Now that you’ve gone away for five days,
I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,
where I want. Make biscuits and eat them

They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s
flat. They’ll be alone for another hour, and then
her friend will be back. Outside, it’s raining—

What a rough night! It’s either no dreams at all,
or else a dream that may or may not be
a dream portending loss. 

Where this floated up from, or why,
I don’t know. But thinking about this
since just after Robert called

Drawing paper down from the cupboard           sky
goes in at the top             scribble scrabble
green line grass for the bottom             filling

Tonight I hear machines at their dark work in the dark, I understand 
the sound they make among the gaps between the trees 

And there, on the machine’s edge, the outrage
of the tiniest rusty star

Folded, closed up, sheltered
beneath a wreath of bright green, in Eden
feeding on happy moths

Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
    quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti 

He’s gone from him forever,     and ever since he’s sought
his lips on the lips of every     boy he goes to bed with,
wanting to fool himself         into thinking those are the very