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      January 26, 2013Jessica Jacobs“Primer” by Jessica Jacobs

      A Florida child knows the safest part
      of a lake is the middle. That gators
      and moccasins shade in the lilies, hunker
      at the shoreline in the muck right past
      the trucked-in sand. Knows a baby snake
      means a mother’s nearby, angry.
      That to kill her, you must bring a shovel
      down just behind her skull—leave
      too much tail and the headed half will
      keep coming at you. To run zigzag if a gator
      gives chase, their squat digger legs built
      for speed, not for turning. Has a friend
      who has a friend who lost a thumb
      to a snapping turtle; has worn lizards
      as earrings, watched lake-caught minnows
      devour a store-bought birthday
      goldfish. Has been dragged on a field trip
      to a sinkhole wide as a city block, though
      that measurement was not yet known:
      a red truck at the bottom, wheels up;
      along with half a house and a wreck
      of toys and books. Has been told it happened
      on a day like any other. Has gone home
      to tread water at the lake’s calming
      center; cool streamers of springs fluttering
      her thighs, the sun a constant; the sucking
      sound of a bath plug pulled, her imagination.

      from #37 - Summer 2012

      Jessica Jacobs

      “Raised in the cultural barrens of suburban Central Florida, I moved away as soon as I could. Yet no matter how captivating my later places of residence, in dreams I more often than not return to the childhood home that was bulldozed when I was sixteen, to the lake on which I learned to water ski, to the scraggly man-made shore on which I killed my first snake.”