elsewhere_an_illusionist raze he has in his hands a few broken-down boxes to bring to his wife back home. he slides them onto the van's bucket seat. i ride up front. a son my mother's second marriage made. i've brought a bottle of water to keep my throat from crusting over. i take a swig. room temperature romance. not the cold kiss i thought i'd get. he says last night the man who was never quite my uncle spat something with a strange name into the dirt while he stood at my sister's bedroom window, forcing froth from the late air's lips. false memory of her on my lap. my hands on her knees. she bakes my brain into a pancake. butter without the sweet. elsewhere, an illusionist instructs his audience to make his voice the locus of their communal mind. a silver thread braids its way between the brown. this is the part that was written for him. anyone who can't comport themselves with the necessary reverence is fined fifteen grand. "you!" he shouts, jabbing one finger at a plump woman. "to the attorney general!" and off she goes, banished to the back of the room, not knowing what she's done wrong or what awful thing she'll have to eat to cough up that kind of paper. 240920 what's it to you? who go blather from