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Samuel Drowns really was his
name—
He tapped the sleepy letters into
place
and made his name hover in the light
of his computer screen before he sent it away—
folded back and gone like a page,
turning.
Fragments of finished lives
climbed up on the screen and fought for place:
There was a Samuel Drowns, Department of English
somewhere in the States, Captain Samuel Drowns
wrote about stripping and cleaning the FN rifle.
A Samuel Drowns sailed in 1801 from Ireland,
came in ninth in a 2002 bicycle race.
Samuel was president of the Irish Pistol Association
and the Samuel from a fishing vessel was lost at sea
off the coast of Nova Scotia, presumed drowned.
This was too much for Samuel, he turned his eyes
away, hating guns, the idea of being
a simple fisherman, wiped from the deck
of a ship like a doll swept from a child’s bed.
Sam lifted his body away from the computer,
and dropped it again in front of the TV.
He turned it on and it began to scream.
Samuel
Drowns, at Thirty
by Alex Boyd
from: Brick and
Bone,
©2004
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