As For Real Wolves

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Lisa Olstein

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A bear’s body freezes after being shot

by a hunter a friend says a friend

 

learned from a video and only recoils

after the threat is gone. I’ve been

 

comparing us to an abused spouse who is just

starting to feel emancipation says another.

 

You try using your sociological imagination

when you’re face down frozen by fear

 

in the performance of your life for your life

(places, everyone) or by some other measure

 

of the ambient air. I get the funniest feeling

sometimes—a kind of visual grammar,

 

the cast of light in actual photons, something

moving with force. Just in case versus just

 

in time? Take your art into the narrowest places,

the dead man said, and set yourself free.