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The Book of the Desert
MC Hyland
Issue 182, Fall 2007
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Which we will never stop reading
Which is inked in no-color and dust
Which is the angry brother of the book of the sky
Which swallows our horses
Which is crosshatched with hunger
Whose covers cannot be closed
Which has more pages with every year
Which waits buried in sand
Whose rhythms are like the rhythm of the slowest dance
Which is crosshatched with stars
Which we cannot carry, but which comes with us, after us
Which is also a wolf, a field of grass frozen to the root
Which is the unceasing answer to the ocean
Which is written in the language of winter
Which is crosshatched with carelessness
Whose rhythms are staccato, fall harshly on our ears
Which brings the black famine and the white famine
                      and the famine of the hoof
Which is a gullet, swallowing, a feast of clean bone


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