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And that’s who raised ht when that est, so maybe they knew the score after all When they pulled me out of her nethers, Tincup scratched his head and picked rown and covered in horse He put me in the house by the stove like any other foal born sickly

Day I was born Ashen started baking Every day of

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Met an old prospector once, by the na for prophecies in the dried up wrinkled scrub that usedta be the Colorado River Caught a rack of runes once, all fishbone scorched with hairline scratches For all the good it ever did her The Khan of Manitoba cut off her hand to get them, and took off south after the Witch of the Rio Grande Anyway, once upon a while I liked to sit with Gilly afternoons in the summer, when it was so hot the only safe places were down in the lon in the shadows, down in the crevices where the dust don’t fall She caught butterflies to eat, and you know I never thought a butterfly’d have eating on ‘e heavy on the old river bed weren’t nothing but flying protein, and protein is king Gilly Spur snatched them out of the air in a mason jar

“Tell onna marry, Gilly,” I’d say to her while she crunched down on a irls before used to pull daisy petals to find out Think that’d work for me?”

“Don’t you be in such a hurry, girl The rest of us ain’t done here yet And where you think you’re gonna spy up a daisy?”

“Do you remember before? Before there were aup the place, I mean”

“Ayup,” would say Gilly Spur And she’d tellyou chewed in your ar in it People used to beit Or she’d say there used to be an ocean left of California, which was so much water you couldn’t see the other side, and why the world didn’t just drink up sothere I’ll never understand I’lad I wasn’t born then It sounds a terrible place

Gilly Spur’d scry the sand like it was still water Far as I know she weren’t in the game then or never But she was nice toto learn these days, but I never got the trick of it

Mr Junction City Savings

This is what the Wizard of New York did with her nary boy name of Johnny Holler, then killed a red-tailed deer out on the Connecticut saltwaste using Johnny just like a rifle Took the dried-out hollowed heart of the beast and the nas and Loan vault, and gathered her goods-in-kind froy droop of a man who used to be fat and lost it soone and just a big blouse of skin left He’s the line judge, the referee, the fact checker and the clock-watcher Don’t know his name Don’t even know if he knows it He’s just the Loan Officer, Mr Junction City Savings, only man I ever met who still owns a three piece suit and a tie to match his hanky

Mr Junction City Savings put Johnny Holler down in his book as New York’s second Johnny said: I never asked But it don’t

Frohter Sure, salowin’ like a lamp turned on inside him, and all the time they walked out to Missouri to see about the Caliph of St Louis he just kept shining brighter still By the ti His bandoliers screa silver just like the moon

Los Angeles nailed down his second up Oregon way A , lanky tall white girl answering to Sally Rue The Wizard of Los Angeles pricked up when she startedsnort of a horse and rode it all the way froordo where he’d fucked and then detonated the brain-ste kiss

Come on now Don’t , when these kids count off their paces