The coat of Italian red eyes me. Wool
Unraveling from abuse,
Creased and spent at the armpits.

If you find me nocturnal and flawed
Look again. Because tonight
I looked at me as though you were looking.

It’s time to leave again. She unplugs the fridge
and watches until the orange coils on its back
have faded down to gray. She turns off the gas.
She papers the windows in layers from the outside,
because if she doesn’t, the moon will reflect in the panes
like a lamp in every room. And then the house will still
seem lived in. And then how to move on?
The last thing she does, always, is go with them
one by one into their rooms and hold them up
to pluck the glow-in-the-dark stars from the ceiling.

The obverse of the sanguinary Turkey
Carpet I figured I was looking for‚
Festooned with geometric shapes in murky

She shapes the moral traveller 
A sphere where she is in command, 
And on a lower level her 

Time's one-way traffic won't reverse
Summer's sentimental course
Or force the headlong universe

While Queen of Colchis, I believe, I made
Available to you my magic aid.
That was the period at which the dread

They broke into houses,
my sisters. The empty ones,
just built, where nobody had yet
tried to sleep. Little mounds
of sawdust still in the corners,
no floorboards loose.

He was struck with awe at the sight of them:
a shoal lifting above the water's surface;
each head trained to his voice's timbre,

It’s the broken phrases, the fury inside him.
Squiggling alto saxophone playing out rickets
And jaundice, a mother who tried to kill him