In the opened wings of cranes, in the single branch of a cherry, black against the gray rock, I saw a life that was nearly mine, but half a world away, a thousand years removed. The birdsong was only imagined.

In desperation, the city council imported a shaman to exorcise whatever demons had possessed the house.

The entire idea of Walmart has always creeped me out. Walking through the door with its grinning old person, I feel I am being swallowed whole into one leg of a pair of pink polyester pants,

She was their coloratura, their rare bird, their gem. When she sang, I understood nothing, but I pictured a young woman, standing beneath a willow by the streambank in Spring

It moved out over us, the way light moves over the landscape in a winter's dawn, the way a snowmelt river flows back into a marsh in early spring.

Her world suffused with green light and orchids, she seemed Maldivian Tara, perched on a cut granite bench. She had no need of orange blossoms there, required no hibiscus or ginger. What were plumerias to her?

In the moment that her slippered feet hit the earth, she found a new recognition, and at once believed Morgan to be who he said he was all along, reliant on taller folk, misshapen, and timid.

An animal tang infuses her nostrils. Her mouth fills with spit. She swallows to keep her breakfast down.