Glenna Luschei
	Feathers Everywhere I loved my stained and smelly bathrobe as much as my scrap of blanket that grandmother, showing mercy, would rescue from the trash time after time. That summer the girl at Paso Robles Park took me to meet her parents in their jalopy, a cardboard suitcase roped on top. The mother nursed a baby. Young as I was I understood their poverty. My friend introduced them as royalty. I understood family then. Next summer in Fresno I learned how chickens mate, and later about human sex, even more weird. Feathers everywhere. Bottom Feeders Life so overgrown, hard to remember only three years ago Queenie clear sailing, with her long ivory cape streaming behind. Her namesake: A Reina Santa Isabel, medieval Portugal, took bread from the castle to feed the poor. Her husband, Dom Dinis, founded the University where I studied in Coimbra, walking two miles up crooked steps to school. He said to Isabel, "Open your cape," and out fell roses. Queenie was magic too. When she floated by, the lotus bloomed. Wise, she knew that the lotus flourishes only in filthy water but one raccoon-masked night she disappeared. I grieved he took the most majestic one. Bill said, "She was wild. You have to let her go." Every morning she swam to meet me but now in the over growth the fish open up like vacuum cleaners. They can't tell if we're medievalist, icthyologist or raccoon. In this jungle we're all reduced to bottom feeders.