Listen to this piece read by the author

A hand or something like
a hand
appeared in the upper
sky & I

saw what must have been
its fingers un-
furl & drop two ice-white
dice which began

their slow

tumbling each over each
down till they turned
to wings dragged
by the weight of

their bodies down & then
all the new &
improved
viruses shook out their

mutations

as they fell, as they
sprinkled down & dusted
us – in-
candescent – & then,

spiralling, all of it
swirled into glinting clanging war-
heads which
appeared

to be arguing each
with each
above the din
of the rushing air

through which they now

fall, two

arguing then screaming mouths
as they drop ever
faster with their
disasters & morph

into just heads just

faces no
backs – mouths
hissing & spitting as if each
wanted to be the

winning number as they
plummet – accelerating – so fast – all
seeking to reach
earth & reveal

the outcome – look now it’s

arms trying to clasp

each other before
they fall into the pile
down there of
severed arms or hands & then

the feet fall & the droughts fall &

famines like
bunched veils reeling with
their new contagions &
then, small & icy

& looking like they’d melt
before they’d ever reach
destination, the
ideas – so jagged &

hard to make out, fall – until
it’s just voices, two
voices, you’d think you
cld see them so

sharp is their
muttering, so eager their
articulation of right of
wrong, though the

meanings escape us,
they come from such altitude,
& the tumbling turns now
again into dice,

the two of them flashing
all their possible per-
mutations
as they turn, as they

fall, of

chance they sing
into the silence of our waiting,
the centuries of waiting,
the centuries of trying

to make out
how they’ll land,
on whose side, who
will be right

in the end, who
will have fathomed
the right. Of chance they sing
descending. Of chance.

And the winds blow.

And the motives hiss.

And the alibis flock & throng

in the trees.

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