by Dawn Corrigan

(Gainesville, Florida)

When things got really dull, we put an aerosol can in the fire and took cover behind some trees until it exploded. Afterward the surrounding grass and branches were filled with smoldering embers, beautiful as flowers.

The dogs that roamed our woods in a loose pack snapped at the coals just as they would at spring fireflies. These dogs usually stayed in an area marked by four dirt roads but occasionally they'd wander farther from home and into the swamp, where refrigerators on their sides gaped open like caves. A blue-lidded jar was still stored inside one. And something inside the jar.

If we followed the dogs we'd pass a row of telephone poles. On top of each one a pileated woodpecker made its home. From the ground their crests appeared to be one single flaming feather.

Farther on we'd cross the clearing where a swath had been cut to make space for the power lines. We were the ones who lived under the power lines, and their hum surrounded us always. Ospreys lived in roomy, magnificent nests on top of the lines. Newcomers mistook their white heads for the crowns of bald eagles.

We'd pass a torn velvet couch spilling its guts like a girl singing a country song. Beyond it we'd come upon a gray fence and behind it another fence and another one behind that.

Inside all those fences, swinging with a motion like the motion of tossed ropes, were monkeys, and one small gray baboon that did not swing but sat silently in a corner and stared back at us. And behind the animals, the shadowy figures of women in surgical masks.

At the far end of the swamp there was a fishcamp where a woman named Evelyn served us warm beer and pickled eggs. For a long time she refused to add any Lyle Lovett tunes to the jukebox.

"That's not proper country hair," she said.

But then one day "Skinny Legs" appeared as selection D-5. She got in the import beer we liked and made each of us one of her feather masks.

Mine had the black and white stripes of the pileated's face, its red crest.

<<>>