GIRL BREATHES A RIVER
Peter Markus
There is a river flowing inside Girl’s body that floats out of Girl whenever Girl breathes. Brothers other than us might say, that’s no river, that’s just some girl breathing out her girl breath, but us brothers who made Girl and us brothers who believe Girl, we know a river when a river’s what we see. No, us brothers, we know better than to say no to what we see and what we say and what we believe to be true. So what us brothers say instead of us saying no is we say, girl, and we hop up on board our made out of mud boat and we oar our way along this muddy river that flows, just like a river flows, up out of Girl’s mouth. Us brothers, we float our made out of mud boat down this made out of mud river. We row row row our boat singing songs that float up from the rivery bottom of our muddy boots. Girl breathes a river is what us brothers sing along as we dip our oars into this muddy water, this muddy river where—sometimes, in some places—it is so muddy that our paddles are shovels digging into dirt. And our boat? It is no longer a boat for us brothers to row. No, what it is is, it is a tractor. And back behind us, in our mud-tailed wake, we spit out from our singing fish mouths songs that turn into seeds, then seedlings, then they turn into full-grown trees that rise and leaf up from the bottom of this river: so many islands of so much green growing in the middle of so much water—so much water that looks so much like mud that it must be mud. And this, are you picturing this? This muddy river that we are floating down, are going down: it is a garden. And it is ours for us brothers to keep.