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      December 17, 2014Z. MuellerThe Difference Between String and Spring

      is less obvious between pine trees. You run
      chin-first (like humans run) into a spider web.
      The thing sneezes itself all over you. And on
      the one hand, bless you and fuck that spider.
      On the other, combing your face and neck
      for invisible thread is the one moment today
      not spent obsessing over your father’s cancer,
      how his absence will split you into pieces—
      the pieces you were before the moment of birth—
      his birth—before assuming this conditioned fear
      of depth. Blame some inherent human reaction
      for believing arachnids grotesque for spinning webs
      that double as both home and funeral arrangement.
      It’s like this fucked-up hatred of snakes people have
      for being just body and mouth—unthinking, instinctual,
      and needy. And yet the serpent doesn’t seem so bad
      in Genesis. He’s just there to give you options. You
      see why Milton picked Satan as the Marlon Brando
      of Paradise. And yet, the choices are confounded.
      You’ve been having these nightmares of swimming
      through endless pools of them—all shapes and sizes
      and species—where they collectively swallow you
      for assuming the dream is just practice for lying.
      Maybe it’s because your dad got bit rescuing you
      from a copperhead when you were little. Oh, no—
      your mom says when you’re older—he deserved it.
      He was poking at it with a stick. It was a baby.

      from #44 - Summer 2014

      Z. Mueller

      “A good poem breaks me. Then it mends me back together—more me and more otherwise. Milosz did that to me, writing about avocado. Most recently, poems by Wendy Xu, Sacha Fletcher. My MFA is from South Carolina. I teach creative writing at Franklin College in Indiana where I feel tiny and big, like those gummy animals that grow in the bathtub.”