After School Care The sun rises early, marking a good day for search and seizure all

l the children are out at play. Slowly an afternoon fills with quiet beheadings, held off-screen. On the new lawn the kids are corralled behind a police chain. The wooden guns shoot only sawdust but the kids cringe away the dust is laced with glass slivers to blind. A girl sits limp a step in front of the crowd, hands cupped over eyes, mouth expressionless. No sirens sound.

Visiting Hours He refuses the hand and falls on the stile, under the stampede. I meet his body at the sweaty infirmary. In greeting the left eye pulsates. The doctors have left open the skull, for safety. I see each lobe, slippery plump goldfish. This white bowl of shivering liquid. On its rim rosy dewdrops congeal, then melt sinuously down the beds polished metal frame. Afterwards, a hand twitch. He sleeps. I watch his jugular vein pulse.

Exhibit A I asked for more, which he confused with faster. He grew defensive, bent on teaching me. Something I already knew on the dining table. Like a mannequin, cause aped effect. Splayed to fit the frame of his balcony doors. Backlit as a puppet show for the dark city. The terracotta vase kept its sullen slouch. I heard bus doors sing open, free the straphangers. The sunned sidewalks gave up a sweaty musk. Silence is consent by the rule of the law. Bodies began inventing little white maladies.

Conundrum A windy fall. It was the year my body began its syncopated disintegration. Teeth turned to chalk, screeched mutedly against the frozen tongue. Each foramen whistled its new breathy Sprechstimme. Even the muscles performed their not-sosubtle etudes, epileptic calisthenics both andante and furioso. Just the desiccated bones kept their paraplegic stupor, filigreed immobile by mute, purple nerves.

W Peace coalitions force us to unload bullets from our mouths. I measure plastic sheeting to spread under the conversation. Careful with those questions. I can shoot back with German subtitles. During the day, between periods of weapons, I eat his buffer. A nuclear voice radiates me. In the sweet aftermath I say forget the stars. I can always see what you see, watching MTV.

Siel Ju's recent work can be found in Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, The Missouri Review, LIT, The Offending Adam, and other journals. Previously an avid blogger, she now keeps an ill-maintained website at sielju.com. She lives in Santa Monica, Calif.