Poetry. If a girl, a virus, a horned animal, milkweed, an exchange of cash for dirty looks, the near-rhyme of greed to death, the names of all brutes, and a shroud in which was wrapped the erect ascendant all met in an ovum and, lodged deep in the earth's core, fused into a supernova. If, from that long ago time until this very moment--perhaps even into the future--that supernova were listening in on us, her grave canal located such that she were overexposed to US American politicovangelizing, all at once began to speak: this is what she says. --Danielle Pafunda