This is how I began: a delicacy
to my mother, a scallop rocking in
her shell, one in thousands of my father's spawn.

It's raining women here in Cincinnati.
Parts of women, parts of one woman—
the police aren't really sure. Last week

You could feel a passion for invisibility: to be a fly on the wall,
the pitcher's ear, the child in the corner
with his eyes closed: you could grow fat on that, full of years.

With a great scuffle,
the meeting adjourned.
Calm turned to storm.

The high-pressure system followed us
from our apartment and out to where
the houses, scattered on the hills and set apart,

Of course it was animus projection
or neurosis or even a psychotic
episode. It was codependence and

God appeared to Dante as a cloud.
Dante had been lying on the ground

like a clod, compressed

Scrawling the letters of my name,
I found and changed what I became:

first, HERON LICE emerged,

The way had become unbearably slow, progress
imperceptible. Even his hunger had become
less, little more than a poorly remembered myth

A naked woman rides a naked man
and vamps, and moans, and both pretend to mount
the summit of desire, although in these