In the middle of the 45th year
of his education, Dean Young falls
in the Amphitheater while attempting
to rappel without a top rope anchor.
Poor creature, learning to fly by
scaring itself into using its gill-flaps
wrong. Below the roaring sky, roaring
earth. Are we there yet? An attractive
but untried way of obtaining data
about the excited-state Dean Young
involves study of photochemical
behavior in the gas phase but
getting to the gas phase…no one’s
done it and reported back. He wishes
his heart would wake up: his only
physical complaint other than an inability
to return phone calls which may be less
a physical than spiritual problem
like kite-making. Is he listening
at the speaking end? Riding back
from battle with six arrows sticking out
his equipage? Is he trying to become
a rose bush again? Done in by a thumb-
tack, revived by golden fries. On July 18,
Dean Young was five or six feet off the ground
when struck by a piece of ice three feet in diameter.
Pitiful motion detectors alarmed the void.
They dressed him like a satellite,
a duck satellite. No wonder it’s difficult
to know exactly what happened to Dean Young—
the preponderance of evidence
has nothing to do with the facts.
But here is his mustache.
I’m tired of fighting for him.

= John-Thomas Hanson