A closer look reveals the blue-dark knot
undone, the torn tissues of the lips,
the disheveled velvets and violet silks
of a woman hurrying to a tryst

Suppose I say the hardest thing to say.
In a famous drawing two black silhouettes
gaze at each other, noses almost touching.

Where the bladderwort and water lily
give way to bulrushes and pickerelweed
and cattail heads nod hugely high,

Walking home from my powerless car
I pass through a dozen supper smells, each
more promising than anything I’ve ever cooked.

This time the mycorrhizal infection
at the crooked roots of a hazelnut tree
meets a set of conditions so knotted and invisible

Psychoanalysis
Pursued by a tiger in his sleep
he turned himself into a horse turd

for dinner, vacation, carnality,
I took up an ancient text on military strategy
hoping to find the miracle subterfuge,

To chart the body’s pull away from text—
from Wuthering Heights to the Analects,
hoping you might call. He says he can’t

where boy scouts gather in a tool shack,
jacking off to the sounds of Perry Como

winged conga lines parading
         the buzz of homo love songs