Jim Gourley
	Descent From Heaven A scab-faced guy on a motorcycle stops dead beside me and turns off the key, his split, swollen lips, the steady lost stare says maybe this time it's it – this here this now beside this stupa. Sometimes it happens this way. So close we are I can smell the smoke of dung fires and cigarettes, the thick stink of one, then the other. His right hand still on the throttle is thick knuckled and bruised from battles, and I think of Agamemnon arriving at what he thinks of as home – maybe it was his brother or the wife that set the sails, but it was all so long ago he's not quite sure anymore. So on this windless afternoon beside the mud-walled temple he decides it's not worth telling or staying any longer and turns finally the key, kicking the cycle into life, and for a reason or not he spares me.