I felt my sin shift itself beneath the skin.

The thump of the newspaper on the porch
on Christmas Day, in the dark before dawn
yet after Santa Claus has left his gifts:

My grandmother used it, Dutch Cleanser, 
in the dark Shillington halls, 
in the kitchen darkened by the grape arbor, 

Be ever after merry,
My dear Miss Terriberry:
Enjoy a very very

His head and legs were like a watch work’s ticking,
but spaced by intervals of what seemed thought.

That women in their marble glory still
had pubic hair so startled Ruskin he
turned impotent, and had to be divorced.

Off, on—there must be something else,
some middle way, third eye, or shakti current.

Motion, motion.
Within the body cells
each nucleus rotates widdershins

Although stone nudes are everywhere—some crammed
two to a column, supple caryatids,
and others mooning in the Tuileries—

I walk along the shore.
Wind’s salt tongue licks my face.
And see—beyond the swells