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A husband puts an afghan over the dead goat’s torso, combs the knots out of  her beard. The goat smells chalk, wonders when the riders will come in their wool pakols red from walnuts, spurs chirring like castanets. The buzkashi whips will grow damp in their mouths, their rope belts slowly twisting in place. She knows not to be devoured is a perfect sentiment because she has thoughts to gather, faces to grow, hunger this morning and no throat, only the song in her teeth that goes on indefinitely as he saws off each hoof, just above the ankle, her knees bent for praying. Her head is axed. Her collar falls to the ground, its circle unbroken. She looks to see how deep is the pool of  blood is a river of  no one becoming her. With salt in her heart she’ll stay good for days. He’s been to her like her father he killed. He’s been to her like the father he killed. He turns her face to the window: mountains oddly still in the milk broth of oblivion. Intercourse: the sun drove a man in the ground like a stake.

Gregarious in hunger, a flock of twenty turn circles like whorls of barbed wire, no spot below flown over uncanvassed. The closer to death the closer they come, waiting on wings with keen impatient perseverance, dark blades lying in wake until age or wound has turned canter into carcass or near enough for them to swoop scrupulous in benediction, land hissing, hopping, tearing, gorging. no portion, save bone, too durable to digest. What matters cannot remain.

Thinking to see them there, captains industrious in morning sun, I crack the egg’s tender yellow head Love comes to me un- repentant, toward it all vectors converge repeating, like moment of the necessary form I pluck a feather from your neck On the page one alights without permission, or love is an assemblage beginning each day identical, palpable I remarks of, is it that music or need edits my body two people leave a shopping mall with goods, death squad hovering high a streetlamp Call your mother, stay up late to watch the neighborhood undressing light, like multiple phone calls connected then hung up, get the family together soon, watch American bison overtake the field filling a vehicle lane in early snow obstructed I paused To see it, their dark furs shaking enormous out of trees they descended from the line of sky respond to a much deeper instinct we were then back on our way input later to the search bar I love keywords, like love is an exodus I imagine you sleeping, then a pyramid or chandelier throwing sunlight An absence emerges, sharp I regard the whole practice of it touch it

A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past. B, in love with A, receives an unsigned letter in which the writer states that she is the mistress of A and begs B not to take him away from her. B, compelled by circumstances to be a companion of A in an isolated place, alters her rosy views of love and marriage when she discovers, through A, the selfishness of men. A, an intruder in a strange house, is discovered; he flees through the nearest door into a windowless closet and is trapped by a spring lock. A is so content with what he has that any impulse toward enterprise is throttled. A solves an important mystery when falling plaster reveals the place where some old love letters are concealed. A-4, missing food from his larder, half believes it was taken by a “ghost.” A, a crook, seeks unlawful gain by selling A-8 an object, X, which A-8 already owns. A sees a stranger, A-5, stealthily remove papers, X, from the pocket of another stranger, A-8, who is asleep. A follows A-5. A sends an infernal machine, X, to his enemy, A-3, and it falls into the hands of A’s friend, A-2. Angela tells Philip of her husband’s enlarged prostate, and asks for money. Philip, ignorant of her request, has the money placed in an escrow account. A discovers that his pal, W, is a girl masquerading as a boy. A, discovering that W is a girl masquerading as a boy, keeps the knowledge to himself and does his utmost to save the masquerader from annoying experiences. A, giving ten years of his life to a miserly uncle, U, in exchange for a college education, loses his ambition and enterprise. A, undergoing a strange experience among a people weirdly deluded, discovers the secret of the delusion from Herschel, one of the victims who has died. By means of information obtained from the notebook, A succeeds in rescuing the other victims of the delusion. A dies of psychic shock. Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, “Boris Karloff.” Silver coins from the Mojave Desert turn up in the possession of a sinister jeweler. Three musicians wager that one will win the affections of the local kapellmeister’s wife; the losers must drown themselves in a nearby stream. Ardis, caught in a trap and held powerless under a huge burning glass, is saved by an eclipse of the sun. Kent has a dream so vivid that it seems a part of his waking experience. A and A-2 meet with a tragic adventure, and A-2 is killed. Elvira, seeking to unravel the mystery of a strange house in the hills, is caught in an electrical storm. During the storm the house vanishes and the site on which it stood becomes a lake. Alphonse has a wound, a terrible psychic wound, an invisible psychic wound, which causes pain in flesh and tissue which, otherwise, are perfectly healthy and normal. A has a dream which he conceives to be an actual experience. Jenny, homeward bound, drives and drives, and is still driving, no nearer to her home than she was when she first started. Petronius B. Furlong’s friend, Morgan Windhover, receives a wound from which he dies. Thirteen guests, unknown to one another, gather in a spooky house to hear Toe reading Buster’s will. Buster has left everything to Lydia, a beautiful Siamese girl poet of whom no one has heard. Lassie and Rex tussle together politely; Lassie, wounded, is forced to limp home. In the Mexican gold rush a city planner is found imprisoned by outlaws in a crude cage of sticks. More people flow over the dam and more is learned about the missing electric cactus. Too many passengers have piled onto a cable car in San Francisco; the conductor is obliged to push some of them off. Maddalena, because of certain revelations she has received, firmly resolves that she will not carry out an enterprise that had formerly been dear to her heart. Fog enters into the shaft of a coal mine in Wales. A violent wind blows the fog around. Two miners, Shawn and Hillary, are pursued by fumes. Perhaps Emily’s datebook holds the clue to the mystery of the seven swans under the upas tree. Jarvis seeks to manage Emily’s dress shop and place it on a paying basis. Jarvis’s bibulous friend, Emily, influences Jarvis to take to drink, scoffing at the doctor who has forbidden Jarvis to indulge in spirituous liquors. Jarvis, because of a disturbing experience, is compelled to turn against his friend, Emily. A ham has his double, “Donnie,” take his place in an important enterprise. Jarvis loses his small fortune in trying to help a friend. Lodovico’s friend, Ambrosius, goes insane from eating the berries of a strange plant, and makes a murderous attack on Lodovico. “New narrative” is judged seditious. Hogs from all over go squealing down the street. Ambrosius, suffering misfortune, seeks happiness in the companionship of Joe, and in playing golf. Arthur, in a city street, has a glimpse of Cathy, a strange woman who has caused him to become involved in a puzzling mystery. Cathy, walking in the street, sees Arthur, a stranger, weeping. Cathy abandons Arthur after he loses his money and is injured and sent to a hospital. Arthur, married to Beatrice, is haunted by memories of a former sweetheart, Cornelia, a heartless coquette whom Alvin loves. Sauntering in a park on a fine day in spring, Tricia and Plotinus encounter a little girl grabbing a rabbit by its ears. As they remonstrate with her, the girl is transformed into a mature woman who regrets her feverish act. Running up to the girl, Alvin stumbles and loses his coins. In a nearby dell, two murderers are plotting to execute a third. Beatrice loved Alvin before he married. B, second wife of A, discovers that B-3, A’s first wife, was unfaithful. B, wife of A, dons the mask and costume of B-3, A’s paramour, and meets A as B-3; his memory returns and he forgets B-3, and goes back to B. A discovers the “Hortensius,” a lost dialogue of Cicero, and returns it to the crevice where it lay. Ambrose marries Phyllis, a nice girl from another town. Donnie and Charlene are among the guests invited to the window. No one remembers old Everett, who is left to shrivel in a tower. Pellegrino, a rough frontiersman in a rough frontier camp, undertakes to care for an orphan. Ildebrando constructs a concealed trap, and a person near to him, Gwen, falls into the trap and cannot escape.

Now the passenger pigeons flock across the sky, Plunging the Central Valley grasshopper into darkness As the Snake River sucker pushes upstream And the golden toad relaxes. A passing skiff Startles a lone gravenche in Switzerland, Just as a pair of blue pike swerve To avoid an anchor. The harelip sucker Stays on course. A phantom shiner Might have swerved to snap up a three-tooth caddisfly, Or even Blackburn’s weevil, but it’s hard to tell Why the white-winged sandpiper wheels At the distant warble of a black-footed parakeet. Gould’s emerald has a tiny, ferocious heart. Domed Mauritius tortoises are clannish, Often clashing with saddle-backed Mauritius tortoises, Though the saddle-backed Rodrigues tortoise Enjoys friendly relations with the domed Rodrigues tortoise. The Santa Fe Island tortoise keeps to itself, brooding Over its sufferings. The Japanese wolf sniffs the air. The Tasmanian wolf bursts into a sprint, The Arabian ostrich could outpace a sprinting bicyclist, And the legs of the sprinting red gazelle blur beneath it, Like the rapidly beating wings of the Kosrae crake. The Kosrae starling is nesting. In one tree The Cascade funnel-web spider lays a trap, While in another, the American chestnut moth Sleeps fitfully. The dodo is too trusting. The laughing owl can be heard across the island. The roar of the Caspian tiger resounds in a canyon. Children shudder at the sound of the Bombay lion. But not even the Caribbean monk seal Hears the Caribbean monk seal mite silently make Its home in the manner of the passenger pigeon mite, Burrowing into the ear canal. The warm river water Through which the Durango shiner darts Reflects a spectacled cormorant. On drafts of air A dusky seaside sparrow rises. Its shadow falls On a school of stumptooth minnows. The sunlight Barely filters down to a Bodensee-kilch, But a red-headed green macaw glimmers. The Kona grosbeak filches fruit from volcanoes Sloping down to the shore where Galápagos damsels Frolic and spawn. The bezoule makes a rare Appearance. Heath hens gather by the pond. Only when the North Island giant moa starts to wonder About what happened to the South Island giant moa Does the upland moa give any thought To the whereabouts of the eastern moa. Meanwhile, The coastal moa seems to have gone off After the heavy-footed moa, which follows In its turn the tracks of the crested moa, Wandering the islands looking for Mantell’s moa. None of them have seen a bush moa in a while. Even as the quagga poses for its photograph, The St. Croix racer is slithering out of the frame In eager pursuit of a big-eared hopping mouse. This may be the moment the Queen of Sheba’s gazelle Takes its leave, along with the Atlas bear, The Palestinian painted frog, and several others. The aurochs left long ago. The lapping waves Echo the strokes of the sea mink, but like The Japanese river otter, it’s nowhere To be seen. What will the confused moth do? The same as Darwin’s rice rat. Years go by, And the Martinique macaw flies through none of them. Melville might have encountered a Nuka Hiva monarch, But Nabokov never pinned a Xerces blue. Cloned, the Pyrenean ibex lived A few seconds more. The paradise parrot Sported the spectrum on its plumage. Bluebucks Only looked blue while alive. The Miller’s rail Survives in a painting. Labrador ducks ate mussels. The crescent nail-tail wallaby once was common. The thylacine appeared four million years ago. Rats killed off the mysterious starling.

By any measure, it was endless winter. Emulsions with Then circled the lake like This is it. This April will be Inadequate sensitivity to green. I rose early, erased for an hour Silk-brush and ax I'd like to think I'm a different person latent image fading around the edges and ears Overall a tighter face now. Is it so hard for you to understand From the drop-down menu In a cluster of eight poems, I selected sleep, but could not I decided to change everything Composed entirely of stills or fade into the trees but could not remember the dream save for one brief shot of a woman opening her eyes Ari, pick up. I'm a different person In a perfect world, this would be April, or an associated concept Green to the touch several feet away

By any measure, it was endless winter. Emulsions with Then circled the lake like This is it. This April will be Inadequate sensitivity to green. I rose early, erased for an hour Silk-brush and ax I'd like to think I'm a different person latent image fading around the edges and ears Overall a tighter face now. Is it so hard for you to understand From the drop-down menu In a cluster of eight poems, I selected sleep, but could not I decided to change everything Composed entirely of stills or fade into the trees but could not remember the dream save for one brief shot of a woman opening her eyes Ari, pick up. I'm a different person In a perfect world, this would be April, or an associated concept Green to the touch several feet away

Houses red as flower of bean, Flickering leaves and shadows lean! Pantalone, like a parrot, Sat and grumbled in the garret— Sat and growled and grumbled till Moon upon the window-sill Like a red geranium Scented his bald cranium. Said Brighella, meaning well: “Pack your box and—go to Hell! Heat will cure your rheumatism!” . . . Silence crowned this optimism— Not a sound and not a wail: But the fire (lush leafy vales) Watched the angry feathers fly. Pantalone ’gan to cry— Could not,would not, pack his box! Shadows (curtseying hens and cocks) Pecking in the attic gloom Tried to smother his tail-plume . . . Till a cockscomb candle-flame Crowing loudly, died: Dawn came.

O awaken with me the inquiring goodbyes. Ooh what a messy business a tangle and a muddle (and made it seem quite interesting). He ticks them off: leisure top, a different ride home, whispering, in a way, whispered whiskers, so many of the things you have to share. But I was getting on, and that’s what you don’t need. I’m certainly sorry about scaring your king, if indeed that’s what happened to him. You get Peanuts and War and Peace, some in rags, some in jags, some in velvet gown. They want the other side of the printing plant. There were concerns. Say hi to jock itch, leadership principles, urinary incompetence. Take that, perfect pitch. And say a word for the president, for the scholar magazines, papers, a streaming. Then you are interested in poetry.

1 By night when others soundly slept And hath at once both ease and Rest, My waking eyes were open kept And so to lie I found it best. 2 I sought him whom my Soul did Love, With tears I sought him earnestly. He bow’d his ear down from Above. In vain I did not seek or cry. 3 My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good; He in his Bottle put my tears, My smarting wounds washt in his blood, And banisht thence my Doubts and fears. 4 What to my Saviour shall I give Who freely hath done this for me? I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live And Loue him to Eternity.