Gone Lawn
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Gone Lawn 32
Vernal Equinox, 2019

Featured artwork, En Sof, by brothers Fabio Lastrucci and Paolo Lastrucci.

New Works

Erich Brumback

The Sea of Knowledge


These things I will never know:

1.   Who was in the truck that pulled up to the storage facility. Where Chris went
      when we scattered. Why there was a huge hole in the south wall.

2.   Why the moon was so energizing to me that night but had a nearly sedative
      effect on you. Why I had to get up and run around the block to get it to
      leave me alone.

3.   How deep the flooded quarry stretched after the shelf dropped off. How
      many degrees the water temperature plummeted after I willed myself past
      the edge. What, if anything, rested at the bottom.

4.   What, if any, astronomical event was taking place. What, if any, human event
     was taking place in response to it.

5.   What kind of aircraft it is that has sunken deep inside of me. I can only feel
      one wing sticking up from the sand; too much of the rest of it has been
      buried.

6.   Why I never felt like that any other night. Why I didn't just close the blinds.
      Why I ever thought I was better at standing still.

7.   Why Chris never mentioned that my family friend had raised him through
      childhood. Why he only ever said that he knew him.

8. Why any business would continuing storing things in a facility with a huge
      hole in the south wall.

9. Why the seas on the moon were named so much more evocatively than the
      seas on Earth (especially since they're not even seas).


Erich Brumback's essays have appeared in Territory, Quarterly West and Entropy. He currently lives in the Willamette Valley.