JAMES GIFFORD
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QUIBBLE COMMONS Black beams tarred down in brown water stare hard into the trembling of stream-sides at quarreling waterways. Houses stare down, fence off pedestrians tumbling awkwardly through these thin pathways of Quibble Creek in suburbs. Keep out. Private. Water lolls quietly, arguing placidly. When will the streambed painfully dug here finally overflow breaking through property, washing off boundaries stinking of coal-tar, creosote, naphtha. Scrubbed-out concrete quarrels here, failingly. Water-browned Quibble Creek Commons undermines foundations, erosion cutting in, pouring out earth under ownership, patiently washing out boundaries—
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Volume 17 • 2022