The Miracle Healing Power I buy is not the Miracle Healing Power of generic Canadian pharmaceuticals. I get it and it pulls me back and in. I put my hand on the top of a child who passes me by on the sidewalk and she smiles and I know how it works. I tell the police who knock at my door that Canadians know nothing about the Miracle Healing Power—this is America! This is American-made Miracle Healing Power! But they say they never heard of it. The lawyer who visits me don’t know nothing of Miss Felicia who sells it fresher than anyone, her father who used to give out free samples back in the day, when the shop only used to dry-clean rich white ladies’ poodles. As he’s leaving me I explain God blew the Breath of Life into the shop and the poodles disappeared. At the big meeting I slip him the address while he’s talking up the judge but he just ignores it. I don’t get why people don’t want the Miracle Healing Power. I don’t get why Miss Felicia marries a Canadian and closes the shop. I don’t get why the Miracle Healing Power can’t be shared instead of sold. But I get the Miracle Healing Power. I get it and it pulls me back and in. I get it and open shop. I know how it works.
***
What Matter Though Numb by Bill
That's where time takes in, takes on, takes over. I could wait and see the boat across the river, that they make the other side without any more problems but my boots are sinking down into the mud and I've still got to go burn the sheets. The sign's gonna catch fire. It'll be a sign signing 'there but by'. Their buys, what they bought, carried, craved. Slinging ass and that was half the problem - sorting out which hand had actually held the whip. The water poured over the rim of the tub onto the floor through the door down the hall out into the yard and as it dried turned to blood. They gave good but not enough, tithed too little. No more. No less. Their hands clasped in front of their hearts. Almost like they were praying. Almost like they meant it. Maybe I'll just burn the whole place down.
***
Superhero Transformative Capability by Alan
The boy blonde would not have believed it if it wasn’t true absolutely in front of his eyes green. The healing power of miracle spelled out effervescently in front of me too. And who is to say who stands next to whom and for how long? The syntax of our rows always muddy the bucket and waste the intake. It’s like thinking in another country might make you believe in, well, miracles.
But the boy blonde shrugged exponentially for days at a time. It’s not the adjective you think it is, he said to several customers curious. It’s about the superhero inside of you, inside of me, inside this store. There’s a superhero inside this store, I said? No, the power is in this store. Down the block the superhero is, healing and dealing, at least a few afternoons away.
I believed him, this circumstance producing kid, and started to consider the dove a swerving kind of adjective too.
***
Circular Logic by Lyle
Miracle healing power, they told me. Yeah, but whose miracle? I asked. It ain’t mine. Touching a tortilla isn’t going to fix a damn thing for me. We were all huddled around in a circle and I didn’t like it one bit. Circles had a way of coming back on themselves. I thought of that grilled cheese sandwich in Las Vegas. Maybe I had gotten it all wrong. But miracle healing power, they said. I don’t care, I shouted, but by then they weren’t listening to me anymore. They were saying names and dates and I could see that ole snake tail of my past coming right back around and I opened my mouth to take it all in even as I spewed and sputtered and collapsed and rose from the dead.
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