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The clew paying out through his fingers, a deftness that would bring him back to her, its softness the softness of skin, as if drawn from herself directly, the faint labial smell, guiding him up and out, as some dampness on the air might lead a stone-blind man to the light. Asterios dead for sure, his crumpled horn, his muzzle thick with blood, so at Delos they stopped, Theseus and the young Athenians, and stepped up to the "altar of horns" to dance a puzzle- dance, its moves unreadable except to those who'd walked the blank meanders of the labyrinth. And this was midday: a fierce sun, the blaze of their nakedness, the glitter of repetitions, a dazzle rising off the sea, the scents of pine and hyacinth. . . Well, things change: new passions, new threats, new fears. New consequences, too. Nowadays, we don't think much about Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne on the beach at Naxos, staring out at the coming years. But people still dance that dance: just common folk, those criss-cross steps that no one had to teach, at weddings and wakes, in bars or parks, as if hope and heart could meet, as if they might even now, somehow, dance themselves out of the dark.

I call my wife outdoors to have her listen, to turn her ears upward, beyond the cloud-veiled sky where the moon dances thin light, to tell her, “Don’t hear the cars on the freeway— it’s not the truck-rumble. It is and is not the sirens.” She stands there, on deck a rocking boat, wanting to please the captain who would have her hear the inaudible. Her eyes, so blue the day sky is envious, fix blackly on me, her mouth poised on question like a stone. But, she hears, after all. January on the Gulf, warm wind washing over us, we stand chilled in the winter of those voices.

I am the last woman off of the plane that has crashed in a cornfield near Philly, picking through hot metal for my rucksack and diaper bag. No black box, no fuselage, just sistergirl pilot wiping soot from her eyes, happy to be alive. Her dreadlocks will hold the smoke for weeks. All the white passengers bailed out before impact, so certain a sister couldn’t navigate the crash. O gender. O race. O ye of little faith. Here we are in the cornfield, bruised and dirty but alive. I invite sistergirl pilot home for dinner at my parents’, for my mother’s roast chicken with gravy and rice, to celebrate.

Because we are so stupid, the prizes in Cracker Jacks are now paper so they can be swallowed, ladders spackled with warnings. No getting within a hundred feet of Stonehenge because everyone wants to hack off a souvenir and the way home is clogged to one lane so whoever wants to can stare into a pothole until coming up with a grievance. I’d vote the greatest accomplishment of mankind is the pickle spear. God created paradise to tell us Get out! which is why we probably created God who doesn’t much like being created by ilk like us. No wonder it’s pediatrics every morning and toxicology by happy hour. Is it all in the mind, the dirty, dirty mind? Maybe God tried to turn you into a garbage can so you could be lifted by the truck’s hydraulic arms and banged empty. Maybe a snow cone so you could be sticky-sweet and dropped. Maybe a genital-faced bivalve to be dashed with Tabasco and eaten whole or, to his glory, produce a pearl.

Halfway between crib and cage the French language puts crate, a simple slatted box for transporting those fruits that fall ill at the least lack of air. Built in such a way that it can be broken down effortlessly after use, it is never used twice. It is really more perishable than the deliquescing foodstuffs that it carries. On the corners of streets that lead to the markets, it gleams like white wood without wood’s vanity. Still very new, and slightly surprised to find itself in this awkward position, having been thrown into the gutter without hope of retrieval, it remains a most likable object on whose fate we will not dwell for long. Translated from the French

Split the boy       —his thorax, throat Pierce-peel the craw: A jag-crystalled crust      —his black scoria, slag (not Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled) What no gizzard ground (could hope to grind) What would not mesh What would not smelt Embedded undigested there in meat

1. In the land of milk and cream delivered early and daily, and always in glass bottles, we care about good grooming and, of course, news of slurs and curs ... Can it really be that home becomes a place to be stranded? “I don’t see a single storm cloud anywhere in the sky, but I can sure smell rain,” out on the edge of Crawfordsville, Indiana, where the answers and questions become identical as evil twins. 2. Basketball ghosts bounce and sweat again in that second-floor gym in the middle of July— that never-to-be-forgotten home of the first-ever Boys State Championship. Rusty jump shots and long-ago corner hooks rim out in a stream of dusted sunlight. “Just to play the game, don’t you know, you know, no matter how much the sacrifice ... ” How searing afternoon’s vagueness now, dreamed in a daylong haze of headache pills downed at the General Lew Wallace Motor Lodge: how the arc of the ball rises to echoes of split-jump cheers in lubricated air, when phantom bodies strive and leap and go prostrate to that squeak of rubber on polished wood— in a game of shirts and skins. 3. You can only wonder how Ezra Pound dissected his time here, among tractors and proctors and temples of antebellum style, as he cooed sweet Greek in the ear of his secular Madonna ... Just now, two pigeons greet first daylight on the Green of Wabash College. Something to be said for being scandalized silly, and in more than one language when life becomes holier than the Crusades. And what’s more—didactic passions eventually drive you insane, thinks young EP, so what? Sew buttons, ha! And make it new always ... and always leave the door cracked open, a light on, and one foot on the floor. 4. “The meatloaf here’s not very good,” warns waitress Lucy, a pretty girl with a tooth missing. Indifferently, day proceeds utterly. Off Country Road X-10, out by Carcus Creek, driving past Minnie Betts’s florist shop and what’s left of the old city jail, you figure each small detail adds glory to any story. “Relax,” says Elton Bidwell, the county’s dead-buzzard collector, “I’ll take care of us all when we com’ on home.” 5. The town goes dark in a killer storm. Collective forgetting and forgiving occurs. But safety comes in many forms. In this vast black you get to thinking about giddy joys and little sorrows, the curse of full employment at minimum wage, and those conspicuous professors— their bowties and braces speaking to the ages and marking moments of learned unworthiness. Maybe, it’s vacuum-packed fear in a stage-managed town. Time to guess what’s behind each tiny crime and local leer, at once rancorous and baffling. Strangers need not apply. A few lights click on at the Shortstop Grille. These cruel weathers turn asphalt slick. The old intramurals begin again. 6. Early Sunday morning and a drunken Elton Bidwell is strung like a scarecrow on his front porch swing, deposited by Grand Wizards from the Odd Fellows Lodge bar late last night—reminder to those devoted folks heading up Church Street with songbooks in hand, that home sure proves just another place to be stranded.

I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. `Those breasts are flat and fallen now Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.' `Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart's pride. `A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent; But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.'

Someone was searching for a Form of Fire. Bird-eyed, the wind watched. Four deer in a blowsy meadow. As though it were simply random, a stately stare. What’s six and six and two and ten? Time that my eye ached, my heart shook, why. Mistaking lime for lemon. Dressed in cobalt, charcoal, thistle—and control. If they had more they would need less. A proposal from the squinting logician. Seems we are legal, seems we are ill. Ponderous purpose, are you weather, are you wheel? Gold with a heart of cinder. Little blue chip dancing in the light of the loom. Mistress, May-girl, whom will you kiss? The death of water is the birth of air.

I was born drunk & paisley, vestige from the womb. My face laughed into itself— eyes sank into earlobe & nostrils warped into seahorse. I was vanilla bean & Mexican vanilla & amniotic dessert, & my mother did everything she could not to devour me. I became comino & ajo & hibiscus— all good for grinding. Mocajete, fist, & knuckle decomposing mass & matter, baby & mother. When she tried to stillbear me it hurt until she cried diamonds while my father was swapping spit with the agave.