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Somewhere in Eden, after all this time, does there still stand, abandoned, like a ruined city, gates sealed with grisly nails, the luckless garden? Is sultry day still followed there by sultry dusk, sultry night, where on the branches sallow and purple the fruit hangs rotting? Is there still, underground, spreading like lace among the rocks a network of unexploited lodes, onyx and gold? Through the lush greenery their wash echoing afar do there still flow the four glassy streams of which no mortal drinks? Somewhere in Eden, after all this time, does there still stand, like a city in ruins, forsaken, doomed to slow decay, the failed garden?

1 About can mean near or nearly. A book can be about something or I can be about to do a thing and then refrain. To refrain is to stop yourself. A refrain is a repeated phrase. 2 This table is an antique from the early Machine Age. The indented circle within a circle motif which appears at three-inch intervals around the base may be a nod to craftsmanship or may be a summary dismissal of same. It is charming in its mute simplicity. 3 People will ask, "Why should we care about this unattractive character?" despite the fact that turning yourself into an admirable character has been considered gauche for as long as I can recall. The word "transparent" is often affixed to such efforts while the mystification surrounding the unflattering self-portrait at least provides some cover. Now someone will say, "You don't need cover unless you're standing naked at a window shouting, 'Look up here!'"

In ’29 before the dust storms sandblasted Indianapolis, we believed in the milk company. Milk came in glass bottles. We spread dye-colored butter, now connected to cancer. We worked seven to seven with no overtime pay; pledged allegiance every day, pitied the starving Armenians. One morning in the midst of plenty, there were folks out of context, who were living on nothing. Some slept in shacks on the banks of the river. This phenomenon investors said would pass away. My father worked for the daily paper. He was a union printer; lead slugs and blue smoke. He worked with hot lead at a two-ton machine, in a low-slung seat; a green-billed cap pulled low on his forehead. He gave my mother a dollar a day. You could say we were rich. This was the Jazz Age. All over the country the dispossessed wandered with their hungry children, harassed by the law. When the market broke, bad losers jumped out of windows. It was time to lay an elegant table, as it is now; corporate paradise; the apple before the rot caved in. It was the same worm eating the same fruit. In fact, the same Eden.

The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.

I’ve often wondered why she laughed On thinking why I wondered so; It seemed such waste that long white hands Should touch my hands and let them go. And once when we were parting there, Unseen of anything but trees, I touched her fingers, thoughtfully, For more than simple niceties. But for some futile things unsaid I should say all is done for us; Yet I have wondered how she smiled Beholding what was cavernous.

Thomas Edison loved a doll with a tiny phonograph inside because he made her speak. Is there any other reason to love a woman? Did she say the ghost of my conception or something equally demure? It’s hard to be sure how he feels when he holds me, I fall apart. I’m projecting here. He didn’t feel her first transgression was in having no expression. René Descartes, too, traveled alone with a doll-in-a-box he called his daughter.Francine, Francine... is it better to be silent and wait for everything we were promised? Or should we love them back, the way a train loves its destination, as if we have the machinery necessary for it?

Be precise authority is magic. When you think you've got it straight wax wane declination feel the movement under your hand one summer morning as you observe it set then rise that night. Always use a well-sharpened pencil followed by a good eraser. Watch the white emerge.

Because you’re gone, I take a book to bed: The Flame of Passion. Scabbard at his thigh, Lord Henry gets the girl. You’d only buy top Booklist picks. “The romance genre’s dead,” you’d say when promises of I-thee-wed lured me to bargain bins. I learned to lie about my day, hoard Harlequins on the sly while you were off at work, your office spread with red-inked proofs. But now it makes me yawn to read beyond the lovers’ wedding night. I close The Flame, not even halfway through. His sword grows dull while she goes on and on about how lovers must stay true. I’d write another ending, if I could, for you.

Seven years old, on loan to an uncle and a bundle of cash went missing. For three days locked in a room, beaten. The golden orbs of pennies roasted in an oven removed by tongs glisten on a child’s skin as she screams and screams. These round white scars that remain even today without pigment without the shadow of colour with only the ash’s afterglow. After telling that story you burnt your hand on the iron, burnt it yourself, your punishment for breaking silence. You rushed to the balcony but they pulled you back inside. You wanted to spit, to scream insults at the soldiers to stop them beating up the old man in the street. “Listen,” she said as she held you back, your mother. “Listen, you have to learn to say nothing.” Learn to be nobody. Learn to be the white wall that has no face and no tongue.

Her pencil poised, she's ready to create, Then listens to her mind's perverse debate On whether what she does serves any use; And that is all she needs for an excuse To spend all afternoon and half the night Enjoying poems other people write.