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10/17/14

Susan McCarty

Pest

A scratching and the singing of light through a million filaments, a brilliant stench and the peck of these feet. Haunch high, it is not a slink so much as a hump. Here, in stump, we say, where you come from now? Was in stump, we say. Is when we are in stump that such happens. Whoas why we in stump to begin. Some in stump and some out in form. Twos or so in stump, but in form: all, noses raising fog. We smell each and each and each. All eaches snuck round, round our haunches, we hidle with all. Here, who in stump? We are. We sleep. With eaches in stump, we sleep. But there in mid, up a bit, the scree of kit or mate. We all take up the scree, a nerve like that run haunch to haunch to haunch. The form a racking-thing when scree it spread. What it done? What it done? some glass-eye-no-scree ask us all in form, but what we do? We scree. The nerve it follow form, no choice in us, no choice of choice. We are stump and form all, and when scree run through, it thread out up and down and stump to stump, a split crack, and shake the nest of nests. Crier finds the thread and winch it back to us: in stump got cracked and shaked, and we snatched out. We who was up in stump last when they big crawlers tore the stone of ground and spit chaff and grain. We in stump take, then put deep in the nest of nests. Where we were, there were we, in form, but short some. The scree went small but we crowded in to fill the hole in form with us. Kit or mate, we say, take us haunch and haunch, and be whole, be form, be here. No scree. And when the warm come more and touch each tail and claw, we all—form and stump, eaters, growlers, takers, biters—we see in warm the form of us complete. No hole, no scree. This thumby pound, just hearts.

Susan McCarty's story collection, Anatomies, is forthcoming from Aforementioned Productions. She lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

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