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Gargoyle

I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth.  
 
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm.  
 
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
 
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

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