BRIAN HENRY teaches at the University of Georgia-Athens. He is editor and founder of Verse Press. His book Astronaut is forthcoming from Carnegie-Mellon Press. THE ASSASSIN FLASH AND RUMBLE in her coat pocket, she daggers       her way homeward, the body on the tarmac spreading its wares       ditchward, her left inside heel undoing itself, keys clicking       smacking the change back and forth between linen       and leg, indefinite faces no grace has adhered to       as the wind sharpens her shadow the hard way, fleck by fleck       by flesh / along the light on that cloud - lambent frieze - 2. the body in bald descent       an engine stalled in gear and veering to black, cross       by a cuneiform no flight abates, she rehearses the approach       to scour the sky black: she tracks the sound       in the light on that cloud 3. and recalls with surety the best route       for a bullet to take on its way through a body. FETCHED IN THE STORM In lieu of retraction or retreat, she pushes further into the interior addled by dusk. The wet means little cracks beneath, means a bare line of vision before. His distance grows, she hopes, with speed, to a less. This is how a story comes around - to scores already tallied, moments forgotten hastily, as quick or quicker than they'd happened. Whose story? not a thing to ask but to think about. Penetrating, she moves discernibly through the covering, metalís gleam in front of her, the sound of cutting absent. In front of her, just past where she can see, a man cannot but trip over the roots he thinks are reaching for him, his body gathering abrasions rapidly but with small pain. Each trip slows him, she does not trip and therefore gains, she does not trip and sees him sliding down a bank, and runs because she knows the river there - its depths no depths at all - because she prefers shooting down, coming down upon. He clutches at roots as he slides, at sticks, and stops at the river's edge to think a way across: he chooses to wade and swim as quick across as his body allows, will dive if she comes upon him shooting. She comes upon him singing.