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cares to remember the guide has been forced to remember what has been forgotten. It takes skill. Nobody really trains you for the job. Sure, you get a manual, and some people are able to teach themselves all sorts of difficult tasks from manuals. When she first got the job and the magpie knocked from its high shelf the employee training manual and facts about the end of the world, the guide found nothing in it comprehensible. She even tried reading from back to front as the manual was in a language that faced backwards. The magpie, irritatingly, can quote

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know how to move info of all types, even what at first seems hackneyed or obvious. You'd be surprised what tired old homilies will fetch in some circles. Or testimony about childhood trauma. Or silly stories about servants, farm workers, and French ambassadors. Still, it does require a certain savvy to know how to collect and find buyers for such tips, anecdotes, involuntary narratives, and poetics. Guiding new arrivals through to the end of the world and what is endemic to its frontier can be a tricky business, and making a living from it even harder. More times than she

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noise or maybe when she is moved to pity, is inclined to mete out with a wet bar rag. She's not usually the only guide but tips lately have been lousy and that's where the money is. The tips aren't money themselves. It's just that those who make it to the end of the world have something to impart. This can be monetized. Sometimes it's as simple as where in the garden the coffee can with the family diamonds has been buried. Sometimes it's the best way to jack into the hotline between heaven and hell. There are people who

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a knitter who knows her way around life on the low? Tiptoe, bounce, beam. Another neutrino slips through an eyeball and goes on through the earth. It will get where it's going, I assure you. There is no obstacle to its progress. I don't know what its needs are. The guide on duty at the end of the world is taking a cigarette break, letting the magpie yank the little flags from the cupcakes and the old man shaking the ice in his plastic cup hiccup without a slap on the back which the guide, when she's sick of the

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the world was made around. The title of the piece is a number. Each day latches onto another and is carried away by the momentum of them all. Light walks down a deserted beach, touching the wood along the tide line. Every grain of sand has a promise attached. The raindrops bear the signatures of the artists who craft them. A spark slaved away a thousand years to be borne on an updraft where the hunter in the woods, slapping his cold hands before the fire, sees it whirl with its brethren into the air. Which worm wasn't woven by

Thousand: Seven Hundred Sixty

that began the world. Your world, if not The World. Maybe that world, your world, is the world that's true, waiting at the name. Up to now you've been working your way toward a world of your own, the one that was set aside for you. All you need to do is accept the name and you will transfer to the place that fits you, stepping out of this odd, nonconforming, unfinished situation and into the one that works, that responds, that has nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong. All right. Just right. With all your thoughts and needs what

Thousand: Seven Hundred Fifty-Nine

name, skinny as a walrus, shy as an avalanche, melodic as a cable snapping, repeating, repeating, repeating. A sound that makes a wall. Will it shut you in? Or hold you out? Is there a gate in it? If there is, how long is the line to get through? If the only egress is a pinhole, perhaps the visitor will be a golden thread. Sh. Listen. Don’t breathe loud. Keep your thoughts quiet. Don’t let your heart howl or your knuckles crack like rifle shots. There is indeed a name. A final, firm, holy name. A complete name. The name

Thousand: Seven Hundred Fifty-Eight

a greased hippo on ice cubes. A dog with epaulets? A special dispensation of grapes? You’re looking at the stars from a speck of material gathered together from cosmic dust and dreams, crystals and the jitters, despair, nitrogen, and used ironing boards, and your mind swirls, blue sludge spiraling through a hot yellow syrup, the roses nodding nearby with wise genitals, the cat slinking through the unmown grass touched by the passion, and all the birdsong knitted into the hour a skein of relief from pain. And there, again, as though a motif in the wallpaper of the playroom, your

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It could be your name. Maybe not. Could be a name something like yours. Anne for Dan, say. Or Bruce for Ruth. Could be there’s someone around here with your name. Could be there’s more than one of you. While you’re standing at the gate, hanging onto a post as though the wind were going to blow you away. It’s stopped now, true, but could come back at any moment, could redouble its fury. While you’re looking up at the stars, which you can’t see because the light of the closest brushes away the light of all the rest like

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someone far it comes. You look into the sky and see contemptuous angels sneering at you. You look at the earth and see centipedes wearing round booties marching back and forth across the sidewalk crack, chanting, praying. Maybe you should close your eyes. You’re not seeing right. You have wasted your sight, and now what do you have? Only everything. Only every thing in the world remaining. It’s the sort of thing that makes one sad. Violins are playing in an Italian café, the players walking around the circular tables, deftly avoiding running into each other. There’s that name again.

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skin. You take a breath. It’s time to do that. Did you notice you weren’t breathing? You’re not a zombie, kid, you gotta partake of the air. It’s okay. There, there. The roses bear you no ill will. It’s only the wind. Only the wind shaking the bushes, rocking the trees. You look down the lane. She’s turning into that alley between sagging tenements. He’s flagged down the bus on the rural route. A giant bends down and scoops her from the path. No. There aren’t any giants anymore. You rub a hand across your brow. Your name again. From

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in a bob, the blonde hiding the gray. Those crepe-soled shoes. Or are they pumps? Did you ever see her wearing pumps? What’s the highest heel you ever saw her wear? Standing on the edge of a cliff, her toes wiggling over the precipice, the whole mountain lifting her heel. Then a tiny white streak through the many-colored stars that made you gasp, and she laughed, making you self-conscious. You touch the gate post, a little dizzy. The thorns of the roses look threatening, like claws that want to catch you, that want to dig into your clothes, into your

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to that couch, kept you groggy and TV-addicted. What was she showing you, a baby alligator? a satchel in which she kept universes? Where did she go? She went to feed the cat, or the dog, the parakeet, the goldfish, the snow leopard, the rightful heir to the throne who has been chained in the basement wearing an iron mask, the fire, the long, slow fire, the fire that never goes out. The figure on the steps rises and walks down the path. The gate stands open. You follow her to the gate, saying nothing, walking softly. The hair cut

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that happened? It was something he did, something you blamed God for. Frankly, I don’t understand how God avoids the blame for anything. You step softly out onto the porch. The person with your name on her lips, grown tired, is sitting on the front steps, leaned forward, her arms folded, her shoulders shaking. Might she be sobbing? You are afraid. What terrible news does she bring? Or you are angry and itch to give her a shove. Or, suddenly, a great joy fills you and you reach out to her, grateful you overcame the demon that held you to

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knob on the outside. Must be warm on the porch. Whoever’s been calling you, at least they’ve been warm. Do you turn the knob and pull the door open? Why not? Why have you hesitated? Could it be dangerous? Is this the kind of neighborhood where you can’t open the door without thinking about it? Maybe anybody who would know your name is nobody you want to see. Let’s say you open the door. Let’s say the person is someone you know. Mom? Father-in-law? Second grade teacher? Minister at the church you stopped going to because of the bad thing

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A man in a white coat looking serious, holding a pointer up to a diagram of a stomach. Well, who knows from miracles? You close your eyes and the world turns round again. It’s time. This is what it’s like. Things happen, then other things happen, then the same thing happens again. Time’s cycle. Time’s arrow. You get cold. You get warm. You are getting colder. Colder. Coldest. You’re really cold now. If you don’t turn back. Ah. You are getting warmer. Warmer. Your hand on the doorknob. Are you surprised to find it is warm? Maybe the sun’s been heating up the

Thousand: Seven Hundred Forty-Nine

dented by years of cat and point it at the screen that’s either no bigger than a postcard or fills the wall. The screen comes to life with two women arguing over a suitcase. One, screaming, seizes the other’s long auburn hair. With the press of a button you switch over to a long flat road across ice, a gigantic truck bearing down on you, a cloud of snow and dirt whirling up behind. Then a sporting event. Then a close-up of a whisk lifting peaks from white foam. Then daisies bowing gently as a piano tinkles in the background.

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at the Dallas International Airport, third degree burns over ninety percent of its body, likely would have been less of a miracle if the angel entrusted with its life hadn’t been chasing migrating geese into the jet engines. Nobody calls the average daily workings of the world a miracle. You eat your sandwich and somehow incorporate its nutrients. No miracle. You walk down the street, and a cement truck does not careen suddenly onto the sidewalk, crushing your soft body against the flowery embankment. Not a miracle! Well, who knows from miracles? You pick up the remote from a cushion

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the angel checked in just when a tornado was bearing down on the U-Storr-It garage where the relic from Christ’s sacrifice was guarded with prayer and a Yale lock. The angel diverted the tornado to the nearby church where the congregation was howling up to heaven its determination to protect an old thread of cotton. Everyone in the church was killed. Except for the baby recovered from the rubble, crying out of hunger. This baby was the charge of no particular angel. Yet there it was. The other miracle baby, the one pulled from the flaming wreckage on Runway 5B

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vial that has been melted shut at both ends then strapped to a velvet cushion in a glass-faced box with carrying handles. This box remains packed in an iron casket bound with chains until its once-a-year removal for the faithful who have purchased the highly-sought-after (and inevitably expensive) tickets to the exclusive viewing in a nearby colonial manor’s antebellum ballroom. The storage facility is known to a bare handful of initiatives and is protected from tornadoes by the daily prayers of a local congregation secretly devoted to this single operation and an infrequent but much ballyhooed chili cook-off. One year