In the Kyi Valley of Tibet, a snow-white desert
where an orchestra of lamas performs by starlight for the gods,
it is said that when we near death, and may least suspect it,

Who's to say where the man ends,
the world begins; what it is
that wakes him in a visible sweat,

For the base I prefer a paste of unscented soap, egg white, & glue or gelatin, often peroxide—
never, as do some of my competitors, chewed muslin strips or (loathsome!) bits of animal tissue!
Though receiving but five dollars each night at the lyceum (a dollar at home),

My daughter screams: I don't believe in  t h i s  God.
I don t believe in an God.
And she escapes into tears over Kafka's Castle.

What happens in this world happens in gold,
the metal in our dreams that signals immortality
bright fame, undying fire, the hour dipped

Suburbs shrill with Nintendo warriors.
Ten o clock: a queasy Pax Romana.
The ears of our mother's cancer over.

It's all talk isn't it, emblem
and suggestion, it's either tremulous stutter
or taunting display: flashy but fleshless, a con man

We think they go well together—the translucent
vanilla orchid, the slipper orchid, the ginger
fragrances of the fiddle leaf, the swollen,

The gargle of water through the pipes
The rattle of water in the ceramic tub,
and the day is washed off, but what's clean?

Days and nights of the most and largest changes
in her tenth year. Absolute time had always been near,
but in that year it entered her seemingly