WEBVTT

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"The Idol."

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"In the kitchen,
a big black blur

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turns its blind face to stare.

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I let it look, I'm
nothing, seven,

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among the props of bankruptcy,
the pen, and banker,

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and pale ledger where grandma
is turning to stone under two

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slow oars of a ceiling fan.

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Big as a houseboat
in her slip, she

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sits in the fiery block of red
that is a leather armchair,

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and watches the
capitals of Europe fall

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again in the fires
of the TV screen,

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while trucks boil down I-40 to
where the atom bomb is parked

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out in the desert near Tonopah.

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When they dig that
geyser out of the ground,

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it does not bend, or nod.

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It clings to the horizon,
pale, intent, shy, proud.

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At night, it smolders in
the slot between two silos

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while Ely burns like a
lit fuse between its two

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beautiful, small black hills.

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And looking up from the fire, in
the hold of the big, black, iron

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warship of her
stove, a groan rises

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in the flue of grandma's throat,
like smoke off a lamp wick.

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And her heart, down on one
knee, puts down the other."