A new name remembering   thirteen dead was on the box. One of seven sets of twins to  survive. Twins Seven Seven, ”Iré”…   It was day after day of the    dead again. We lifted shot glasses filled with salmon fat.  ”No life long enough,” we winced.   We’d been eating tacos and  falafels filled with confetti,    shredded newspapers. Head-   lines blackened our teeth… It was    day after day of the dead again.   Repetition was what we had  and we worked it, Quag’s toll     rose each day. There was the    it, then there was the it of it, less   itself than a hum even we could see,  Quag Nub’s Pyrrhic limb… Some- one’s face was in a window squinting,    scrunched up, looked out intimating   what soul was. A bubble in my groin made  me grimace, I looked up, long since in- sistent we were it, it was us, Osiris’s    chthonic run… Day after day of the   dead again. Day after day went by     without emolument. Nub’s low growl    and regret… It wasn’t run what we     did, hesitation was what we had, no   step not taken back. Trepidation was what  we had. No way could we breathe deep    enough, brace against what would   come… If we ran it ran with us. No way      could we be alive enough. Bumped     earth escaped us, lost in low scrub, the it    of it given up, let go… There would be  bits of it ever after, its it scattered. This   would be known as time. So we read in what would be our book should there be a book,  address not arrived as yet, book in abeyance,   book meant beginning to be gone… It wasn’t my face we saw in the window albeit tunes     from my youth were in the book. “Little    Sunflower,” “Equinox,” “Doxy,” on and  on, played by a beginners band. It was a sad   glad children’s orchestra, an all-souls band we     were told… Mock-awkward Monk it might’ve been,      unintended, so tenuous it made us weep… We    sipped salmon fat, beginners against our will.       Vicarious consort, vicarious kin… Washed     ashore no one could say where, mystic habitat,   Quag’s necropolitan outskirts, Quaph… Day  after day went by, mock promise. Erstwhile     body, yet-to-be book, box yet to be within    earshot… More ghost of what it was than   an echo, long since not even a shell. So we said    or said we saw, were told we saw… Whatsaid  savvy, apocryphal witness. Long since no longer   its it, more say than saw… Said we saw an  edge in front of us… The way the ground fell away spoke     loudly. A pregnant star, dilated light… It was    the end of something risen, lifted up only to subside, ythm’s  hushed insistence it seemed… So it was in what was     always aftermath, day after day of the dead   again, again no longer the it of it it was… Book  said to be wet with lipsmear, seal against what was     to come. Love’s chronic lovers Nubstruck… Quag’s    quaint romance blown up… An ailing voice   would come out of it, box as much as book,      sing its heart out we’d say,    begin with     humming, not the hum from before, Nub’s    alibi, summon something said out of hearing, mum  amen