riding in the pick-up
between the father and the son
I hardly know the older

Maria, you are dead.
But you probably knew that.
We miss you.

It is Sunday, day of roughhousing. We are let out in the woods. The young boys wrestle and butt their heads together like sheep—a circle forms; claps and shouts fill the air. The women, brown and glossy, gather round the banjo player, or simply lie in the sun, legs and aprons folded.

In her dream
the wind blew her vagina out the bedroom
down the Spanish steps

“Uh.” Wayman says. “I think my car has been stolen.”
Well, the voice demands, has it been stolen
or hasn’t it? “I guess it has.’” Wayman says.

The professors with their words.
the secretaries with their papers
and the service people with their labor

I put the bacon into the pan.

It lies there, lank and perfectly relaxed.

You kneel at the stream
to drink from your hands.

we stand in profile perfectly still
against the bulletin board

you stood close to the boy, bored,
looking off into the vanishing point