A boy drowns in a lake. Another opens
his head against a steering wheel. Another
goes downtown. Into a boardroom. Into

And then what? Then I thought of
What I first remembered:
Underneath some porch with Gide.

To write about age you need to take something and 
break it.
(This is an art that has always loved young women.
And silent ones.)

Never before such a distant season of derision. 
Across town, the silo siren heralds an encore to panic. 

Even the moon has its own snail,
Gnomic, removed
Under miles of water, its pale

They put a roof over our heads.
Each tile was a slab of clay laid over a
thigh and bent until it dried bent,

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,

I am not a flower.
I am a chunk of meat
sprayed by the department-store cosmetic technicians,

Soon you’re going thirty miles per hour
through slush and they’re hardly moving,
barefoot but they’re catching up.

What gift is this the day forces
upon the hapless tangerine tree?
It is the gift of sunlight for chlorophyll