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| FEATURES | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ABOUT US | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SERVICES | | | | | | | | | | | | On the Phantom Estate Money is the sun at night, spirit is a parrot. What is the thing? A public assembly on a hill, a hill the color of sage or money. The assembly sounds like birds and what it says is that in another world we will not matter. At night the hill is the color of night, sage is the color of night and money sleeps in the thing. It’s even trained to say this thing whose upper limit is another and whose lower limit music, the sound of the sun in that other world. To get there a coin is placed in the mouth of the dead—this the silent music of the thing, the untrained speech of the dead. They are deported into space as spirit and reassemble under the hill. The sun returns, and the birds. —Geoffrey G. O’Brien Geoffrey G. O’Brien is the author of The Guns and Flags Project. His second book, Green and Gray, will be published in 2007. Originally published in the March/April 2006 issue of Boston Review | |