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Often, the three of them—burro, horse, rider—would simply stand in the middle of the plains. Aside from the occasional sigh or the halfhearted attempt at swatting away an insect, they all stood still, staring into the avoid. Brown flats, blue wall. From his animals, with their serenely sad, bulge-eyed gaze, Håkan seemed to have learned to gape into space. To this absent expression, he added a drooping jaw. They merely stood, completely absorbed by nothing. Time dissolved into the sky. There was little difference between landscape and spectators. Insensible things that existed in one another.

                    MOSES

yo ass gon rise up to yo full potential too

gon git up off dis block

man

you remember

dat sunday school

ol reverend Missus be like

                    (as reverend missus)

sed uh

do you wanna cross dat river now chillun

sed uh

do you wanna cross dat river now chillum

                    KITCH

                    (gasping)

pass ovuh

                    MOSES

yeah nigga damn

i feel like we cud do dis shit

you feel me

git up off dis block

                    KITCH

amen!

                    MOSES

be all we cud be

                    KITCH

yes lawd!

CHOTON

I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…

He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.

…if that’s a penis then…

He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.

I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.

RAHEEM

Okay.

CHOTON

It’s a little nunu.

RAHEEM

Well I like your little nunu…

RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.

CHOTON

Ow. Careful.

RAHEEM

What?

CHOTON

No it’s— it’s just sensitive.

Egrets picketing the spines of cattle in fields edged

with common tansy. Flowers my father gathered

for my mother to chew. To induce abortion. A common,

cosmopolitan agnostoid lithofacies naked in the foothills. I love

the character of your intelligence, its cast as well as pitch.

Border wide without marginal spines. At high angles

to the inferred shoreline.

Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for

And flew out of the stream

It was not dreaming

It had no ambition but confusion

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun

and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl

when it’s broiled

The Titanic is the one that got away.