My gold fish swims
And skims the waters
Of his fishbowl.

He makes faces at me
While I pee because
He lives in the bathroom.

Sometimes he lies
On the bottom of his
Bowl real low

Pretending to be dead.
But he’s really overfed
And big time lazy.

But one day when
I changed the water
He jumped out

AND COMMITED SUICIDE!
THAT STUPID FUCK FACE
FISH THAT NEVER LOVED
ME THE RIGHT WAY!

I want to leave a kiss
On your moist cleavage
Because there’s no way I could piss
Away my chance at your beaverage.
Longing for your lips,
I think of your gyrating hips
And how much it would mean
For me not to be seen
While I watch you change
Outside your window.

I dream of the day
When I can lay
Next to you and eat
A bloody steak so sweet
That you and I share.
I can only compare
This vision
With the ass bang I got in prison.
Now that’s true love!

The house in front of us was about the size of a two-car garage. “This is Nick’s brother’s house right?” I question Aaron not wanting to walk into some random house. “Of course,” Aaron said, following Nick up the incredibly small flight of stairs. Nick turned the knob, and we all walked in awkwardly. We got a few glances since we were the odd men out. The room was filled with the smell of alcohol and fun. It was packed to the brim with people; we knew none of them. All of these students graduated at least a year before us, and all went to rival schools of ours. None of them knew Aaron or me so we decided to make up fake backgrounds for ourselves just to make things entertaining.

Nick headed for the keg and Aaron and I were left in a lurch; we decided to sit down and take it all in. The first people that we saw happened to be a sexy nurse and something I would like to call a mermaid. The nurse was wearing the cliché tight fitting short-skirted ensemble and the mermaid was covered from the waist down in green scales and a top thing of some sort. “So are you guys from Saint Paul too?” they started questioning. “Yeah we are.” This was the only thing truthful coming out of our mouths. “Oh cool, so what year did you guys graduate.” Aaron and I looked at each other and both said completely different numbers. It was a combination of 2003 and 2002 they didn’t really seem to catch our folly.

The conversation got worse from there. We continued and one thing led to another and soon Aaron and I both went to a private Catholic school, instead of our ugly, run-down, jail of a public school. We said we knew about five of the girls’ friends or cousins that went there, every name they would mention we immediately said we knew them. This wasn’t done as way to be mean or manipulative; we just realized we would never see these people again and found this funny.

As our conversation continued, a large frat-looking guy came into the room announcing: “Everyone, we’re heading out to State Street in a few minutes.” Just coming from that swarm of drunken chaos to get to this toy box house, I was ready to take another pilgrimage. As the sexy nurse and the mermaid found their sexy cop friend, a strange new face came out of the kitchen. He walked with a presence that was felt through the house and his attire demanded his name to be spoken—Jesus. He wore a dingy white robe that looked as though it had been used as the mat next to the bath tub. With his long, brown hair that was greasy and stringy and his robe, the whole combo all preached, “How I look isn’t important, but my message is.”

I felt that my three-man party, consisting of Aaron, Nick, and myself, wasn’t up to par with our dress. Aaron and I were recently divorced Mario and Luigi, with blazers, original white gloves, green and red hats and recently shaven mustaches. (Madisonians were not happy with our lack of commitment to character.) But Nick was the best dressed of all of us. He was in a large Sponge Bob Square Pants child’s costume with a blue hood and rather rough facial hair. Donning a lit cigarette always seconds from falling from his mouth, he looked as if Nickelodeon had just given him his pink slip that morning. Despite this small obstacle, or asset, depending on your view, I knew Jesus would accept us for who we were as people.

Everyone walked out of the house leaving the door wide open. There were about seven or eight of us in total and Jesus showed us the way to State Street. After passing the Romanesque police that lined the only passage to the street, we found ourselves in front a sea of intoxicated college students. Everywhere you looked there were more sexy nurses and more Mario and Luigi look-a-likes. With the decision of right or left, we all chose right as a group and ventured cautiously into the churning mass of characters. Everyone was having a good time because it is always fun to yell for no reason at random people you don’t know and the only reason you can connect to them is through the fact you recognize who they are dressed like. Like “Batman! Yes high five!” or “There’s Waldo. I found him; he was peeing by the bookstore!” With our group being led by the most popular man among college students, the J.C. himself, and his sidekick of a down-on-his-luck Sponge Bob, we couldn’t go wrong, or could we?

This continued for what I would say felt like about 15 minutes. Once we were all starting to get tired of walking the group pulled off the main street to talk about heading back. The big frat guy said, “Let’s head back. We still a whole keg to finish” Looking around I felt like something was missing. There was a whole; our chain had been broken. We had lost Jesus; he was still on State Street. So many visions ran though my head even though we had just met. I felt I owed him. “I’m going back for him! Who’s coming with me!” without waiting, I dashed back onto the street. Mario was the only one I had seen following me back in to the Hell from which we had just come. (I mean Hell in the best way possible.) As we kept walking, some areas of the street were so crowed with costumed freaks that there wasn’t enough room to move. Every step and every shout of “Jesus, Jesus Christ?” made me feel that much closer to finding him. All I could do was imagine him spreading his vision of the best Halloween ever; it brought a tear to my eye that amidst his exile he would still be working towards helping the cause.
As our journey pushed on through the slurry of people, it seemed no matter how fast we went it looked as if Jesus was just out of our reach. We were nearing the end of State Street and still no sign of him. We were asking people if they had seen him and one kid responded, “Yeah, Jesus just got arrested. They put him in a squad car.” “THEY PUT HIM IN A SQUAD CAR!” He had been busted for public intoxication. I thought it’s not his fault his blood consists entirely of wine. My heart sank and a feeling of dread flowed over me like a white sheet hung to dry on clothesline on a warm summer day. Not wanting to believe this, I asked the kid: “What did you Jesus look like? Was he short?” The kid said no. He said no. That’s all I needed to hear. I knew my savior wouldn’t desert me like that. At the same time my head became confused with the thought of more than one Jesus, but obviously the other was an evil fake. With only hope left in our hearts and no more streets to conquer, we headed back to the refuge of the disheveled Sponge Bob’s brother’s house.

We got back and waited, Aaron and I went to the small porch and took the chairs down to the lawn and started our wait, only to see drunk after drunk walk by. No sign of Jesus, but then in the mist and coming from the totally opposite direction, our friend came. Aaron and I leapt from our seats to meet him. “Jesus! You will never guess what happened.” We regaled him with the story. With a smile and a calm tone he left and cried with our struggles and was appreciative. Once our hold on him had loosened, he walked into the house. Aaron and I stayed outside and just listened to the screams that arose from his return. Recently resurrected, his first order of business was to change his wine from ordinary wine into wine in a glass. All Aaron and I could do was smile and know everything worked out and our messiah of Halloween was fine.

(Ago)
The first time I rode a school bus
I cried and clutched and nearly lost my way
And the teacher said maybe it would take me
Where I needed to go
And my parents were not at home.

(Today)
City buses don’t have to stop if you look like indecision.
Cradling indecision has creased my face
So I wave to the bus to spotlight my intention
Slouch of weary seat
Uncommitted to my goal of passing with direction
I pull the cord twice to unload.

(Evening)
Less than my want to venture out
Is my want to retreat defenseless, undecided
To books and spiteful comments hurled to walls
I must define as comfort
Lest the bus take me both ways to homelessness.
I pull the cord once and step off.

(Tomorrow)
I can settle my differences with bus rides
If one way, just one, will be home.

We voted in the van
apple orchard, corn maze, or
petting zoo first?
Petting zoo first.

I sprinted ahead of my sister
toward an aluminum gate and a dented
garbage can, but instead of the glassy gloss
of horsehair, a yellow jacket reached me first.

Me first? My finger pricked
by the needle of that buzzing spindle-wheel.

And then onto the corn maze,
my sister in the lead and me behind
my extended hand humming with pain?
Past the moan of dried corn husks.

And all in-between I remember only
my hand and myself, hating democracy.

The edge of my mind is a tethered bee
that flies around a pencil
on a mint-green line of floss.
If I was smart I wouldn’t touch it,
but my heart has thick red secrets,
and from time to time they bug me
and I have to write them down.

March 20, 2006, 1:41 am

Questions
1.What are the “thick red secrets”?
2. Who or what is the antagonist of this poem?
3. What is “it” in line four?
4. What is the form of the poem?

Web Editor’s Note: To see the first installment of “The Exhibit” please .

There was one lone guard on the fourth floor. He was old, his limbs were weak. He wasn’t about to go running around like the others. He would be of more use, he told himself, staying at his post. Let the others give chase.

He had spent most of his life tending the museum, and he liked it. It was quiet and peaceful. He knew every inch of it, knew the routines and systems, knew how to handle all the little problems that worked their way in from the outside. Management was always changing, new guards and new bosses coming and going, above and below him. But the museum hadn’t changed, not really, and neither had the people who visited it. He loved them, for some reason. Loved the upturned looks of curiosity on their faces, and loved the things on which they looked. He felt a strange sympathy for these objects, trapped in place, never changing, standing still. It was just a job to all the others. They didn’t love anything. But he did.

What was that breeze? He turned to the window behind him, and there in a shifting waterfall of quiet stood the stranger. He didn’t stand for long though. The window edge stood broken and jagged, but where was the glass? Where was the noise? The old man raised his right hand to gesture stop, moved his left to the radio on his belt and opened his mouth to say something, anything. But he saw the smile and the motion and sound stopped. The stranger ran forward, smile never wavering, stride never breaking, and as he passed, he looked at the old man and winked.

The guard relaxed. Everything, he now understood, was going to be okay.

The fourth floor was where they kept the rotating exhibits, the traveling pieces that moved from museum to museum. It had drawn larger crowds than the other floors, so the rooms were more densely populated with last minute visitors . The exhibit currently on display was a collection of musical instruments, the oldest in the world. Each room had its own family: percussion, wind, string, metal and stone and wood. Each piece was untapped, unopened. Unused. They didn’t move as he passed them. They didn’t catch the light. They didn’t make a sound. As the stranger ran, they were terribly, utterly still.

There was a highlight in the exhibit, a crowning achievement. It was a violin. It sat in a room of its own, poised on a low stone pillar, surrounded by a glass case and a velvet rope and a wide open space. There was a camera in the upper corner of the room that rested its gaze all day on the instrument’s quiet form. As people, in the course of their wandering, moved from room to room, they instinctually saved this one for last. They sensed it was different somehow, so they wove their way through the circuit of rooms and hallways until they were sure they could see no more, until they were sure it was finally right to enter. Then they would step from the crowded galleries of horns and lyres and drums onto the empty wooden floor, into the pale light, that was the home of the violin.

But when they approached, when they walked out into the open and quietly stood before it, they were confused. Every piece in the museum had history. The pieces wouldn’t be there otherwise. And that history was always on display, etched into the narrow gray confines of a small placard sitting before each piece. Names, dates, facts, all faithfully encapsulated in plastic for the edification of the museum’s guests. This exhibit had a little plaque as well, attached to the front of its pillar. It was bigger than the rest. But it was blank. There was no information of any kind, no history or heritage, not even a name. Every other exhibit at least had that, the title of Bowl or Hammer, Robe or Sword, convenient labels and tidy definitions. But there was nothing here.

The violin sat in its case, and each observer had nothing but the deep golden gleam of the wood, the elegant curve of the neck, the subtle tension of the bow to read. The mute instrument yielded no answers. The people who had made or played it were of no importance. Those who bought or sold it were of no importance . Trapped in its glass prison, it seemed to stare, unblinking, back at its observers. There was something about it, something in or around it, something that made it seem vaguely and quietly alive.

Each person stood before it, peered and wondered. Then left. It was no mystery they could solve. So they left.

The stranger was gaining speed now. His exertions hadn’t tired him, and he was nearly there. He didn’t go through the circuit like everyone else, and as he ran, the people he passed all turned. They froze for a moment. They looked at him like an exhibit, with curiosity, quiet and introspective. And inexplicably they needed to know him, where he was going, what he would do, so they turned and followed. The guards, just arriving, joined the newly formed ranks, shouting and pushing. They knew they were too late, knew he was just beyond their grasp. With the crowds closing in from all sides, he burst from their view, into the final room and stood before the violin.

The glass fell. They were just in time to see it, spilling over the threshold of the room, just as it started to drop. It fell like snow. Silent. It caught the light in a thousand shining points as it slowly showered down around the man, around the instrument. But the glittering barbs were quiet, and for an awful moment so was everything else. No breath rasped as it was drawn, no footsteps sounded as they fell. For that instant, the world was captured in falling glass. But the stranger was still moving, faster than the others. His left hand closed around the violin, his right around the bow. His feet left the ground and he was on the pillar where the captive instrument had lain. And as the silent, aching moment passed, as the glass fell soundlessly to earth, he began to play.

They stopped. Everyone. Instantly. How could they not? How could they move, in the face of that terrible, beautiful sound? They swayed to a stop, a single mass, as the first impossible strains of the music echoed outwards from the stranger, striking them still. What was he playing? What could it possibly be? Later, no one remembered, no one could even hum one line of it. It was impossible. The music filled the room like a living thing, like a million living things, every note a terrible blow from the thousand captured vessels that lay dying in the museum’s halls. The walls could not have shook. The lights could not have quavered. The people could not have sunk to their knees, driven downwards. But they did. The awful majesty of the music crashed around them, vibrated in the air, an unplayable chaos of swoops and stutters and screams, of reverberating sound. It was angry, so angry, that the people balled their hands into impotent, shaking fists. It was sad, they knew, as the tears slid silky down their cheeks. It was lonely, and each of them was alone with it, alone with that impossible stranger and his violin. His fingers moved across the strings like the dappled flow of water, his arm worked the bow like fire. He moved so fast, and so slow. He was almost motionless. But no matter the contorted insanity of his fingers, or the chaos of the music swirling mindlessly around him, his eyes shone, and from his face there burned a final, terrible smile.

Free. That was the end of the song. After an uncountable eternity of playing, it was free. The sound impossibly swelled around him in a final surge, a dying struggle, and the people whimpered into the ground, the shaking, shifting ground beneath them, and the building began to change. The first notes of that ending fell below on room upon room of melting paint. The forgotten masterpieces oozed and poured, their substance sluicing downwards from their frames, their smiles consumed in the swirling mess. Like blood, the rivers ran across the floor, mingling the essence of their lost masters, leaving nothing but empty traces on the walls.

The middle notes rose to the galleries above, and hundreds of quaking relics were already splintering from their pedestals. There was rust spreading like a virus over the smooth planes of metal, rot eating into the wood. Angled shapes drooped and split all around , shattered and broke. Soon the pedestals were empty, and the cases bare.

The final notes, the end of the end, rose higher and were met by a thousand other inanimate voices from the dark vibration of the instruments. The strings and skins and other dead substances shook, each making its own noise in its own way, each sound released into the un-caged air. There were shrieks and groans, screams and sighs, as the instruments gave up their quiet, forgotten lives, as they sounded one final time.

And glass fell everywhere. It skittered across the wood and paint, the stone and metal, the petty fabrics of the world that lay dying on the floor. It floated and glittered, a hardened funeral shroud, a window that couldn’t be looked through and a mirror that couldn’t reflect. The lifeless things lay strewn everywhere, broken amidst the glass.

And the stranger played his final note. It didn’t leave the room, didn’t leave the air, but stood and expanded in the space above their heads. It didn’t go after it was played, didn’t fade away. It grew, and the people shrank back as the stranger dropped slowly down. His feet landed silently, his hands empty, his smile unmoving on his mouth. There was, somehow, an open door, a stair leading down, that no one had noticed before. And as he ran towards it, as his body was consumed by the echoing dark, as the museum lay ruined all around, the people turned away from him and looked. They looked, and the violin lay broken on the ground.

For those of us who attended the T.C. Boyle reading, author and University of Minnesota graduate instructor Brian Malloy may not come across with the same prestige—he hasn’t authored two dozen books, gone on as many European tours that he’s forgotten most of or won enough awards to sell books without a promo advisor. Malloy represents another side of successful writing. He does what he wants and still gets paid for it, which puts him in a percentile over those of us who dream of our first novel’s success without having written it. Malloy’s on his third book, and won’t stop until writing’s no longer fun for him.

The Wake: I think most readers think of writers as aspiring to be one of two personas: do you see yourself leaning toward the rock n’ roll super star—in your face, rebellious badass; or the English professor—locked up in the ivory tower with dangling modifiers and who/whom exercises?

Malloy: (laughs) I feel too old for the former and too young for the latter. I don’t know; there are so many stereotypes associated with writing—and many of them well deserved. We tend to take ourselves way too seriously. Writing’s just one of several things I do. And if you made me choose between writing and going to the Boundary Waters, I’d choose the Boundary Waters. Writing is not something I have to do. I enjoy it, and as long as I enjoy it, I’ll keep doing it—and when it stops being fun I’ll move on to something else. I don’t take it as seriously as other serious writers do.

The Wake: How has your process changed when writing different kinds of fiction?

Malloy: It was hard shift to go from what workshop encourages, which is insightful, literary work, to a young adult novel. I think young adult is as much work, but I don’t think it gets the respect as a genre as it deserves. It was difficult to go from workshop where people debate small details and look for meaning in everything, and have permission to write a novel from the perspective of a 17-year-old girl, which is challenging for me as a 45-year-old man (laugh). I just have some fun; I experiment. Young adult gives more permission to make mistakes; literary fiction…where is this being published again (laughs)?

The Wake: The Wake.

Malloy: It takes itself too seriously.

The Wake: When do you know a novel is done, and have you ever wanted to change anything after it’s been published?

Malloy: Yes. I never know when it’s done, and I always want to change it. The Year of Ice has been out four years now, and if I had the opportunity I’d make changes to it. But at some point, it becomes community property—just because I’m the writer doesn’t mean I’m entitled to make changes, that my opinion of the story is any more valid than the reader’s. That’s the hard part to accept: launching it and having people love it or hate it, and thinking to yourself, “Why are you reacting this way? That’s not what I meant—you’re supposed to be loving this book.”

The Wake: If you could have every American read one novel—any novel—what would it be and why?

Malloy: (shakes his head).

The Wake: I know, these are the kinds of questions that need weeks or even months to think about, but unfortunately you don’t get that much time.

Malloy: Well, what’s today’s date? April …

The Wake: Thirteenth.

Malloy: On April 13, as of this time, I would probably go with The Handmaid’s Tale, even though it was written in the mid-’80s. The trends in society that it addresses and speculates on are even more with us today. I think people have to stop paying attention to American Idol and start paying attention to our foreign policy. Wake up. And I think The Handmaid’s Tale is a good cautionary tale of what happens when people hide behind the Bible or the flag when told it’s for our own good. I think that would be the book considering the times we’re living in right now.

The Wake: One last question: Do you have a favorite quotation and, if so, what is it?

Malloy: Sally Brown, Peanuts: “I’m losing my mind and nobody cares” (laugh).

The museum was quiet. The rooms echoed softly with the wandering steps of the last patrons. It was closing time, but there were always a few stubborn people, who waited to leave until the last possible moment, a few who wanted their money’s worth. The security guards checked their watches, waiting until it would be appropriate to be pushy. Coffee had stopped dripping in the café, and the ticket takers lazily tapped their feet against the floor.

But when the stranger came, he came fast. The doors flew inward with the force of his entry, and an air of mad, desperate energy flowed in behind him.

He looked normal, is what they said. They didn’t know what else to say. The image of his face slipped away from them, just beyond their grasp. What did he look like? He was…I don’t know, just normal, like you could just walk right by him without noticing. Was he tall? No, but he wasn’t short. Was he fat? Skinny? No. No. How was he dressed? Um… What color was his hair? It was… maybe kind of dark. Or it could have been light. I don’t remember.

That’s what they said, after it was over. They didn’t remember. Except for his eyes. Nobody had trouble remembering the eyes. That was the one thing about him that wasn’t normal, they all said. His eyes, they were gray. Not gray like light blue, or pale green, or faded brown. Gray. Like smoke or fog, steel or stone. Gray. They remembered that.

He slid recklessly across the smooth wooden floor, madly skidding as he changed direction. His limbs swung wide for balance, but his eyes were focused, and a smile stretched across his lips. That was the other thing they remembered, in a hazy, distant way. They couldn’t picture his face, but from the time he entered to the time he left, they said, he never stopped smiling.

If they had been given a moment, the staff behind the reception desk would have regained their composure, and politely asked the frantic stranger to leave. If the ticket-takers, standing on either side of the lobby’s glass doors, had seen him coming, they might have stood in his way. But it was too late for that. He was there and gone, his body already propelled into the museum just as everyone thought, Who is this guy? They paused a beat. The echo of the lobby’s smooth wooden floor died out, the echo on the gallery’s cool stone picked up, and then with one voice, the staff began to shout.

It was too late. He was gone. As the stunted crackle of walky-talkies sprang up behind him, he rocketed towards his destination. He didn’t mount the stairs so much as collide with them. A couple, coming down the steps to leave, was thrown aside, split apart. They joined in the yelling of the staff.

All over the museum, the guards perked up their ears, raised their radios to their lips to respond to the anxious warnings of the lobby staff. They began to walk briskly towards the stairwell. Their faces wore dutiful looks of concern. Each guard went to their respective landing, to cut him off. But they were also a step too slow, and the guards on the second floor, just as they arrived, reported the sound of running footsteps in the gallery, fading. They turned and pursued, as the other guards came clattering down to join them.

Paintings rose and fell on either side of him, muted white pedestals stood in his way. He dodged them, barely slowing, and ran on. All around him were faces, gazing down from the curled madness of their frames. Some were dead, and some had never lived, and their expressions, captured in frozen, riotous paint seemed to change at his approach. Some had been cast in sadness, some in anger, some in bliss. But were they really? Had this vast array of human emotion been one emotion all along? Maybe, as legions of faithful had stepped before them, looked and left, there had been some trick of the light that masked this new expression. Some stood, or sat, posed. Some were locked in struggle, some twisted in pain. They lay slack with depression, writhed in ecstasy, brimmed with victory and defeat. But now, as they looked down on the stranger, they seemed different. What was it that had lain behind their eyes so long, unnoticed? Satisfaction? And what, despite the surface posturing of their faces, was that enigmatic expression that tinged their lips? Was it a smile?

He ran through the rooms, through the thinned crowds. He passed two janitors, sitting idly with their mops, and as he passed them he waved. They caught the fleeting image of deep gray eyes and a smile, surprisingly they waved back.

The guards split up and spread through every gallery, roaming in teams. The remaining museum-goers regarded them quizzically as they searched, surprised at how many of guards suddenly seemed to be there. Had there been that many before? They were an angry, faceless army, rustling their red jackets and buzzing their black radios as they impotently searched. They were sure they had him cornered, checked every nook, every hole, every possible hiding place. They asked the patrons if they had seen him. Yes, he went that way, and each guard who followed a pointing finger strode headfirst into another who had done the same. Where was he? They had covered the stairs. They had filled every room on the floor. Where was he?

Then the guards in the most isolated corner heard a clang. They peered into a secluded hallway, at a door marked Emergency Exit. Shouting, much louder than they needed to, they used their walky-talkies to relay the news to their peers and went barreling through the door.

The pounding of the stranger’s steps was multiplied beneath him by the rushing feet of his pursuers. The dust of the disused staircase flowed behind him as he ran. The narrow shaft of the stairwell snatched his rhythmic steps from the air, vibrated them, echoed them against the walls. For a moment, as the stranger approached the end of this climb, and his pursuers began theirs, the noise took on a terrible physical force, a violent, shaking solidification between their ears, a space without thought or feeling or anything but noise. They clutched at their heads.

Then the stranger was through the door and the noise was just footsteps. The guards, panting, struggled up the stairs after him, and the stranger was another level higher.

The people on the third floor had heard the commotion below them, had paused and cocked their heads to the side. The stranger’s arrival broke in on their listening and wondering, and startled them, but he ignored their stares. Their heads swiveled on frozen bodies as they watched his frantic, smiling progress through the room and past them into an empty gallery and out of sight. When, seconds later, both stairways erupted with red uniformed bodies, the patrons pointed them in the right direction. But the first room branched off into others, which branched into others in turn, and the stranger was speeding through the maze ahead of them.

There were relics all around him. Relics form every forgotten age, from every corner of the earth. The gilded, impotent wealth of the dead rested with tired poise at every turn. The objects, the weapons and tools and luxuries of the past, shared a common gleam, a capturing of the golden lights that shone down on them. It gave them a strange sheen of similarity, as if the times and cultures of their origin didn’t exist, as if, beneath the surface, they were separate parts of the same unknowable whole. Why did they quiver, as the stranger ran past? Were his footfalls so heavy? And what was that peculiar trick of the light, as it shone from their shaking surfaces? What gave them that air of dark and quiet anticipation?

The guards followed after, arms pumping and heads bobbing. They began as one group, more numerous then it seemed they were a moment ago, more than it seemed one museum would need. And at every turn and junction, they branched out like an angry red flood. The size of each split group seemed no smaller than the original whole, dividing but not diminishing. There were no more stairs on this floor, other than the ones they came from themselves. There were no more exits or escapes. They knew it was only a matter of time before he was cornered and they had him. They kept running.

Every room was searched, cleared, sterilized, one by one. After each room was found empty of all but tired, curious spectators, the guards flew more zealously to the next. Soon there was only one left. The red tide slid in form three directions and stopped, just in time to avoid the glittering field of glass that had been scattered across the floor from the broken window. And while they bellowed into their radios, while they left a group at the window to guard against his return, while the rest stamped quickly back toward the stairwells, there was no longer any doubt of his destination. They knew that he was up there. They recognized him now. And they worried that it was almost too late.

Web Editor’s Note: To see the second installment of “The Exhibit,” please .

You wandered slowly downstream
throwing your gaze to the other shore.
Small wonder: you have always loved
your coastlines. You’d dart for a stone,
like a heron fishing, pluck and then weigh
it in your hand, smoothing away the sand.

There are markings in the sand,
from somewhere younger in the time-stream,
another traveler on your way.
That day, you did not share the shore.
You sank through water, pretty stone
forgetting rivers you had loved.

There, in twilight, it seemed no one loved
you, your hair soft and brown as sand
and all their eyes as flat as stones,
the ones tossed out by shallow streams
to wait for you to tread their shore
and tell them each how much they’d weigh,

as if the world cared for a stone’s weight.
You chose two, only, that you loved
staring at you on the edge of the shore
one perfect, rounded by sand,
another bored and bitten by the stream,
hole-filled, less whole stone.

Later, you will choose a gravestone,
thread it through a chain to weigh
your neck, fill it with a stream
of tears. Only I know which one you loved
best. And when your body turns to sand
I will be waiting on the shore;

the farther shore, the shadowed shore.
You’ll know me, sitting on a stone;
we’ll bury ourselves in wet sand
neither of us caring how much it weighs.
It will embrace us and we’ll feel loved
as we watch the boats slip off downstream.

I stand on the shore, tracing the way
your path was set in stone, the way you loved.
Sand in my eyes, I follow the stream.