everything else is salvageable
 
1.     The girl who learned to shoplift   from her mother   builds websites for old family photos:   Here is the alcoholic grandfather   and the aunt with pancreatic cancer   and that Christmas everyone posed   with faces as serious as the 19 th  century.   Digitization as affirmation—   her story will not be stolen.     2.     The archivist’s friend was stabbed   leaving a piano concert at 23.   Her blood slick black in the dim parking lot.   The man moved on to guns   and the archivist nursed   a fear of flickering street lamps.        3.     The child who fled his empty house   for the thrum of the street   stabs a man in prison   but sends his daughter to college   and watches her fall   from an airplane, holds his breath   until her parachute opens. She flies   toward him, a nylon flower   billowing behind her.     4.     The ex-gang member considered   his past a fading tattoo   until old enemies came for his son.   The boy’s headstone shows him stone-faced;   the cursive promise...