Thousand: One Hundred Sixty-Seven

a leprechaun’s jacket. “How ever did you get that clean in the first place?” asks a magpie, which you notice for the first time. The youth dips the green rag in a bowl of suds, wrings it out, then hangs it from a blunt red hook. “Did you want something? Hell! Oh! Hello, you, did you want something? Something to drink? We also have biscotti and bags of potato chips and cheese twirls and rubbery candies. Pheh! What does anybody see in that gunk? Cat got yer tongue?” You realize the magpie is talking to you. Your hands close around