Surveillance Systems
Sound Navigation
For you it’s easy the slip the darkness me
my bones glow like gunshots on the wharf.
Before I even ask what are you swimming for
before I let slip a mess of wires out of my mouth
into the water. I get the sense someone is watching
for us I get the sense I should keep my mouth shut
when you kiss me this time swim off into the bay.
Put my ear to the planks and listen to water
pleating itself brackish in the pilings you weave
in by strokes kicking off the wires naked in the waves.
Want to follow you to that dry place below the bridge
where your chest is a paper lantern. Want to be gone
by the time the echo lets me know what you shouted
up to the train when it goes loud over the bridge.
If I get there if you make it back from if someone doesn’t
I would climb the tower dampen my luminous bones
in dressed-up flesh drop a handful of nickels down
in the river make a cloud of sound you could escape again.
About the Author
Katie Naughton lives in Brooklyn. She writes about science for kids and others, and is looking forward to bike-to-the-Rockaways season. She can be reached at kathleen.e.naughton@gmail.com
The Floating Woman by Megan Gilbert
Beavers are considered nuisances because of their dam-building and tree-cutting, which is particularly undesirable to landowners. They can be removed using live traps or lethal traps. Most lethal traps kill an animal with a mechanical blow. Although death comes quickly, it might not be instantaneous. If the trap is not set properly, you may get a bad or nonlethal capture. It takes more skill, experience, and time to set a lethal trap. Again, if you are not an experienced trapper, we strongly recommend that you seek hands-on training—especially before using body-gripping traps.
–New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and the NYS Integrated Pest Management Program.
They were spotted in the daytime, near a thatch of low-hanging trees. They were swimming, cooling off. It was the last day of July. The old woman who lived next to the low-hanging trees sat in a plastic chair in the shade, reading. She could hear the splashing, which was no news. The thwaps against the water’s surface were probably kids who had swum over from the public beach on the other side of the point, or one of those ladies who liked to swim across the lake for exercise. She turned a page then fanned herself; it was getting warm. She should go get her wide-brimmed hat.
Then she heard voices. A man’s and a woman’s. Thwap. The voices rose in pitch, the woman’s a bit of a shriek, the man’s growly and bellowing. “I’ll kill you!” Is that what she heard? She stood up, placing the book on the grass beside her chair. Thwap thwap yell. Man’s voice again, “I’ll fucking kill you,” this time softer, winded. She turned and went inside.
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Objects
- 1600 bars of silver
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- Body
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- Eyeglasses
- Fish
- Flying fish (kite)
- Formica dinette
- Freight train
- Giraffe
- Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks
- Grand Piano
- Green boat
- Headless Dutch Boy figurine
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- Kawasaki waverunner
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- State secrets
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- Submerged barge
- Surveillance Systems
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- Tea Pot
- Teredos & Gribbles
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- Toxins
- Toy airplane
- Volvo
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Body of Water
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