16-17. / Sneak Peek 1

On the Bolo Knife A blade-long ruler. A hammer by way of its handle. Wet steel splitting a coconut in two. What Lapu Lapu held in one hand while waving Magellan’s head in the other.

They didn’t tell me right away. First there were greetings and cookies. My husband chatted with his father in the kitchen, where I slid the cooler onto a counter, moving down the stairs to call the boys up from the basement. Let’s wash our hands, I said, and we went through the motions.

When they come to pluck me, I appear neither girl nor boy, clam nor cock. I have neither hooves nor snout. But I do have claws; I can grunt and growl and show my teeth.

For Ryan Tracy   “And if the assumption of responsibility for one’s discourse leads to the conclusion that all conclusions are genuinely provisional and therefore inconclusive, that all origins are similarly unoriginal, that responsibility itself must cohabit with frivolity, this need not be cause for gloom.