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Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser In the hothouse Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are Glass and my privacy comes from the apple-geraniums, Violets, ferns, marigolds, and white mayflags. I get my meals With the janitor and his wife and all of the books are mine To use. I scour, sweep, and dust. I hope you don’t think of me As a runaway? I remember your kindness, Your lessons in reading and writing on the piazza. My journey was unusual. I saw some of the war And it was terrible even far up into the North. My first fright was at a train depot outside Memphis Where some soldiers found me eating not yet ripened Quinces and grapes, they took me prisoner: first I helped some children carry tree limbs to the woodbox Of the locomotive, then, I was shown to a gentleman In the passenger car who was searching for his runaway Negress in a purple dress; he wouldn’t identify me, And I was thrown in with about forty stray blacks into An open boxcar and soon we were moving, next to me A man was sucking on the small breasts of a girl Maybe twelve years of age, across from them A sad old woman smiled as she puffed on an old cigar end, By afternoon she was dead, her two friends Just kicked her out so that she rolled down into pasture Frightening some hogs that ran off into a thicket. The girl next to me whimpered and shook. Those quinces Just ran straight through me and all I could do was Squat in one corner that was supplied with ammonia-waters And hay. We were given that night Confederate uniforms To mend and when the others slept I dressed in three Shirts and trousers and leapt from the moving train, The padding helped some but I couldn’t walk the next day. I hid in a shack that seemed lonely but for a flock Of turkeys, some young hens, and a corncrib with tall Split palings. The next morning from a hill I watched field-workers on a tobacco plantation, it took Two men to carry a single leaf like a corpse from A battle scene. That night I found a horse with a bit In its mouth made of telegraph wire. He carried me up all The way to Youngstown.Chloe, you must Learn to swim in the pond and to ride the old sorrel.

The dog licks my hand as I worry about the left nipple of the woman in the bathroom. She is drying her hair, the woman whose left nipple is sore. We looked this evening for diagonal cuts or discoloration or bite marks from small insects that may be in our bed. It is a good bed, a faithful bed. A bed that won’t be hurt by the consideration we gave to the possibility of small though disproportionately strong insects in our bed. The blow-dryer sounds like a jet taking off. The first time I flew to Brussels, people began the journey happy but ended with drool on their shirts. She is drying her hair though she has never been to Brussels. Drying her hair though she could be petting a dog. Drying her hair while having red thoughts about what the pain in her nipple means. I would not dry my hair in such a moment but I am bald. The body of the woman has many ways to cease being the body of the woman. I have one way to be happy and she is that way. I would like to fly with her to Brussels. We would not be put off by the drool. This is what happens when people sleep. We would buy postcards of the little boy who saved Brussels when he peed on a fire. We would be romantic in public places. For the moment these desires can best be furthered by petting a dog. I’m also working on this theory. That sometimes a part of the body just hurts. That the purpose of prayer is to make the part of the body that sometimes just hurts the little toe or appendix. Something vestigial or redundant. Something that can be jettisoned. I have no reason to use the word cancer while petting a dog. Here is a piece of a second during which a jet is not flying nor is it on the ground. I’m working on a theory that no one can die inside that piece of a second. If you are comforted by this thought you are welcome to keep it.

With a boil the size of an egg protruding from her right hip, she knows what I must do, and to stall me has locked herself inside the bathroom, bargaining for a way out. But it’s too late: I’ve seen the oozing wounds stopped up with bits of toilet paper and tape, the scarified pockets that crater the surface of her arms, buttocks, thighs. A mean fix torched her last vein years ago, and she’s been banging the dope ever since, puncturing her body like a juju doll. She wants to kick, but not now. I’m not gonna lie to you, she says in a velvet voice. I already know what she’s after: something stronger than local, a few Percocet, a shot of Demerol before she’ll let me begin. All I can tell you is, when the abscess finally drains the odor is so foul it’s evil. And I’m not sure, driving home later that night, still smelling the pallid citrus, whether it’s merely hallucination, the way her memory inhabits me; or if being in that same room, inhaling that same air, made some of her part of me. And whose veins are these, beginning to twitch?

i want her tin skin. i want her militant barbie breast, resistant, cupped, no, cocked in the V of her elbow. i want my curves mountainous and locked. i want her arabesque eyes, i want her tar markings, her curlicues, i want her tin skin. she is a tree, her hair a forest of strength. i want to be adorned with bottles. i want my brownness to cover all but the silver edges of my tin skin. my sculptor should have made me like her round-bellied maker hewed her: with chain- saw in hand, roughly. cut away from me everything but the semblance of tender. let nothing but my flexed foot, toeing childhood, tell the night-eyed, who know how to look, what lies within. —after alison saar’s “compton nocturne”

In goes the cafeteria worker in her hairnet. In goes the philosophy teacher explaining the theory of eternal return, and Anton Stadler with his clarinet, still owing money to Mozart. In goes Mozart. Everyone flopped into the creel of the happy fisherman, everyone eaten. Every river is Lethean, so why should we care if it’s not the same river? I hate how everything changes, tree to failing term paper, chatelaine to beheaded plotter, drug dealer to narc. The heart softening faster than cereal but then hardening to a relic which turns into another line of depressed poetry to recite to the next eager trainee anxious to be more than lint. Going up, you’re also going down, so either way, as your mother said,Be nice. When she went in, she was very thin. Earth, air, fire, water, mother. Fish pulse slowly under the river ice.

Herbert Glerbett, rather round, swallowed sherbet by the pound, fifty pounds of lemon sherbet went inside of Herbert Glerbett. With that glob inside his lap Herbert Glerbett took a nap, and as he slept, the boy dissolved, and from the mess a thing evolved— a thing that is a ghastly green, a thing the world had never seen, a puddle thing, a gooey pile of something strange that does not smile. Now if you’re wise, and if you’re sly, you’ll swiftly pass this creature by, it is no longer Herbert Glerbett. Whatever it is, do not disturb it.

"When I hit her on the head, it was good, and then I did it to her a couple of times,— but it was funny,—afterwards, it was as if somebody else did it... Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line. Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay, tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss, hop out and do it to her... The whole buggy of them waiting for me made me feel good; but still, just like I knew all along, she didn't move. When the body got too discomposed, I'd just jack off, letting it fall on her... —It sounds crazy, but I tell you sometimes it was beautiful—; I don't know how to say it, but for a minute,everything was possible—; and then, then,— well, like I said, she didn't move: and I saw, under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud: and I knew I couldn't have done that,— somebody else had to have done that,— standing above her there, in those ordinary, shitty leaves... —One time, I went to see Dad in a motel where he was staying with a woman; but she was gone; you could smell the wine in the air; and he started, real embarrassing, to cry... He was still a little drunk, and he asked me to forgive him for all he hadn't done—; but, What the shit? Who would have wanted to stay with Mom? with bastards not even his own kids? I got in the truck, and started to drive, and saw a little girl— who I picked up, hit on the head, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then buried, in the garden of the motel... —You see, ever since I was a kid I wanted to feel things make sense: I remember looking out the window of my room back home,— and being almost suffocated by the asphalt; and grass; and trees; and glass; just there, just there, doing nothing! not saying anything! filling me up— but also being a wall; dead, and stopping me; —how I wanted to see beneath it, cut beneath it, and make it somehow, come alive... The salt of the earth; Mom once said, 'Man's spunk is the salt of the earth...' —That night, at that Twenty-nine Palms Motel I had passed a million times on the road, everything fit together; was alright; it seemed like everything had to be there, like I had spent years trying, and at last finally finished drawing this huge circle... —But then, suddenly I knew somebody else did it, some bastard had hurt a little girl—; the motel I could see again, it had been itself all the time, a lousy pile of bricks, plaster, that didn't seem to have to be there,—but was, just by chance... —Once, on the farm, when I was a kid, I was screwing a goat; and the rope around his neck when he tried to get away pulled tight;—and just when I came, he died... I came back the next day; jacked off over his body; but it didn't do any good... Mom once said: 'Man's spunk is the salt of the earth, and grows kids.' I tried so hard to come; more pain than anything else; but didn't do any good... —About six months ago, I heard Dad remarried, so I drove over to Connecticut to see him and see if he was happy. She was twenty-five years younger than him: she had lots of little kids, and I don't know why, I felt shaky... I stopped in front of the address; and snuck up to the window to look in... —There he was, a kid six months old on his lap, laughing and bouncing the kid, happy in his old age to play the papa after years of sleeping around,— it twisted me up... To think that what he wouldn't give me, he wanted to give them... I could have killed the bastard... —Naturally, I just got right back in the car, and believe me, was determined, determined, to head straight for home... but the more I drove, I kept thinking about getting a girl, and the more I thought I shouldn't do it, the more I had to— I saw her coming out of the movies, saw she was alone, and kept circling the blocks as she walked along them, saying, 'You're going to leave her alone.' 'You're going to leave her alone.' —The woods were scary! As the seasons changed, and you saw more and more of the skull show through, the nights became clearer, and the buds,—erect, like nipples... —But then, one night, nothing worked... Nothing in the sky would blur like I wanted it to; and I couldn't,couldn't, get it to seem to me that somebody else did it... I tried, and tried, but there was just me there, and her, and the sharp trees saying, 'That's you standing there. You're... just you.' I hope I fry. —Hell came when I saw MYSELF... and couldn't stand what I see..."

Nothing has changed. They have a welcome sign, a hill with cows and a white house on top, a mall and grocery store where people shop, a diner where some people go to dine. It is the same no matter where you go, and downtown you will find no big surprises. Each fall the dew point falls until it rises. White snow, green buds, green lawn, red leaves, white snow. This is all right. This is their hope. And yet, though what you see is never what you get, it does feel somehow changed from what it was. Is it the people? Houses? Fields? The weather? Is it the streets? Is it these things together? Nothing here ever changes, till it does.

The day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees. When I tell you the day is a poem I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening. The sky is listening; the sky is as hopeful as I am walking into the pomegranate seeds of the wind that whips up the seawall. If you want the poem to take on everything, walk into a hackberry tree, then walk out beyond the seawall. I’m not far from a room where Van Gogh was a patient—his head on a pillow hearing the mistral careen off the seawall, hearing the fauvist leaves pelt the sarcophagi. Here and now the air of the tepidarium kissed my jaw and pigeons ghosting in the blue loved me for a second, before the wind broke branches and guttered into the river. What questions can I ask you? How will the sky answer the wind? The dawn isn’t heartbreaking. The world isn’t full of love.

for Yehuda Amichai Though you live in a little country, crammed and crisscrossed with debris, the past oppressive many times over— where you buy your grapes David, pausing, eyes a fiery dark girl, a lusty song riding his breath, the old dance urgent at his body; where you buy your bread Christ, stumbling, stoops to heavy lumber— you insist on your own loves and griefs, on living your own life. So you love this city, but mainly as it goes on living its own life, across its roofs the lines flapping, not gaudy banners, but sheets and diapers, pants and slips, as if rehearsing private pleasures. And though you know you cannot win, you play the game with all the skill and love that you can muster, hoping to keep it, keep it going, whatever the fierceness in it, while you learn the repertoire of your opponent’s wrist, the repertoire your own commands, with every stroke surprising you, as in a woman’s glance the abundance glinting of her passion stored away. Those opposing roles, victor, victim both, when they require re-enacting, the moon as ever plays the luminous dome above your god-and-man-scarred rock, responsive to each nuance of the light informing it with this, the latest scene. The sweat you’ve shared between you, juices drying on your hands and moon- lit belly, swirls out of the rutted, stain- stiff sheets a fragrance stronger, more anointing, than the myrrh, the frank- incense the magi brought, a gleam that would eclipse their beaten gold.