1.

Max, I lean a photo of Josephine Baker
in this box lined with black construction paper,

I keep returning to that window
in the mountains of southern Bavaria.

                                               I’m pushing the halves open

What about one of Michelangelo’s last Pietas
in the maze of outbuildings at Sforza Castle, the dead Christ
visually carrying his mother

                 Is it cardinals

that separate seed from the yellow blades of rye
the way braille comes up with the fingertips,

I remember erecting a screened-in porch
for a house I lived in, the staple gun
all afternoon like a giant mosquito