The day we moved into our new home, my husband, Roger, dropped a box and out spilled his collection of vintage little green army men. A machine gunner got stuck upside down in a sidewalk crack and an infantryman stumbled toward the sewer grate.

After I slept with the woman who as a girl had been in the Frosted Flakes commercials, every day I imagined myself as Tony the Tiger a little more.

We are Good Boys.

We are in the Good Boy Club.

We follow the rules.

We do what we’re told.

In 1966, the residents of Pepperton County were perfectly happy to go to work, attend church, mow their lawns and make occasional love to a husband or wife they’d chosen when the moment seemed right, before the moment passed.

Well it turned out classically

my desire was to be desired, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t read

any of that stuff, I mean I’d read a bit. But I made no

connection between that and

me

when I drive past the body of a deer,

struck down in the middle of the road,

sometimes whole, sometimes not,

I’ll tell you what happened backwards

to erase the memory

ut never wear, the ones I double back for and pluck

from the rack on impulse, that I smuggle into dressing

rooms in my search for something that looks like anyone

The guys get a real kick out of the bird. There’s a cougar and a whale and one I think is an armadillo, but it’s the crow they’re all looking at—the way her black feathers shine against the white skin stretched over her collarbones.

Hey. You with the face. Can you keep a secret?

As it turns out, we can’t.