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Someone in an accent of seduction whispered salmon. Then someone filled a bucket up with sleep. Mermaidism in the Donnelly house was five sisters deep.

When I first heard you on the phone your voice had to be that '40s wartime voice for it to get under my skin like it did, after seven years asleep. You’re at the beginning of something, you said, and I’m at the end of something; but you didn’t go away, twice-born, three times, coming around, rough cello. Late days I want to drive to your grave, But I don’t belong to it.

The socks red with a white star in a crescent moon the shoes black red gold are to many like a warm foot in cold shoe leather to others a double knot in a life only as long as a shoelace but for all that on hot coals Translated by Oliver Pauley Die Socken rot mit weißem Stern in Sichelmond die Schuhe schwarz rot gold für viele ist es wie ein warmer Fuß im kalten Schuhwerk für andere ein Doppelknoten in einem nur schnürsenkellangen Leben aber das auf heißem Boden

Well aren't you the harsh necessity, As in what fear is for? It was the summer of You should have been there, Though the last thing I want Anywhere near me is you. Louche and thaumaturgic, You made my faith My foolishness— Easy as lying to trees. Essence of the inessential Is what you are, double rainbow, Extrinsic as blood is to stars, An empire not of death, But inspired by death, Farrago of arid precepts, A few cheap ideas about hope, The eschaton, alterity, All featuring you. What are the chances? Slim to none. But listen here, my fraud, my forger, I could close my eyes at any time. All I have to do is close my eyes.

At Waffle House, they fired her on the spot: “You talk too much!” She’d told her customers That “made” gets “mad” and “poet” goes to “pot” Without the letter e. The “amateurs,” She’d said, “inherit everything: the sand, The stars, the world that only God possesses.” While washing dishes with a bleeding hand, She’d told them, “through ‘possession’s’ double ‘esses’ There’s a line that cleaves; things come apart; ‘Refrain’ means both ‘hold back’ and ‘go again’; Things join in wholes of which they are a part.” She “touched” the people. Was it such a sin? Her broken pencil left a double line On my tab, both legible as one design.

When in the dumps, I hate the things That ordinarily I love. I loathe the lark that blindly sings; I hate the bland, blue sky above. The crocus, sneering on the lawn, Forsythia about to bloom— I'd like to see them dead and gone, Instead of filling life with gloom. But most of all, I do not care, While I am droning in my hive, To hear vivacious chums declare How great it is to be alive.

At first he seemed a child, dirt on his lip and the sun lighting up his hair behind him. All around us, the hesitation of year-rounders who know the warmer air will bring crowds. No one goes to their therapist to talk about how happy they are, but soon I’d be back in the dugout telling my batting coach how the view outside my igloo seemed to be changing, as if the night sky were all the light there is. Now, like two babies reaching through the watery air to touch soft fingers to soft forehead, like blind fish sensing a familiar fluttering in the waves, slowly, by instinct, we became aware. Off-field, outside the park, beyond the gates, something was burning. The smell was everywhere.

Nothin very bad happen to me lately. How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones, terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety. Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones, what could happen bad to Mr Bones? —If life is a handkerchief sandwich, in a modesty of death I join my father who dared so long agone leave me. A bullet on a concrete stoop close by a smothering southern sea spreadeagled on an island, by my knee. —You is from hunger, Mr Bones, I offers you this handkerchief, now set your left foot by my right foot, shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz, arm in arm, by the beautiful sea, hum a little, Mr Bones. —I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.

Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream; It was a theme For reason, much too strong for fantasy, Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yet My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it. Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truths, and fables histories; Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best, Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest. As lightning, or a taper's light, Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd me; Yet I thought thee (For thou lovest truth) an angel, at first sight; But when I saw thou sawest my heart, And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angel's art, When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st when Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then, I must confess, it could not choose but be Profane, to think thee any thing but thee. Coming and staying show'd thee, thee, But rising makes me doubt, that now Thou art not thou. That love is weak where fear's as strong as he; 'Tis not all spirit, pure and brave, If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have; Perchance as torches, which must ready be, Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me; Thou cam'st to kindle, goest to come; then I Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

Last night, all night the dream, the dead mother, my small sister, tiny, her mouth over my shoulder (screaming) like a knapsack when she heard the news, & my brother playing the stereo. I howled like the coyotes; myself. & saw the light outside below the window, my mother, young, playing with me at a rock, in some sunlight falling over us. I was small. An old & famous woman asked her questions: Who wrote this dream? I wanted to know. My brother thought it was our mother who wrote it when she was old. She did not die, he thought. But I knew, & called down to the cotton-head of her then, when she could not see or hear me. She would never hear me. I was not capable of talking then, yet, & she had died, after all, & the mother I call to tell the dream will not remember, after all she was not born then, yet, & needed the first mother to die before she could use her name & feed her children.