I am never getting married or having babies
after I saw what happened to these dogs we had
named Max and Phoebe. 

the summer she wore a bathing suit
she stood me in front of her
and was photographed.

We begin every night ignorant,
two xenophobes called in from exile,
pleased to the point of buoyant.

You must remove your sleepmask, haul it
from your eyes, sleep a white sleep without
slapping floodwaters—let it go,

Somebody’s aunt out swabbing her birdbath
with Lysol and the town paper mill down the block
is beginning to blister in a clean shock

How parched, how marrow-dust dry
they must get on their long surface and undersea
journeys—huge stuffed husks,

Thud, thud, all the sores go blind,
and over the basket of pears hover
brief addicted fruitflies.

One of these days she will lie there and be dead.
I’ll take her out back in a garbage bag
and bury her among my sons’ canaries,
the ill-fated turtles, a pair of angelfish:

Your glasses are strafed with sun.
The gravel above where your shoulders touch
detracts from the curve of your wife’s neck.

Wearing a plaster corset with a sickle of roses
curved beneath a breast, you are beautiful.