The plant etched on the wall sits in its pot
as calm as anything—
as any thing not

No island is a man
lonely on all four sides
with the door left unknocked

I knew the length of an average penis
   was five to seven inches, a fact
I learned upstairs in the stacks marked 610

Possibly a child is not damaged immediately
but only after some time has passed.
When the parent who sits on the edge

Andrew works in the kitchen He’s going
to get me out of here.

My boyfriend doesn’t believe me.

It is seven A.M and raining
when I awaken in my berth
in Kansas City. Mo. The Midwest.

1. After years away I was back in London visiting a friend who lived in Kensington in one of those cheap council flats that  in my day poor people like me fought for. He had a few people  in; some I knew; some I didn’t. They sidled between the furniture and the stacked books. A bitter smell came from marigolds in a vase.

He wanted to tell her the weekend idea was ‘neat,’
But he kept hearing tome If repeat the word ‘funny.’
She named the names of trees. flowers: sycamore‚ tulip.

1. A mother’s lifelong rage. The slow burn
of a wire behind an old house wall, its paper
ornamental to the last, going

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze
of these skeletal figures affects
the disposition of those grinning candies