It's true: I am a coward. The other night,
at dinner, I neglected to tell you how much
I detest your latest novel. Had you asked me,

The idea of being tried by "A Jury Of One's Peers,"
Which, as we all know, is the pillar & pride of our American
   system of jurisprudence, among others.

Dear Emile, I'm tolerating the tribute
of these flowers in the garden you once planted—
their modulating wits, the conspiratorial

I agree, O heart, that my poetry is not easy to take in.
When they hear my work, experienced poets
Suggest I should write something easier to understand.

I do not live in Niger, but once
a man begged me to stop living
my life in Long Island City

Even I can see the flowers are up. I take
like wild vine to my bed. And may I have
a word with the miser measuring out my joys.

When you wrote about Hotel Ikao to your mother,
eating rice and tea and tea and rice,
you were sitting again where tuners

I guess like losing anything, I thought
it was coming back at first. And then days
crowded round with nowhere else to go—

Outside my window, branches are breaking off the trees. The sound of glass shattering
fills my afternoons. I tell myself, this is natural for March: the frozen rain coating each limb.
The weight, the breaking begins when the sky turns plum—we are at tea (the children try

Already, the moon. What wouldn’t come with such
A moon? Invisible stars foretell
The precious night. What wouldn’t come, as bees