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    Risk Management Memo: Community Outreach

     

    by Mary Biddinger

     

     

    At first it was like one of those riddles

    they assigned to keep us busy, like soldering

     

    the white parts on a panda, building half-

    boats / half-men that could reproduce themselves

     

    with a little encouragement. I wished for

    an earthquake, and it happened in ceramics so

     

    everything that was destroyed should’ve

    been destroyed anyway. It was a compliment.

     

    In Lars von Trier’s version of my history

    I would have occupied more than one bus seat.

     

    But I was past the candy age, and this

    was a colder sort of country, which sets its girls

     

    loose in 305-square-foot occupancies

    furnished with yesterday’s dormitory regalia

     

    and suspicious electrical outlets like

    pornographic slot machines for the very small.

     

    And the social worker has her own

    heavy troubles, so it’s not out of line to offer

     

    to fix her braids in the back, or put on

    a pot of maybe coffee with a West Side press

     

    which can do other things, much like

    you or me, and that’s called dimensional by

     

    the checklist (the mild version thereof),

    and I wonder if eventually checklists become

     

    extinct in this story, and you’ll just think

    hard of the only lady on earth wearing red wool

     

    and she will start buzzing your buzzer,

    which is just two wasps interlocked on the floor.

     

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