The point is that love & love alone
holds up my feet as they step from
Bourbon to Rampart Street

Memory brings us back to such a place—
the rows of photinia, each leaf a red flame
(blood-tinged, almost) violent in sunlight,

They come in many sizes—small and faint, loud and 
thunderous. And it’s a problem, what to do with them,
they won’t rise up to heaven where ears have the power

In a dim room above the freightyards, next to an old brass bed, an angel is taking off his wings. He winces a little as he eases the straps that run down into his chest: the beat of the wings is the beat of the heart.

What gift is this the day forces
upon the hapless tangerine tree?
It is the gift of sunlight for chlorophyll

My best idea so far had been
to take a girl to a half-built house
and feel up her breasts, but bras back then

I am not a flower.
I am a chunk of meat
sprayed by the department-store cosmetic technicians,

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,

Soon you’re going thirty miles per hour
through slush and they’re hardly moving,
barefoot but they’re catching up.

There are days I can understand
why you would want to board
broad back of some ship