[A narrow Fellow in the Grass]
Rebecca Hazelton
At last, the reader asks for parlay, no promises, but kindly requests that the girl across these pages at least pause in her runnings to listen, listen — we just want you reasonable — and that is no imprisonment. Only she's already slipped from the parlor, waist deep now in Queen Anne's Lace, in fluttering monarch butterflies — of course every butterfly flutters — how lazy — She's lilting across the field — no — bolting, lanky crashing over the fence and gashing open a leg, but still running — Dear Reader, why do you hound her — and there's the river in which she always drowns — because you need her to — you hold her down, and she transforms into a snake, to a burning coal, a hot poker — and you just hold tighter, even tighter, until the tiny bubbles giggle from her nose, the greater spasms rattle her frame and the water carries the death away, cleans it up and you can always say she slipped — why wouldn't she just sit — the girl had it coming for going so fast.