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By the time the pregnant woman for whom Anna was waiting walked up, the trailhead was quiet enough to make the chirping of birds seem jarring. As Anna pulled a plastic bag of pills from her pocket and settled across from the pregnant woman at a picnic table, she registered the fear on the woman’s face. Her distress, as Anna understood it, was less about a breach of Texas law than about the possibility that her husband, who was violent, might find out what she was doing. Hands shaking, the woman told Anna that she was already raising three children and had been trying to save enough money to remove them from a dangerous home. The prospect of having another child, she said, was like “getting a death sentence.” She couldn’t vanish from her household for a day without explanation, travel to a state where abortion is legal, and pay seven hundred dollars to a doctor for a prescription. Anna’s pills, which were free, were her best option. Taking the baggie and some instructions on how to take the medication, the woman thanked Anna and fled the park, hoping that her husband would never realize she’d been gone.

NAT TURNER

What do you mean by your copyright?

The right to copy?

THOMAS R. GRAY

Yes, well, the right to publish and distribute, which involves copying necessarily.

NAT

And who can grant such a right?

THOMAS

The copyright office, naturally.

NAT

...

THOMAS

It protects the rights of the man who has done the work.

NAT

And is God not a sufficient witness of our works?

THOMAS

Uh,

No.

My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.

When Blair protested they hit him fairly hard in the stomach, and that was the moment he knew that his life had changed. They called him la merca, the merchandise, and for the next four days he slogged through the mountains eating cold arepas and sardines and taking endless taunts about firing squads, although he did, thanks to an eighty-mile-a-week running habit, hold up better than the oil executives and mining engineers the rebels were used to bringing in.

You know it too! … The charm of funerals in the rain,

the special effects men with their hoses well aimed,

huge drops exploding on

classically beautiful

black umbrellas.

You know them, -

the houses like fat vegetables

stuffed with old lace, ceramics, silverware, dust –

secure as bank vaults.

                                    Who will inherit?

Vittorio is dining with

that Chinese actress again…

Will the kingdom be divided?

Who will keep

the chandeliers in good repair

and tend the lists of public enemies?