I am not a robot.OK, stop me when I have…
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The Glitter of the Simple

The Glitter of the Simple Oh, I would divide the world into binaries, cast each earthly element to a pole⎯good or bad⎯according to its flag: The stonefish with its ugly mug. Black-whiskered tarantula. Simply by appearances I would judge. And likewise, disregarding conflicting evidence, I would crown the beautiful: The uncanny blues and gold of the poison dart frog. The sacred passion flower ringed by purple filaments, though its cool smiles nest in leaves of cyanide. Then I would round the numbers up or down, toss out their remainder, throw out the imperfect squares, too cumbersome to carry! I would…
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Civilized

Civilized That summer in Powderhorn, Colorado, and us kids obsessed with the story of Packer, an old prospector caught in the San Juan mountains in Winter who ate his companions, then straggled out of the trees to the Los Pinos Indian Agency, not skeletal. My brothers, cousins and I said the word “cannibal” with gravity, which spoke our shock at discovering that the world held such horror. We drank Roy Rogers (ruby red soda) and pored over sepia photos of Packer in Old West picture books: moustache draped like a limp black snake, his beard a tangle of brush encircling…
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Jimsonweed

Jimsonweed Angel’s trumpet, stink wort, Devil’s trumpet, hell’s bells: named and named again to try to nail its source of power. Each petal-point a corner of a twisted pinwheel, swastika in purple petticoat, these plain assassins live demurely in the dung and meadow. Purest vehicle of lethal dreams, it tunnels first behind the victim’s eyes and lets the night shine through like two black moons with the perfect symmetry of a double barrel. Then it sends the heart spinning away like a child’s top, irretrievable. Soon the voices. A few isolated laughs, until the voices reverberate, become a throng that…
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The Renderer

The Renderer

The RendererOur Patsy died last night. Fifteen years with that horse, we had.A big ole gal, sweet and constant. You could set a little baby on Patsy’s back,send her down the lane and know that baby’d be safe,like pushing Moses’ little boat into the reeds.My boys were quiet this morning. No squabblin’. I knew they were wonderinghow they were going to live without their horse, how Patsy’s big old bodywould make its way to heaven.I told them that God would come and be real gentle with Patsy.Why He’d carry her across the sky to the most beautiful pasturecovered with grass…
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