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Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is available for preorder, in regular hardcover and
limited-edition fur-covered.

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Jennifer Connelly
Sestina.

BY TERENCE WINCH

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 The boy returns home with blue hair.
 The dog understands everything we say. 
 He is wearing an lampshade around his neck. 
 His left hind leg is stapled closed. 
 The veterinarian says there is no reason for God
 because the universe is just a dog's dream. 

 We can all agree that Jennifer Connelly is a dream. 
 Almost naked, in a thong, cloaked in her long black hair, 
 her every move is proof for the existence of God. 
 The boy with blue hair is not willing to say
 why his lips are sealed, his mind made up, his door closed. 
 I am not wearing a lampshade around my neck. 

 My wife once owned a jacket with "Great Neck"
 printed on the back. Before we met I had a dream 
 about her name. I waited until the restaurant closed
 to tell her she had dazzling movie-star hair. 
 In fact, she is just as beautiful as, let us say, 
 the astonishing Jennifer Connelly, so help me God. 

 The boy and the dog are friends with God. 
 They claim they feel his hot breath on their necks. 
 Unfortunately, they don't like what He has to say.
 I'd like to take this occasion to daydream
 briefly once again about Jennifer Connelly's hair
 and the rest of her: extraordinary. That's it. Case closed. 

 When I got to the church at midnight, it was closed
 tighter than the eyes and ears of our good friend God. 
 Frankly, in that proverbial foxhole, I'd take Madalyn O'Hair
 over the Pope. The boy's upstairs playing bottleneck
 guitar. The dog is drunk on painkillers, dreaming
 that if he could talk, he'd know just what to say. 

 O Jennifer, there is still so much left to say 
 but my time is up, it's late, everything is closed. 
 I want to crawl into bed, past the dog, and dream
 of the sex palaces of Heaven, where everyone is the God
 of love, and you and me and my wife are racing neck and neck
 with the erotic angels of Paradise, but I win by a hair! 

 New Orleans, like you, is now a dream. Maybe I'll call this "The Hair
 of the Dog," who, by the way, has become an incredible pain in the neck.
 What more can I say, except that in Waking the Dead, you played God. 

 

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