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The hastily assembled angel flies With patchwork wings red patches and white patches And yellow patches blood and emptiness And sun and usually      an angel’s wings would Be made of  only one of  these      but his Were made at the last minute and were almost Not made at all and wouldn’t have been made Had Azrael not seen      in the hastily Assembled angel’s eyes as Azrael Placed his white palm on the hastily assembled Angel’s chest fear      as Azrael placed his palm there To shove him from the cloud      and saw he had No wings      and paused and thought      then pulled him back And so the angels stitched together what was Near      blood      emptiness      sun      as what was near Was Heaven      and what else would Heaven be

Big smelly bowel movements this blue January morning. From the living room TV, a commercial from our TV company:We’re the fastest, the only — Meaning,Love us above all others. What makes poop more pungent on certain days? A question for science. From the living room TV: the powerful cite Law, bark Order— Meaning,Love us or else. Years ago, a teacher said never to use the word “poop” in a poem. Today, the icy kiss of the toilet seat wakes me up. Today, I poop while my boyfriend shouts from the living room,Did you hear that, meaning the atomic scientists who say we are now two & a half minutes to midnight. But still I marvel whenever poop comes out as one true Platonic tube. I am trying to be marvelous. & to make my enemies throw up. I mean, if you shower with soap & eat well, maintaining consistent gastrointestinal health, you should be ready for a rimjob or other forms of anal play. My boyfriend & I are not platonic. From the TV: a white supremacist cites Science, barks Two sides to every — I mean, up the throat, out the mouth: the fastest, the only way the powerful will let go of their shit. I mean, my boyfriend & I are not into scat but if you are I hope your beloved produces the most fragrant, citrusy shit. I mean, is “shit” more or less literary than “poop”? I mean, one winter night I got sick & pooped the bed. & he just got up with me. Helped strip the sheets, carry it all to the washer. I kept saying,I’m so sorry, shivering,I’m so, I’m sorry. But he said,What? Hey. I love you.

I don’t know what to say to you, neighbor, as you shovel snow from your part of our street neat in your Greek black. I’ve waited for chance to find words; now, by chance, we meet. We took our boys to the same kindergarten, thirteen years ago when our husbands went. Both boys hated school, dropped out feral, dropped in to separate troubles. You shift snow fast, back bent, but your boy killed himself, six days dead. My boy washed your wall when the police were done. He says, “We weren’t friends?” and shakes his head, “I told him it was great he had that gun,” and shakes. I shake, close to you, close to you. You have a path to clear, and so you do.

A kind of Danish cow long thought to be extinct lumbers slowly from a fog-soaked forest. Past the statue of two men shaking hands on horseback. Into the trainyard with its newly brunette-colored coal cars. It is late, lamps light the trainyard. One of the trainmen sees the cow and has a thought like a small grey infant sinking ever so slowly in the icy harbor. The cow continues out the other side of the trainyard. The trainman shudders at the thought. The trainman’s cat Stamina crunches walnuts in her cat dish. Now, nearly thirty years later, ladies and gentlemen it is my great pleasure to introduce to you that very same cow. (The cow is led out onto the stage by a young boy dressed as a farmer.)

A little heat in the iron radiator, the dog breathing at the foot of the bed, and the windows shut tight, encrusted with hexagons of frost. I can barely hear the geese complaining in the vast sky, flying over the living and the dead, schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

By photography’s gospel, I thank you, think you back. You fail far away from me, waving at pain. A perfect song is loveless and here by your name. Things will never be the same. Are they the same yet?

Behold the gloomy tyrant’s awful form Binding the captive earth in icy chains; His chilling breath sweeps o’er the watery plains, Howls in the blast, and swells the rising storm. See from its centre bends the rifted tower, Threat’ning the lowly vale with frowning pride, O’er the scared flocks that seek its sheltering side, A fearful ruin o’er their heads to pour. While to the cheerful hearth and social board Content and ease repair, the sons of want Receive from niggard fate their pittance scant; And where some shed bleak covert may afford, Wan poverty, amidst her meagre host Casts round her haggard eyes, and shivers at the frost.

Couched on crimson cushions, pink bleeds gold and red spills into one’s heart. Broad leather keeps time, calibrating different hours in different zones unaware of the grammar that makes sense. Only random woofs and snores of two distant dogs on a very cold night clears fog that is unresolved. New plants wait for new heat — to grow, to mature. An old cane recliner contains poetry for peace — woven text keeping comfort in place. But it is the impatience of want that keeps equations unsolved. Heavy, translucent, vaporous, split red by mother tongues — winter’s breath is pink.

How long will the bed that we made together hold us there? Your stubbled cheeks grazed my skin from evening to dawn, a cloud of scattered particles now, islands of shaving foam slowly spiraling down the drain, blood drops stippling the water pink as I kiss the back of your neck, our faces framed inside a medicine cabinet mirror. The blade of your hand carves a portal out of steam, the two of us like boys behind frosted glass who wave goodbye while a car shoves off into winter. All that went unnoticed till now — empty cups of coffee stacked up in the sink, the neighborhood kids up to their necks in mounds of autumn leaves. How months on a kitchen calendar drop like frozen flies, the flu season at its peak followed by a train of magic-markered xxx’s — nights we’d spend apart. Death must work that way, a string of long distance calls that only gets through to the sound of your voice on our machine, my heart’s mute confession screened out. How long before we turn away from flowers altogether, your blind hand reaching past our bedridden shoulders to hit that digital alarm at delayed intervals — till you shut it off completely.

The wintry west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw; Or, the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw: While tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae; And bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast, The joyless winter-day, Let others fear, to me more dear Than all the pride of May: The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join; The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fate resembles mine! Thou Pow’r Supreme, whose mighty scheme These woes of mine fulfil, Here, firm, I rest, they must be best, Because they are Thy will! Then all I want (O, do Thou grant This one request of mine!) Since to enjoy Thou dost deny, Assist me to resign.