Read the excerpt from "Parsley” by Rita Dove.pulls on his boots, he stomps toher room in the palace, the one without curtains, the one with a parrotin a brass ring. As he paces he wonders Who can I kill today. And for a moment the little knot of screamsis still. The parrot, who has traveledall the way from Australia in an ivory cage, is, coy as a widow, practising spring. Ever since the morning his mother collapsed in the kitchen while baking skull-shaped candies for the Day of the Dead, the generalhas hated sweets. He orders pastries brought up for the bird; they arrive