I can’t even sin, Nora’s back on the eaves, butt complacent as a nest:
gravity can’t seem to win.

Loved, we have no need for love;
thieves, surprised in other people’s houses, we wait for night,
we touch our bodies like jewels made of paste.

At one time, under this same title,
I told the whole story of the kidnapped girl
and her Mexican tortures.

A heron beat across the steaming marsh.
He heard each rush of wings, so still the air,

You were gravely pulling up his best necktie,
Smoothing down his collar for that calm journey.
He drew off the body. a limp, soiled garment,

No matter what, hold hard to me as breath .
Oh, black branches! We are not made for death.

Fumbling till she steered his blue mouth to nipple.
      “Oh, but he’s lovely.”

Epigrams, 56

When I began writing I felt like a constellation,
                                some new fixture in the sky,
a lamp with twenty wicks, or at least
                                an eternal flame. It was mostly a lie
I told myself, though a few

Iambi, 203

                                I’m not exactly from poverty, or from obscurity,
but I think it’s okay for me to complain.

                                Some people treat the right, or the ability
to make, or to talk about, poetry

                                as a matter of being born in the right place,
or as some kind of laying on of hands.

Without fear or fault, the green
Expanse of it drops off at acute
Angles, sudden and inconveniently,