Preface

As the toothless muse dips her pen in India ink to set it scribbling, so begins a full
accounting of the way the whistle stops just before the bomb explodes, the blitz,
the bliss, the beast that has two backs and the one with only one, the way back
when, the milk-maid and the mister, the hall clock and the hollow wall, the
missed message and the one heard overhead, the maxim and the moor, the will,
the wedding ever-after, and the afterlife. The end.








The Two Stand Face to Face

As dreams shadow shade, a hard seed opens life’s dark riddles on the harp. A
saying in these parts, a sad dash. These seasons are the word their world belongs
to, the weeds of April, its rutted ways. Their stone heads lowed in a row, crown
after crown. Each tooth is a hollow ministry, a chipped star that might have been a
sun. A wrinkle in the tongue. These lessons are nothing less.




A Summary of the Missing Chapter

The sea.
The boats at sea.
The man on the bicycle.
Fat and happy children.
The folded cliffs.
Between A and D.
The horse that pulled double.
The one that died.
Questions as to property.
The missing boot.
They set out again.












Jason Stumpf's recent work appears in Third Coast, No Tell Motel, and Jacket. The moon ain't nothing but a broken dish, his translations of selected poems by Mexican poet Luis Felipe Fabre has just been released by Achiote Press.






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