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--- D E I R D R E   O 'C O N N O R


One of his dreams has him riding the streetcar through downtown
Pittsburgh.  It's an accident, a mistake, the sky dark with soot, the
mills alive, the passengers suddenly noteworthy because they're undead and
they have appeared to pay him no mind all these years as his familiars,
kept in some crevice of the brain in dirty work-shirts, cloth coats. His
mother will be expecting him. But first the dream will permit a doe to
emerge from the cobblestone alley the tracks intersect, the weedy corner
of yellow brick inside which he pictures typewriters clicking. Bells at the end of
each line are ringing brightly as exclamations no one shouts at the sight
of the doe, but which are inside him-"Look! Look!"  Like some of the
larger accidents of his heart, if they could find him.

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