Smaller Place

Andrew Sargus Klein

Or when the fox dug a hole under the fence and
slipped the yard behind. He ran circles around the
house until a dirt ring appeared, until the ring became
a trench, until the trench reached bedrock, until it all
filled with water and the house was by itself and the
neighborhood kept on being a neighborhood.

The fox came back years later and the house’s front
porch was the only thing left, a small square of
concrete surrounded by stockade grass.

Or when the idea of the house was found in the
bedrock as a thin line of siltstone, a familiar tracing.

Or when this is a memory misfired, a small choke on
the island where the house once stood.

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Andrew Sargus Klein is a queer poet, essayist, and critic living with his partner and their two cats. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Hyperallergic, The Offing, Cosmonauts Avenue, Big Lucks, and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor at Platypus Press and Territory, and is a poetry reader at Little Patuxent Review.

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